I started off my career as a dietitian in 2000, excited to jump in and help patients lose weight. They came to see me every week with food records and calorie counts in hand.

Clients stepped on the scale and I celebrated with them when their weight went down, and joined in their sadness when their weight went up. At the time, I didn’t see any problems with the weight management program I was running.

Sure, my patients lost the weight for a while, and then usually regained it a few months later; but I just chalked it up to them not quite being motivated enough to sustain the weight loss.

Looking back, I have to shake my head at my antics and my lack of understanding. I mean, I guess I was simply a product of my environment — doing the things I had been trained to do. But still, how did I not see the harm I was causing?

After two years of watching my patients lose weight only to gain it back, I did what any logical healthcare professional might do: I realized I still had things to learn and headed back to school!

Over the next five years of graduate school I learned more about the human body, metabolism and weight science. I discovered these truths about weight and health that completely revolutionized my career:

It wasn’t that my patients were unmotivated. Their bodies were set up to regain the weight.

Our bodies fight to maintain homeostasis. While the energy balance equation (calories in = calories out) may be true at first, our body’s hormones and neurotransmitters are designed to fight back during periods of restriction or starvation. That’s how the human race has survived famines!

Even individuals on GLP-1 agonists and GLP-1/GIP co-agonist weight loss drugs regain the weight after discontinuing the medication.

BMI, or Body Mass Index, was never meant to be used to assess individual body weight; it was designed to be used at the population level. Not only does it fail to account for lean vs. fat mass, it doesn’t take into account gender and race differences, nor any health habits.

It’s like looking at the outside of a car to figure out what’s going on under the hood. If you want to know........

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