Refuse To Regain

The 2010 Dietary Guidelines: Doesn't ANYONE Have A New Idea?

by Barbara Berkeley, MD Since 1980, the US Department of Agriculture has been producing dietary guidelines for the American people. These guidelines and the infamous "Food Pyramid" which illustrates them serve as the backbone for our country's dietary advice, a kind of gospel of nutritional correctness. The guidelines are announced every five years with great fanfare (2010 Guidelines). The committee cites the latest research and announces its findings with great seriousness. This task has taken on an even greater urgency... Read more →

Gaining Weight? Maybe Your Fat's Gone Rogue

by Barbara Berkeley, MD Imagine, if you will, a world in which all of our current assumptions about what makes us fat are erased. It's hard to do, because we are all so certain that we get fat from eating too much. That little tune has been played for us every day of our lives in excrutiating repetition. We are so brainwashed that we've never stopped to consider whether it's true. Suppose what makes us fat is not what we... Read more →

What Makes us Fat? Where I Stand in 2011

by Barbara Berkeley, MD About ten years ago, on our annual family visit to the Bahamas, I had a sudden insight into what might be causing obesity. I had been treating obese patients for some years and had been watching them relapse. I also was watching the frustrating progress of my own weight. I had always been thin, but during my forties I had grown twenty pounds heavier despite my usual schedule of five-day-a-week high intensity aerobics. The annual diet... Read more →

More on Why We Get Fat

Hi. This is Barbara posting. I wanted to suggest a one-plus hour project to you that I think will be well worth your time. As I mentioned in my book review of Gary Taubes' Why We Get Fat, I had the opportunity of hearing him lecture a couple of years ago. Now, the same lecture is available on line. This includes a slide presentation. The lecture takes about an hour and fifteen minutes, but is broken up into segments so... Read more →

Losing Weight After Fifty: Menopause and Other Issues

by Barbara Berkeley, MD Let's get the off-putting facts out of the way first. Your metabolism slows down with age, meaning that your body burns fewer calories than it used to. Prior to menopause, estrogen directs fat storage into the hips and thighs. Once estrogen is gone, storage starts occuring in the belly creating the famed "mena-pot". While these things are true, they don't have to mean anything. Is it possible to lose weight and keep it off later in... Read more →

Why We Get Fat: A Book Review

by Barbara Berkeley, MD For most people, the prospect of meeting a favorite movie star or sports hero would set the heart aflutter. Call me a nutrition geek, but I get palpitations from meeting the researchers and authors whose work on obesity I revere. Several years ago, a friend from residency,who is now chief of endocrinology at a major academic center,invited me to meet Gary Taubes, the author of "Good Calories, Bad Calories". Taubes is a science writer with a... Read more →