Dogs, I have been thinking about our dogs.
A few years back we had a coonhound named Suzie, great dog I loved her howl. You could just put out a bowl of dog food for her and she’d eat what she wanted, not a lot but stayed healthy and never gained weight.
Then we got Sister, a beagle mix. Sister was part of a litter of puppies a friend found abandoned in the woods and near starvation, Sister was the healthiest. Sister is a really smart dog and spends most of her waking hours figuring out how to get food, and she’s really good at it. Left to her own devices she’d eat nonstop and be too heavy to walk. We had to take to feeding Suzie in another room, door closed, to be sure she got enough to eat.
Suzie left us a few years ago and we have a new dog, Taki some kind of mix, we were told half beagle half boxer. Taki is something in between, most days she can hold her own against Sister, but isn't as aggressive about finding food.
Point is I think our eating instincts play a big role in what we eat. Wandering in the woods Sister’s instincts served her well, if not found she might have been the only one of the lot to survive. I guess I am a lot like Sister, problem is I have no owner to control my food, and I have a very unnatural access to high calorie food. I think that is what a lot of us overweight people are up against, and it’s not surprising we have so much trouble fighting it.
No solutions here, just musings. I think understanding our problems can help with solutions, in my case I think I am fighting instinct. Humans have other instincts we overcome all the time. The aboriginal people we descended from were more violent and tribal than we are, killing most strangers who wandered into our territory. We control those urges pretty well, so I guess there is hope.