Scientific Approach to Weight Loss

Science provides many advantages to serious weight controllers. Among these advantages are genuine expertise, dynamic growth and improvement in approach, specific recommendations based on evidence, and objectivity.

Genuine Expertise

Science provides many advantages to serious weight controllers

Millions of people have advanced degrees in some aspect of health care. Thousands write books offering advice, sometimes based on nothing more than an advanced degree and pure ambition. How can you determine who really knows what they’re writing and talking about?

Scientific provides a great objective way to determine expertise. You can investigate anyone’s credentials these days using Google Scholar. Go to the website and type in our director’s name, for example. (Daniel S. Kirschenbaum). You’ll quickly see that dozens of Dr. Kirschenbaum’s articles published in peer reviewed scientific journals are just a click away. Publication of at least 5 articles in scientific journals is a minimum requirement for expertise on a given topic. These articles all must be found acceptable to an editor and at least two peers (fellow scientists); most top journals reject 80% or more of the articles submitted to them and none provide compensation to the authors for publication of their work.

Dynamic Growth of an Approach

Science is NOT an accumulation of facts. Instead, science guarantees dynamic change. New knowledge, built on the foundation of prior research, provides suggestions based on evidence for how to do things better. For example, many people argued against frequent weigh-ins for weight controllers. Most of us thought weekly weigh-ins avoids too much disappointment, yet provides enough of a reality check to keep weight controllers well focused. Surprisingly, several very recent studies found that weight controllers who got on a scale every day tended to maintain weight losses better than those who weighed in less frequently. Perhaps that daily reminder keeps the focus even sharper, helping increase motivation day by day.

Recommendations Based on Science

A few decades ago, most people believed that exercise was just fine, but the evidence of the many ways that simply moving around can help us become far healthier just was not known. We now know that daily movement, not hard core exercise, can definitely help prevent cancer, improve moods (even 10 minutes of brisk walking can dramatically improve moods), and reduce weight. Science points us in directions many of us would not have guessed.

Objectivity

Science provides objectivity. It is not a blind approach and scientists certainly present arguments in favor of pet theories as best they can. However, most of the reviews done for scientific journals exclude the names of the authors and certainly researchers must disclose their employers, sources of funding, and so on to keep the process reasonably pure. The weight of the evidence over time, with different researchers arguing through data about their beliefs, winds up telling the truth as it is known. That knowledge changes as the data change – but the process has objective beauty built right into its very fabric.