After reading both the Association for Size Diversity and Health’s press release and Laura Frater’s post on the CDC’s LEAN Works site I went and took a look at it.
I was not impressed.
While skimming the site, a survey popped up asking me to give my feedback. I answered it honestly, noting that, for example, I am not an HR professional. Under “What did you like LEAST” about the site I wrote:
It’s totally focused on losing weight. Numerous studies have found that there is not a proven method to turn fat people into skinny people which means you are encouraging businesses to waste money that could be spent on things that actually improve health, like smoking cessation or exercise programs. For an overview of the research see: http://mann.bol.ucla.edu/files/Diets_don%27t_work.pdf
A USDA-funded study comparing the “Health At Every Size” (HAES) approach with a traditional diet found that the HAES group had better and more sustainable health results than the diet group. The USDA published the results at: http://www.ars.usda.gov/is/AR/archive/mar06/health0306.htm
These two references are certainly not the sum total of what could be said, but they do make a good introduction to the topic.
In answer to the question about how the site could be improved, I suggested they make use of the “Active At Any Size” information from the NIH (it’s actually NIH Publication No. 04–4352, and I included a link to it as well).
Living ~400lbs 
Leave a Reply