Big Fat Lies: The Truth About Your Weight and Your Health by Glenn Gaesser

Author:Glenn Gaesser [Gaesser, Glenn]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Gürze Books
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

The Weight-Loss Paradox: Yo-Yoing to Death

What we have here is a paradox, with potentially calamitous consequences. Losing weight seems to increase the chances of dying from a disease for which weight loss is frequently prescribed to help cure! This brings to mind the most fundamental canon of all helping professions: “Above all else, do no harm.” How is it possible for weight loss to be both therapeutic—in its effect on many of the risk factors for cardiovascular disease—and dangerous? The explanation lies in the fact that it is virtually impossible to discuss weight loss apart from weight gain. As the dieting phenomenon has grown, so has the average dieter’s weight. Weight loss, especially by dieting, the most frequent means employed, begets weight gain; and, as Hippocrates cautioned some twenty-five centuries ago, is “beset with difficulties”—many of them almost certainly attributable to dieting’s cyclical nature.

The weight cycling experiences of the Harvard graduates studied by Drs. Lee and Paffenbarger are revealing in this context. In 1988, when the most recent follow-up information was gathered, the alumni were asked how frequently they had dieted and how many times during their lifetime they had lost less than five, five, ten, twenty, or thirty or more pounds. When all the weight-loss attempts and total pounds lost were tallied, those alumni who had a net loss of more than eleven pounds between 1962 and 1977 actually had a cumulative weight loss of ninetynine pounds—which means they had also gained a considerable amount of weight over the years! The health consequences of this yo-yoing were striking: Compared with men who maintained fairly stable body weights, those who had lost and gained the most total pounds had an 80 percent higher rate of heart disease, and a 123 percent higher rate of type 2 diabetes. Similar results were found for yo-yoers who had ended up with a net gain of more than eleven pounds—which suggests that it might not necessarily be the net gain or loss that is dangerous, but the yo-yoing itself. Indeed, those alumni who stated that they dieted frequently, or all the time, had nearly double the risk for type 2 diabetes, hypertension, and coronary heart disease compared with their former classmates who said they never dieted.

The higher rates of heart disease in those who yo-yoed the most have been found in a number of other recently published studies, including the Multiple Risk Factor Intervention Trial, just mentioned, and the Framingham Heart Study. After more than three decades of follow-up evaluations that included biannual body-weight measurements, those Framingham subjects whose body weights yo-yoed the most had up to a 100 percent greater risk of death from heart disease than those whose weights fluctuated the least! The 1991 report in the New England Journal of Medicine suggested, very tentatively, that these findings “raise the possibility that weight cycling by dietary means may have a role in the development of chronic disease.” Indeed they do! But the traditionally conservative medical and scientific research communities are still holding back from any more definitive condemnation of yo-yoing.

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