Sugar not so sweet for addicts weighed down with obesity
Author believes in traditional methods to tackle health crisis
SIMON RUMLEY is author of The Wobble Club, a satirical novel about the life of a morbidly-obese couple.
It was partly inspired by his own past battle with being overweight.
His book involved deep research into the condition, and the social, cultural and psychological reasons behind it.
Here, to mark World Obesity Day today, he considers if the condition may have its roots in addiction patterns.
TODAY is World Obesity Day. My initial discovery of this annual event — initiated in 2015 by the World Obesity Federation — was one of intrigue followed by confusion.
Is it a celebration of the obese? An attempt at removing the stigma that can come with obesity?
Or, actually, a clarion call to the obese? Lose weight immediately before it’s too late?
Doctors define someone as obese if their body mass index (BMI) is over 30.
I was happily obese and loved bingeing on alcohol, food and chocolate.
I still do occasionally, but over 18 months, I lost 25 kilograms (nearly 4 stone).
Partly inspired by this experience, I wrote my debut novel, The Wobble Club, about a morbidly obese couple – Gill and Brolly – and the conflict that arises when the guy in the relationship wants to diet but the woman refuses.
He weighs 266 kilograms and she weighs 228 kilograms.
Neither can walk more than 15 metres and they travel most places on their bariatric mobility scooters.
Although I never mentioned the word once, I treated their condition as an addiction.
Literature and drama are made of extremes but is the obesity most of us “suffer” also caused by addiction?
Are body positivists food junkies? They’d argue, correctly, that their body is theirs to do whatever they want with it and the medical profession be damned.
But what about the silent majority? Those who lack such confidence?
The ones who do believe in diets and/or exercise regimes but somehow never quite hit their mark? Those who aren’t “too” obese?
I lost 25kg – the weight of a drum kit – over 18 months SIMON RUMLEY ON HIS OWN WEIGHT BATTLES
EPIDEMIC
Are they (we) sugar addicts? It’s a widely held view that drug addicts only manage to get help when they admit they are drug addicts.
When they’re ready to get help, not when someone else wants them to.
Would it help this global weight epidemic, therefore, if we all defined ourselves as food addicts? Or sugar junkies?
With technology as it is, such philosophising might soon become a thing of the past.
The pharma industry knows a cash cow when it sees one; Wegovy and Ozempic are relatively new and approved injection-based products that contain semaglutide.
Semaglutide reduces blood sugar by promoting the release of insulin whilst sending messages to the brain.
What this does is convince your stomach it’s more full than it actually is.
Perhaps even more interesting is the nascent technology involved in sugar elimination; negating the effects of sugar not before but after it’s consumed.
Monch Monch by Bioluminescence is a plant fibre-based drink mix that expands in the stomach and makes sugar unavailable for early absorption. Two sachets every day at a cost of about €140 a month. Is this the future? Passive weight loss?
In 11 years, the World Obesity Federation estimates that one in four adults will be obese, totalling 1.9 billion people, the estimated financial impact of which will amount to €3.98trillion a year. Given how hard losing
weight seems to be for most of us, having our cake, eating it and not getting obese must surely be the holy grail.
Simon Rumley’s debut novel, The Wobble Club, is available in shops now priced at €15.94.