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Why Diets Make Us Fat: The Unintended Consequences of Our Obsession With Weight Loss
“If diets worked, we'd all be thin by now. Instead, we have enlisted hundreds of millions of people into a war we can't win."
What’s the secret to losing weight? If you’re like most of us, you’ve tried cutting calories, sipping weird smoothies, avoiding fats, and swapping out sugar for Splenda. The real secret is that all of those things are likely to make you weigh more in a few years, not less.
In fact, a good predictor of who will gain weight is who says they plan to lose some. Last year, 108 million Americans went on diets, to the applause of doctors, family, and friends. But long-term studies of dieters consistently find that they’re more likely to end up gaining weight in the next two to fifteen years than people who don’t diet.
Neuroscientist Sandra Aamodt spent three decades in her own punishing cycle of starving and regaining before turning her scientific eye to the research on weight and health. What she found defies the conventional wisdom about
·Telling children that they’re overweight makes them more likely to gain weight over the next few years. Weight shaming has the same effect on adults.
·The calories you absorb from a slice of pizza depend on your genes and on your gut bacteria. So does the number of calories you’re burning right now.
·Most people who lose a lot of weight suffer from obsessive thoughts, binge eating, depression, and anxiety. They also burn less energy and find eating much more rewarding than it was before they lost weight.
·Fighting against your body’s set point—a central tenet of most diet plans—is exhausting, psychologically damaging, and ultimately counterproductive.
If dieting makes us fat, what should we do instead to stay healthy and reduce the risks of diabetes, heart disease, and other obesity-related conditions? With clarity and candor, Aamodt makes a spirited case for abandoning diets in favor of behaviors that will truly improve and extend our lives.
From the Hardcover edition.
304 pages, Kindle Edition
First published March 15, 2016
62 people are currently reading
645 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 75 reviews
December 10, 2016
I read this book for the neuroscience. It was primarily written, however, less to explain the science than to provide a guide for what to do with the science - but in this review, I want to focus on the science aspects, and how they intersect with social ideas. I want to confess at the outset to an inherent reluctance to discuss how, or whether, to lose weight. Weight is both an intensely personal and intensely political subject, particularly for women. I have friends who have been deeply harmed and abused by our society's conviction that weight-loss is objectively a good thing; and I have friends who work very hard to lose weight. Like parenting and marriage, weight-loss issues are areas where broad social issues and trends crush down in entirely individual configurations upon women, and it is all too easy to get judgemental of choices that occur in a constrained and subjective environment.
So, back to the science! Because Aamodt's focus is firmly on understanding the impact, she uses both evidence from behavioral studies, with cognitive, psychiatric and neuroscience making it harder to pull apart the different evidence for different claims. I would have liked, for example, a more pulled-together explanation of the role of the hippocampus in maintaining a set-range weight, including the various inputs (beyond measuring fat cells) that come in, and how much we understand of the areas coming out. The role of gut parasites was well-explained in parts, but the extent to which the brain and the parasites interact was left unclear to me - I am going to have to read Giulia Enders' Gut: The Inside Story of Our Body’s Most Underrated Organ , and that may help.
But overwhelmingly, the evidence presented here is very, very strong: and most frighteningly, not really very controversial in its key points. Our brains work well to stop us from becoming underweight, which throughout human history has posed a real threat to survival. There are less checks and balances for gaining weight, because, frankly, it poses less of a risk to us. Even in a modern society, where most of us have access to enough food, mortality rates are higher for those on the skinny end of our spectrum than they are for what our society has designated as overweight, or even on the lower end of the designated obese spectrum. To understand this, that our brains insistence that we gain, rather than lose, weight is a *healthy* impulse is central to Aamodt's subsequent explanations.
The mechanisms for this are fascinating. A lot of my reading circles around the sense of self - we have this illusion, created by our own brains, that we have a central decision-making point in there somewhere. Our own personal Picard weighing (heh) solutions and declaring "Make it so!". But really, our decisions are more like an ant colony - with different systems working together to bring information in, gather info from resources like memory and respond with various changes in physical and emotional states. Because as a society we are so obsessed with controlling weight, it provides a rich example for studying how this process works. How if the info coming in is that your fat stores are declining, you will get hungrier; reward food will look more attractive as your brain releases more dopamine every time you see a donut ad; you'll feel tired and lethargic as your brain decreases the available resources for exercise. Aarnodt explains how you can override this system - you can use "willpower" - your higher reasoning circuits in this case - to override your impulse-based behaviours. But willpower is a finite thing, because constantly invoking those parts of the circuitry necessary to do this is draining. It prevents other uses, pathways and grooves from developing. Aarnodt doesn't actually say that resisting your bodies attempts to get you to eat makes you dumber, but she definitely implies it.
It is interesting to put this together with some of the information in Marc Lewis's The Biology of Desire: Why Addiction Is Not a Disease. Lewis discusses the neuroscience of eating disorders at length in this book, describing the startling, but accepted, fact that OCD and obsessive eating behaviours are controlled by the limbic system, and patients with them show much stronger connections and loops that skip the higher order brain functions. By calorie counting obsessively, he concluded, you develop a habit loop which decreases your capacity to make decisions about food based on your long-term plans, your sense of self and community, or your sense of wellbeing. Binge eating, he argued, was a phenomenon in which people literally could not control their eating, as the brain's reward, desire and habit loops kick in without the strong neurologic networks needed to override them.
In contrast, Aamodt argues, the brain's natural, hippocampus-based, system for managing energy intake and expenditure, is balanced to maintain a roughly consistent amount of body fat. This goes up over time, and can be pushed up, either by a period of deprivation (hence dieting making you fat) or by a sustained period of plenty. Consistently eating high-fat, low nutrition food & living a sedentary lifestyle will, over time, she implies, push the set point up, as our brains can't maintain the lower weight in the face of our own resistance. Her core message - that the healthiest thing to do is to let your brain do its job, forget about your weight, but focus on ensuring you surround yourself with healthy food options and pleasurable exercise opportunities - feels obvious and simple, despite the constant use of the word mindful.
The terrible thing really, is that this book will disappear as one among many texts arguing the opposite. Despite the fact that science is pretty unambiguous on the fact that dieting makes most people less healthy - sometimes dangerously so - we live in a world where most doctors will recommend it to most of their female patients (the gender disparity she quotes on this is sickening). Even accepting the current nutritional science on the risk factors that go with the higher-end of the BMI spectrum (and there is reason to challenge the causation here), it remains lower than the risk factors of being poor, or being lonely. If even a fraction of the funding or rhetoric of the war on obesity was redirected into programs to reduce social isolation and address inequality, more lives would be saved. So why do we remain so obsessed? It might be the power of the food and diet industry (which is literally the same set of companies). It might be about the various forms of social control for women that serve to reinforce sexist ideas, and keep a cycle of self-loathing that prevents women from demanding a better deal. Or maybe it is about not having understood that our behaviours are more complex than Picard-on-a-bridge, and that our brains are more wondrous and diverse than they themselves allow us to imagine.
So, back to the science! Because Aamodt's focus is firmly on understanding the impact, she uses both evidence from behavioral studies, with cognitive, psychiatric and neuroscience making it harder to pull apart the different evidence for different claims. I would have liked, for example, a more pulled-together explanation of the role of the hippocampus in maintaining a set-range weight, including the various inputs (beyond measuring fat cells) that come in, and how much we understand of the areas coming out. The role of gut parasites was well-explained in parts, but the extent to which the brain and the parasites interact was left unclear to me - I am going to have to read Giulia Enders' Gut: The Inside Story of Our Body’s Most Underrated Organ , and that may help.
But overwhelmingly, the evidence presented here is very, very strong: and most frighteningly, not really very controversial in its key points. Our brains work well to stop us from becoming underweight, which throughout human history has posed a real threat to survival. There are less checks and balances for gaining weight, because, frankly, it poses less of a risk to us. Even in a modern society, where most of us have access to enough food, mortality rates are higher for those on the skinny end of our spectrum than they are for what our society has designated as overweight, or even on the lower end of the designated obese spectrum. To understand this, that our brains insistence that we gain, rather than lose, weight is a *healthy* impulse is central to Aamodt's subsequent explanations.
The mechanisms for this are fascinating. A lot of my reading circles around the sense of self - we have this illusion, created by our own brains, that we have a central decision-making point in there somewhere. Our own personal Picard weighing (heh) solutions and declaring "Make it so!". But really, our decisions are more like an ant colony - with different systems working together to bring information in, gather info from resources like memory and respond with various changes in physical and emotional states. Because as a society we are so obsessed with controlling weight, it provides a rich example for studying how this process works. How if the info coming in is that your fat stores are declining, you will get hungrier; reward food will look more attractive as your brain releases more dopamine every time you see a donut ad; you'll feel tired and lethargic as your brain decreases the available resources for exercise. Aarnodt explains how you can override this system - you can use "willpower" - your higher reasoning circuits in this case - to override your impulse-based behaviours. But willpower is a finite thing, because constantly invoking those parts of the circuitry necessary to do this is draining. It prevents other uses, pathways and grooves from developing. Aarnodt doesn't actually say that resisting your bodies attempts to get you to eat makes you dumber, but she definitely implies it.
It is interesting to put this together with some of the information in Marc Lewis's The Biology of Desire: Why Addiction Is Not a Disease. Lewis discusses the neuroscience of eating disorders at length in this book, describing the startling, but accepted, fact that OCD and obsessive eating behaviours are controlled by the limbic system, and patients with them show much stronger connections and loops that skip the higher order brain functions. By calorie counting obsessively, he concluded, you develop a habit loop which decreases your capacity to make decisions about food based on your long-term plans, your sense of self and community, or your sense of wellbeing. Binge eating, he argued, was a phenomenon in which people literally could not control their eating, as the brain's reward, desire and habit loops kick in without the strong neurologic networks needed to override them.
In contrast, Aamodt argues, the brain's natural, hippocampus-based, system for managing energy intake and expenditure, is balanced to maintain a roughly consistent amount of body fat. This goes up over time, and can be pushed up, either by a period of deprivation (hence dieting making you fat) or by a sustained period of plenty. Consistently eating high-fat, low nutrition food & living a sedentary lifestyle will, over time, she implies, push the set point up, as our brains can't maintain the lower weight in the face of our own resistance. Her core message - that the healthiest thing to do is to let your brain do its job, forget about your weight, but focus on ensuring you surround yourself with healthy food options and pleasurable exercise opportunities - feels obvious and simple, despite the constant use of the word mindful.
The terrible thing really, is that this book will disappear as one among many texts arguing the opposite. Despite the fact that science is pretty unambiguous on the fact that dieting makes most people less healthy - sometimes dangerously so - we live in a world where most doctors will recommend it to most of their female patients (the gender disparity she quotes on this is sickening). Even accepting the current nutritional science on the risk factors that go with the higher-end of the BMI spectrum (and there is reason to challenge the causation here), it remains lower than the risk factors of being poor, or being lonely. If even a fraction of the funding or rhetoric of the war on obesity was redirected into programs to reduce social isolation and address inequality, more lives would be saved. So why do we remain so obsessed? It might be the power of the food and diet industry (which is literally the same set of companies). It might be about the various forms of social control for women that serve to reinforce sexist ideas, and keep a cycle of self-loathing that prevents women from demanding a better deal. Or maybe it is about not having understood that our behaviours are more complex than Picard-on-a-bridge, and that our brains are more wondrous and diverse than they themselves allow us to imagine.
December 29, 2017
Her Ted Talk covers most of the book. Overall she’s making a case against dieting and for intuitive eating which doesn’t work for most people since most people are still using food for something... and until that use is addressed, the person can’t intuitively eat. That’s like telling an alcoholic to intuitively drink. Plus most people will also gain weight doing it and I don’t think they’d want that result?
overall this is a manifesto of her failed dieting attempts cloaked in science that supports her but fails to include opposing research. For example theirs a portion on set points (body refusing to change your weight) but fails to mention research that you can change this so called “set point” if you maintain that new weight for 3-4 months... or that you can change the fat to muscle ratio so the weight is the same but you LOOK different... This book feels like an argument against dieting and losing weight. Which, okay? You do you? I reviewed it ages ago for my podcast so my review isn’t as clear (sorry!) cleaning off my desk!!
overall this is a manifesto of her failed dieting attempts cloaked in science that supports her but fails to include opposing research. For example theirs a portion on set points (body refusing to change your weight) but fails to mention research that you can change this so called “set point” if you maintain that new weight for 3-4 months... or that you can change the fat to muscle ratio so the weight is the same but you LOOK different... This book feels like an argument against dieting and losing weight. Which, okay? You do you? I reviewed it ages ago for my podcast so my review isn’t as clear (sorry!) cleaning off my desk!!
June 13, 2016
Last year, I read the book Secrets from the Eating Lab: The Science of Weight Loss, the Myth of Willpower, and Why You Should Never Diet Again and I swore off dieting. I Can honestly say I kept to my word even though I was tempted a couple of times to try a diet program. This book by Dr. Sandra Aamodt has convinced me even more not to try any more diets-period. Dr. Aamodt gives more of the science about why diets do not work than Dr. Mann's book and the author really convinces me about mindful eating. I have been seeing a nutritionist for going on two years and she basically gives me the same advice, however my nutritionist does not give me the science behind it. I really appreciate the fact that Dr. Aamodt goes into detail with the science, but not too much that I became bored. She has convinced me about being mindful and to not waste my willpower on dieting. Another great book to read if you want to stop the dieting rollercoaster.
December 11, 2019
This strikes me as an irresponsible title and first few chapters. The author has clearly looked at a lot of weight studies, though she’s often drawn aggressive conclusions that all diets make you gain weight. Some of the diets aren’t even diets but actual periods of starvation that caused food-related psychological issues.
As the author herself states, there are numerous reasons why people gain weight, not just as the first few chapters suggest, the actual act of dieting. By Chapter 9, she’s listing people who can’t lose weight through intuitive eating. By Chapter 10, she’s discussing how the food environment is itself a huge factor in causing weight gain.
She’s also underplayed the importance of achieving a lower weight- even temporarily- to lifespan.
Maybe start with Chapter 11, and read chapters 1-10 in backward order.
As the author herself states, there are numerous reasons why people gain weight, not just as the first few chapters suggest, the actual act of dieting. By Chapter 9, she’s listing people who can’t lose weight through intuitive eating. By Chapter 10, she’s discussing how the food environment is itself a huge factor in causing weight gain.
She’s also underplayed the importance of achieving a lower weight- even temporarily- to lifespan.
Maybe start with Chapter 11, and read chapters 1-10 in backward order.
February 7, 2018
Having an advanced degree in physiology, I already knew the bulk of this information. Yet, even with my degree, my horrible eating habits dominated my life - driving me to twice the healthy weight range for my height. A couple years ago, I lost 85 pounds. It has started to creep back, despite my best efforts. I read this book over several sessions on my stationary bike. The emphasis on exercise over calorie restriction is welcome in the age of “you can’t outrun a bad diet” advice. I’ll most likely never be in the “healthy” weight range, but I had a Dr appointment yeasterday and my 2 1/2 year daily exercise habit is continuing to bear fruit. My blood sugar is normal, even now without the heavy diabetes meds I was on three years ago. My cholesterol and blood pressure were also both in healthy range. Psychologically, it’s a hit to see those scale numbers go up. But the scale is not an accurate indicator of health. I know that, but it helps to hear it again.
May 23, 2025
Very scientific in the beginning almost hard to follow it was so wordy with studies and scientific words. But bottom line - exercise is important to stay healthy. Don’t worry about weight.
Read
May 25, 2018Finally, a scientist who bridges the gap between the emerging behavioral theories of weight loss and our current disastrous attempts to diet our way thin! I can’t wait for this to be published so I can give it to patients.
Dr. Henry S. Lodge, Professor at Columbia University Medical Center and Co-Author of Younger Next Year
In this deeply researched book, Aamodt demolishes the conventional wisdom on dieting, building a compelling case that if we want to be healthier, we should diet less, not more. Essential reading for today’s weight-obsessed culture.
Traci Mann, PHD, Author of Secrets from the Eating Lab
This important book sounds a much-needed alarm about the long-term damage that dieting does to our bodies and minds. Highly recommended for chronic calorie counters and anyone trying to raise healthy, sane children in an insane food world.
Jonathan Bailor, Author of The Calorie Myth and Founder of sanesolution.com
Aamodt, a neuroscientist, explains the science behind the way your body controls your weight, showing why it can be so hard to lose those extra pounds. A host of sobering statistics reveal just how taken in we are by empty (and expensive) promises.
Drew Turney, Cosmos
Dr. Henry S. Lodge, Professor at Columbia University Medical Center and Co-Author of Younger Next Year
In this deeply researched book, Aamodt demolishes the conventional wisdom on dieting, building a compelling case that if we want to be healthier, we should diet less, not more. Essential reading for today’s weight-obsessed culture.
Traci Mann, PHD, Author of Secrets from the Eating Lab
This important book sounds a much-needed alarm about the long-term damage that dieting does to our bodies and minds. Highly recommended for chronic calorie counters and anyone trying to raise healthy, sane children in an insane food world.
Jonathan Bailor, Author of The Calorie Myth and Founder of sanesolution.com
Aamodt, a neuroscientist, explains the science behind the way your body controls your weight, showing why it can be so hard to lose those extra pounds. A host of sobering statistics reveal just how taken in we are by empty (and expensive) promises.
Drew Turney, Cosmos
March 11, 2018
This book is such a clear explanation of what anyone who's ever tried and failed to lose weight has experienced and blamed him- or herself for. This is a mountain of evidence-supported science, and it can be a bummer to internalize the futility of the struggle, if you don't like your size/shape. But it is also freeing and hopeful to just decide to move forward toward health, which *is* attainable.
September 4, 2019
It is refreshing to read diet information that is based in science. The humour is welcome I’m hoping there will be an update.
December 21, 2021
An excellent non-fiction book that spells the facts! Why Diets Make Us Fat: the unintended consequences of our obsession with weight loss - and what to do instead is an eye opener. The primary premise of the book is easy to understand if you are familiar with the Set Point Theory which is making a comeback. Set Point Theory explains that all of us have a natural weight range that can fluctuate up or down by about 10 pounds. It is the weight we maintain with ease. Our personal Set Point does not usually conform to the height/weight charts that we all know. If we try to lower or raise our weight beyond our Set Point then our bodies fight to return to our Set Point weight.
Ms. Aamodt also includes other topics like fat prejudice and societal norms. At this time it is unclear that once we achieve this higher Set Point if we can ever get back to our original Set Point. I got a lot of excellent information and tips from this non-fiction book in Pakistan. As an experienced meditator I would have liked to see more on how mindful eating worked for her and was left with certain questions such as if one is to eat a diet balanced in fruits, vegetables, meats and grains how does that square with eating when hungry and stopping when full? I would also like to know if one doesn't get hungry until 9PM and needs to go to bed at 10:30PM should he/she eat that late at night before going to bed?
This is the reason why most of us "fail" to maintain weight loss no matter how hard we try. The is especially true if the weight loss is significant. I would recommend everyone to get this non-fiction book online in Pakistan from Chapters bookstore at https://chapters.pk/collections/non-f... You could give it as a gift to someone interested in fitness and health or read it yourself and improve your own fitness. Unfortunately, if we have yo-yo dieted over many years and have regained more weight the research indicates that our Set Point can actually rise to the new weight and we fight to maintain this new higher weight. At this time it is unclear that once we achieve this higher Set Point if we can ever get back to our original Set Point.
Ms. Aamodt also includes other topics like fat prejudice and societal norms. At this time it is unclear that once we achieve this higher Set Point if we can ever get back to our original Set Point. I got a lot of excellent information and tips from this non-fiction book in Pakistan. As an experienced meditator I would have liked to see more on how mindful eating worked for her and was left with certain questions such as if one is to eat a diet balanced in fruits, vegetables, meats and grains how does that square with eating when hungry and stopping when full? I would also like to know if one doesn't get hungry until 9PM and needs to go to bed at 10:30PM should he/she eat that late at night before going to bed?
This is the reason why most of us "fail" to maintain weight loss no matter how hard we try. The is especially true if the weight loss is significant. I would recommend everyone to get this non-fiction book online in Pakistan from Chapters bookstore at https://chapters.pk/collections/non-f... You could give it as a gift to someone interested in fitness and health or read it yourself and improve your own fitness. Unfortunately, if we have yo-yo dieted over many years and have regained more weight the research indicates that our Set Point can actually rise to the new weight and we fight to maintain this new higher weight. At this time it is unclear that once we achieve this higher Set Point if we can ever get back to our original Set Point.
August 18, 2016
Although I did not learn anything I was not already aware of, I do think this book could be of value to those who are dieting and/or struggle with disordered eating. Sandra Aamodt's clearly laid out arguments, supported by ample statistics, make the case for the positive results of rejecting the "diet culture" and eating the way our ancestors did - for both fuel and pleasure. She is a proponent of "mindful eating" which bears much in common with the intuitive eating style first proposed by Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch.
October 27, 2017
I found this a really informative and interesting book. There were plenty of examples to stop it from becoming too dry and plenty of healthy advice at the end of the book. The author, Sandra Aamodt, is a neuroscientist and this gives her a good understanding of the link between the brain and weight. Throughout there are references to articles within scientific journals so you get the feeling that her conclusions are based on scientific research. I found it an enjoyable read and learnt a lot from it.
November 24, 2017
This book had some good nuggets of wisdom. There were way too many pages devoted to outlining various animal torture studies and I ended up skimming most of those chapters.
March 1, 2018
Overall, I like this book. I rated it 4 stars because there's no 3.5 option, but that would be where is at, not because of the content but the presentation of the information.
What I liked about this book:
- Well researched topic by an actual scientist who understands research. Plenty of evidence to support the fact that restrictive/calorie counting diets, do not work because of the effect that said restriction has on the brain.
- Evidence that marketing is to blame for a lot of our biases with health, food choices, etc.
- Mindful eating as alternative to dieting, not to lose weight, since the point of this book is to show why diets don't work, not to give you a recipe for weight loss, but to be more connected to your body/brain needs and because living mindlessly is probably not the best way to live. If you're going to eat something yummy, you might as well "know" full well that you're eating it, otherwise, what's the point?
- You can be "fat" and healthier than thin people.
What I didn't like about the book:
- As others mentioned, dry at times, skimmed through research bits as they were too many and not necessary to make the point. A few examples would have been enough, and if wanting to read more, offer referencing.
- I personally would have liked to know more about the author's own journey, even though the point of the book is not to be biographical but to inform why diets make you fat, it's always good to anchor evidence with life stories to make it more readable and relatable. There are a few examples, but there is no detail involved into their journey, as in strategies, struggles, etc they found while applying mindful eating, etc.
- As other reviewer pointed out, evidence contrary to what's been shown would have been helpful too to provide a more balanced review, e.g. how can exercise change your body/size without necessarily change the number on the scale. Weight training does assist in changing body composition where you lose fat, gain muscle but don't necessarily lose weight, but do lose dress sizes. This happened to me for many, many years.
- More evidence to show that some people can and do lose weight and maintain it. The set point mentioned for example, is not a verifiable number as far as I could read, therefore we don't know if people who lost and maintained that weight loss, even by eating mindfully, maintained that weight below the range or within the range, that is, how is the set point range established? It's apparently 10 or 15 pounds within a certain number, but how is this thermostat number quantified? This is not very clear to me. There are people who've lost and kept off 40 pounds eating mindfully, at least anecdotally, and this seems to be below the range. Their stories or research into that, would have been helpful, or there isn't any? But my issue is that maybe there's a weight the brain wants you to be, which for some people could be below the set point, in which case, the brain does not seem to want to increase if you eat mindfully. If this is true, then it is also false that set points always go up, therefore the brain may get used to the new lower weight. So maybe this is not the full story but more research is required, and it's not entirely true that once you gain weight you can never ever lose it.
Anecdotally, this happened to me, I put on increasing amounts of weight (while losing and gaining) to being 16kgs heavier than starting weight and eventually, after dieting, etc. I found a balance by not doing anything special and kept off the lower weight, and eventually, with exercise I maintained it by eating a lot of food. I was working out intensively (cyclist) but I was eating more calories than what dieticians would have advised (a lot more, maybe 3500 a day and I am 1.59cms and was 56kgs), however I did not put on weight, and this I maintained with very little effort apart from exercising (for enjoyment although intense) for many years. I did change however, after pregnancy even if I didn't put on more than 10kgs while pregnant and yo yoed after the fact. However, as mentioned, for 10 years or more I maintained the same weight, and even lost a dress size by weighing the same, by (presumably) doing intense exercise, so even anecdotally, it is possible to maintain a lower weight, therefore it is not entirely true that once you put on weight you can never ever lose and maintain that loss unless you diet. Before starting exercising intensively, I was already maintaining eating quite a lot, exercise gave me more definition and I lost a size, so it wasn't just exercise what allowed me to maintain, with exercise there was improvement on the maintenance.
- Mindful eating, eating wholefoods, exercising, are all part of a diet. They are not restrictive in the sense that they don't have as many rules, and eating for hunger makes A LOT more sense than eating by following external cues, however, it is a way of eating and there is at least one rule, "eat till you're full", so not calling it a diet is probably not that accurate.
Saying all this, the information on this book is very important to get out there. Marketing is evil and does a lot of harm to adults and children alike. The truth needs to come out and for that reason alone I think this book is extremely important. I really liked Sandra's TED Talk too and do recommend the book, despite its weaker points.
What I liked about this book:
- Well researched topic by an actual scientist who understands research. Plenty of evidence to support the fact that restrictive/calorie counting diets, do not work because of the effect that said restriction has on the brain.
- Evidence that marketing is to blame for a lot of our biases with health, food choices, etc.
- Mindful eating as alternative to dieting, not to lose weight, since the point of this book is to show why diets don't work, not to give you a recipe for weight loss, but to be more connected to your body/brain needs and because living mindlessly is probably not the best way to live. If you're going to eat something yummy, you might as well "know" full well that you're eating it, otherwise, what's the point?
- You can be "fat" and healthier than thin people.
What I didn't like about the book:
- As others mentioned, dry at times, skimmed through research bits as they were too many and not necessary to make the point. A few examples would have been enough, and if wanting to read more, offer referencing.
- I personally would have liked to know more about the author's own journey, even though the point of the book is not to be biographical but to inform why diets make you fat, it's always good to anchor evidence with life stories to make it more readable and relatable. There are a few examples, but there is no detail involved into their journey, as in strategies, struggles, etc they found while applying mindful eating, etc.
- As other reviewer pointed out, evidence contrary to what's been shown would have been helpful too to provide a more balanced review, e.g. how can exercise change your body/size without necessarily change the number on the scale. Weight training does assist in changing body composition where you lose fat, gain muscle but don't necessarily lose weight, but do lose dress sizes. This happened to me for many, many years.
- More evidence to show that some people can and do lose weight and maintain it. The set point mentioned for example, is not a verifiable number as far as I could read, therefore we don't know if people who lost and maintained that weight loss, even by eating mindfully, maintained that weight below the range or within the range, that is, how is the set point range established? It's apparently 10 or 15 pounds within a certain number, but how is this thermostat number quantified? This is not very clear to me. There are people who've lost and kept off 40 pounds eating mindfully, at least anecdotally, and this seems to be below the range. Their stories or research into that, would have been helpful, or there isn't any? But my issue is that maybe there's a weight the brain wants you to be, which for some people could be below the set point, in which case, the brain does not seem to want to increase if you eat mindfully. If this is true, then it is also false that set points always go up, therefore the brain may get used to the new lower weight. So maybe this is not the full story but more research is required, and it's not entirely true that once you gain weight you can never ever lose it.
Anecdotally, this happened to me, I put on increasing amounts of weight (while losing and gaining) to being 16kgs heavier than starting weight and eventually, after dieting, etc. I found a balance by not doing anything special and kept off the lower weight, and eventually, with exercise I maintained it by eating a lot of food. I was working out intensively (cyclist) but I was eating more calories than what dieticians would have advised (a lot more, maybe 3500 a day and I am 1.59cms and was 56kgs), however I did not put on weight, and this I maintained with very little effort apart from exercising (for enjoyment although intense) for many years. I did change however, after pregnancy even if I didn't put on more than 10kgs while pregnant and yo yoed after the fact. However, as mentioned, for 10 years or more I maintained the same weight, and even lost a dress size by weighing the same, by (presumably) doing intense exercise, so even anecdotally, it is possible to maintain a lower weight, therefore it is not entirely true that once you put on weight you can never ever lose and maintain that loss unless you diet. Before starting exercising intensively, I was already maintaining eating quite a lot, exercise gave me more definition and I lost a size, so it wasn't just exercise what allowed me to maintain, with exercise there was improvement on the maintenance.
- Mindful eating, eating wholefoods, exercising, are all part of a diet. They are not restrictive in the sense that they don't have as many rules, and eating for hunger makes A LOT more sense than eating by following external cues, however, it is a way of eating and there is at least one rule, "eat till you're full", so not calling it a diet is probably not that accurate.
Saying all this, the information on this book is very important to get out there. Marketing is evil and does a lot of harm to adults and children alike. The truth needs to come out and for that reason alone I think this book is extremely important. I really liked Sandra's TED Talk too and do recommend the book, despite its weaker points.
April 26, 2018
If you are on a diet or about to start a diet and are excited and motivated, you probably don't want to read this book. Permanent or even reasonably long-term weight loss as a result of dieting, after one has existed long enough at a new, higher weight "set point", appears to be so unlikely an achievement, according to plenty of evidence presented in this book, that you might as well write it off as impossible. "You just plain can't do it," is the message. You're just going to annoy yourself at best, and possibly at worst even harm your health in your attempts to improve it.
That's the bad news. The good news is a vision of a post-diet, post-fat-conscious existence once we see how much we've been wasting our time. Our goals are presumably to be healthier, right; and, secondarily (we would claim), to look more attractive. Aamodt presents evidence that the amount of adipose tissue in a body is, wonder of wonders, NOT the be-all and end-all of good health. It's just fat, after all. What is "health"? Healthy heart. Ability to move around and lift things without exhaustion. Strong lungs. Functioning systems... you get the picture. It's not about fat, for pete's sake.
Aamodt's focus is health; she does not talk about physical appearance and attractiveness at all. It is not a chick book; it is definitely something every bit as geared towards a male reader as a female reader, something rare in this genre. But I don't have to tell you; you've probably noticed time and again in other people, physical attractiveness and good looks seem to shine from within. They aren't about size.
So if health is not about fat, and attractiveness is not about fat... what are we fighting fat for again?
She does talk a great deal about exercise and healthy eating, particularly eating "mindfully" (oh how I hate that word). But it doesn't really devolve into a self-help book about how to improve your health - and maybe, when you're not even looking, as a side effect, fringe benefit, while you're insisting "I don't care about losing weight" and "I don't care about the number on the scale" -- maybe you just might lose a few pounds via mindful eating and exercising? Nuh-uh. No, she makes clear - you're not going to lose weight this way. REMEMBER? (head-slap) I spent half the book telling you that? Right. It wasn't a Jedi mind trick to make you lose weight by pretending not to try. It really is reality.
I love books that make my mind shift 90 degrees. 5 stars.
That's the bad news. The good news is a vision of a post-diet, post-fat-conscious existence once we see how much we've been wasting our time. Our goals are presumably to be healthier, right; and, secondarily (we would claim), to look more attractive. Aamodt presents evidence that the amount of adipose tissue in a body is, wonder of wonders, NOT the be-all and end-all of good health. It's just fat, after all. What is "health"? Healthy heart. Ability to move around and lift things without exhaustion. Strong lungs. Functioning systems... you get the picture. It's not about fat, for pete's sake.
Aamodt's focus is health; she does not talk about physical appearance and attractiveness at all. It is not a chick book; it is definitely something every bit as geared towards a male reader as a female reader, something rare in this genre. But I don't have to tell you; you've probably noticed time and again in other people, physical attractiveness and good looks seem to shine from within. They aren't about size.
So if health is not about fat, and attractiveness is not about fat... what are we fighting fat for again?
She does talk a great deal about exercise and healthy eating, particularly eating "mindfully" (oh how I hate that word). But it doesn't really devolve into a self-help book about how to improve your health - and maybe, when you're not even looking, as a side effect, fringe benefit, while you're insisting "I don't care about losing weight" and "I don't care about the number on the scale" -- maybe you just might lose a few pounds via mindful eating and exercising? Nuh-uh. No, she makes clear - you're not going to lose weight this way. REMEMBER? (head-slap) I spent half the book telling you that? Right. It wasn't a Jedi mind trick to make you lose weight by pretending not to try. It really is reality.
I love books that make my mind shift 90 degrees. 5 stars.
November 21, 2017
Although economics has famously been called "the dismal science," I would like to nominate nutrition as an equally good candidate for this label. My reason is that for something so vitally important to health and happiness, even the neuroscientists know precious little, and the information we are fed in the popular press is truly the epitome of "junk science." We are then expected to make critical life decisions about feeding ourselves and our families based on each poorly-designed and questionably interpreted study du jour appearing just in time to contradict yesterday's findings. It saddens me when serious newspapers like the NYTimes and WAPO undermine their own credibility with articles like these, but apparently their readers are ravenous for reliable information and often have nowhere else to turn.
If you can only read one book on nutrition, make it this one. Aamodt not only has a broad knowledge of the current neuroscience of nutrition, she also does a terrific job of making it comprehensible to the educated nontechnical reader. By "comprehensible" I don't mean easy or definitive, but at least after reading this book you will have a better understanding of why the picture is so confusing, how far we are from having the answers we need, and how important it is to keep funding scientific research in this field. Armed with this knowledge, perhaps readers can at least stop lurching from theory to theory and diet to diet in an effort to do the right thing by themselves, and perhaps they can start to move away from thinness as either a health or an aesthetic goal.
She also offers something of a way out in urging readers to focus more on physical fitness and less on dietary intake. The main weakness here is that in her enthusiasm for physical fitness (NOT as a weight loss tool - it isn't - but as more important to health than weight control per se), she doesn't entirely grapple with the fact that getting people to exercise and enjoy it is for many people just as difficult as getting them to restrict calorie intake. She soldiers on gamely in promoting the "joy of exercise," but like restricting or modifying food intake, it's a hard sell. We are probably not designed by evolution to squander our hard-earned calories on pointless activity. Still, her advice on habit formation may be helpful to some.
If you can only read one book on nutrition, make it this one. Aamodt not only has a broad knowledge of the current neuroscience of nutrition, she also does a terrific job of making it comprehensible to the educated nontechnical reader. By "comprehensible" I don't mean easy or definitive, but at least after reading this book you will have a better understanding of why the picture is so confusing, how far we are from having the answers we need, and how important it is to keep funding scientific research in this field. Armed with this knowledge, perhaps readers can at least stop lurching from theory to theory and diet to diet in an effort to do the right thing by themselves, and perhaps they can start to move away from thinness as either a health or an aesthetic goal.
She also offers something of a way out in urging readers to focus more on physical fitness and less on dietary intake. The main weakness here is that in her enthusiasm for physical fitness (NOT as a weight loss tool - it isn't - but as more important to health than weight control per se), she doesn't entirely grapple with the fact that getting people to exercise and enjoy it is for many people just as difficult as getting them to restrict calorie intake. She soldiers on gamely in promoting the "joy of exercise," but like restricting or modifying food intake, it's a hard sell. We are probably not designed by evolution to squander our hard-earned calories on pointless activity. Still, her advice on habit formation may be helpful to some.
December 31, 2021
I'm not sure what I think of this book.
On one hand, I agree wholeheartedly about diets- they are often extreme and ultimately unhelpful to healthy living. On the other hand, intuitive eating is a skill that most of us would need to develop over time. Our intuitive eating signals are buried in the modern eating world, and it takes time and practice to get right.
There is a lot of very interesting science in this, and I enjoyed reading the science behind the art of weight loss and health, but the author and I don't entirely agree on the conclusions.
I may read this again sometime, and see how my opinion of this changes.
On one hand, I agree wholeheartedly about diets- they are often extreme and ultimately unhelpful to healthy living. On the other hand, intuitive eating is a skill that most of us would need to develop over time. Our intuitive eating signals are buried in the modern eating world, and it takes time and practice to get right.
There is a lot of very interesting science in this, and I enjoyed reading the science behind the art of weight loss and health, but the author and I don't entirely agree on the conclusions.
I may read this again sometime, and see how my opinion of this changes.
May 28, 2018
This book starts with a huge downer: if you are fat, you will probably never be thin no matter how hard you try. It beats that downer into the reader's head with study after study in approximately 23 different ways. That's pretty depressing. The third part of the book explains the "better way" and how understudied health apart from weight loss is. I learned a lot, and reinforced a lot of what I already know. But I think the first two parts could be shoulder to get to the solution quicker.
October 14, 2017
I think there are some awesome information in this book. They should be known to the world.
But as with many books that is based on getting the facts out to people, it is far to long. To many stories about people that feels constructed. And a lot of repetition.
I would rate it 5 for the information, but the stories and the assumtion that the reader is "stupid" and needs a lot of repetition, drag it down to a 3.
But as with many books that is based on getting the facts out to people, it is far to long. To many stories about people that feels constructed. And a lot of repetition.
I would rate it 5 for the information, but the stories and the assumtion that the reader is "stupid" and needs a lot of repetition, drag it down to a 3.
November 11, 2021
For someone who has gained and lost the same 30lbs on Weight Watchers, I can attest that diets don’t work. I no longer weigh myself, I try and eat a healthy diet. I exercise and walk more than 10,000 steps per day. I am trying to control mindless eating habits and to only eat when I am hungry and learn to stop eating when I am full. I enjoyed the audiobook but found the author droned on and many chapters made the same point over and over.
July 8, 2017
For me, a lot of this information was not new, but I'm very fortunate to have grown up with parents who encouraged mindful eating. I appreciated some of the studies I hadn't read before, and I do think it's a valuable book. I especially appreciate the parts about ensuring that our children grow up with healthy attitudes toward food, fitness, and nutrition in general.
July 24, 2019
This book is excellent. It gives the reader a sensible road map on how to lead a healthy life. Spoiler alert: that does not involve going on weight loss diets which we all know have a nearly 100% failure rate in the long term. Although some of the passages in the book can be a bit technical, overall I found the book helpful with lots of ideas to try.
October 28, 2021
- Human body use precise calculation for eating. And when losing weight it could trick body into thinking it has not eaten enough and is starving
- Genetics has a huge part in how heavy a person is
- Forming a habit is more important than discipline. The former only lasts a short time
- The trick here is to gradually form a habit
- Genetics has a huge part in how heavy a person is
- Forming a habit is more important than discipline. The former only lasts a short time
- The trick here is to gradually form a habit
November 3, 2017
This is the best book or article I’ve ever seen on the subject of weight. It’s an engaging, easy-to-follow rundown of all of the available scientific research on the subject, including, possibly most importantly, the neuroscience. I can’t recommend it highly enough.
November 16, 2019
Eye opening! Frustration! So many years wasted on diets. But so many questions answered - why diets don't work. I had living proof yet couldn't see the truth beyond the next diet. This book changed my future. No more diets.
October 10, 2016
Interesting, but very dry. It referenced so many studies that I ended up skimming to get the gist.
June 3, 2017
Very important information but the writing is very dry, the first 3/4 is very science heavy and hard to get through. It's a worthwhile read if you can stick with it.
August 25, 2017
Fascinating and important!
July 31, 2017
Excellent insight into the dieting world and culture and how much it has control over our lives. Interesting facts and statistics also.
October 16, 2017
Simple and succinct point that diets don't work and are actually physically and psychologically destructive. The alternatives are a bit less clear. Also enjoyed Aamodt's TED Talk.
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