In my focused world, the release of Ashley Gearhardt's (et. al) study advancing the evidence for food addiction has been a welcome thunderbolt from several directions. Unreservedly.

But nothing is perfect, and I must quarrel with the report's closing words:

"...the current emphasis on personal responsibility as the anecdote [sic] to increasing obesity rates may have minimal effectiveness.

As you know, I identify as a food addict, and I will tell you that personal responsibility is the only thing that saved me from my extreme obesity and likely early death. As I am also wont to say, nobody ever held me down and forced food into my mouth.

I do take the authors' point, that wagging fingers at fat people and telling them to just stop being lazy pigs is a self-defeating "strategy." Not only is it hurtful, it won't work. Or, certainly, it hasn't worked so far.

The question is, why do some people deploy the American ethos of just grasping onto one's bootstraps, and some don't? How does one access the strength to be personally responsible?

I failed to do it into my 30s, despite being wholly aware of the concept. It was only a combination of therapy, support groups, and rehab — which brought the attitudes, practices, and treatments designed for addicts into my life — that helped me to get there.

(It is good to point out that I devised none of these actions, and greeted none of them gleefully. So if you're thinking, "ugh, no way," well, that's where I started, too.)

Personal responsibility is — has to be — the way to go. But for some of us, biochemical, emotional, and spiritual factors undermine gumption.

That's why recognition and acceptance of food addiction is so important, so that people who have repeatedly tried to lose weight but have always gained it back will see that there is another way to find release from all that weight, and all the misery and discomfort that goes with it.