First World Problems

I have paused my career in weight loss counseling and now mainly work in the hospital with pediatric oncology patients. This has allowed me to really reflect on the struggle the majority of Americans have with diet, exercise, and weight loss. This struggle people have, is known as first world problems.

Urban Dictionary defines first world problems as, “Problems from living in a wealthy, industrialized nation that third worlders would probably roll their eyes at.” It also says, “Compared to third world problems our problems don't mean shit.”

People obsess about food. What should I eat? How much should I eat? When should I eat? What time should I stop eating? How many meals a day should I eat? What is the best food I can eat? What supplement do I need? How many grams of sugar should I eat? Then you have the post meal reaction... Oh my goodness, I ate that, I shouldn’t have eaten that. I can’t believe I ate that. Why did I eat that? And the vicious cycle of their first world problem continues... daily...

I have spoken to many people who have experienced this, and my advice to them is...

Stop obsessing. Expending so much time and energy thinking about food only gravitates you towards food... and overeating. There are a million things going on in the world... weight loss and diet is not worth thinking about day in and day out.

Weight loss is not complicated. Eating healthy literally means, eat food, mostly plants, not too much. BAM. There you go. And then the excuses start rolling in.

“No matter what I do, I can’t lose weight.” It get’s old quick, because when it comes down to it, if you followed those simple instructions, you would achieve your goal.

So the obsession with food and it’s nonsensical and unnecessary complexities continues.

Notice the table below, I've talked about it before. The gist of this hierarchy of needs is that you must achieve one level, before fully moving onto the next “level of needs.”

As you can see, food is on the bottom as a physiological need. Next we have safety needs, the need for love and belonging, the need for self esteem and confidence, and finally the need of self actualization. So if your basic physiological needs (for example, food) are not being met, it is incredibly difficult to have the motivation (or time/awareness) to move further on to other needs, such as self esteem or problem solving.

I do not know if you are aware of this, but we are in the top 1% of the world. Our society should be at least on the level of love and belonging if not near the level of self-actualization and trying to solve the world’s problems; not stuck worrying about our basic needs.

Neanderthals were forced to worry about food because it was hard to come by. Today, food will always find you; your only job is to make an educated choice on what food you allow to enter your body. By worrying about such a basic need, you are stunting your growth as a human being and inhibiting your self-actualization, your creativity, and your motivation to succeed in helping yourself and others.

So yes, people struggle with weight loss daily, because they do not choose to eat healthy food or exercise... First world problem.

My friend loves quoting this Proverbs to me, “As a dog returns to his vomit, so a fool repeats his foolishness.” Well, people love basking in their vomit, no matter what their proverbial vomit may be.