The Obesity Epedemic and Little Kids

I read this article this morning about children as young as 5 having heart attacks and strokes because of high cholesterol and obesity. Is this real or is this the typical American scare tactics, like fat is some kind of Osama Bin Laden stealthy little sucker just waiting in the closets to attack us. There's so much debate and questioning about why this exists. And the fact that it's called an Epidemic takes the responsibility away from the individual, as though obesity is attacking us without warning, sneaking up on us. Why are we so fat? I know why I became overweight. Because I ate too much. I ate too much because I was sad. I was because, well, because I was overweight... why was I overweight? I ate too much. I think it started with my parents divorce. I felt so lonely and depressed. I would come home and my sister wouldn't be home, or if she was, she'd be on the phone with her friends. So then I'd dig into the oreos and milk and lay on my belly in front of the tv and watch Woody Woodpecker and eat a bag of oreos. A bag of oreos almost every day after school. It soothed me. It made me feel better. I'm not sure about this addictive, sedative effect of processed food. It is something that made me feel safe and secure in the past. Eating was always consistent, alway there, food always had the same effect. It always worked to make me feel better.

Now it's different. Now I'm reaching out for new things, like exercise, which certainly does help me feel better, or also a warm bath with Dr. Bronners lavendar soap which smells nice and relaxes me, sometimes I listen to the think & shrink on my ipod, the long version and that's incredibly relaxing, I find lots of things that are consisitent like the way food used to make me feel. Food at some point ceased to make me feel better and has just made me feel worse. When I eat (in a binging addictive way) I feel bad about myself. I feel uncomfortable. I feel full and sick.