As someone who has fought to keep weight off since his early thirties, I know the battle, and what it does to the mental well-being of those of us involved.
Many of the most influential of those prewar European authorities had become convinced that obesity must be the result of a hormonal or metabolic dysfunction, not caused by overeating, a concept that they recognized as circular logic. (“To attribute obesity to ‘overeating,’ ” the Harvard nutritionist Jean Mayer had aptly commented eight years before Astwood’s presentation, “is as meaningful as to account for alcoholism by ascribing it to ‘overdrinking.’ ” It’s saying the same thing in two different ways, at best describing the process, not explaining why it’s happening.) Rather, it’s somehow programmed into the very biology of the fat person, a disorder of fat accumulation and fat metabolism, these German and Austrian clinical researchers concluded. They believed, as Astwood came to believe, that obesity is neither a behavioral issue nor an eating disorder, not the result of how much we choose to eat consciously or unconsciously.
And…
If the proposed treatment for a fat accumulation problem that itself caused internal starvation—that is, hunger—was to starve even more, we can imagine all too easily why it would fail, if not in the short run, certainly eventually.
And…
Even those suffering from obesity came to see their condition as their own fault.
— The Case for Keto: Rethinking Weight Control and the Science and Practice of Low-Carb/High-Fat Eating by Gary Taubes