Recently the New England Journal of Medicine came out with a "Study" showing seven myths and six assumptions about "obesity" Although not a single one is a myth or presumption about fatness, say how the obesity epidemic is overblown, how being fat doesn't affect your mortality except for the supersized, or how everyone ignores the rise of dieting came with the rise in fatness. Instead every single one is about weight loss/ dieting. Some of it is fairly harmless like sex only burns about 14 calories compared to 300, or that breast feeding doesn't make your kids thin. Please don't stop having sex or breastfeeding because of this study as both have health benefits. Others aren't as helpful, that gym classes don't make you thin. That's right they don't, regular exercise for most people despite their size makes them healthy, not neccessarily thin.
Normally I would say this is a positive article because it shows that healthy habits don't actually mean weight loss.
Until I got to one of the myths.
Within weight-loss trials, more rapid and greater initial weight loss has been associated with lower body weight at the end of long-term follow-up
Essentially the "Myth busted" is that rapid weight loss works better than steady weight loss. The authors point out that some people have been successful at it. Depends how you define success. In 1999-2000, I was a success. I lost 35-40 pounds (I was still fat) in about 6 months and while I never got to a goal weight, I kept the weight loss for another year. But a year after that I was back to my original weight. A number that I've hovered within 10 pounds of for the last 10 years. I never said people can't lose weight, I said they can't keep it off in the long run. Whether they lose it slowly or quickly.
Rapid weight loss can lead to gallstones, and loss of vitamins and minerals. Most rapid weight loss comes from very low calorie diets either liquid diets or weight loss surgery which means you aren't eating enough for your body to function properly.
I think Marion Nestle hits the nail on the head on the reason for this "study".
"I think it’s weird. I don’t get it," said Marion Nestle of New York University. "I can’t understand the point of the paper unless it’s to say that the only things that work are drugs, bariatric surgery, and meal replacements, all of which are made by companies with financial ties to the authors. " She noted that the researchers who signed the paper also provided a long list of companies they have been paid to work with.
If you read the affliations, you get big food, big pharma, and the diet industry. As mentioned last week, the diet industry is expected to make 66 billion in 2013.
Not surprising that they want you to not eat healthy food and exercise (To be honest they don't actually say that) and instead to take drugs, get surgery, and go on crash diets.
I must have caught the author of this study one morning on CBS. There was the caption -- obesity myth -- and I thought for one second it might actually be about the myth of obesity! No, it was the stuff you outlined. I guess sex burning 14 calories is fairly harmless, as you said, but I could only feel pity for someone who stated that sex lasts six minutes. Not in my world!
Posted by: Elizabeth | February 12, 2013 at 04:50 PM