Hi losers! I'm a longtime lurker here, and the community has been a great motivator for me since I started on my weight loss journey last year. I've seen a lot of discussion in some posts about the 'Health/Healthy At Any Size' concept, and after reading this article I'd love to see what Redditors here think of it (be warned: it's quite long).
It was published in 2018, so some of you may have already read it, but to me it really encapsulated some of the attitudes that I find difficult to reconcile in the body positive or HAES philosophies. Namely, that losing weight is pointless because diets don't work and even if you do lose weight you'll likely gain it all back anyway. Some lines that jumped out at me:
- "For 60 years, doctors and researchers have known two things that could have improved, or even saved, millions of lives. The first is that diets do not work. Not just paleo or Atkins or Weight Watchers or Goop, but all diets. Since 1959, research has shown that 95 to 98 percent of attempts to lose weight fail and that two-thirds of dieters gain back more than they lost. The reasons are biological and irreversible." This seems like a pretty defeatist attitude to me -- nearly all attempts to lose weight fail? And the reasons are biological? So what's the point in even trying then? And doctors know this but choose to misdirect their patients? (Also Goop isn't a diet, but that's a whole other can of worms.)
- "As early as 1969, research showed that losing just 3 percent of your body weight resulted in a 17 percent slowdown in your metabolism—a body-wide starvation response that blasts you with hunger hormones and drops your internal temperature until you rise back to your highest weight. Keeping weight off means fighting your body’s energy-regulation system and battling hunger all day, every day, for the rest of your life." I've never experienced a big drop in weight, so this is something I wanted to ask to people who have. Does this sound true?
- "A few years ago, on a routine visit, Andrew’s doctor weighed him, announced that he was 'dangerously overweight' and told him to diet and exercise, offering no further specifics. Should he go on a low-fat diet? Low-carb? Become a vegetarian? Should he do Crossfit? Yoga? Should he buy a fucking ThighMaster?" This just bugged me. Maybe Andrew could have done some research and read the countless free resources online about what to do if you need to lose weight? Idk.
- This statistic is highlighted in a callout box: "Chances of a woman classified as obese achieving a 'normal' weight: 0.8%" Again -- I guess I have to take this at face value, but this seems to be cherry picked deliberately to stop people from even trying to lose weight.
The bulk of the article covers anecdotal evidence from overweight people who have experienced cruelty and discrimination by the medical establishment, which is obviously terrible but I got the feeling that the author had purposefully included these stories to support their hypothesis that dieting is a sham and weight loss is a pipe dream. It didn't come across as very balanced.
Like most people here, I think everybody deserves respect regardless of their size and the socio-economic factors that play a part in a person's diet should be looked at more closely instead of just applying the same weight loss advice to everyone. But I find it difficult to support the idea that even attempting to lose weight is an exercise in futility, especially given all the inspiring stories I've seen posted here.
Would love to hear your thoughts though.
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from loseit - Lose the Fat https://ift.tt/2vyQxJr
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