Posts Tagged ‘weight loss’

One of the very few blessings of the pandemic lockdown has been a respite from keto mania. Yes, we’ve had to blot out stupid talk about the Quarantine 15. Nonetheless, rants from true believers in ketogenic diets have been on the back burner. Interest in keto everything is down by more than half from where […]

Sometimes human creativity simply makes our heads spin. Take this example of imagination running wild in obesity research. Last year, Frontiers in Psychiatry published a study of the possible placebo effect of an imaginary low-calorie diet. The diet was a fiction – no reduction in calories. What’s not to like about an imaginary placebo effect? […]

Cease and desist. That’s our reaction to a rise of inane headlines about how to lose weight in the midst of a public health crisis. Smelling the potential for great clickbait, one reporter reached out to an expert in obesity, asking: Do we have a fatdemic coming our way? The DietDoctor offers up Six Tips […]

Through the last four decades of relentlessly rising obesity, we’ve had two clinical strategies in play. The first approach – arguably dominant – has been to overlook obesity and merely treat the complications as they appear. The other is intensive behavioral treatment. But clearly, neither of these have been adequate. The burden of chronic diseases […]

What is the first thing people do when they resolve to shed some excess weight? Often they head to the gym. Self-help articles are full of suggestions for the best way to exercise for weight loss. Unfortunately, that stuff is mostly misleading. The relationship between exercise and weight is complicated. As we’ve written before, exercise […]

The FODMAP diet is useful to help manage irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), but it’s becoming more popular. Now bloggers and so-called health gurus have jumped on board, claiming it can treat everything from acne to weight loss. While it would be great if the diet did help to manage these hard-to-treat conditions, these claims are […]

The strongest defense of a scammer often comes from the people who fall for the scam. For inexplicable reasons, people sometimes like sweet little lies and insist that liars are dispensing truth. So it is with herbal supplements for weight loss. People desperate for help in overcoming issues with obesity latch onto these scams. They […]

We have little patience with false dichotomies. Sometimes they offer a way to win an argument. But they don’t do anything for the cause of finding the truth. When one seems to pop up over and over again, it’s especially annoying. For example, obesity care and body positivity are, in fact, complimentary. Not mutually exclusive. […]

We’re guilty. Like many others walking down the street, it seems we can’t do it without the aid of our phone. Can that same phone help with weight? A new study in Obesity says yes. A little bit. In the short term. Mobile apps can indeed help. A Meta-Analysis Xue Cai and colleagues analyzed data […]

We’re nearing the end of diet season, but permanent weight loss puffery isn’t going anywhere. It used to be that promising permanent weight loss would land you in trouble with the FTC. But somehow, the upstart Noom is making a business of it. Much to the dismay of WW International (formerly Weight Watchers), the Noom […]