Dieting

People like Sydney Spiesel at Slate seem to be completely missing the point of a recent study that shows that people who have dieted tend to gain weight in the long-term. The title of the article is

Beware of Diet

What if counting calories makes you fatter in the long run?

I've heard this chalked up to 'dieting changing your metabolism' and all sorts of nonsense, but naturally people are making the same mistake they always make, confusing correlation with causation.
As a former fatty fatty fat fat who lost 180 pounds through lifestyle change, I'll tell you why people who go on diets, even successful ones, gain weight in the long run. It's because they were never taught will power and have terrible eating habits that they don't know how to break. Perhaps they have the 'soft will power' necessary to stick to a strict diet plan, but they don't have what it takes to live a life in which they exercise control over their own actions on an everyday basis. People talk about going on diets and all the will power that it takes, but in the end that effort cannot extend into the long term. The most important thing of all is developing new eating habits, which people on the whole don't know how to do. The most effective way for an out-of-control fat person to change their eating habits is to take the choice out of their own hands in one way or another, because just like you can't expect a wild dog to be a good babysitter, you can't expect what amounts to a feral person to plan out a balanced diet and administer it to themself.
In Korea, there was a fad a couple of years ago called welbing, from the English 'well-being'. Basically welbing consisted of sprinkling green tea powder on everything and frying stuff in olive oil. That's how ridiculous dieting sounds when viewed with a detached eye (gross image, I know).

Kirstie Alley's epic battle with the bulge

Is it ridiculous that this poor woman's entire life revolves around her weight and body and body image? An ounce of prevention, a snifter of discipline at some point in her childhood and she would have to have developed an actual identity for herself. Imagine if you or I were defined by our lifelong battles with nose picking and finger biting, respectively. Just imagine it. There'd be nothing left of us.
So Ms. Alley gained alot of weight after Cheers, then did a TV show called "Fat Actress" which neither you nor I ever saw and then she vowed to show up on the Oprah show in a bikini, which she did. And it's good that she did, for her. I doubt she has anything to offer anyone else out there, whether they be fat or a fat actress.
Perhaps because I work with kids every day, my answer to everything is "get 'em while they're young". Now, I don't think it would have made any sense to teach diet and exercise extra-explicitly to the child Kirstie, but what could have been beneficial down the road is a little will power and discipline. That framework is something that is definitely difficult to pick up later in life, but once it's learned it can be applied to anything. As long as you learn to put your nose to the grindstone, focus on your weaknesses instead of your strengths etc. at some point, you're head and shoulders above the hoopleheads