Health “experts” in the United Kingdom are advising a new solution to their nation’s increased incidence of overweight and obesity.

This new solution is one of several included in a new report, “Obesity — Can We Turn The Tide?” which was recently published in the British Medical Journal.

Here’s the new solution these academics are advising:

Include a helpline phone number for weight loss advise in all clothes with a waist of more than 40 inches for men and 35 inches for women. They also recommend this warning label be placed in all women’s clothes with a size of 16 or above.

OK, so lets say you are above these size limits and so you find this warning label attached to all your clothing. Now what?

I guess these academics assume the people would call the phone number and get some weight-loss advice. But, what weight-loss advice are they going to get which has been proven to work? Are they going to recommend starting on one of the popular book-based diets or commercial weight-loss programs that have a 95% failure rate? Or — do they have some other advice in mind?

Is this crazy stuff or what?

Allen Oelschlaeger
Author of Finally, the Straight Scoop About Weight, Nutrition, and Fitness

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Science frequently does junk research but there is no area where this practice is more common than with nutrition and weight loss.

We are bombarded with research study after research study which only create confusion because they all seem so contradictory. There are two reasons for this:

* Doing good and valid research in nutrition and weight loss is enormously difficult and it’s this difficulty that leads to contradictory outcomes.

* The results of the research are inappropriately presented to the public.

It is this second reason that the American Dietetic Association is targeting. Here are their ten red flags you should watch out for:

1. Recommendations that promise a quick fix
2. Dire warnings of danger from a single complex study
3. Claims that sound too good to be true
4. Simplistic conclusions drawn from a complex study
5. Recommendations based on a single study
6. Dramatic statements that are refuted by reputable scientific organizations
7. Lists of “good” and “bad” foods
8. Recommendatons made to help sell a product
9. Recommendations based on studies published without peer review
10. Recommendations from studies that ignore differences among individuals or groups.

My advice? Ignore all scientific research reported on by the media. There is no way you can separate the wheat from the chaff.

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It’s an article about weight-loss myths.

Here is how the article starts out:

“Myths are all over the place without a doubt. Some of these myths are really easy to debunk, but other myths seem so realistic that a lot of the times we take them as reality and sadly this affects our perception of things.”

Here are the myths the article lists:

* “Lose 30 pounds in 30 days”
* Fat is bad for you
* Carbohydrates are bad for you
* Lose weight by not eating
* Don’t eat after 6 p.m.
* Salad bars ahre healthy
* Diet sodas aid in weight loss
* You shouldn’t step on a scale
* You can lose weight with a pill
* You have to join a gym

Great stuff!

Allen Oelschlaeger
Author of Finally, the Straight Scoop About Weight, Nutrition, and Fitness

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Here is what’s included:

* Year’s worth of sessions with a personal trainer

* Behavioral and nutritional counseling

* Support groups

* Medical supervision

The total cost of the program is $6,000 which the employee contributes just 20%.

The result? 61,100 pounds have vanished from 2,152 Microsofties.

So, what do you think? Is this a program which will likely be rolled out to all employees in the United States?

I don’t think so. Microsoft’s experience is like the articles about celebrities losing weight. We read about them losing 50 pounds or whatever but, what we don’t learn, is that they get to work with a personal trainer several hours a day and have a personal chef preparing all the food they eat.

It would be nice — but that’s just not the reality for most Americans.

Allen Oelschlaeger
Author of Finally, the Straight Scoop About Weight, Nutrition, and Fitness

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Yesterday I posted a blog about a list of 15 weight-loss tips which are worthless.

Well, I just found another list of 15 tips. What is it about 15?

Anyway, out of this list of 15, I could only find three tips that are any good (better than yesterday’s list in which I could only find one good tip).

What’s interesting is that a couple of the bad tips from yesterday also showed up on this list:

* Drink more water
* Eat small meals throughout the day

This is amazing to me. This type of advice — which is based on absolutely no scientific evidence — is almost universally accepted.

For example, I’ve done the research on water. It turns out that NO ONE knows where this idea came from. People have gone back into the medical literature looking for some study which suggested drinking more water was a good idea and nothing could be found. Instead, there have been plenty of studies showing water consumption has no effect on weight.

But, despite the research, drinking more water is on almost everyone’s list of weight loss tips.

But, at least this list had three good ideas — which have some scientific support:
* Avoid the latest weight loss diets
* Take notice of your food
* Drink less soda

However, with these three mixed in with twelve tips which are worthless, the author isn’t doing anyone with weight problems any favors.

Allen Oelschlaeger
Author of Finally, the Straight Scoop About Weight, Nutrition, and Fitness

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The promise:

“These tips are going to be really big weight loss tips. They will surely help you in getting weight off.”

HOGWASH

There are 15 of these “big weight loss tips” and there is only one which is any good — “shut off TV while eating.”

Now the reason given for why this tip is a good one is all wrong but at least the advice is good.

The other 14 tips are pure nonsense. Here are the worst of the bunch:

* Drink 6 to 8 glasses of water every day
* Eat “negative calories foods”
* Eat small, frequent meals throughout the day
* Take vitamins to increase your metabolism
* Eat green tea via a drink, a pill or a weight-loss patch

No wonder the incidence of overweight and obesity is going up.

Allen Oelschlaeger
Author of Finally, the Straight Scoop About Weight, Nutrition, and Fitness

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The charter is the first ever agreement among nations having to do with obesity, and it focuses on concrete goals like making healthy foods more available and improving roads so more people can bike and walk.

The charter also expects food companies to “self-regulate” in their marketing of fatty and sugar foods to children.

OK, I applaud the effort — but the goals are down right silly.

I’ve said this before but where is there any evidence that this charter’s recommendations are going to have any effect on the “obesity epidemic.”

Here we have 53 countries all agreeing to take action (and probably committing significant resources to the effort) with no data that anything they are doing will make any difference. In fact, if they were to dig into the research like I have, they’d discover their actions are likely to cause more harm than good.

Obesity isn’t caused by the lack of availability of healthy foods, poor roads, or food advertising — so why did they come up with the goals they did?

Pure craziness.

Allen Oelschlaeger
Author of Finally, the Straight Scoop About Weight, Nutrition, and Fitness

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I hadn’t either.

So the Surgeon General must not have done a lot of “calling.”

Or, more likely, he realized that the “call” was based on such shaky evidence, it didn’t deserve much effort.

Like almost all public health policy related to the increased incidence of overweight and obesity, this “call” tell governments, communities and schools to “take action to assist Americans in balancing healthful eating with regular physical activity.”

So, where is their evidence this will work? Sure, it seems logical but, as I’ve said in previous blogs, the data just isn’t there to support it. But that doesn’t keep the health policy folks from offering up ideas on how to make these things happen — for example:

* Daily gym in school
* Reduce TV time
* Ensure that people get 30 minutes of moderate physical activity most days of the week (have you heard this one before/)
* Create more opportunities for physical activity at worksites
* Make community facilities available for physical activity
* Promote healthier food choices — including 5 servings of fruits and vegetables each day
* Ensure schools provide healthful foods

Don’t get me wrong, these are all great ideas — but for reasons other than addressing the “obesity epidemic.”

Doing things to help American increase their physical activity is a wonderful idea — if the goal is to improve American’s fitness.

And, doing things to help Americans eat healthier food is a wonderful idea — if the goal is to improve American’s nutrition.

However, these two objectives are the WRONG place to focus if the goal is to prevent overweight and obesity.

Allen Oelschlaeger
Author of Finally, the Straight Scoop About Weight, Nutrition, and Fitness

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The title: “Some food dos and don’t are best ignored, experts say:

Yep, this article points out some of the dozens of silly food ‘rules’ that are plain not true.

Here are a few of the ‘rules’ listed in the article:

* Don’t eat before bedtime or you’ll gain weight (never mind that folks in Spain almost eat their family meal just before bed).

* It’s best to eat at the same times every day (but, what if you aren’t hungry?)

* Refusing food at a party or when visiting is rude (no, what’s rude is not being able to tell your host you are totally satisfied with their wonderful food because you ate something you didn’t like or ate more than you wanted to).

* Bread is fattening, nuts are fattening, pasta is fattening (actually, there are no fattening foods).

Why do people continue to believe these silly ideas — when there is no absolutely no evidence they are true? — and a lot of evidence they are false.

Allen Oelschlaeger
Author of Finally, the Straight Scoop About Weight, Nutrition, and Fitness

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It is a database of more than 4,800 adults who report being successful at maintaining a weight loss of at least 30 pounds for a minimum of one year.

Once someone registers by meeting these basic criteria, they are sent annual surveys to collect information about how they remain successful at preserving their weight loss.

The results from these surveys are then consolidated into a summary which is often published by the media.

Here is one such summary.

Methods used to lose weight by registrants:
* 55% use a formal program or professional assistance
* Most use both diet (low calorie and fat) and physical activity
* Majority report limiting the types of foods eaten (e.g., avoid fatty foods)
* Less than half report limiting the quantity of food eaten
* About half counted calories

So, what do you think? Is this list worth paying attention to?

First of all, who do you think registers? Did you know about this registry? Do you know anyone who knows about it? If you lost a bunch of weight, would you register?

Here is my guess. If someone loses a bunch of weight using a “formal program” or “professional assistance,” he or she is told about the registry and encouraged to register. In fact, I bet they are almost forced to register.

And what do these programs recommend? — dieting, limiting foods, counting calories. So, if 55% use a “formal program” or “professional assistance,” it’s no surprise that about half of the registrants diet, limit foods and count calories.

But, here is what is suprising to me. Given the number of people involved with Weight Watchers, Nutrisystems, and all the rest — and the number of people who see a weight-loss expert of some type, wouldn’t you think more than 4,800 people in the entire United States would have registered by now?

With those results, it seems like the National Weight Control Registry is the wrong place to look for weight-loss advice.

Allen Oelschlaeger

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