What You Can Change _. And What You Can't - Martin E. Seligman [153]
Finally, the consumer should consult the splendid “Diets: What Works—What Doesn’t,” Consumer Reports, June 1993, 347–57.
2. The Metropolitan Life table is adapted from E. Weigley, “Average? Ideal? Desirable? A Brief Overview of Height-Weight Tables in the United States,” Journal of the American Dietetic Association 84 (1984): 417–23.
3. The argument that being over your “ideal” weight means that you would live longer if you dieted down to your “ideal” weight is a non sequitur of the first magnitude. It astonishes me that serious physicians have been dispensing such advice for decades. Technically speaking, it is a fallacious argument on two grounds: First, it confuses correlation and cause. Some third variable may cause people at their “ideal” weight both to have that weight and to live longer. Second, it ignores the health cost of dieting to get to a lower weight, which in itself could offset the health benefit of being at that lower weight.
There is something else to be said against the Met Life “ideal” weights. Met Life charged about 20 to 30 percent extra in life-insurance premiums to the overweight. A good number of the overweight policyholders were willing to pay an extra premium because they knew something was wrong with their health that the company didn’t. This means that the overweight people that Met Life insured were probably unhealthier than people of the same weight who didn’t try to get insurance. Policyholders systematically select against the company, and the result of this is that the “ideal” weight figure is probably markedly too low.
4. J. Garrow, Energy Balance and Obesity in Man (New York: Elsevier, 1974), and S. Wooley, O. Wooley, and S. Dyrenforth, “Theoretical, Practical, and Social Issues in Behavioral Treatment of Obesity,” Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis 12 (1979): 3–25, review these studies. K. Brownell and T. Wadden, “The Heterogeneity of Obesity: Fitting Treatments to Individuals,” Behavior Therapy 22 (1991): 153–77, is a useful general source debunking the myths of overweight.
New studies of doubly labeled water challenge the view that the obese don’t overeat, however. According to such studies, obese people underreport how much they eat by 30 percent. See D. Schoeller, “Measurement of Energy Expenditure in Free-Living Humans by Using Doubly Labeled Water,” Journal of Nutrition 118 (1988): 1278–89.
5. R. Striegel-Moore and J. Rodin, “The Influence of Psychological Variables in Obesity,” in K. Brownell and J. Foreyt, eds., Handbook of Eating Disorders (New York: Basic Books, 1986), 99–121.
6. “What’s Ahead? The Weight Loss Market,” Obesity and Health (July 1989), 51–54. J. LaRosa, Dieter Beware: The Complete Consumer Guide to Weight Loss Programs (Valley Stream, N.Y.: Marketdata Enterprises, 1991), is a useful if unselective compendium of the facts and financial doings of the diet industry.
7. D. Garner, P. Garfinkel, D. Schwartz, and M. Thompson, “Cultural Expectations of Thinness in Women,” Psychological Reports 47 (1980): 483–91; R. Jeffrey, S. Adlis, and J. Forster, “Prevalence of Dieting Among Working Men and Women: The Healthy Worker Project,” Health Psychology 10 (1991): 274–81.
8. M. Hovell, A. Koch, C. Hofstetter, et al., “Long-term Weight Loss Maintenance: Assessment of a Behavioral and Supplemented Fasting Regimen,” American Journal of Public Health 78 (1988): 663–66; T. Andersen, K. Stokholm, O. Backer, and F. Quaade, “Long-term (5-Year) Results After Either Horizontal Gastroplasty or Very-Low-Calorie Diet for Morbid Obesity,” International Journal of Obesity 12 (1988): 277–84; D. Johnson and E. Drenick, “Therapeutic Fasting