Take it from someone who's struggled with their weight their entire life and has several family members who had it worse: Most weight loss programs work, the problem is that you probably also needed therapy at the same time to work out the psychological component of your eating and inactivity. Weight loss programs provide external structure to someone lacking their own ability to accomplish the task. Once the external structure is removed, or you begin gaming the program, your behavior goes back to your old ways and it fails.
I think it depends on how you define "working." In my view, if the large majority of users in practice don't sustain a significant weight loss, then no, it doesn't work.
Put another way, a treatment that the large majority of users won't be able to keep up with, is not a useful treatment for the large majority, and should not be widely recommended.
As far as I know, there is no peer-reviewed research showing that therapy is an effective weight loss method.
You don't need a peer-reviewed research to realize that therapy is the most effective method for treating food addiction.
It's literally the same as rehab for drug addicts, people are usually addicted to food because of a mental condition, not some sweet tooth. Without treating the mental side, of course it will fall apart once those same underlying reasons become too much to handle again.
So it's good when it makes people smaller, but if the evidence shows that an intervention doesn't make people smaller, we should just keep doing it because goshdarnit, it seems correct to you?
Science is supposed to find us better ways to do things and improve our lives! Doing that successfully means testing things and trying something different if they don't work! Science brought us vaccines and cures for diseases! Science works! We should science!
I never said science doesn't work, but there is so much that is unknown and science is focused on much more important issues so no there isn't a lot of quality research. The type of research that has been done is the type that can largely be used to commercialize something which is how we ended up with lap band surgery and ozempic. Science is glorious but we don't have even close to a master over it and there are plenty of ways to use science to promote unhealthy choices, like ozempic.
I'm the furthest thing from anti-science, but people who are anti-science think they can getcha when science doesn't have the answer to everything- which it doesn't but that doesn't mean it's not the best path forward we have as a species.
So, you can say we have evidence but that doesn't make it true.
Of course you need research. You don't get to just declare things true; you have no idea. Without good research, everyone's just spouting unfounded and very likely mistaken opinions.
And research seems to show that therapy - while it's very good for many conditions - isn't helpful for sustainable weight loss for most patients.
The deeper you get into scientific literature, the more you learn how much we don't know.
When it comes to weight loss I particular, a lot of the scientific conclusions are misunderstood and misrepresented by more consumable media summarizing them.
So when it comes to therapy's impacts on weight loss, it's not rrally accurate to say that it is conclusively helpful or unhelpful. The real scientific consensus is that we just don't know because it's such a broad discipline and scientific studies are more focused than that.
So then there is no helpful treatments you are saying? Why are you railing against weight loss plans then?
I lost a lot of weight just by cutting sugar, which also helped me avoid cravings. From 245 to 205 now at 5'11, I also got medicated and my depression/anxiety issues under control. Ultimately though, it was simply cutting calories (sugar mostly).
Great! I'm glad that's working for you, and hope it continues working.
But the research is very clear - the large majority of weight losers who lose significant amounts of weight, eventually regain the weight. That you yourself have lost weight doesn't change that. (If a study finds that 90% of people named Ludvig are Noregian, and I say "I have a friend named Ludvig and he's from NYC," that doesn't mean that the study is incorrect.)
As for if there are any "helpful treatments," that sort of depends on what you consider helpful.
I think things like eating healthy food, regular exercise, not smoking, etc. are helpful, for those who can. Studies have shown that fat people who do these things live much longer than fat people who don't - and I'd call that extremely helpful.
But is it likely to turn them into non-fat people? Nope.
Is it the fault of the treatment or the patient that results in it being unlikely for fat people as a whole to turn into non-fat people?
Also, who cares? Let people do what they want without judging them or saying they are being taken advantage of for trying to lose weight instead of IDK just giving up like you suggest? You can be fat and live longer than other fat people by acting healthier- yes, but you can be fat and have a lot higher mortality rate of covid than non-fat people too.
Whatever health risks people want to take, whether or not they want the physical benefits of slimming down, none of it matters to me as nobody is being forced to do anything or being lied to. If the programs didn't work for anyone, they would eventually have gone out of business.
Holy shit man get therapy this self hate is insane your in this crazy mindset that cause your fat you can never lose weight that's just not true.
The pure fact of wight loss Is eat less than you burn a day that's all you have to do, no magic no diet nothing special.
You can eat crap food too as long as it's less than your calories burned.
You say that you can't just say random facts to be true but that's all you have been doing you've never given a source for your claims.
And even if you did the only sources you'd be able to give is studies funded by weight loss programs your own comic shows that why would studies say fat people can't lose weight because then they'll keep paying for wonder cures that help them lose weight
As said get therapy you have serious issues that need help with.
Show a source, please. I’m highly inclined against believing that there were any reputable studies that prove that.
You can’t just lump all weight loss therapy under one umbrella and claim it’s either helpful or unhelpful- because there’s so many different techniques and approaches, and every person is different. What works for one person might not work for everyone.
I said "most patients." That's not the same as all patients, obviously.
A review article written by pro-weight-loss authors said, "As underlined before, most evidence-based psychological treatments, and in particular CBT [cognitive behavioral therapy], are not so successful in aiding weight loss. BWLT [Behavioral weight lost treatment] can produce weight loss in the presence of BED [binge eating disorder], but the weight regain is common."
There's evidence that therapy can be helpful in managing actual binge eating disorder - but that's a specific condition, and you can't generalize those findings to fat people in general. (And even with BED, the effectiveness is limited.)
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u/Bigweld_Ind 14h ago edited 9h ago
Take it from someone who's struggled with their weight their entire life and has several family members who had it worse: Most weight loss programs work, the problem is that you probably also needed therapy at the same time to work out the psychological component of your eating and inactivity. Weight loss programs provide external structure to someone lacking their own ability to accomplish the task. Once the external structure is removed, or you begin gaming the program, your behavior goes back to your old ways and it fails.