This book was written from the perspective of a physician who solved his own weight challenges and has maintained normal weight for over two years. As a clinician in private practice, I am in that ...view moreThis book was written from the perspective of a physician who solved his own weight challenges and has maintained normal weight for over two years. As a clinician in private practice, I am in that rank of endangered middle class who constantly fight the headwind of time, money, and family. With three children—ages twenty, sixteen, and thirteen—I think my life intersects in many ways with those of many Americans.
I was born in Nigeria, the fifth of ten children. I completed medical school at the university college hospital, Ibadan, Nigeria. In 1992, I immigrated to the United States. From 1993 to 1996, I did my residency program in pediatrics at Brookdale Hospital, Brooklyn, New York.
In rural Nigeria, where I grew up, there were lots of fruits to choose from. A typical neighborhood backyard had mango trees, peas, banana, pawpaw, pineapple, palms, wine trees, oranges, fresh corn, and guava. It sure was like the garden of Eden but without the divine constraint. Children ran around and ate from all the trees.
Facing the challenges of survival in urban New York City, I had to succumb to what was readily available and expedient: work, confinement, coffee, fast food, refined cereal, soda, chocolate bars, ice cream, and processed food. The weight piled up.
It took nearly twenty years and a looming catastrophe for me to catch my breath, to rediscover my life, to retool my lifestyle, to take responsibility for what I eat, to get back to the basics of what food should be, to redefine who I want to be based on what I eat, and to remember what my grandmother and mother taught me when they put a plate of food in front of me.
In this book, I brought forth my gift of being able to trim a complex subject down to the essentials.
Other books I have written are Let the Dead Man Walk, Automated Man, Thought Inheritance, and The Cycle of Existence.view less