Okay, some quick comments because we're ridiculously busy at work and that's all I have time for:
The Fat-Positive Diet uses the wrong definition of success, in my view. A 10% one-year "success" rate is already appalling - a drug or surgical intervention with this rate of success and the same physical mental health side effects as dieting would not be licensed - but the rate drops to 2% after another year. Statistics beyond that don't exist, because it's not even possible to recruit a large enough pool of "successful" dieters to do that study. My source for this is Paul Campos in The Obesity Myth.
The Fat-Positive Skeptic and the Open Letter are wrong about the science, and for that I repeat my suggestion to wildeabandon earlier in this thread. I would also add that even if I am wrong (and so is Paul Campos, and so is Sandy Swarcz) on (a) whether or not being fat is unhealthy and (b) whether or not diets "work", there is still AFAIK not a shred of evidence as to (c) whether someone for whom a diet has "worked" thereby acquires the same health benefits that someone who maintains the same weight, BMI etc without dieting ex hypothesi enjoys (and, given the problem with recruiting "successful" dieters, it is difficult to see any such evidence emerging any time soon.)
I do feel sympathy for her knee pain, having had similar problems myself in the past (at a much lower weight than I am now), and she is of course entitled to take whatever gambles she wishes to try to resolve it - just as she is entitled to try homeopathy, reiki, animal sacrifice or anything else that does no harm to anyone else. Perhaps the sense of taking charge of the problem will even produce a placebo effect that will do her some good, and I'm all in favour of that where medicine can't come up with anything better. But I believe it will be just that - a placebo, and one bought at the price of considerably more health risks than drinking water that may or may not have come into contact with a minuscule drop of herbal extract at some point in its history.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2009-10-07 12:48 pm (UTC)The Fat-Positive Diet uses the wrong definition of success, in my view. A 10% one-year "success" rate is already appalling - a drug or surgical intervention with this rate of success and the same physical mental health side effects as dieting would not be licensed - but the rate drops to 2% after another year. Statistics beyond that don't exist, because it's not even possible to recruit a large enough pool of "successful" dieters to do that study. My source for this is Paul Campos in The Obesity Myth.
The Fat-Positive Skeptic and the Open Letter are wrong about the science, and for that I repeat my suggestion to
I do feel sympathy for her knee pain, having had similar problems myself in the past (at a much lower weight than I am now), and she is of course entitled to take whatever gambles she wishes to try to resolve it - just as she is entitled to try homeopathy, reiki, animal sacrifice or anything else that does no harm to anyone else. Perhaps the sense of taking charge of the problem will even produce a placebo effect that will do her some good, and I'm all in favour of that where medicine can't come up with anything better. But I believe it will be just that - a placebo, and one bought at the price of considerably more health risks than drinking water that may or may not have come into contact with a minuscule drop of herbal extract at some point in its history.
Edited for clarification of my view on placebos.