LoveLiveGrow turns out to have another really awesome post up, These Are the Fat FAQs, with a ton of handy link to resources and studies. Highly recommended.
And another link
24 Wednesday Oct 2012
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Thanks for the links to LiveLoveGrow, good stuff. I posted this comment on the FAQ thread there:
I’m a big proponent of people being free to trick out their own bodies any way they like, for any reason. I’m fat and the women in my life are fat and mostly none of us is terribly unhappy about that. I agree with nearly everything in the FAQ. But, I am also a proponent of people doing their thing with as much knowledge as possible. The statement that “diets don’t work” (with the broad (and good) definition provided) is probably not correct. I was a firm believer (for all the reasons outlined here) that “diets don’t work” but the last couple of years have changed my mind to “convention wisdom on diet is wrong.”
Two years ago I read Gary Taubes’ _Good Calories, Bad Calories_ and it forever changed my thinking about food (and believe me, I love me some food.) In three years I fully expect to hit that five year mark that will let me say with confidence that high fat / low carb eating works for me and mine (which it has done for the last two years.)
The internet is now replete with excellent analysis of why the studies we do ask the wrong questions and come up with the wrong answers; but the absence of good studies demonstrating that some diets do work is not proof that no diet can. Here is a list of excellent hard science to add to your arsenal of knowledge for being the best you you want to be:
http://www.marksdailyapple.com/
http://garytaubes.com/
http://eatingacademy.com/
Diets don’t work is “probably not correct”? Bullshit. There is no evidence anywhere that diets work. Any diets. There’s lots of evidence that human bodies actively resist losing large amounts of weight and will try to regain it, and often more than was lost. There’s also lots of evidence that the bodies and brains of fat people who DO lose lots of weight react exactly like the bodies of thin people who are starving. It’s not simply that there is an absence of evidence that effective weight loss is possible for most people. There is lots of active evidence that the body itself works against weight loss. In order for major long-term weight loss to work for most people, the body’s natural response would have to be overcome, and food alone is simply not going to do that.
Don’t come back to my blog with these claims.