The Conversation
3 research-based things a doctor says should be part of your weight loss efforts
A woman exercising on a stationary bike. Exercise is an important component of weight loss, most experts agree. CC BY-SAImagine that you are running a company, but you cannot get to your goal because all of your good workers keep quitting. For 30 years, your response to this problem has been to criticize the workers and say they are stupid and weak for quitting. As a result, you never reach your goal. You don’t change your formula or alter your plan, just keep blaming and shaming the workers for quitting. If you did this, your failure rate would remain unchanged over time, of course, and you would never reach your goal. In the same way, hundreds of thousands of people fall short of their dieting and weight loss goals every year, and the incidence of obesity continues to rise. The fitness industry’s answer to this has been to continue on as planned and blame the soaring failure rates on the people themselves, creating a culture of overt and subtle fat-shaming. Now, imagine that you do some research at your company, and you find out that folks keep quitting because the carpet smells like garbage, the office is way too hot and the desks are in disrepair. If you hope to eventually get to your goal, you would almost certainly address the factors that are leading to attrition of our workers, right? The same thing goes for weight loss in 2018. Science has shown us why…
