This is a pretty good book overall. I have a lot of respect for someone who can take the information in 437 articles, conduct their own Research Study, and turn all of that into a cohesive book. I was very surprised to learn that research does not support the idea that being in a weight class of 'obese' dooms you to poor health. This book reinforces that our society is all about the money, and does its best to lay out the truth about what's happening in our country. Dr. Bacon goes into excruciating detail about how we've been sold down the river by what she terms Food Politics and Fat Politics. It's no wonder that many spend their lives obsessing about their weight and feeling bad, when everyone from the government to the healthcare industry is constantly reminding us that we're fat and should be unhappy and worried about it, while at the same time lying about everything. It's great to hear that what is put out there is pretty baseless, and that we have the option to just love ourselves for who we are and stop the self-recriminations about our weight. There really is just an amazing amount of useful information in this book on many inter-related topics, and I'm about 95% good with it.
Moving on, what I don't like about the book is that it states that permanent weight loss is a pipedream, but at the same time admits that everyone knows someone who has lost weight and kept it off. Well, that's illogical. The book talks about how any given person has a Set Point Weight that they will always tend towards. Where I differ with the author is that I believe that Set Point Weight can be changed with a sustained lifestyle change. I'm not employed within the healthcare industry, but I know I've settled for a period of years at many different weights over my lifetime. If we want our Set Point Weight to go down, we are going to have to make a permanent lifestyle change. It's not hard to understand that if you change your eating and exercise patterns for a few months and lose weight, that as soon as you stop doing that and go back to old habits, your body is going to go back to your old weight. However, if you keep it up, the weight loss should be maintained.
I will tell you that I was fine just disagreeing on this one point, until I read the material in the Appendix, where the author has a pre-printed letter for every type of person you know: friends and family, health care providers, people considering their next diet, people considering bariatric surgery, school administrators, fitness professionals, and on and on and on. I hit my limit of patience with this when I came to the letter for people who have lost weight. What? Really? This author, whose entire premise is that you can't lose weight in any lasting way has written a letter to people who have 'lost some weight and kept it off for a while', imploring them not to encourage others to do the same or to really even talk about how they lost the weight. This really just rubbed me the wrong way.
As we all know, we are in a society that worships being thin. I think that everyone should love themselves as they are, but I also think that they should have a choice to try to lose weight if they want to. This author tells us not to even try, even though we all know someone who has lost weight and kept it off (Dr. Bacon's words). While I will concede that changing your Set Point Weight is not easy, it is also not impossible. I guess it's like a lot of things. If you are just going to dabble, don't bother. If you want to take weight loss seriously and permanently change your lifestyle to achieve it, I say go for it.
Let me be clear. There is a lot to learn from this book, and I'm still giving it four stars for that reason. I applaud Dr. Bacon for diligently seeking the truth on these many topics and sharing it with us. But at the end of the day, I'm still only 95% in agreement with what it teaches. In my opinion, the majority of that Appendix with its never-ending letters of 'everyone needs to be told' should go. It is just way too over the top for me.
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Popular Highlights in this book
if you feel driven to eat for emotional reasons, you don’t have an eating problem. Nope. You have a caretaking problem. You’re not taking proper care of yourself.Highlighted by 1,455 Kindle readers- eating when you’re hungry helps maintain your setpoint and keep you at the weight that’s right for you, and denying your hunger leads to compensatory mechanisms that trigger fat storage and weight gain.Highlighted by 1,371 Kindle readers
- Weight gain is relatively easy, but the human body is just not designed to support weight loss. This means that reversing weight gain habits will do a pretty good job of preventing weight gain, though they may not result in weight loss.Highlighted by 1,259 Kindle readers
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