Fat Science: Why Diet and Exercise Don't Work - and What Does by Robyn Toomath

Fat Science: Why Diet and Exercise Don't Work - and What Does by Robyn Toomath

12 February 2016, 7:30AM
Lighthouse PR

This book draws on the latest science to offer realism and policy solutions to one of our biggest problems.

‘I don’t ask my patients to lose weight,’ says endocrinologist Robyn Toomath. This book is explains why. Science tells us that our own efforts – following diets, heading to the gym or taking some new pills – are defeated again and again by our genes.

Drawing on the latest research and twenty years of working with overweight patients, this short and punchy book dispels myths and tells the tough truths about our obesity epidemic. Does dieting work? (No.) Is exercise the answer? (No.) Can we change our genes? (Unfortunately not.) How about pills and surgery? (Sometimes, but we can’t operate on everyone.) Why are the rich thinner than the poor? (You’ll find out.)
 

Photo courtesy of Lighthouse PR

Toomath shows how our modern world is making us fat. And while governments and individuals keep trying things that science shows do not work – from dieting to education campaigns – she outlines what just might make a difference in ending the obesity epidemic. A thousand books will tell you how to get thin. It looks like they haven’t worked. We just keep getting fatter. Fat Science – a small book about one of our biggest problems – can change that.

Robyn Toomath is the Clinical Director of General Medicine at Auckland Hospital, former President of the New Zealand Society for the Study of Diabetes, a life member of Diabetes New Zealand, a member of the World Public Health Nutrition Association and founder of Fight the Obesity Epidemic. As a diabetes specialist, she started seeing teenagers with type-two diabetes; it had previously affected only people aged over 40. While President of the NZ Society for the Study of Diabetes Toomath determined that she needed to divert her energies from treating diabetes to preventing obesity. She co-founded the activist group FOE (Fight the Obesity Epidemic) in 2001. This group pushed for a select committee enquiry in to diabetes and obesity resulting in an array of public health recommendations which were largely ignored. Toomath continues to battle the fast food industry and successive governments.


Photo courtesy of Lighthouse PR

Fat Science is published by Auckland University Press on 18 April 2016, RRP $29.99.  More information is here.

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