Fear, anxiety and mental overload are causes for obesity in human beings. How should one lead a healthy lifestyle in order to prevent obesity and bulimia?

Obesity, increase in bodyweight disproportionate to the height with excess fatty deposits under the skin, has become a menace to society, especially in the affluent West. It has reached its zenith in the US, where almost every person seems to be obese. It has become a good money-spinner for the pharmaceutical, technology and the food industries. Most of the quick-fix methods if not all are only tall claims. Some of them are downright risky and has the potential to kill. The fear of obesity and the mad rush to slim down has resulted in many Western girls developing a new disease, bulimia.

The low carbohydrate (low-carb) diet seems to be the latest fad. It is estimated by The Times magazine that nearly 1,558 low-carb products have been introduced in the US alone, in the last two years, with estimated sales of more than $30 billion a year. There are hundreds of other low fat, high-protein, diets that not only ruin one’s health but also increase anxiety levels. It is not what one eats that kills but one’s negative thoughts, the very heavy mental flab that kills. The overwhelming evidence points to the primacy of the mind in the causation of all killer diseases. Obesity is no exception.

Many of us overeat when we are depressed and/ or not happy. Similarly, many people lose weight and find it difficult to eat when they are troubled by extreme anxiety and guilt. While modern medical science says: “you are what you eat,” the science of spirituality says: “you are what you think.” This wisdom is the essence of Ayurveda that has existed for centuries. The bija mantra, the foundation of Ayurveda, is: “Prasanna aathma indriya manaha, swastha ithyabhideeyathe.” As long as the mind is free from all the dangerous negative thoughts and is filled with universal love, good health will be guaranteed. Patanjali’s Yoga Shastra, with its advocacy of the sattvic diet and chitta vritti nirodhah (control over ones greedy desires), would be the ideal recipe for an ideal body weight and good health.
 

Mary Baker Eddy wrote a treatise Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures wherein she quotes extensively from the Bible. In Luke's Gospel, Jesus says, "Do not worry about your life, what you will eat; or about your body, what you will wear. Life is more than food, and the body more than clothes." This counsel about food anxiety sounds extraordinarily contemporary. The Bible talks about the inner hunger for spiritual satisfaction that might be at the root of either overeating or self-starvation. It is the mental obesity that manifests as physical obesity. The holistic approach to obesity starts with spiritual management. That, when coupled with a sensible simple diet, would cure obesity permanently.
 

“Feast on giving. Happiness consists in being and in doing good….only what God gives, and what we give ourselves and others through His tenure, confers happiness: conscious worth satisfies the hungry heart, and nothing else can," writes Mary Baker Eddy. “We can dine on the reality that we are God’s own children,” wrote the Christian Science Monitor. Inquest Foundation, Bangalore is spreading the message of obesity management through spiritual means without the crazy diets and weight-reducing gadgets.
 

The message in Verse 96, in Sura V, of the Holy Quran is that food is less important for human health than righteousness.
 

In short, all the scriptures proclaim that it is the man’s mind with his awareness of his higher duties to God’s creations that determines one’s happiness or ill health. If one unloads the mind of all destructive negative thoughts and makes sensible changes in life style, then one quickly realises that not only obesity but all other physical illnesses will get corrected. While there is no pill for every ill, every pill has an ill following its prolonged use.
 

(Professor Dr BM Hegde, a Padma Bhushan awardee in 2010, is an MD, PhD, FRCP (London, Edinburgh, Glasgow & Dublin), FACC and FAMS. He is also Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of the Science of Healing Outcomes, chairman of the State Health Society's Expert Committee, Govt of Bihar, Patna. He is former Vice Chancellor of Manipal University at Mangalore and former professor for Cardiology of the Middlesex Hospital Medical School, University of London.)