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
Ego boost. Marks and Roberts have each lost more than 85 pounds over 18 months. For Roberts, the shocking aspect to weight loss has been his increased confidence and self-esteem. "If you had told me I could feel this way about myself and it would cost me $100,000," he says, "I would have found a way to make the payments."
Scientists and health officials have long believed that the key to reversing obesity was education, offering the public information about healthy food choices. Most government programs aimed at weight control are based on this principle. "But in my mind," says Yale's Brownell, "the most important thing in weight loss is motivation."
Brownell believes that the national obsession with thinness, along with medicine's fixation on weight charts and body-mass index, has hindered, not helped, weight-control efforts. "One major way of undermining motivation," he says, "is to expect more than you can accomplish."
Recent studies of dieters' expectations underscore his point. Women seeking obesity treatment said that their goal weight was about 32 percent less than their current weight--close to an "ideal" weight based on standard height/weight charts. But most obesity programs, offering even the best in nutritional education and behavioral counseling, achieve only about a 10 percent loss within six months. What's more, the women in this study said that even a 25 percent loss in six months was "one I would not be happy with," and a 17 percent loss was "one that I could not view as successful in any way." As a result, many disappointed dieters feel they've failed and give up, only to regain the weight they've lost. Says Brownell: "Our challenge is to help people be happy with a modest weight loss and maintain it over time."
No one knows how important realistic expectations are better than LaVonnia "Bonnie" Johnson. In 1992, Johnson was a single mother of three, living in the projects in Washington, D.C. Her former husband had just died of AIDS. She'd landed a job in the city government, but to make ends meet, she also worked weekends in a hospital emergency room. One day a doctor took her aside and said: "Bonnie, you're only 38 and you weigh 230 pounds. You're not going to see your kids graduate from high school unless you do something about your weight right now."
Like many others, she had lost weight but regained it. An ad for a fitness club caught her eye, so she joined. Her kids and work schedule made exercise a challenge, but she found motivation in an unlikely source: pop icon Tina Turner. "She appeared on the cover of Essence magazine," Johnson says. "I looked at that cover and there she was. She'd been abused by Ike. She'd had trouble with her kids. And she had legs to die for."
Johnson taped the picture to her computer at her office and headed out every day to swim, walk on the treadmill, and bike. Progress was slow, and she wanted to quit. Then, a trainer suggested she take a step aerobics class. At first, she was so self-conscious she clung to the back wall. "But I kept thinking about the trainer saying I needed to push myself. So I moved to the front so I could see myself in the mirror."
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