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HAES: Health at Any Size and CICO
If you have tried to lose weight, you know the story. You go to the doctor, the dietitian, SLIMFAST, Weight Watchers, and all they sing this song: Eat less, move more. This comes from a simplistic understanding of the human body, which translates to comparing your body to a bomb calorimeter: CALORIES IN, CALORIES OUT, energy balance, and the problem with obesity is too many calories, ergo, you eat too much.
This has been a mantra for decades, and likely we got it wrong. But it’s good to sell diet programs that promise the moon and deliver to very few. Yes, some people actually manage to lose it and keep it off permanently. I count myself as one of them. I lost 50 pounds and kept it off for over three years, Now losing more, while following the new science of this is a hormone issue, and need to reduce my insulin resistance. Ergo, intermittent fasting and watching my carbs, not my calories, my carbs.
So the emergence of Health at Any Size (HAES) and the body positivity movement for obese people should surprise no one. We have an obesity epidemic that is leading to very high rates of obesity, with the accompanying medical issues from Metabolic Syndrome. Let’s be honest, society, let alone the medical system, tends to treat obese people as if they were lazy and gluttonous. Some likely are, see the Muckbang movement on YouTube or the challenges to eat fifty…