Going Against Anti-Fat Gurus

Don’t Diet by Dale M. Atrens (Morrow: $16.95)

Dale M. Atrens, a psychobiologist at the University of Sydney, Australia, has evaluated thousands of books, studies and reports on dieting.

Contrary to everything we’ve heard and read, Atrens says: “There is no good evidence that weight loss is at all beneficial for the vast majority of overweight people.” He also doesn’t believe that fat folk succumb to cancer, heart disease or other ailments at a younger age than their more slender counterparts. He posits a genetic or physiological component to being fat or thin and suggests that most dieters flunk out because we all metabolize food differently. In his view, weight loss from exercise is extremely limited.

Abandon the “anti-fat crusade (that) has created major social and health problems,” Atrens cries. Most of us, he says, should become comfortable with weight appropriate to our age, physical needs and self-defined body image, not one dictated by “weight merchants,” advertisers for bikinis or self-serving diet gurus.