> "Ultimately long-term weight loss is a complex matter of psychology, motivation, habits, and indeed personal temperament and genetic baggage."
As someone who has suffered and struggled with obesity in the past, I hear ya loud and clear, but IMO the notion that "calories in < calories out -> weight gain" is still very valuable.
One of the fundamental problems that lies between our society and healthy weight is that we continue to believe in miracle diets, or that somehow we can cheat the rule. We talk about being carb-free, being fat-free, rarely acknowledging that maybe we should just stop eating so damned much.
When I was in high school I was quite obese, and the (Canadian) government paid to send me to a dietician in a group program. Let me tell ya, the notion that "calories in must be less than calories out" was news to a lot of people there.
You're right of course - this knowledge, in an of itself, is insufficient force to turn a fat man into a thin man, but in the current state of our society, simply acknowledging and owning up to this fact is pretty tremendous.
Why do you say that? Is the knowledge that heroin is bad for an addict any motivation for them to quit? I hardly think so.
Considering that you can eliminate heroin from a person's usage and that you can't eliminate food it seems that the relapse rate for both is reasonably close.
Until obesity and eating psychology gets more study in this area, I don't think anything's going to happen to improve the health of the typical US citizen (or Canadian, eh?).
As someone who has suffered and struggled with obesity in the past, I hear ya loud and clear, but IMO the notion that "calories in < calories out -> weight gain" is still very valuable.
One of the fundamental problems that lies between our society and healthy weight is that we continue to believe in miracle diets, or that somehow we can cheat the rule. We talk about being carb-free, being fat-free, rarely acknowledging that maybe we should just stop eating so damned much.
When I was in high school I was quite obese, and the (Canadian) government paid to send me to a dietician in a group program. Let me tell ya, the notion that "calories in must be less than calories out" was news to a lot of people there.
You're right of course - this knowledge, in an of itself, is insufficient force to turn a fat man into a thin man, but in the current state of our society, simply acknowledging and owning up to this fact is pretty tremendous.