Great comment. If the doctor has never lost weight or reviewed the weight loss research in depth then their opinion isn’t much better than anyone else. In many cases they may not need to lose weight so there is no reason for them to be aware of the process.

This is an interesting issue because weight loss is intimately tied to health…doctors are intimately tied to health…so people get their lines crossed and assume then that doctors must also be weight loss experts. Not true.

I’m sure that many of them get the basic principle of eating less and exercise, but this isn’t a rule or anything you should expect your physician to be completely up to date on.

JB

Michelle Legg

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35315651/ns/health-diet_and_nutrition//

as a teaser, let me quote the very first line – “It’s not just about calories in versus calories out.”

this little attention grabber is then followed by – “If that were all it took to lose weight — eating a little less and exercising a little more — then weight loss would be as simple as grade-school math: Subtract Y from Z and end up with X.”

the article goes on to document research on “obesogens,” or “natural and synthetic chemicals known as endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs),” that apparently permeate our food supply and promote weight gain above and beyond the caloric content of food.

the authors’ starting question? “But if you’ve ever followed a diet program and achieved less than your desired result, you probably came away feeling frustrated, depressed, and maybe a bit guilty. What did I do wrong?”

their answer: it’s not your fault (i.e., you weren’t eating more calories than you were burning), its the mean non-caloric chemicals in your food…

the authors’ ultimate recommendation – to avoid obesogens, eat organic food.

as someone who has lost 50 lbs. of fat in 7 months by just watching my calories in vs. my calories out, and who has in the process eaten fast food with some regularity, not eaten organically, and violated any other number of these ‘expert’ rules, i take exception with these recommendations, still the authors do cite a substantial body of research in support of their recommendations/opinions…so if you were a concerned, conscientious doctor who would you tend to believe – me or these ‘experts?’