Giving Compass' Take:

• Dieting and weight loss can be difficult. Having the right information about how to lose weight in a healthy way is imperative to actually accomplishing weight loss goals.

• How has the fitness and diet industry changed the rhetoric about healthy weight loss? The article states that the fitness industry’s blames the soaring failure rates on the people themselves, creating a culture of overt and subtle fat-shaming. Do we still live in this culture today? How can we re-configure how we approach overweight and obese people when it comes to health?

• Read more about the reign of dieting wizards and understand the difficulties in weight loss for people that are overweight.

Hundreds of thousands of people fall short of their dieting and weight loss goals every year, and the incidence of obesity continues to rise. The fitness industry’s answer to this has been to continue on as planned and blame the soaring failure rates on the people themselves, creating a culture of overt and subtle fat-shaming.

I have studied weight loss and obesity for many years. The issue of overweight and obesity grows more pressing each year, as 84 million people are now considered pre-diabetic. While they are in a pre-diabetic condition, they can still avoid the debilitating consequences of the disease. But once they become diabetic, health problems cascade as a result of this serious disease.

People must exercise enough not only to burn calories for weight loss but to keep weight off. The initial goal of any intended weight loss transformation should be to first increase one’s exercise capacity to a critical point, called the catching point. Once this capacity is reached, food preferences will change, metabolic rates will increase and patients will have a real chance to follow an exercise regimen that results in a significant amount of calories burned.

Sleep is the time that the body changes. Structurally, our bodies are making molecules during sleep that follows exercise which will do useful things for us such as strengthen our muscles, lower blood pressure, neutralize inflammation and increase our metabolism. Sleeping enough will also make us eat less.

A recent study of a large group of people suggests that people should not count calories at all but instead pay attention to the quality of the food they eat, refraining from sugar and processed foods and instead eating lots of fruits and vegetables.

Read the full article about research-based studies for weight loss by David Prologo at The Conversation.