Weight Loss Causes Harm
Imagine this:
You walk into a doctor’s office with a sprained ankle. Before even looking at your injury, the doctor hands you a diet plan. Sounds ridiculous, right? Yet every day, in medical offices across the country, weight loss is prescribed as the miracle cure for everything from joint pain to depression. Got high blood pressure? Lose weight. Chronic migraines? Have you tried losing weight? Anxiety? Depression? Infertility? The prescription is always the same: lose weight.
We’re told this prescription comes with no side effects, no risks, and guaranteed health benefits. Just eat less, move more, and watch your health improve. Simple, right?But what if everything we’ve been told about prescribed weight loss is wrong? What if this one-size-fits-all “treatment” is actually causing profound harm to millions of people? Not just temporary discomfort, but serious, lasting damage to both body and mind.
It’s time to look at what really happens when we put bodies on diets. Time to examine the physical toll, the psychological impact, the eating disorders that develop, and the dangerous cycle of weight loss and regain that follows.
It’s time to understand why prescribed weight loss might be one of the most harmful interventions in modern medicine.
Your health is too important to accept “just lose weight” as an answer anymore. Let’s look at what the evidence really shows.
When 'Health' Hurts
The Physical Toll of Dieting
Think a 1,200-calorie diet is just a path to weight loss? Think again. In 1944, scientists at the University of Minnesota conducted a groundbreaking experiment that would reveal the shocking truth about what we now casually call “dieting.” They put healthy young men on 1,600 calories a day – and labeled it “semi-starvation.”
Today, doctors routinely prescribe even less than that for weight loss, often as low as 800 calories. Let that sink in: we’re prescribing diets that are quite literally half of what researchers once considered starvation. The effects of these restricted diets go far beyond simple hunger. Your body responds to dieting as a fundamental threat, triggering a cascade of hormonal changes that touch every system in your body.
Your adrenal glands pump out cortisol, weakening your immune system and disrupting your sleep. Blood pressure rises as vessels constrict. Reproduction hormones plummet. Your thyroid slows down. Even oxytocin – the hormone that helps you feel calm and connected – takes a hit. This isn’t just theoretical; it’s your body’s desperate attempt to survive what it perceives as famine.
But surely it’s different if you have “extra weight to lose”?
That’s what many doctors believe, but the Minnesota study debunked this myth decades ago. Participants across all body sizes experienced the same devastating effects: muscle wasting, anemia, dizziness, and fatigue. Even more troubling, these effects didn’t simply reverse when normal eating resumed. Many participants struggled with ongoing physical health issues and disordered eating patterns long after the study ended – a pattern we now see repeated in chronic dieters.
Perhaps most alarming is what happens to your brain. Recent research shows that restricting carbohydrates – a common dieting strategy – can actually impair your memory and cognitive function. Your brain needs carbohydrates to operate optimally, yet we routinely advise people to cut them drastically without warning them about these effects. This isn’t just about feeling hungry or tired; it’s about fundamentally altering your body’s ability to function.
Starving Your Brain
The Psychological Impact of Dieting
When we talk about the harm caused by dieting, we often focus on physical effects. But what about the psychological toll? It’s profound, pervasive, and backed by decades of research. As far back as 1996, scientists discovered something striking: the mental states of dieters closely mirror those seen in the famous Minnesota Starvation Experiment. Think about that for a moment:
People choosing to diet were experiencing psychological effects similar to those who were deliberately starved.
The science behind this is both fascinating and disturbing. Every time you restrict your food intake, especially carbohydrates, you’re not just reducing calories. You’re disrupting the delicate balance of neurotransmitters in your brain. Serotonin, our “feel-good” hormone, depends on tryptophan from food. Dopamine, which drives motivation and pleasure, requires regular nourishment to function properly. Norepinephrine, crucial for energy and attention, suffers when we diet. In other words, dieting doesn’t just make you hungry – it literally changes how your brain works.
And here’s where it gets even more complicated. We’ve long known that higher-weight people experience higher rates of depression, starting from childhood. The traditional medical response? Prescribe weight loss. But research tells a different story. It’s not the weight itself that’s causing the depression – it’s weight stigma and body dissatisfaction. Studies show that when you control for these factors, the relationship between weight and depression largely disappears. Yet instead of addressing stigma and promoting body acceptance, we continue to prescribe the very thing that makes these problems worse: dieting.
Think about the cruel irony here. We take people who are struggling with body image and mood, put them on diets that deplete their brain’s feel-good chemicals, and then act surprised when their mental health suffers.
Even worse, when the weight inevitably returns – as it does for the vast majority of people – they’re left with even greater body dissatisfaction and psychological distress than before they started. The evidence is clear: dieting isn’t the solution to mental health challenges. In fact, it’s often part of the problem.
The Diet-to-Disorder Pipeline
An Uncomfortable Truth
Here’s a startling fact that the weight loss industry doesn’t want you to know: dieting and eating disorders are intimately connected.
It’s not just a correlation – it’s a direct pipeline.
Research shows that college students who diet exhibit behaviors remarkably similar to those seen in both the Minnesota Starvation Experiment and in individuals diagnosed with eating disorders. In other words, the line between “healthy weight management” and disordered eating is vanishingly thin.
The numbers tell a devastating story. In one landmark study, adolescents who engaged in “unhealthy weight control behaviors” – including many practices now routinely prescribed by doctors, like meal replacements and severe calorie restriction – were six times more likely to develop binge eating and two and a half times more likely to develop extreme weight control behaviors five years later. Even more alarming? Those who dieted at what researchers called a “severe level” were eighteen times more likely to develop an eating disorder compared to those who didn’t diet at all.
Here’s what most people don’t realize: eating disorders don’t discriminate by size.
The common assumption that higher-weight individuals only experience binge eating disorder is dangerously wrong. In fact, studies show that between 1995 and 2015, the number of higher-weight individuals with restrictive eating disorders increased by an astounding 11.5-fold. Yet because our diagnostic criteria for conditions like anorexia nervosa traditionally required a low BMI, countless higher-weight individuals suffering from severe restriction go undiagnosed and untreated.
This creates a cruel paradox in our healthcare system: the exact same behaviors that would raise red flags in a thin person are prescribed as “healthy lifestyle changes” for higher-weight individuals. Fasting, extreme calorie restriction, meal replacements – these are all warning signs of an eating disorder in one body but “doctor’s orders” in another. The result? A medical system that not only fails to recognize eating disorders in higher-weight people but actively encourages behaviors that can trigger them.
The Yo-Yo Effect
Why Dieting Makes You Sicker
Here’s the cruel irony of dieting: the very thing prescribed to “improve” your health is actively damaging it. We’ve already established that diets don’t work for long-term weight loss. But what happens when you cycle between losing and regaining weight over and over again? The medical term is “weight cycling,” though you might know it as yo-yo dieting. And the research tells a disturbing story.
When doctors prescribe weight loss, they rarely mention the near-certainty of weight cycling – or its serious health consequences.
Studies show that these repeated cycles of loss and gain can wreak havoc on your body. Blood pressure fluctuates. Heart rate becomes erratic. Metabolic factors like cholesterol and blood sugar go haywire. Over time, this roller coaster takes a devastating toll on your cardiovascular system.
The evidence is particularly damning when we look at long-term studies. Middle-aged men with significant weight fluctuations were twice as likely to die from coronary events compared to those with stable weights. Young, otherwise healthy women who weight cycled showed worse cardiovascular health markers. Perhaps most ironically, weight cycling appears to increase insulin resistance – yes, the very condition that doctors tell you to lose weight to prevent.
When it comes to targets, the medical establishment keeps moving the goalposts.
First, they told us to reach a “healthy” BMI. Then they wanted us to lose around 20% of our body weight. Then 10%. Now some experts suggest 3-5%. Why the constant downward revision, which according to industry experts has no particular medical reason? It’s simply to make them seem more achievable. Meanwhile, each cycle of weight loss and regain triggers permanent changes in your body, increasing inflammation, altering body composition, and potentially causing more harm than if you’d never dieted at all.
What Now?
A message of hope from Dr Asher Larmie
After reading about the devastating impacts of prescribed weight loss, you might be wondering: what now? If weight loss isn’t the answer – if it’s actually causing harm – what’s the alternative?
The truth is, there is a better way. One that doesn’t involve sacrificing your physical and mental health on the altar of weight loss. One that doesn’t trigger eating disorders or set you up for dangerous cycles of weight loss and regain. One that actually addresses your health concerns instead of masking them behind a scale number.
For over fifteen years, I practiced medicine the way I was taught. I believed the lies about weight and health. I prescribed weight loss, thinking I was helping.
And I was wrong.
Over the last few years, I’ve dedicated myself to unlearning those falsehoods. I’ve sifted through mountains of research, separating fact from fiction. I’ve listened to hundreds of stories from people who continue to face weight stigma in medical offices. And now, I’m turning all of that knowledge – and all of that righteous fury – into a book that will change medicine.
This isn’t just another book about weight and health. This is a thorough dismantling of weight-centric medicine, backed by evidence and fueled by the experiences of people who’ve been harmed by it. It’s a clear, uncompromising message to healthcare providers: We must never prescribe weight loss. No exceptions.
Join Me on This Journey
I want you to be part of this transformation from its inception. Through the No Weigh Course, you’ll get:
- A new chapter every month, diving deep into the evidence
- Monthly live presentations where we explore these ideas together
- Q&A sessions where your voice matters and your experiences count
- A community of people who understand and share your passion for change
This isn’t just about learning – it’s about being part of a movement. Your experiences, your insights, your questions, and yes, your anger at the system will help shape this book. Together, we’ll create something powerful enough to change how medicine treats fat patients.
Why This Matters Now
Every day, in medical offices around the world, people are being prescribed weight loss instead of receiving actual care. Every day, medical professionals are perpetuating harm while believing they’re helping. Every day, we lose another opportunity to provide real, evidence-based healthcare.
We can change this. But we need voices like yours. We need your passion, your perspective, and your lived experience to help create the kind of resource that can’t be ignored.