A Book Review: the end of overeating by David A. Kessler, MD

The End of Overeating (313 pages) is not my normal type of book to read, but I am an RD (dietitian) and I do find this body of work to be interesting because - I am overweight and overeat!

Wow, this book made me hungry. To start out with, most of the book is written at a great level for a person with a few years of college to understand. It promises to change the way you look at food forever, and I suppose it will. I can't look at a huge portion the same, and think, I can eat just half because Dr. Kessler is sure that I cannot stop at one.

This is a story about our insatiable appetite for sugar, salt and fat. Man, he describes so many delicious foods that I can't help but think of them while he's describing them. Which is what he is talking about, how we are obsessed with food and eating it - that it does not make us feel better only worse and through continued "conditioned hypereating" we gain more and more weight.

It is a rational explanation for the process our body goes through when we eat more than we need and more than we want. It seems to explain why we crave foods and eat food when we are full or satiated. He spends a great deal of the book explaining the phenomenon. So, I am clear when I say I understand how high sugar, fat and sodium lead me to eat more of the same.

But, nothing really of substance about what to do with it. I don't know if that is his plan, not to give us a guide but more of a description of the issue. He does say, eat less... Which all of us know. I can't say I am sure I like the amount of useful information in the book, because as a lay person I don't see a lot of use. Nonetheless, I am going to start working on logging my eating because of all of the things that work or don't, I think that helps the most.