Obesity is becoming our nation's top health-care concern physically and psychologically, with little relief in sight. According to the Centers for Disease Control, 65 percent of Americans are overweight. In the 1960s men's average weight was 166 pounds and women 140 pounds. In the early 2000s men's average weight increased to 189 pounds and women to 163 pounds. We are growing as a nation.

Men and women are not the only ones in our community with expanding bellies. Children are growing at alarming rates. Lack of exercise, watching television too long, playing video games and the reluctance to explore the world outside creates hothouse children who are uncomfortable when a little too hot, slightly too cold, hungry or bored. It's time to turn off the TV, unplug the Xbox, put a coat on our children and take them outside.

Inactivity is not the only cause of the widening of America. Also to blame is the availability of fat and caloric-laden fast food, gluttony, chili-cheese fries and gorging on Romanistically fashioned overabundant meals. We must take personal responsibility for our growing girth.

Diets, weightloss programs, medication and operations, intestinal cleansing, exercise regiments and fasting have become the standard list of options for those wishing to lose a few pounds. But have these programs worked? Some find success and keep the weight off, while many add the lost pounds back on with extra weight added for their trouble. If these programs collectively worked, the obesity rate would decrease and our nation will once again become fit and healthy. This is not happening. We continue to grow in circumference while our mood shrinks and energy level decreases.

These weightloss programs don't work because weight loss and weight gain is not just physiological but also psychological. Attention must be paid to the way we think of food, our behavioral approach to food and our instinctual need to consume sugary, fat-laden foods.

Let's examine unhealthy psychological eating. We condition ourselves to eat in a healthy and unhealthy way. I believe there are five reasons people use food to torture their body and subconsciously and consciously become overweight.

1. Emotional eating is paring positive past memories with the food eaten during the time of that memory. The brain's circuitry has a hotline, which runs between the brain area that gets information from the nose, and the brains ancient limbic centers associate with memory and emotion. Information from the taste buds travels to an area of the temporal lobe not far from where the brain receives olfactory information, which interacts with taste. The brain's circuitry for smell also connects with areas involved in memory storage, which helps explain why a smell can trigger a memory explosion.

When we eat or smell food, wecreate emotion from past memories. Huge holiday meals are psychologically pared with past memories of family, friends and the people we love who have died or whom we have become estranged from. We remember meals as a child when mom and dad ate together and we laughed as a family. A first date at a romantic restaurant reminds us of the anticipation of a first kiss. These memories create a subconscious behavioral desire to repeat the memory and relive the joyous feeling.

Imagine briefly smelling bread baking while walking downtown, then suddenly creating a cognitive impression of standing in your grandmother's kitchen as a child deeply breathing the same delicious yeast. You might catch yourself smiling softly then breathing more deeply to continue the memory.

Taste and odors have the power to evoke memories and feelings. When feeling lonely, depressed, sad, mad, frustrated, anxious, unloved, grieving or unwanted, some turn to food to subconsciously and odiferously fill the void left by past memories. People eat to change their emotion.

2. Eating because one is depressed or has poor self-esteemed is a chicken or the egg quandary - which came first? Some become depressed when their waistline increases and begin to feel out of control, less healthy or less attractive. Some begin negative self-talk when they feel unfit. Others eat when depressed or lack self-esteem to gain happiness in their unhappy life. Food satisfies temporarily and offers brief happiness. The happiness waivers when the meal is over and the guilt of overeating take over the feeling of happiness.

3. Some overeat to punish or gain control of an out of control life. This self-injurious behavior rewards the eater by punishing herself or the people controlling her. A person sexually or physically abused might overeat to subconsciously become too unattractive to again be abused. Some eat to gain control of her life when another - a spouse, parent or friend - controls all other life factions. This behavior is analogous to a person who suffers bulimia or anorexia and slowly starves herself or purges her food to control the one thing in her life no one else can control; her consumption of food.

4. Some behaviorally overeat because the person is simply used to overeating. He or she have been behaviorally trained to eat unhealthy food and consume the same type of unhealthy food every week then continue to eat as long as food is present (even though they are not hungry). The behaviorally trained overeater's home pantry is filled with unhealthy food and he or she seldom purchases healthy alternatives. A person who behaviorally eats is not an adventurous eater and seldom tries new food. Becoming a culinary explorer of healthy foods often reduces the waistline of a behavioral eater quickly.

5. Lastly, some eat for instant gratification. People who desire instant gratification have not learned the willpower to delay gratification. He eats for the moment, knowing he will gain weight but rationalize his eating as satisfying his present hunger needs. Then rationalizes again by bargaining internally that, if he has a second helping of mashed potatoes and gravy, he can always go for a walk after dinner. The problem is that the walk seldom happens due to the lethargy caused by overeating.

This list is inconclusive and mostly my own opinion based on my research and observations from my private practice patients. I'm sure there are other reasons people overeat or become obese and I welcome your personal observations or stories of your experience or beliefs. Next week I offer ways to become psychologically healthy with food.

Bill Rutherford is a psychotherapist, public speaker, elementary school counselor, adjunct college psychology instructor and executive chef, and owner of Rutherford Education Group. Please email him at bprutherford@hotmail.com.