Thanks to all the public transport links in london I havent needed to have a car or pass my driving test for quite a number of years, im now 34 and finally decided to get it done.
I took an intensive 6 day course for manual transmission and managed to pass my test on the 7th day with 6 minors. I have no prior driving experience, but my instructor was very good all credit to him.
The point being, I had to put in ALOT of effort, skill, willpower, concentration to learn to drive and pass the test. Especially in such a short amount of time. And I managed it in 6 days.
Meanwhile, I have been trying to diet and get lean for alot longer than 6 days, infact you could say my whole life! I never been in the normal BMI category I was the fat kid at school too.
If I was too take a "dieting test" it would be fail fail fail fail x 1000000
So the question is, why is it I can do a complex willpower thing like learn to drive in such a short amount of time but keep failing miserably to get normal BMI?
The answer is because the former IS mostly under my control, and the latter is not. As much as the diet and exercise industry and guru's would like you to believe you can achieve and sustain weight loss with deliberate intervention, the reality is that you cannot, because weight is largely NOT under your control.
While operating the mechanics of a car ....is.
"We should stop offering ineffective treatments aimed at weight loss. Researchers who think they have invented a better mousetrap should test it in controlled research before setting out their bait for the entire population. Only by admitting that our treatments do not work ---and showing that we mean it by refraining from offering them--- can we begin to undo a century of recruiting fat people for failure."
ReplyDeleteDietary treatments for obesity are ineffective. Susan C Wooley, David M Gamer, 1994.
May be when we, as a society, know of an effective weight-loss method, lack of willpower will be a handicap and we can blame the obese. We are not there yet.
nice paper absolutely agree , really nice that you find all these papers
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