"Rethinking Thin" or Should we just Give Up

This weekend I read Rethinking Thin by Gina Kolata on the recommendation from Noelle. My partner in crime has been a bit slammed lately which is why I've taken primary blogger duty of late.

Regardless, she mentioned this book so I checked it out from the library and took a look. As a side note, I have decided that I will not EVER buy another book about diet, weight loss or getting healthy. I have dedicated one shelf of one of my larger bookcases to these type of books and I'm disgusted with myself over how much money I've spent on books that did nothing for me (or my health). So NO MORE. I will borrow from the library and hopefully one day, I will just stop reading these things.

But for now, I did spend a few hours this weekend reading this book written by the New York Times Science Writer, Gina Kolata. To Kolata's credit (or detriment, I haven't yet decided), this book reads like a science book. If you are not at all interested in the history of the science investigating obesity, then leave this book on the shelf (or just read the short sections at the end of each chapter that talk about the research test group studied for this project).

I admit I'm not a huge fan of the science jargon so I skimmed some of the chapters. I wasn't too interested in the discovery of leptin deficiency in rats (or mice) so I read enough to get the gist.

I finished this book with 2 problems:

1. It seems like there is no hope for most people wanting to lose weight; AND

2. This book doesn't apply to me

So I guess personally I wasn't disheartened by this book but for others, I felt irritated. The book reads as though there is a genetic component that forces people to maintain a high weight because the genes make them eat more (some are insatiable), it adjusts so that they constantly need fewer calories to maintain their weight.

The reason I say this book doesn't apply to me is because I am not a big eater, I don't have any drive to consume massive amounts of food in the evening and I'm not so obese I cannot move. In relation to the participants in the book, my heavy weight isn't high enough to qualify. So I'm not the audience she is speaking to. Still, it seems distressing to think that for some people, weight is completely out of their control which in turn means that their health and life are out of their control as well. For some, reading this book is the answer to a prayer. It is a reason to just give up and never try to be thinner. It is the ultimate demotivator.