Day: April 5, 2008

Successful Weight Loss

Is successful weight loss possible?  Beginning from the presumption of “will power,” no.  People who “diet” generally lose and gain weight in a yo-yo fashion, often with greater rebounds.  But some people do successfully lose weight and maintain that loss.  What makes them different, and what lessons does that hold for thinking about weight loss?

 

Let us start with this 2005 article by leading researcher Rena Wing and Suzanne Phelan.  Here’s the abstract:

There is a general perception that almost no one succeeds in long-term maintenance of weight loss. However, research has shown that 20% of overweight individuals are successful at long-term weight loss when defined as losing at least 10% of initial body weight and maintaining the loss for at least 1 y. The National Weight Control Registry provides information about the strategies used by successful weight loss maintainers to achieve and maintain long-term weight loss. National Weight Control Registry members have lost an average of 33 kg and maintained the loss for more than 5 y. To maintain their weight loss, members report engaging in high levels of physical activity (1 h/d), eating a low-calorie, low-fat diet, eating breakfast regularly, self-monitoring weight, and maintaining a consistent eating pattern across weekdays and weekends. Moreover, weight loss maintenance may get easier over time; after individuals have successfully maintained their weight loss for 2–5 y, the chance of longer-term success greatly increases. Continued adherence to diet and exercise strategies, low levels of depression and disinhibition, and medical triggers for weight loss are also associated with long-term success. National Weight Control Registry members provide evidence that long-term weight loss maintenance is possible and help identify the specific approaches associated with long-term success.

 

A 2001 review article by Rena Wing and James Hill makes their argument more explicit: “common behavioral strategies, including eating a diet low in fat, frequent self-monitoring of body weight and food intake, and high levels of regular physical activity.”

 

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Keep Communication Open: Net Neutrality

Sometimes it’s about the medium, not just the neuroanth message.  Damian Kulash has an editorial today, Beware the New New Thing, on net neutrality and how companies are trying to sell us something “good” (for those who can afford it) that replaces something better that we already have, an open Internet.  There’s just one problem, we might have that–but not legally.

Here’s one good excerpt: “For some parallel examples: there are only two guitar companies who make most of the guitars sold in America, but they don’t control what we play on those guitars. Whether we use a Mac or a PC doesn’t govern what we can make with our computers. The telephone company doesn’t get to decide what we discuss over our phone lines. It would be absurd to let the handful of companies who connect us to the Internet determine what we can do online. Congress needs to establish basic ground rules for an open Internet, just as common carriage laws did for the phone system.”

To support net neutrality, you can go to the website Save the Internet.

Martin Luther King Jr. on Vietnam and Dreams

My niece sent me the first link, Why I Am Opposed to the War in Vietnam, which is as relevant today as it was then.

And for the second, I Have A Dream, came, of course, at “the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation” against the “flames of withering injustice” and “the long night of [our] captivity”

The third is Miri Ben-Ari’s Symphony of Brotherhood, an uplifting and haunting piece of music that resonates deeply with me.  I’m not a big fan of music videos, and this one is not particularly well done, so I listen to it with the video in the background.  It’s the music that speaks.