January 10, 2025 — Let’s talk selfies. For me, they were my reality check. Full-body shots? Forget it. Every milestone photo with my family got run through every beautification filter the App Store could throw at me, but nothing could match the image I wanted to see staring back. That’s when I knew – it was time for a […]
December 7, 2024 — The concept of turning food into medicine mildly repels us. But telling us chocolate is medicine simply goes over the line. Yet here comes a study in the BMJ, spinning off headlines about dark chocolate as a “bittersweet remedy for diabetes risk.” Milk chocolate? Nope. In fact, the authors of this observational study say milk […]
March 25, 2024 — Weight neutral approaches to health and healthcare are the subject of well-deserved attention. The World Obesity Federation recently published a position statement on recognizing and reducing weight stigma. One of nine recommendations was to “engage in weight-neutral health promotion.” But what does this really mean? How should a healthcare provider respond to a patient’s concern […]
November 17, 2023 — It’s not easy. Getting access to good obesity care and maintaining it is a challenge that is especially frustrating as we see that the options for care are improving. But it seems that health systems right now are rigged to interrupt obesity treatment. An illustration of this comes from a recent study published in Obesity. […]
August 14, 2023 — Headline writers are fond these days of depicting a “craze” among prescription writers for new obesity medicines. But in fact, it seems that long-standing prescribing patterns may promote more weight gain than weight loss. A new paper by Erik Almazan, Jessica Schwartz, and Kimberly Gudzune documents prescribing for medicines that promote weight gain in 36 percent […]
May 3, 2023 — We have received enough lectures for a lifetime from people who know just what the root cause of obesity is. The lecturers know the cause and they know the solution: tax, nudge, cajole, and educate people to follow a healthier diet. Eat less of that awful ultra-processed food. But the presumption that it’s all about […]
April 24, 2023 — For an accounting for the food that is fueling a relentless rise in obesity, NIH researcher Kevin Hall is a good source. At the Obesity Medicine 2023 conference in New York Saturday morning, this is exactly what we heard. Systematically, Hall described his work to understand how food can be an important input into a […]
February 26, 2023 — Quietly and systematically, Tera Fazzino has been working with colleagues to define a concept of hyper-palatable foods that might explain the apparent effect of ultra-processed foods on body composition and thus, obesity. The latest chapter in this quest appeared recently in Nature Food. In short, a narrative is taking shape that we may have a […]
December 24, 2022 — For some of us, gaining weight (especially at this time of year) is a metabolic curse. But there are individuals for whom gaining weight is a metabolic gift and, in fact, essential for surviving in good health. In this case, we are thinking about grizzly bears. These animals gain tremendous amounts of weight every year […]
October 1, 2022 — Boredom is unpleasant for a reason – our brain wants action from us. It is a signal that, whatever we’re doing, something isn’t right. We’re not engaged with it or we’re not finding meaning in it. We need to change course. So one way or another, we will respond to that discomfort prompting us for […]
