As she points out,
Even if becoming thin would solve every single problem in every single fat person’s life (and I don’t think it would), the truth is it doesn’t matter. Because we don’t know how to get it done. The belief that we know how to help people lose weight long term, and that weight loss leads to greater health, is a major Galileo issue of our time – widely believed, fervently defended, and unsupported by the evidence.
So we throw around this hope, this dream, that one day the research will tell us something different. But even the science team at Weight Watchers isn’t hopeful that this will happen. Here’s the dirt:
Weight Watchers own numbers show that the average person maintains a 5 pound weight loss after 2 years (a feat I feel could be accomplished by regular exfoliation and without paying a small fortune to Weight Watchers.) When asked by the Federal Trade Commission to do longer-term studies, representatives from WW refused because “it would be too depressing for our clients”.
No, we wouldn’t want to depress clients with…the truth. That would be unconscionable wouldn’t it? And why would the truth be depressing? Because, as Ragan Chastain quite rightly points out, we’ve come up with the kooky idea that losing weight is a cure all for everything that is wrong. And it’s kind of depressing to discover that the magic cure is almost unattainable.
Better to keep people hopeful and trying. That’s the WW strategy. That’s the PN strategy. That’s the strategy for just about every weight loss program out there. They use before-after pictures, but the small print says “results not typical.” And it’s rare to see “after” shots that are way after. Like two or more years after. Why? Because it’s really hard to see anything dramatic in a 5 pound weight-loss, which is what WW for example says that the average person maintains 2 years out. Pics from 5 years after would be an even harder sell.
So there are a couple of things going on here. First off, we need to seriously examine why weight-loss is ascribed all the magical happy-making qualities it is. What’s that all about? It’s not as if everyone who wants to lose a few pounds is facing major health risks if they don’t. It’s not as if everyone who is in the perceived “normal healthy” (ugh!) weight range is actually healthy. And it’s certainly not as if losing weight will solve our financial problems or marital problems or make our kids give us no grief or make the boss our best friend or stop our neighbor from dying or prevent us from getting in a car accident or make airline travel a pleasant experience, give us more vacation days, better sleep, and tickets to see our favourite band. And yet so many people, large and small alike, are filled with self-loathing and despair because they can’t lose weight and keep it off.
And then, we need to even more seriously consider why we reject the evidence before us about what a futile endeavor this actually is for the vast majority of people who undertake it. Please do not start on the “if people just did what they were supposed to do they would lose it and keep it off.” When we individualize this as if it’s all the fault of the people who can’t stick to the program as presented we miss the larger issue, which is that maybe, just maybe, these programs are a waste of time and money.
Ragan Chastain:
Almost everyone who attempts weight loss fails. Yet doctors keep prescribing the same things and blaming the vast majority of people for “not trying hard” enough or “not doing it right”. Can you imagine if Viagra only worked 5% of the time and we blamed 95% of the guys for just not trying hard enough? It’s completely ridiculous. But when I point this out people roll their eyes and say “everybody knows” that you can lose weight if you really try.
Let me say it again – even if weight loss would solve every problem (and I don’t think it will), it doesn’t matter because we don’t know how to get it done and my opinion, based on the research that exists, is that it is a massive waste of time, money, and resources to keep suggesting, marketing, prescribing, and pursuing weight loss.
And finally,
If people want to keep researching weight loss methods that’s fine, it’s also fine if they want to keep researching ways to help people fly like superman, but I certainly won’t be dieting or jumping off my roof and flapping my arms. Attempting weight loss to get healthier is doing something that nobody has proven is possible for a reason that nobody has proven is valid.
It’s been a long time since I built a blog post around quotes from someone else’s blog post, but this message cannot be delivered enough. We all want to think we’re exceptions. That this time we will do it and it will work because we’ll do it better, we’ll be more vigilant, we’ll be “good,” la, la, la.
But, and I hate to be a negative ninny about it but hear me now: a new diet will probably fail and even if you lose weight and keep some or even all of it off, that is not going to mean you’ll suddenly become happy.
But there are lots of other tangible things we can do to live now in the body we have today. So rather than obsess and wring our hands over the impossible, why not move on from that and live in reality?
