Rethinking Thin: The New Science of Weight Loss–and the Myths and Realities of Dieting
They are far from the same.
Through a thorough analysis and painstaking interviews Ms. Kolata shows how diets do not work and that every person has a different set point for their weight. And most of us are not going to meet the Hollywood ideal.
She follows a group of volunteers who sign up for a University of Pennsylvania study of a restricted calorie diet vs. the Atkin’s diet. Each diet is then paired with a variant of behavior modification therapy. This study lasted two years and followed people through weight loss, weight loss plateaus, and the almost inevitable weight gain once the diet was over. The findings of the very rigorous study - and several others - blew all of the “common sense” ideas surrounding weight loss out of the water.
People are not fat because they eat too much and exercise too little. Those who are predisposed to be skinny have bodies that work to become skinny, and those who are prone to be heavy, will have bodies that work to be heavy. As a matter of fact, hunger, that most basic of drives, works very differently among those who are obese and those who are not.
In the obese, it seems that restricting diet makes that person obsess on food due to the reaction of the endocrine system. There are a number of chemicals that govern hunger and if the triggers or receptors are not working just right, that person will eat more - or less - than their body actually needs. They will physically suffer if they do not eat. (Yes, some suffer if they do eat as well.) In the most severe cases, leptin can be given to those who do not make enough of it. However, there is a subset of patients who can receive all the leptin in the world and they will never know they are satiated because their brain does not receive that signal.
It seems that the endocrine system is intricately linked into the way in which we process food as fuel. Those who tend to be skinny will turn more into muscle, and those with a tendency to be fat, turn food into fat. It doesn’t seem to matter much (One weakness of the book is that Ms. Kolata does not go into the increasing use of endocrine disrupting substances in our environment which may contribute to the problem.)
Now, some say we are fatter than we have ever been. I - and Ms. Kolata - beg to differ. Look at the paintings of the great masters. Those men and women would be considered obese under current standards. As a matter of fact, prior to the turn of the 20th century, women were not considered beautiful if they did not have something spilling out of their corsets! What happened? Today we have Photoshopped models representing an impossible ideal of thinness and beauty instead of real people.
Now, wouldn’t you think that the research that could point to the real reasons people fail to keep weight off would be welcomed by the scientific community? Nope. The scientific community, as usual, went back to the days of Copernicus and Galileo with aspersions as to the veracity and methodology of the studies showing that weight had other causes - or that it was not, in isolation, a factor in younger time of death.
“If you are on he political right, obesity is indicative of moral failure,” he says, “If you are on the left, it means rampaging global capitalism. - - Eric Oliver, a political scientist at the University of Chicago, an obesity researcher, p. 195
This sums up the problem with obesity research nicely. It has been politicized. Completely and thoroughly politicized. Nobody wants to hear the simple truth that weight - like height - is a matter of genetics, not environment, or will power.
This book also goes into the discrimination against those who are overweight. People are turned down for jobs, unable to build families, and even denied necessary medical treatment because of their weight. Several stories are of men and, especially, women, who when trying to find treatment for disease were turned away because they were heavy. There are several known diseases in women especially (PCOS, anyone?) that can contribute to obesity.
This book needs to be read by health care practitioners, patients, and society as a whole so that the myth that will power can bring about weight loss can be crushed. There is so much talk about the “ownership society” in insurance and health care that it concerns me that this myth pervades so much of the literature.
If someone is overweight or obese, should they have to pay a premium for health insurance in the same way many push that smokers should? If the conclusions of this book - and the majority of scientific research - are followed, no, they should not. It is no more within the person’s control than any other genetic feature.
Where does this book fall down? It does not give mention to co-morbidities that can exist in the overweight and obese that may actually be contributing to weight problems. One of the favorites these days is the risk of asthma with obesity. Is that an accurate portrayal? Isn’t it more likely that due to asthma someone becomes less active and then gains weight? Correlation is not causation and there is a dangerous tendency to make causation out of correlations in the field of obesity research. Of course, there are drugs that can cause obesity as well. Some of them have a greater benefit than the treatment of obesity does for a certain population of patients. That is something only an individual and their doctor can decide.
So, please, the next time you feel like telling that “fatty” that they should close their mouth, think about the fact that weight is in your genes, not your mind.
(on my to read list), had a chemical analysis done and found corn molecules in his hair! Do you realize how much corn has to be ingested for that to happen? Do you know how much corn that you are exposed to and you don’t even know about it?
on order, we headed towards Border’s Bookstore.