we don't know how to make people thinner
Patently false. We do know how to make people thinner. In fact, he agrees with me before that quote:
If you put people on starvation diets, which is what these methods do, of course you'll get huge amounts of weight loss
Right, so we
do know how to make people thinner then! But it's just that the way we know how is bad and doesn't work for anyone?
They do the experiment, the experiment doesn't work in the vast majority of cases
Wait, so in some cases it
does work? Wow, I'm totally buying what this guy who's contradicting himself in his own article is selling as gospel here.
People will be healthier if they're more active and don't smoke and if they avoid eating disordered behavior (like dieting in particular.
There's compelling evidence that this "disordered behavior" might in fact lengthen lifespans. Maybe it doesn't work, but what evidence does he have that reducing your caloric intake is "disordered behaviour"? It's just weasel wording designed to give you a gut reaction towards dieting, that its
bad. Not hard to do, since most people hate dieting to begin with!
I also find that article about how thin people can't stay fat, and how fat people can't stay thin very interesting. I used to have a BMI of under 19, and I wasn't doing anything in particular to get it that low. I didn't exercise and I didn't eat abnormally little. I started eating to gain weight and over a period gained weight, settled into my new routine, and held a BMI of around 25.
Then in my mid 20s something about my body changed and the old pattern no longer held. I went up to as high as 76kg. I changed my habits again and I lost 12kg so far, that's over 25 pounds for the interested.
So apparently
some people can lose and keep off, or gain and keep on, an extra 30-60 pounds, as I'm living proof. Which makes the whole "it's futile" argument pointless and self indulgent defeatism.
Now I'm not going to put a gun to anyone's head. I don't think anyone should do something they're unwilling to do, even if it is losing weight. I do believe there is undue emphasis on weight, and having to lose weight for health benefits. I even think that BMI is woefully inadequate and realize that even thin people can be fat "inside" (
TOFI) and potentially suffer just as many health risks as visibly overweight people.
But this guy is selling defeatism, platitudes, weasel words and, in a word, snake oil, and I find it sad to see anyone embracing this as some sort of excuse to not even try because some guy on the internet says "it can't be done anyway" without even providing any proof.