The Science of Slimming
Getting rid of all those unwanted pounds is as simple as calories in, calories out. It's also as mysterious and complex as the workings of the human mind
On a rainy Wednesday night in the meeting room at the United Methodist Church in rural Friendship, Md., some 70 people line up through the aisles of folding tables and chairs. They're waiting to be weighed. This is the weekly moment of truth, the place where these dieters will learn, officially, if all their hard work--the food diaries, the exercise, the "behavior controls"--have paid off. The scales are precise to a tenth of a pound.
Welcome to Weight Watchers. Group leader Darleen Bedard, 41, is an attractive woman with big earrings, bright clothes, and spiky blond hair. She weighed 221 pounds four years ago but has dropped a third of that. Recent medical research shows that, compared with solo dieters, Weight Watchers lose more weight, and more than half maintain the loss for two years. Leaders like Bedard are one reason why--she's part role model, part counselor, part cheerleader. Tonight she's discussing every dieter's summer Waterloo: beach food.
"What is the hardest thing to handle at the beach?" Bedard asks the crowd.
"Funnel cakes!" a woman shouts.
"OK. So how do you plan to handle the funnel cakes?" Bedard responds.
"You follow someone with a funnel cake and lick their crumbs," the woman answers.
In a rush to tackle obesity, the nation's No. 1 public-health problem, researchers are for the first time applying the tools of science to popular programs like Weight Watchers, hoping to offer serious guidance to legions of dieters looking to get leaner and healthier. Obesity researchers now find their proposals welcomed by health funders who, just five years ago, believed that only smoking warranted serious attention (box, Page 38). Besides Weight Watchers, there are studies underway on Internet counseling, various popular diets, and social and psychological strategies used by "successful losers" to maintain weight loss.
It's about time. Americans spent about $40 billion last year on weight-loss products, programs, and diet aids (story, Page 41). Federal surveys show that 29 percent of men and nearly 44 percent of women are trying to lose weight on any given day. Indeed, losing weight is so important that according to a recent survey, 88 percent of dieters said they would forfeit a job promotion, retirement with full pay, or a dream house if they could simply reach and maintain their target weight.
Unhappily, the mere desire to be thinner is not enough. Statistics from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that America has never been fatter: Sixty-four percent of Americans are now overweight, and 31 percent are obese (defined as a body-mass index of 30 or above, or about 20 percent over a healthy weight). Yearly medical spending on obesity has reached $92.6 billion, about half financed by Medicare and Medicaid. But often the greatest costs are personal. Jeffrey Schwimmer, a pediatric gastroenterologist at the University of California-San Diego, found that severely obese children--who often become severely obese adults--were five times more likely to report an impaired quality of life than healthy kids. In fact, their quality of life was comparable to that of children with cancer. "Obesity is now arguably the most important cause of adult morbidity and mortality," says Schwimmer.
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