September 20, 2023 — Apparently big food is not scary enough. The Washington Post wants you to know that it’s really big tobacco that is selling you those noxious and addictive Teddy Grahams to destroy the health of your children. For this report, they rely on a paper by Tera Fazzino and colleagues. This continues a tradition of using […]
March 30, 2023 — Reuters reported yesterday that the World Health Association is considering, for the first time ever, adding a drug used for diabetes and obesity to the WHO essential medicines list. The specific drug under consideration is liraglutide. This would represent a step toward learning from public health mistakes of the past to make a course correction […]
August 8, 2022 — A fascinating debate is unfolding in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). It’s mostly about publication bias, but the bottom line question is not so esoteric. Can a nudge make meaningful behavior change happen in a wide variety of situations? Late last year, Stephanie Mertens and colleagues published a meta-analysis of nudging […]
May 30, 2022 — It’s pretty easy to find advice to make small changes that stick if a person wants to lose weight – or keep from gaining weight. It certainly sounds authoritative when a PhD psychologist offers up small change theory as a winning strategy: “When you focus on just a couple of small changes at a time, […]
January 12, 2021 — Isaac Bashevis Singer told us we must believe in free will – there is no other choice. Thus, many of us put a great deal of energy into resolutions at this time of year. Often, they involve an effort to eat more healthfully. Resolve fades. Though 77 percent of resolutions last for at least a […]
January 4, 2021 — Maybe you’ve noticed. Resolution season has a different tone this year. The assault from popular media has made a shift. In fact, many of the headlines are not about diets and weight loss this year. Instead, they’re about healthy habits and lasting changes. After all we’ve been through, people simply don’t have much appetite for […]
January 7, 2020 — Right now, all we want is a bit of normalcy. Let’s face it, the month of December thrusts a great deal of change and disruption upon us. Maybe it’s the disruption of too much fun and camaraderie. Maybe it’s an excess of familial joy. Or perhaps it’s darker memories that you’re carrying into the new […]
August 15, 2019 — Beware of pilot studies with claims of effectiveness. “A pilot study is not a hypothesis testing study,” says Andrew Leon in a cogent summary of what pilots can and can’t do. But it’s oh so tempting to jump on effect data from a pilot study. Especially when you believe in what you think it tells […]
August 4, 2019 — The closing day of YWM2019 began and ended with acceptance and commitment. First, Jason Lillis presented a brilliant session on using our own values to empower healthy changes. Then, at the end, attendees told their own true stories of acceptance and commitment to live their best lives. It was a perfect pair of bookends for […]
August 9, 2018 — Journals are bursting with studies of childhood obesity this week. One appeared in Pediatrics. JAMA published two of them. Furthermore, all of these studies were randomized and controlled. On top of all that, JAMA published an editorial, describing “a glimmer of hope” for preventing childhood obesity. A Glimmer or a Wish? Unfortunately, we’re not seeing a lot […]
