I wonder when we will look back on the last decades and ask how we could have gotten the problem of excess weight so wrong? I don’t know what the right answer is, but we clearly don’t have it now.

My doctor is tolerable; he vaguely mentions my slightly elevated blood sugar levels, but doesn’t nag, even though we have a thing called “prediabetes” now, which is the same kind of thing as “metabolic syndrome.” Both of them mean, “You’re at slightly higher risk of something.” I don’t have prediabetes yet, so my doctor hasn’t kicked into gear, thank goodness.

At my age, I’m at a slightly higher risk of developing everything, is the problem.

Of course, now there are weight loss drugs, and a lot of people I know are using them. My adult kid referred to the GLP-1s as “medicalized starvation.” Well, they are. Early results suggested that, like diets of all sort, when people go off these drugs, they gain the weight back. Even more recent results suggest that the weight gain is accelerated after going off the drugs. The solution may be staying on the drugs for the rest of your life, but the way pharmaceuticals are going, and the way we keep discovering side effects of miracle drugs years after everyone goes on them, I don’t think that’s gonna work.

Lots of people like to blame “processed foods.” Most foods are processed (that’s called “cooking”), and always have been. Lots of people like to blame bad eating habits, and that’s certainly possible, but historically, eating habits weren’t as good as people like to claim, and people didn’t gain much weight. The stuff we ate in the 50s, unless it was in season, was often heinous shit, but people ate a lot of it.

I’m fond of the theory that the overuse of antibiotics has something to do with the weight gain, because many antibiotics really mess with your digestive system. Others think “hyperpalatability” is the problem. Still others are sure that it’s sugar, which gets put in everything these days. My favorite theory is capitalism, because corporations, to increase shareholder value, need people to consume way beyond their needs, and they are working hard to get us to do that.

But though I have a doctorate and know how to read research, it’s not that kind of doctorate, so I’ll leave “doing your own research” to people who are actual researchers in the field.

The problem is that “actual researchers,” meaning people in the medical fields, are so goofy about weight. They keep thinking fat is the whole problem, and that losing weight is easy. They keep treating it as a moral issue. They keep talking about getting people to eat better and exercise more to lose weight, as if that worked for most people. The research consistently shows it doesn’t, not for the majority.

Also, my own experience shows it doesn’t work. My mother’s and grandmother’s obsessions about food and weight were transmitted to me; my mother’s worst insult was to call someone “fat” in a disgusted tone. She was often on some kind of diet herself, all the way back to those times that people think everyone ate better, and she was always pretty sturdy. And like my mother and grandmother, I have a sturdy build, and my “resting” weight in my twenties was well over what doctors thought a dainty young thing should weigh. I was substantial. Still am.

Oh, I’m a big fan of exercise. I have been an active exerciser all my life; I ran long distances for a long time, even completing a marathon in under four hours, and later became a competitive fencer at a high level. If exercise was the answer, I would be skinny. Instead, I am still at the “resting” weight of my twenties, and have always returned there, no matter how much I exercise. (And at my age that resting weight is a lot lumpier-looking, sadly).

Also, I know how to eat well. Throughout my life, I spent years and years eating sensibly, tracking my intake, planning my meals, even going to Weight Watchers before it stopped using the modified diabetic diet, and have lost weight that way. One time I went down to the “dainty young thing” weight, and people worried about me because I looked like death. And every time, as soon as I neared my goal weight, I got ravenously hungry, and gained it all back.

That said, I gave up any kind of dieting some years ago when I realized that all I was doing was making myself obsessed with food. Sure, my weight went up, but it stopped at the weight it always stopped at, and after a few years I stopped holding my breath and worrying.

Lately, I’ve started having less appetite, because I’m older. This happens. I eat a lot less now, because I just can’t eat the way I used to. And guess what? I still don’t lose weight.

My husband, however, was skinny all his life.

Of course he had liver damage and smoked like a chimney, he had terrible teeth, and he was incapable of eating anything until he was irrationally starving and had exactly the right food in front of him. That’s a great weight loss program.

Shame he died anyway, of something not at all weight-related. He was yearning for a pastrami sandwich near the end, and I ran out and got him one, but he couldn’t eat it when I got back, because he was just too sick. That made me terribly sad.

You know what else is sad? Everyone spending so much time thinking about weight.