Your Mouth, Your Body, Your Choice

At the end of the day, is this the best way we have of motivating people to manage their weight? After all, when you are standing in the kitchen at the end of the day eating a toast and butter sandwich, no-one else but you is putting it into your mouth.

But are you really just one person? Inside your head, different "yous" compete for dominance over what you will do, feel and say at any one moment in the day. One moment you are the responsible adult and the next you are letting loose your inner child.

To say that what you eat is "your choice" assumes that you have options. Many fat people consider in their rational mind that there are options for eating, drinking, managing celebrations and socialising with others with regard to food. After all, who is the grown up here?

But the emotional mind may believe something entirely different - that you have no options at all for what you put into your mouth, and how you manage your weight. Inside this part of your mind reside all the memories, the longings, the old messages about food and deep secret beliefs of your heart which may undermine your options one by one. Remember the old saying..."The heart has its reasons that the mind knows nothing of."

So where does this leave the notion that we all have choice and that we are all capable of exercising it? Is fat really "an optional issue?"

Who Knows Best About Weight Loss?

Did anyone see that programme in the series "Who Knows Best"?  I couldn't  believe the professionals in the programme. One alternative practitioner working with the "thinking" versus a boot camp exerciser defined as "two of the UK's leading experts in weight loss". Hello?

What we saw of the "thinking" approach was some visualisations based, I believe, on NLP and a great deal of tapping using Thought Field Therapy. The so-called Experts were less interested in their clients than they were in their own performance. By the end of the six week experiment they were basically telling their clients, please do this for ME so that I won't lose the contest. It may be good television but where are the ethics in this for these unfortunate subjects?

Short term weight change is very easy to achieve and I would have expected the boot camp expert to win the contest because he managed to get the client on her feet, buring calories every day. But this was not a moral victory for the alternative therapist who claimed that she was working with the obesity mindset. I would have liked to see where these clients are two years down the line.

Working with obesity is complex. Helping someone to move around more consistently and helping them to think and relate differently to food and exercise needs a great deal more expert help. People with serious weight problems who don't like their situation need a much more intelligent approach.

They need a practitioner who understands and can apply the models of health behaviour change, cognitive behaviour therapy, motivational therapy, EFT (not Thought Field Therapy which is old-hat) and even some of the techniques of NLP. Really digging down into the issue of emotional eating would be the icing on the cake. Why didn't the programme advisors come to me?

Fat - to coin a phrase, is a financial issue. There are lots of treatments out there making people very rich but very few experts know what they are doing. For the ultimate look at what really can work for people with weight problems, come along to my Essential Obesity - Psychological Interventions training - for details visit http://www.eating-disorders.org.uk/

Why May Holiday Overeating Make You Fat?

Asa Ernesson at the University of Linkoping in Sweden has done some research showing that brief periods of overeating contribute to long term gains in fat mass - even if weight is lost after the period of overeating. In other words, if you diet to get into that red dress for Christmas, then eat or drink anything that isn't nailed to the flooboards when you are on holiday, you are making it hard for yourself to stay in control of your weight down the line.

We all like to let our hair down on holiday. It's normal to want to let go of all the worries that dog us in the day to day routines of our lives. We overdo the wine and want to sample all those new foods and cool ourselves down with  big ice creams without caution. We don't need to concern ourselves with getting up to go to work, feeling fresh the next day. We rush round the supermarkets at holiday times to fill our trolleys with chocolates, fruit puddings and double cream.

I think of this as party-pooper research. It shows us that we will pay for our brief moments of just having a little harmless fun. Even if we flagellate ourselves with diets and exercises after our holidays, the damage has been done.

Well there is it; these findings will not go away. Researchers at the National Weight Control Registry have come to very much the same conclusions anyhow. People who maintain weight loss are those who eat consistenly pretty much all the time and they don't have patterns of boom and bust, feast and fast.

The problem is - how to give this kind of information to my weight loss clients without adding to the disappointment they already feel about having to restrict their favourite foods? What do you think?

Views About Emotional Eating

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/3592058.stm the bbc

Why Do Some People Put On Weight Easily?

I have found this interesting research by following the health pages of the BBC. They have reported on studies which have conclusively shown that some people cannot put on weight by overfeeding a normal group of people and also restricting their activity.

One of the subjects said that she vomited the extra food she was supposed to eat and one subject found it hard to eat such large amounts. I also find it hard to eat large amounts of food and this goes all the way back to my childhood so it certainly isn't willpower.

Professor Jane Ogden speculates that genes might have a role to play in what people variously call the "set point" of our weight. There are also variations in the ability of our brown fat stores to dissipate extra energy as heat. Then there are variations in individual metabolic capacity which is a whole other subject to get our head around.

Professor John Blundell at the University of Leeds has also reported on the effects of feeding a high fat diet to male subjects which have shown some interesting and unexpected results.

So where does this leave us in our understanding of people who say "I put on weight if I just look at a packet of crisps!"

They might be right. Psychologists have identifed a form of thinking called "Thought Shape Fusion" thinking where a person thinking about forbidden food irrationally believes that they are going to gain weight. This is turn makes them feel helpless and ashamed, a sure trigger for having the crisps to console themselves or to block the horrible feelings that emerge.

To read the article to go http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/7838668.stm. And, if you want to learn how to change the subtle and insidious thinking that cuases weight gain in some people and not in others, consider coming on our BPS Approved eating disorders training course seecheck it out at  http://www.eating-disorders.org.uk/

Appetite Changes In Anorexia

What are your views? Email admin@ncfed.com  or comment below

A question from Dr Robin

In a nutshell, I have had the opportunity to briefly work with a 16 year old girl who had been suffering with anorexia. Her body mass index was only 13 when I first met her about six months ago. Thankfully something had switched in her mind and she had insight into her being unwell and realised that she was harming herself by not eating. I was able to give her the usual basic physiological advice and get her eating regularly and incorporating the right variety in her diet. I am pleased to say that her weight has slowly increased and yesterday her body mass index had reached 21. However, her main source of distress is that she still does not feel 'hungry' or 'satiated' and she is fearful that she will never feel those 'normal' sensations again. At first I wondered if much of those sensations would return when she restored much of her lean body tissue. I was wondering whether you could offer me any advice in order to further help my client.

Answer from Deanne  

The issues of hunger and satiation are complex in anorexia and there may be some primary problems with appetite regulation. Appetite disruption tends anyway to persist long after dietary restriction. There are also issues of whether this person is confusing emotional experience with her experience of hunger.

Intero-receptive awareness is a term we use for sensitivity to body signals, which is one reason why people with eating disorders often say they are hungry when they are angry or sad, or otherwise fail to interpret the physical signals of emotion thereby being unable to name their feelings.

I could not predict that her appetite sensitivity will return because she is deflected from awareness of what is really going on somatically by the cognitive-emotional system which is activated by eating, which will be sensed as forbidden even long after apparent recovery. Thus, mindfulness training is also indicated so that she can calm down and pay attention to her body in a non judgmental way.

I hope this makes sense. Good consistent nutrition will also give her brain and body the best chance of working properly.

Personality Filters For Weight Loss - So What! Or How?

James Lamper (of Weight Matters), our colleague and one of the NCFED therapists shows us a study suggesting the need for differing approaches based on personality filters for the vexed question of how to help people lose weight. We all know intuitively that there are many barriers to weight control; of which character, history, personal resources, skill-sets, support systems etc can help or hinder motivation and outcome success.

Kelly Brownell was one of the first obesity specialists who said that we have to find a way to target obesity programmes more helpfully because one size fits all approaches simply don’t work. The only system we have at the moment is based on a progression of increasingly invasive treatments based on  Body Mass Index. Cognitive Behaviour Therapy would, in this system, be the Gold Standard for the moderately overweight while surgery is the option for the super obese at risk of serious medical complications if nothing else had worked. (NICE Obesity Guidance 2006).

Then, in 2005 or so, the BBC Diet Trials programme conducted at the University of Surrey clearly showed that there are no outcome differences between different types of diet, although there were big individual differences between dieters in the long term. The  conclusion suggested that certain types of weight loss programme could be usefully targeted to character and lifestyle. A person who did not like meal plans would benefit from the low protein approach and the person who needed structure might succeed better the slimming club approach.

Research even points to gender differences with males clearly preferring a health approach with minimum rules and control while women prefer by and large to meet in groups and talk about their feelings.

The British Psychological Society is currently engaging the skills of a Working Party to investigate how psychologists can add to the debate. This working party to date examines the more complex barriers to change such as emotional eating which may, or may not, have its roots in early traumas or neglect. This all begs the question of choosing which treatment pathway to engage our client on and the assessment methods that such a selection process will involve.

The application of the term “metabolic” to personality typing is interesting and reminds us of diets which are based on biological metabolic typing which have sold quite a few books and which could be considered pseudo scientific (in the words of Susan Jebb - a weight loss expert).

The study below is only one model of behaviour change. Research into the management of diabetes points to another category. This refers to the individual whose best way of managing their illness ( putting other important life values in perspective) is to deliberately ignore it even at the risk to health and life. A good motivational practitioner must take all these features into account when helping a person to change. And there is another missing piece and that is the “metabolic typing”  of the therapist and how well he or she is able to adapt to the shifting status of their student.

So here is the study. Do you think it answers all the questions we need to ask about obesity. Or is it another piece of information that we need as therapists to place into our own untidy toolkit?

The Study (reproduced with acknowledgement to James Lamper)

A MicroMass study in the US reveals that while disease symptoms and treatment vary widely among individuals with metabolic conditions, there are remarkable similarities in patients' motivations to change behavior and the barriers that stand in their way. This 'metabolic mindset' offers a vital key to successfully motivating people to make difficult behavior changes.

Here are four types of metabolic patients, their percentage of the total study population, and suggested ways of motivating each:

Cruise Control (19%)

These patients follow their doctors' orders and manage their conditions pretty well, but may not understand the seriousness of their disease or the value of treating it by changes in behavior. This makes them vulnerable to backsliding. Strong and repeated reinforcement is a must, using self-assessment tools that concretely demonstrate the benefits of behavior change.

Taking Charge (30%)

These patients know the risks of unhealthy behavior and actively avoid them. They don't require intense investment or intervention by their physicians. Healthcare providers should engage these patients as advocates and invite them to share their expertise with other patients.

Disengaged (20%)

This group is highly susceptible to setbacks because they feel that improving their condition is beyond their control. Healthcare providers should applaud each small success with these patients and allow them to choose which behaviors to work on, one at a time. They should also plan for relapses.

Overwhelmed (31%)

These patients want to change but don't know how to start. It's important to raise their self-confidence by giving information in easy-to-digest bites, creating step-by-step action plans focused on small goals, and acknowledging their successes.

For obesity training with Deanne visit our website at www.eating-disorders.org.uk

Workshop : Key Issues In Overweight And Obesity

Introducing A fabulous one day skills based seminar for counselling therapists

Key Research Issues, Nutritional Interventions & Their Practical Application

TO REGISTER PHONE 0845 838 2040

With Jane Nodder and Deanne Jade in Esher, Surrey on September 13^th 2010

Fee £155

REGISTER CALL 0845 838 2040

Obesity is a worldwide public health concern. In the UK nearly 1 in 2 men and 1 in 3 women are overweight. A further 1 in 5 adults, and 1 in 6 children aged between 2 and 15 are obese. This makes the UK population the fattest in Europe and the situation is getting worse. At an individual level, many overweight people feel unhealthy, miserable and alone with their concerns.

Whilst there appears to be no single cause of obesity, there is also no ‘one size fits all’ solution that is right for everyone who wants or needs to lose weight. The obesity practitioner needs knowledge about different weight loss approaches and their relative merits. You also must be able to call upon a range of evidence based tools to manage the issues each treatment pathway will involve.

SEMINAR PROGRAMME

This training course is designed to inform and empower clinicians in one increasingly important domain of

treatment; which is the influence of nutrition and physiology in the aetiology and management of obesity.

This seminar will focus primarily on interventions for working with adults. It is an excellent partner to the BPS

Approved course “Essential Obesity” and may have implications for the young. It offers suitable CPD for

professionals working with obesity in all clinical settings.

YOUWILL LEARN:

_ How biochemistry and physiology may affect weight management

_ How stress and stress hormones can affect mood, eating and weight gain

_ How gut hormones can influence appetite and weight control

_ Why (and which) nutritional interventions are important for managing weight concerns

_ How to use nutritional interventions to manage overweight and obesity

_ How to integrate the knowledge and skills from the training to your therapeutic practice, safely and effectively

Appetite Sensitivity Training For Comfort Eaters

What is comfort eating? If you eat when you are angry or sad or anxious it is obvious. If you go backwards and forwards to the fridge looking for food and nothing satisfied, then probably you are an emotional eater. But if you eat a bar of chocolate because it is there and you want a taste buzz, is it the same?

People usually call themselves comfort eaters if they eat more than they need. They may even call themselves addicts if they carry on eating when they are full, or are especially attached to a particular kind of food. I wouldn’t mind a fiver in my own pocket for every person who has told me “I’m addicted to chocolate.”

Experts also have ways of thinking about emotional eating. There is indeed a school of thought which marks compulsive eating as an addiction. There is also a school of thought which suggests that emotional eating is an attachment to food as a substitute for more authentic forms of self soothing that comes from good, mutually adaptive relationships.

Then there is the trauma account of emotional eating which suggests that food is the way of managing forbidden feelings such as anger or fear. This account of emotional eating allows for the possibility that some people do not want to feel any of their emotions because of deep rooted feelings of shame. And thus they eat so that they won’t have to feel anything at all.

The link between overeating and feelings is quite clear. We only know we have an emotion when we feel it in the body. Sadness gives me a feeling in the pit of my stomach and anger gives me tightness in my chest. If I do not like feeling angry, eating might take away that feeling and give me a nice warm feeling somewhere else.  If I can’t make sense of that feeling in my chest and call it “fear” I might convince myself I am hungry and go to find some soothing food.

Experts have met the problem of emotional eating by doing “feelings sensitivity training”. There are many steps to this kind of training. The first step is permission to have emotions. The second step is teaching good names for the feelings that we experience in our mind and body too. The third step might help us to know why some feelings are more troublesome than others. And the last important step is learning all kinds of skills to manage our feelings better. Managing conflicts and standing our ground with other people is all part of building emotional intelligence. This will help reduce all kinds of disordered eating behaviour, from calorie restriction to chronic overeating.

However.....

There is a possibility that Appetite Awareness Training might help even better for emotional eaters.

Experts give the name “interoceptive awareness”  to our understanding of the changing experiences that happen in the body. People with weight problems and eating problems seem bad at interpreting these signals and are more likely to interpret everything, including emotions, as feeling hungry or having cravings.

The old way of dealing with this is to increase our sensitivity to emotions, to be able in other words to recognise when we are angry and when we are feeling useless.

Some new research suggests that it might be even better to learn how to recognise physical hunger and how exactly to distinguish it from a buried feeling.  A group of researchers in the USA have recently conducted an experiment in which a group of people were exposed to 5 weeks of Appetite Sensitivity Training. All they had to do was self monitor hunger, cravings and fullness sensations for each eating event; and also relate the degree to which they felt positively or negatively after each eating episode to help them distinguish between hunger and feelings.

On week 4 they also self monitored to identify specific emotions triggering urges to eat, with the help of a sheet with emoticons J and feeling words. During this week they were given advice on other ways of managing their feelings.

At the end of the period, participants and controls returned to the clinic to complete the post intervention assessments.

The results were clear. People who did the appetite training did not show much improvement on emotional awareness but they had big changes in appetite sensitivity. They reported fewer urges to binge or cut back on food and better eating control.

Emotional eating is a multi dimensional idea. I believe that any single explanation of it and the treatment that follows will not work for everyone. Clearly, emotional eating is behaviour which must take account of our history, our beliefs and our emotional strengths and weaknesses. But this research shows clearly that Appetite Sensitivity Training might be an important part of therapy and get change fast, even for people with “issues”.

Vanessa, Comfort Eating And The Gastric Band

Today Vanessa Feltz was on BBC radio 4 to talk about her gastric band operation which she ways is successful in helping her to limit her portion size.  Lots of people will be following her with her weight loss struggles and will be saying if it works for her, why not for me!

I saw Vanessa many years ago;  she was interviewing me just after having lost a great deal of weight. I quailed at the fact that I was telling her that 95% out of 100 people who try to lose weight put it all back on again in the end. I don’t think she wanted to hear that but the years have proved me right.

The gastric band is a reasonably safe operation but like all weight loss surgery it isn’t a panacea for overeating or comfort eating in the long run. Ultimately the person with the gastric band will need some coaching to address her emotional eating because it is all too easy to learn how to out-eat the band.

Most people don’t really know what emotional eating is. It is a common fallacy that eating food we want but don’t need, often compulsively, is “eating for comfort”.  Emotional eating is a catch-all term that means different things. Some people overeat to quell difficult feelings or even to reduce or soothe emotional excitement. In some people the feelings relate to bad events in the past and in other people they do not.  In some people emotional eating is about a difficulty in managing impulses “I have to have this or I will die!” and in other people, emotional eating is about unhelpful meanings and associations with food; this is fun, food is my friend, I deserve this, it is a treat!

In her interview on the BBC, Vanessa spoke about looking for the dessert trolley as soon as she goes into the restaurant. The gastric band won’t change that mindset in the long run because there are limits to how much it can be tightened and adjusted. What really needs adjusting is the brain, to tone down and muffle the core excitement that exists around food and eating.  We can learn how to enjoy food – all of it – without it having to rule our life.

The First Ever Clinical Trial of Diet and Nutrition?

From Daniel 1: 1-16

In the third year of the reign of Jehoiakim King of Judah came Nebuchadnezzar King of Babylon and he set Jerusalem under siege.

The King asked Ashpenaz the master of his eunuchs, to bring him some of the Israelites, in particular the children of nobles and royals. These children had to be able, wise and beautiful, well tutored, understanding the arts and sciences. He wanted to teach them the learning and language of the Chaldeans.

The King said that they should be well fed with his own foods and wine, and after 3 years he would see them.

Now among these Israelites were Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah. Daniel did not want to eat the kings food. He said it would defile him and he spoke to the Prince of the Eunuchs who listened sympathetically to him.

The Prince of the Eunuchs said to Daniel, if you don’t eat the King’s food and you look ill and pale compared to our own boys, the King will surely cut off my head for failing to look after you.

Daniel said to the Eunuch, I will make a bet with you. Take a few boys for just 10 days and give them only vegetables and pulses to eat and water instead of wine, then compare them with the other boys who are eating the King’s rich food and drinking his wine.

At the end of ten days their faces appeared fairer, and they were more beautiful than all the youths who ate of the King's dainties.
So the steward took away their dainties, and the wine that they should drink, and gave them veggies and pulses. And Daniel proved himself to have knowledge and skill in all things as well as in visions and dreams. And thereafter in all matters of wisdom and understanding, the King found him 10 times better than all the magicians and enchanters (and gurus) who were in the Kingdom.

Bulimia - The Demon Within

I had a call today from a young woman who was interested in one of our bulimia workshops. She asked me if this single day would help her recover from a 15 year illness that has so far resisted CBT, counselling, and even schema focused therapy.

Why do some people find it so hard to recover from bulimia? Psychologists suggest that resistance to treatment infers a personality disorder such as impulsive, narcissistic or borderline personality disorder (you can Google these).  But being categorized in this way doesn’t really help the people who struggle with their illness.

In my experience, bulimia starts as a way of controlling calories. Soon it becomes a way of helping people to block or manage bad feelings. People start bingeing because it gives them the excuse to purge, which is the true addiction. They cannot stop no matter how much they promise “this is the last time…”  The solution has become the problem.

People with bulimia have two lives; the normal life and the bulimia life. The bulimic life becomes the real person doing all the thinking and the planning, the bulimic feelings and behaviours.  In time the person becomes  just the ghost in her “normal life”; he or she is half present for everything that calls for attention.

 No wonder it is so hard to give it up. It feels as if the person as she was doesn’t really exist anymore.  How will she or he cope with life, food, feelings, people, stress - without the bulimia?

I do 3 hour breakthrough sessions for hopeless cases. In treatment for sustained bulimia – see eating-disorders.org.uk -  I would have 3 people in the room; the ghost, the bulimic and me.  I would find a fast way to help the ghost to find his or her voice and commit to battle from a place of strength.  This is because the real person who wakes up knows that this is no way to live. Sometimes this therapy involves very creative tools, such as Emotional Freedom Therapy and NLP.

call 0845 838 2040 for details

          Deanne Jade

0845 838 2040

www.eating-disorders.org.uk

Eating Disorders Awareness Week Video

Hello followers
Take a trip to this link to get what an eating disorder is about: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QSqtVDIwnHo

We have 100 eating disorder specialists in the UK and overseas to help sufferers and their carers. Look at the counselling section of our website at www.eating-disorders.org.uk

Airbrushing And The Media

Today the Girlguiding Association has issued a petition to demand that adverts and photos should carry a warning if the picture has been airbrushed.  When I was young and not so young, I used to look at pictures in the fashion magazines and marvel at the length of the model's legs or the flawless complexions of the women of all ages. After reading these magazines, I would often feel like a frump
.
This is a good example of what we psychologists call "beauty and the beast " thinking. If you see a someone with lovely hair or legs to die for, you automatically think that your own hair and legs are inadequate. These horrible feelings do ebb away but the drip feed effect of believing that there are people out there who are effortlessly perfect will have an effect. We lose the ability to figure out the essence of our own loveliness; we discount it.
So what kind of damage will the media cause? The people most at risk of developing anxiety and distress are the people who"internalise" society's images of perfection and compare themselves all the time to an impossible ideal. Many people dont "internalise"- they admire perfection but find no need to try to live up to it.

Societies have always valued images of perfection and have brought these to the attention of the public through art and sculpture. The images of Rubens and the statues of Michaeangelo celebrate the human body at its best for the time rather than the mundane and everyday reality. Which woman could ever look like the Venus de Milo without a little bit of nip and tuck? The media is just another artform and perhaps we should not try to make it reflect the world as it really is.  Yet I am torn. I treat all the collateral damage, people who are going crazy inside because they hate the way they look. So I would like to see an airbrush kitemark. Yet I value art and freedom of expression; I dont particularly want to look at pictures of Mrs Bloggs next door in her new Dior suit. What matters most is that girls and boys are media wise and know that what you see isnt really factually real. This kind of wisdom starts at home, with parents who find the time to talk to their kids about these and other matters. For information and help visit http://www.eating-disorders.org.uk

Bariatric Surgery And Ethics

I listened to a programme on BBC radio 4 today on whether it is ethical to offer bariatric revisions to patients who have jumped the queue by “going private.” There were two people with gastric bands whose ops had gone horribly wrong, the money had run out and they needed extra help. In one person the band had become too tight – almost killing her. The second young woman found that her band has “stopped working” and she had no money to ask for it to be tightened.

Having contributed to the NICE bariatric technology appraisal, I have some thoughts about these issues. The first is that of desperate need. The two girls had done everything they could to lose weight.  They almost certainly had some kind of eating disorder which, by the way, is not a contra-indication for surgery. The quality of their lives was severely impaired despite the fact that they did not quite fit the criteria for inclusion for surgery.

The second issue is all about preparation, which was almost absent for these ladies. There is a  fallacy out there that you have to prove your ability to eat normally and sensibly before having the surgery. If the girls could have done that, they would not have spent money they could barely afford - but they almost certainly had no help to figure out how to manage their lifestyles after the operation.

In both ladies, the gastric band has failed and they are both looking at the gastric bypass now. Even bypass operations can stop working in time and pose their own physical and emotional risks. They are regaining all their weight. Sadly, neither  of these girls know that weight regain is the default position for dieters and not a sign that they are weak or greedy which is the belief system that has arisen from their repeated failures to lose weight.

 For one of the ladies it was clear that overeating junk food is the glue of most of her most intimate and loving relationships. Health psychology teaches us that people only change and want to change if the immediate social environment provides the support and the opportunity to change. It is insane to blame the overweight for being irresponsible when they are faced with a  choice between intimacy and “taking care of yourself properly” . To help a person like this, we have to work with the person holistically  and help her to feel effective in managing the system in which she lives rather than just being a part of it.

I am not against bariatric interventions. I know all the pros and the cons. Einstein told us however, that the solutions we create to solve problems must be far more elegant than we suppose.

I am providing a course on bariatric counselling in September 2010. Visit http://www.eating-disorders.org.uk/ for the details.

What's In a Name - The F(Fat) Word

Fat? obese? humongous? Jelly belly? Overweight?  Will words help people change? I find it hard to use the “f-word” when I train other professionals to help people lose weight. Are we being too careful not to hurt feelings or should we take our cue from Cameron and talk blunt. Anyhow how fat is too fat these days? An interesting debate – does anyone want to run with this….  email admin@ncfed.com visit www.eating-disorders.org.uk

Should Obesity Experts Be Paid By Commercial Organisations?

It is reported that Susan Jebb, obesity expert, is being paid by Rosemary Conley and Weight Watchers to support their enteprises. Many organisations with one eye on the balance sheet and mindful of the public relations outcomes find academics to confer "authority" on their products. Do you think that such organisations should be compelled to disclose what they pay and to whom? Shame on those experts for taking the "kings silver" and for not having the courage to say that everything works for someone, that long term outcomes are pretty much the same for everything, and for not being able to disclose which enterprises are causing harm. I should know - I pick up the pieces. Visit http//www.eating-disorders.org.uk for the views of a psychologist who hasnt (yet) been bought.