Welcome, TED viewers! My talk from TEDGlobal in June 2013 was posted today. For those who came here looking for the details, I’ve got you covered. Start with the three posts explaining the science behind the talk: Weight and health – show me the data!, Long-term effects of dieting, and Early dieting predicts weight gain. Then move on the my favorite post on the site, How obesity is like nearsightedness, which explains how genes and environment interact to control body weight.
These ideas didn’t originate with me, of course. This research represents decades of work by many scientists, much of it old enough to be found in physiology textbooks. But since most people don’t read textbooks, here are some good places to look for more information.
The Health at Every Size community site has many resources for people interested in focusing on healthy behaviors without dieting, including the Fat Friendly Health Professionals list.
Much of the work on fitness versus fatness comes from Steven Blair of the University of South Carolina. Here’s an interview containing his recommendations for a healthy life. Just 30 minutes a day of moderate exercise is enough to provide most of the benefits.
The Fat Nutritionist has a good recent round-up of the science on why people have a strong tendency to regain the weight lost by dieting.
Arya Sharma is an obesity specialist who takes a realistic view of the difficulties associated with weight loss. Most relevant to my talk, see his blog posts Will losing weight make you fat? and Will losing weight make you sick? [links to his site are failing intermittently, but they’re correct]
Here’s a nice summary of the original study by Rudy Leibel, Jules Hirsch and colleagues showing that weight loss reduces metabolism.
If I’ve missed anything that you wanted to know about, tell me in the comments, and I’ll update the post later on.