From Your Health Journal…..”A very interesting article recently from The Indian Express in New Delhi, India called Weight Loss Myths Busted. There are so many ‘stories’ out there about obesity and weight loss, many of us do not know what to believe anymore. There are so many ‘so called’ experts who preach facts and fiction to their clients and peers, a mass confusion sets in. So, it was interesting to read today’s article review about weight loss myths. It is a very lengthy article, but quite interesting to read. Some of the interesting myths that were busted include walking a mile a day can lead to a loss of more than 50 pounds in five years, set a realistic goal to lose a modest amount, and if you lose weight too fast you will lose less in the long run. Some ideas not proven yet include diet / exercise habits in childhood set stage for the rest of life and add lots of fruits and vegetables to your diet to lose weight or not gain as much. Of interest to me, the author of the article started off by mentioning the importance or non importance of physical education in the schools. For me, I truly believe that if children had daily quality PE in school, it would set the stage for a healthier lifestyle, as PE does educate children on fitness, exercise, nutrition, social skills, cognitive skills, and many more things. If you have any weight loss myths you want to share here, please leave them in the comments section. In the meantime, please visit the Indian Express web site (link provided below) to read the complete article.”

From the article…..

If schools reinstated physical education classes, a lot of fat children would lose weight. And they might never have gotten fat in the first place if their mothers had just breast fed them when they were babies. But be warned: obese people should definitely steer clear of crash diets. And they can lose more than 50 pounds in five years simply by walking a mile a day.

Those are among the myths and unproven assumptions about obesity and weight loss that have been repeated so often and with such conviction that even scientists like David B. Allison, who directs the Nutrition Obesity Research Center at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, have fallen for some of them.

Now, he is trying to set the record straight. In an article published online today in The New England Journal of Medicine, he and his colleagues lay out seven myths and six unsubstantiated presumptions about obesity. They also list nine facts that, unfortunately, promise little in the way of quick fixes for the weight-obsessed. Example: “Trying to go on a diet or recommending that someone go on a diet does not generally work well in the long term.”

Obesity experts applauded this plain-spoken effort to dispel widespread confusion about obesity. The field, they say, has become something of a quagmire.

“In my view,” said Dr. Jeffrey M. Friedman, a Rockefeller University obesity researcher, “there is more misinformation pretending to be fact in this field than in any other I can think of.”

To read the full article…..Click here