The Fat Trap - Follow-up - POSTED ON: Dec 12, 2012
Regarding the article I recently posted: The Fat Trap, I am one of those people who believes that saying “weight-loss and maintenance is easy” is an unhelpful lie, and that telling people the Truth about weight-loss and maintenance is what is Helpful.
Below are a couple of follow-up questions and answers about the article that I think are worth posting at here at DietHobby.
Reader’s Question: Were you at all worried that by writing a high-profile article about this research you would discourage people who are unhealthily overweight from trying to lose weight?
Answer from Auther, Tara Parker Pope: I was really worried that the story would be discouraging to people, but I have been so pleased by the hundreds of e-mails and comments sent by readers. So many readers said to me, “Finally, my life made sense….” and “Now that I understand what’s happening, I’m really encouraged to try again…” One reader wrote that she found the article to be “sobering, challenging, and comforting all at the same time.” We don’t do dieters any favors by telling them that it’s easy and simple. I think telling people the truth about weight loss leaves them far better equipped to tackle the problem.
Reader’s Question: A fascinating and disturbing part of this article is the section where you detail the extremely regimented lives of a few formerly obese people who have managed to keep off the weight. These rare individuals, as you quote a Yale scholar saying, “never don’t think about their weight.” A Slate article on your piece argues that the mentality of these people “resembles the symptoms of an eating disorder.” They suggested that our fat problem is not obesity but that we encourage people to adopt an eating-disorder mentality to fight obesity. How would you respond to this? Answer from Auther, Tara Parker Pope I think if a person had epilepsy and needed to adopt a very regimented diet to control that disease, nobody would accuse them of having an eating disorder. A person with high blood pressure might cut back on salt and take medication, and we don’t judge him. A person with Type 1 diabetes has to be very careful about what they eat and constantly monitor blood sugar to stay well. Again, we don’t question this behavior or call it disordered eating. But a person with obesity as a medical condition is ridiculed for gaining the weight in the first place and then they are criticized for being hypervigilant about maintaining a healthy weight. That said, I thought the Slate article made a good point, concluding “that a society that stigmatizes people for a physical attribute that they can’t change is the real fat trap we ought to be trying to escape.”
The Fat Trap - POSTED ON: Dec 11, 2012
Research exists showing that a biological and metabolic backlash is triggered by weight-loss. Learning about the way our own biology operates to influence us with regard to food and weight issues helps make sense out of our dieting struggles, and provides a better understanding of the challenges that overweight / obese people face. Here is an excellent article that was published in the New York Times about that issue.
The Fat Trap by Tara Parker-Pope -- The New York Times 12/28/11
For 15 years, Joseph Proietto has been helping people lose weight. When these obese patients arrive at his weight-loss clinic in Australia, they are determined to slim down. And most of the time, he says, they do just that, sticking to the clinic’s program and dropping excess pounds. But then, almost without exception, the weight begins to creep back. In a matter of months or years, the entire effort has come undone, and the patient is fat again. “It has always seemed strange to me,” says Proietto, who is a physician at the University of Melbourne. “These are people who are very motivated to lose weight, who achieve weight loss most of the time without too much trouble and yet, inevitably, gradually, they regain the weight.” Anyone who has ever dieted knows that lost pounds often return, and most of us assume the reason is a lack of discipline or a failure of willpower. But Proietto suspected that there was more to it, and he decided to take a closer look at the biological state of the body after weight loss.
At that point, the 34 patients who remained stopped dieting and began working to maintain the new lower weight. Nutritionists counseled them in person and by phone, promoting regular exercise and urging them to eat more vegetables and less fat. But despite the effort, they slowly began to put on weight. After a year, the patients already had regained an average of 11 of the pounds they struggled so hard to lose. They also reported feeling far more hungry and preoccupied with food than before they lost the weight.
While researchers have known for decades that the body undergoes various metabolic and hormonal changes while it’s losing weight, the Australian team detected something new. A full year after significant weigh...
Cultural Bias - POSTED ON: Nov 14, 2012
This picture shows a parent in the act of physically disciplining a child, and one’s individual emotional reaction to this behavior will depend, in part, on one’s own cultural bias.
What is meant by the term: “Cultural Bias”?
BIAS is a preconception that prevents objective consideration of an issue or situation.
CULTURE is a rough label for a set of characteristics (beliefs, practices, and values) that a group of people tend to have in common. There are also cultures within cultures. For example, the American Culture is a subgroup of the Western Culture, and there are many cultural subgroups within the American Culture.
Cultural differences exist even within subgroups of middle-class Americans. Some of these subgroups are different due to locational or environmental differences such as northerners, southerners, easterners, westerners, or country, city, suburban; some of these subgroups are different because of educational, economic, religious or political differences; some subgroups are different because of the race or the nationality of one’s ancestors, etc. etc. etc.
Cultural values, attitudes and behaviors prominently influence how a given group of people view, understand, process, communicate, and manage data, information, and knowledge.
CULTURE been defined as a kind of collective programming of the mind that distinguishes the members of one group from another. In essence, the content of culture consists of a set of underlying norms and values of behavior, shared by a group of people who are tied together by powerful affiliations or bonds.
Cultural differences can be understood as CULTURAL BIAS, a bias so deeply ingrained that it is unconscious, unless explicitly examined.
The term CULTURAL BIAS is defined as interpreting and judging things in terms particular to one's own culture, which includes attitudes, behaviors, beliefs, and social practices.
Cultural bias occurs when people of one culture make assumptions, because they interpret and judge things by their own cultural standards.
Cultural Bias means that a culture’s views are in fact different from, and in conflict with, another culture’s views. Cultural bias involves a prejudice in vie...
Are GMO's Frankenfoods? - POSTED ON: Nov 13, 2012
“We cannot actually say on the basis of truly conclusive evidence what specific dietary pattern is best for human health, because definitive head-to-head comparison trials have not been done, and almost certainly won’t be. Would you sign up to be randomly assigned to a specific dietary pattern for the next several decades? Only if thousands were to answer “yes” would such a trial be feasible – with the enormous costs and daunting logistics still standing in the way.”
This is an insightful statement by Dr. Kantz, who is one of the current High Priests of “Healthful Eating”. However, just like the rest of them … despite the lack of such conclusive evidence,… Dr. Kantz chooses to form his own “expert” opinions and to share them with as many as possible, as often as possible. Recently he spoke out about his own position concerning GMOs. GMOs is a term for genetically modified organisms. Those who are strongly opposed to them have coined the term: “Frankenfoods”, to negatively describe them. The term is based on the novel, Frankenstein, published in 1818 by Mary Shelley about a creature produced by an unorthodox scientific experiment
Although I'm personally not a "fan" of Dr. Kantz, he seemed to take a Thoughtful and Balanced approach to the issue of GMOs, so I’ve decided to share his article here at DietHobby.
Seeking Perspective on Genetically Modified Foods by David Katz, M. D. , Director, Yale Prevention Research Center. The topic of genetically modified foods is buffeted by deep passions from the one side, and deep profits from the other. Images of scientists inserting eye-of-newt genes into escarole, or wool-of-bat genes into walnuts, stalk the nightmares of pure food proponents, and up to a point, rightly so. Even if the intentions of those tinkering with foods are good -- such as putting antifreeze genes from amphibians into oranges so they are not destroyed by an early frost -- the law of unintended consequences pertains. There is ample reason, in principle, to be wary of Frankenfoods. There may be reason in epidemiology as well. We are substantially uncertain about why rates of gluten intolerance and celiac disease are rising; genetic modification of food may be a factor. Some go so far as to declare modern wheat a "poison," lest sugar get all that negative attention! Genetic modification may be a factor, as well, in everything from food allergies, to irritable bowel syndrome, to behavioral and cognitive disorders occurring with increasing frequency in our children. I feel we need a more balanced perspective on this topic. Genetic modification is not all bad. There, I've said it. Without it, we would not have broccoli or navel oranges. We would not have pink grapefruits. We would not have amaranth or quinoa. And for that that matter, we would not have our dogs, our tea roses, or -- arguably -- our children. Opposition to genetic modifi...
Accepting the Truth - POSTED ON: Nov 10, 2012
There are many reasons why the opinions of a person become well-known, and most of those reasons are unrelated to whether or not those opinions are grounded in truth.
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