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149 of 157 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A must read..., May 13, 2007
This review is from: Rethinking Thin: The New Science of Weight Loss--and the Myths and Realities of Dieting (Hardcover)
Gina Kolata's "Rethinking Thin" deserves a place on the best-seller list. It is a comprehensive and highly readable examination of why most diets fail. Her thesis is rooted in science and research dating back as far as the 1940s. Many of her findings will be no surprise to people who have struggled with their weight. Kolata's bottom line: genetics play a far bigger role in weight than will power, exercise, or food choices.
The book begins with details of a University of Pennsylvania study. A group of obese volunteers are divided into two groups (one using the Atkins diet, the other a low calorie diet) and agree to have their progress monitored very closely over a two year period. Most lose some weight (typically 10% of their body weight) before hunger takes over and they find themselves backsliding.
The chapters about this U Penn study alternate with others in which Kolata examines the science of why it's so hard to lose weight and keep it off. The short version: once a body begins to lose weight, it switches into a kind of starvation mode. It wishes to hold onto the fat it has and tricks the person into thinking they're hungrier than they actually are. These two things combined make it an uphill battle. Kolata cites a University of Minnesota study in which normal sized men suddenly ate half their usual calories. They lost weight, but soon began behaving bizarrely. They became obsessed with eating, consuming up to five times their usual amount of food. Others showed strange mood swings. This goes a long way in explaining why the weight comes back for those who have the obesity gene.
This book highlights studies that many people ignore. For instance, an eight year, $20 million study done by researchers at Johns Hopkins which attempted to stave off the obesity crisis in children. The reserachers deliberately selected high risk schools, where children were getting two meals a day. The program adjusted the fat content in food the children were being served (by about 10%), introduced more daily exercise, and educated the children about nutrition. These measures were not enough to lead to any weight loss.
Anyone who has ever lost weight knows why: it takes a lot of effort to lose even a little bit of weight. Light exercise does very little (although it may have other health benefits) and hunger is a very difficult thing to ignore. Kolata pushes for a more tolerant society, that accepts that weight loss is very difficult to maintain, and asks for an end to the inaccurate idea that weight loss is totally within everyone's control. Genetics are different, she concludes, and some people will have an easier time losing weight than others.
There really is no reason why these findings need be controversial. And, yet, they will be. The same day I finished the book, two national magazines came out with cover stories about women losing over 100 lbs each. These types of pieces are very popular -- profiles of shiny happy weight loss success stories. The fact that most of these people will put the weight back on is never addressed. The fact that they are starving and miserable is glossed over in comments like "nothing tastes as good as it feels to be thin." Everyone loves a luck and pluck success story.
This is why "Rethinking Thin" is so important. Instead of putting a shiny gloss on hard facts, it gets to the bottom of things. It doesn't address every facet of this issue (it badly lacks a chapter on those rare successes at weight loss) but I highly recommend it. Definitely one of the best books I've read this year.
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73 of 78 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Fascinating Reading, May 21, 2007
This review is from: Rethinking Thin: The New Science of Weight Loss--and the Myths and Realities of Dieting (Hardcover)
I actually found this book extremely good reading, and couldn't put it down! It's not that Kolata presents anything earth shatteringly new, but she does a great job of compiling a lot of fascinating information about studies and attitudes that most of us would probably never get a chance to read through our usual casual reading. Kolata has done a LOT of research here and it's a great read!
We have been led to believe that obesity is a relatively recent development in U.S. society, but this apparently is not the case. The stories of weight loss strategies and weight attitudes from even 100+ years ago are fascinating to read about. Discussion of our past attitudes about what is fat and what is a desirable weight shows that these attitudes have changed substantially through the years: for example, flappers of the 20's, who most of us vaguely recall to have been quite thin, would actually be considered overweight by today's extreme standards. The "Gibson Girl" ideal of the early 1900's would be considered absolutely obsese today.
Studies and experiments which have been done to figure out the "why" of overweight show that everything is still not well understood about weight gain, obesity, and weight loss. There are still more questions to be asked and not yet enough answers, and to complicate things each person is unique in physiology. Genetics is thought to play a strong role, and studies of twins and adopted children reveal the genetic component plays a strong role in your weight and how easily you can gain or lose excess weight.
Don't read this book expecting to find some new weight loss miracle. There are no real solutions in this book, but rather, it can give you a more realistic and educated understanding of what you are up against in the weight loss wars. Being realistic is half the game. As studies continue and knowledge increases, this book is necessarily "unfinished". But it gives you a good perspective at this point in time. The information presented will be viewed by some as discouraging, especially those who are searching for a quick and sure-fire weight loss plan. This book makes it fairly obvious that may never happen. And one good thing you realize after reading this is the extent to which we are all manipulated by those who profit from the weight loss industry. You come away from this book with a "buyer beware" attitude which will serve you well in not being duped into yet another weight loss product that doesn't work.
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120 of 152 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
A Disappointment, May 18, 2007
This review is from: Rethinking Thin: The New Science of Weight Loss--and the Myths and Realities of Dieting (Hardcover)
The book has been a tremendous disappointment to me.
I read an article by Kolata in the New York Times a few days ago that was based on this book. I thought that the article was excellent, stressing the heritability component in obesity, and pointing to the failures of weight-control diets. I rushed to get the book, fully expecting fuller, more satisfactory explanations -- a truly book-length treatment of this important subject.
But the book here is actually no more than an article that has been heavily padded with cutesy anecdotes so as to achieve the physical corpulence of a book.
There are interesting (but not original) descriptions of diet fads throughout the ages. There are interesting (but depressingly familiar) accounts of failures of diets. There is an interesting account of animal studies on obesity. There are interesting accounts of twin studies that point to high heritability of obesity. And then there is endless prose that over-interprets all this: to wit, obesity is inherited, nothing can be done about it.
There is also an instance of gross malpractice of journalism. In the introduction, Kolata tells us that her book is the story of a high-science, two year long, carefully planned study of diets: Atkins versus LEARN. In chapter after boring chapter she gives us personality sketches of some of the participants and trivia about the progress of the study over the two year period. Then, at the end, while we wait for her to tell us the outcome, she tells us that, well, no, she can't say. The scientists haven't had the time to write up the results. Come on, Ms. K., if you don't know the outcome you shouldn't have bothered us with all that chatter about the wall color in the research room or what the weather was like on the first day of the study.
Journalistic malpractice isn't the worst thing about this book. The worst thing is that the author hasn't engaged with the intellectual problem that she posits. Her overall point is that obesity has very high heritability, i.e. that it is overwhelmingly determined by genetic factors. But then she also reports, as if this had nothing to do with her thesis, that numerous studies have shown that obesity is also strongly influenced by social class, the lower classes having higher rates. Now if that is true, what is the relationship to the high heritability ? Is lower class membership equally determined by genetic heritage ? Is it the same gene, or group of genes ? What, in other words, is the relationship between the claimed heritability of obesity and its correlation with class ? It doesn't seem to have occurred to Ms. K. to worry about such questions.
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