By Barbara Berkeley
If you’re a reader of these pages, you know that I like to write about science. Where weight issues are concerned, we tend to rely too much on claims of uncertain validity. Just because we’ve heard weight loss “rules” over and over doesn’t make them true. That’s where research comes in. A good research study can confirm or disprove a hypothesis and that helps. If a body of evidence shows that something we believed to be true is actually false, it’s time to move away from that belief.
But I’ve also written about the difficulty of doing good research where overweight and obesity are concerned. The best research is simple and controls all variables. Think 8th Grade Science Fair. A student wants to find out which commercial fertilizer makes a bean plant grow best. She starts ten plants, each from exactly the same kind of seed. She puts each one in the same container. She gives each the same amount of water and exposes it to exactly the same sunlight. The only thing she changes is the type of fertilizer she adds. In this experiment, everything is controlled except the element that is being studied. If one plant grows 5 inches taller than the others, you can be pretty sure you know why.
Imagine, though, the impossibility of making accurate studies about weight. Let’s take a simple example. Say you want to know if the Mediterranean Diet makes people leaner in the long run. You pick a group of people to study. You train them in the elements of the Mediterranean Diet. You ask them to follow that diet for six months and keep food records. You devise a control group that will eat as they always do so that you can compare the two. But problems immediately arise. Each person in the study is different and some may have medical conditions that affect their weight. Some of the people don’t show up for training. Others forget to submit food records. Of the people who do bring records, you can’t be at all sure if they are truly eating what they write down. You notice a few people are losing weight, but some of them have started exercising because they are inspired by being in a study. Is their weight loss related to diet or to more moving around? Two subjects develop the flu during the study period and lose five pounds each. How does that factor into your results? In other words, the variables are endless and impossible to control.
Despite these difficulties, research remains important. But it is equally important to look at studies critically and try to determine if they were done well. I am not an expert on this, but when I look at studies, I give it a shot. This is one of the reasons that we shouldn’t jump on every research study that is announced in the media. They aren’t all good. They aren’t all valid.
Dr Walter Willett of the Harvard School of Public Health has written eloquently about interpreting studies. He reminds us that one study result does not make a truth. One study will usually spawn others which contradict its conclusions. Only when a mounting weight of evidence accumulates on one side can we say that the conclusion is likely true.
It is precisely because studies of overweight are so difficult, that common sense and observation become so vital. So let me use the rest of this post to talk about the behaviors that I observe most commonly in the successful maintainers I know. Recently, a maintainer wrote me about a book she had just read. The book pointed to many studies which showed that the biological deck was stacked against maintainers. “The conclusion one might draw,” she wrote, “is there is simply no way other than sheer, knuckle-gripping discipline to maintain a weight loss – that fat people are simply wired to be fat and nothing can stop that.” Studies may suggest this, but in fact, it has not been my observation.
What is missing from that final sentence makes all the difference. Fat people are simply wired to be fat indeed…WHEN CONSUMING THE MODERN WESTERN DIET. The major observation I have made about the maintainers I treat and that I’ve met is that they are actually NOT hanging on by their fingernails. While they carefully monitor the type and amount of food they eat, they probably wouldn’t describe themselves as tortured. And they are NOT inevitably regaining their weight. The major observation I have made about unsuccessful maintainers is that they ARE hanging on with white knuckles and that is because they are still attempting to eat some modified form of the modern western diet.
We are overweight in America and in increasing numbers all over the world because our entire concept of diet is so reckless and unexamined. It’s impossible to completely figure out what part of the western diet is so toxic. It’s probably a whole lot of things. As a result, the maintainers I know have all seemed to come to a similar conclusion. They have junked the whole SAD and have started at square one: primary foods (foods as they come direct from nature). They have built up from there, figuring out what each might be able to add or tolerate. Anything goes, as long as it works for that person, but most people seem to find that they can’t tolerate many excursions into the SAD world.
In my book, I suggest that new maintainers put themselves on a 3-month OptOut. This means that they almost completely abstain from SAD (Standard American Diet) foods during this period and play with the idea of eating anciently. “Play” is the operative word. It should be interesting, scientific, and fun. An OptOut isn’t the only way to go, but it gives you the idea. Each maintainer I know has a definite framework for how he or she eats. It’s a kind of eating constitution that is specific to each one. Each of us has made a commitment to this constitution and is proud of it. It’s not a matter of white knuckles when you’re defending the territory you love.
So even though I will continue to write about science I want you to take all research conclusions with a healthy grain of salt. Where weight maintenance is concerned, you can learn more from observing those who have been successful than from all the scientific studies in the world. There is a wealth of information residing right here, in the lives of Lynn and the many other maintainers who read this blog. Feel free to pose questions and we’ll post them to the community.
