A Little Knowledge about Obesity is a Dangerous Thing
Rajiv Mehta of Zume Life, a company that helps patients follow treatment regimes, told me that he’s been doing the Shangri-La Diet with some success — he’s lost 3 pounds in a month. Now and then he tells others about the diet. There are two types of reactions. Those who are outside the field of obesity prevention/research are interested. Those inside the field, obesity professionals (e.g., a Stanford professor), uniformly reject it: “Impossible,” they say. Can’t possibly be true.
June 10th, 2009 at 12:21 pm
I have come to the conclusion that the primary purpose of education today is to make sure people do not stray too far from the conventional wisdom.
June 10th, 2009 at 4:18 pm
Seth, Have you seen the studies in this link http://diabetesupdate.blogspot.com/2009/06/good-science-dr-leibel-explains-it-all.html which support the idea of set-points
June 10th, 2009 at 7:20 pm
Sometimes there seems to be an inverse relationship between a particular medical establishment’s ability to make progress in treating its given problem and the vehemence with which it rejects alternative methods of treating that problem. If any field should be open to new treatment ideas it should be the mainstream obesity establishment, as it has been singularly and embarrassingly unsuccessful at reversing obesity.
June 11th, 2009 at 9:03 am
Clearly the obesity professionals have not thought the matter through. Losing three pounds in a month is no big deal. I find that my weight can fluctuate a couple of pounds over the space of a day, so being down three pounds in one month is very possible, even doing nothing at all. The professionals should be saying, “Hmm, that’s nice, but let me know how you’re doing a year from now”.
June 12th, 2009 at 7:24 pm
Wilbur — yes, the daily weight variation is often quite substantial. To smooth the fluctuations, I’ve been calculating a Trend value, using simple exponential smoothing algorithm: Trend_(n) = 0.1*Weight_(n) + 0.9*Trend_(n-1).
- Rajiv