One of the most common errors in the press is the confusion between correlation and causation in scientific and health-related studies.

In theory, these are easy to distinguish … an action or occurrence can CAUSE another (such as smoking causes lung cancer), or it can CORRELATE with another (such as smoking is correlated with alcoholism). If one action causes another, then they are most certainly correlated.

But just because two things occur together does not mean that one caused the other, even if it seems to make sense.

In general, we should all be wary of our own bias. We like explanations. The media often concludes a causal relationship among correlated observances when causality was not even considered by a research study itself. Without clear and definite reasons to accept that one thing CAUSES another, the fact that a correlation exists is all we should accept. Again, two events occurring in close proximity does not imply that one caused the other, even if it seems to makes perfect sense.

Once upon a time, this type of error wasn’t too bad.
If one ate a berry and got sick, it was wise to see meaning in that data. (Better safe than sorry). The same goes for a red-hot coal. Only one touch will give all the correlations needed. Being bullied by a primitive world of nature, it's far worse to miss a link than it is to make one up. A false negative yields the greatest risk.

Now conditions are reversed.
People in modern civilization are bullies over nature. New claims about causation are often made so we can make large interventions in nature. A false positive today often means approving drugs that have no effect, or imposing regulations that make no difference, or wasting money in schemes to limit unemployment. Now, as science grows more powerful and government more technocratic, the stakes of correlation…. of making counterfeit relationships and bogus findings,… grow larger and larger. A false positive is now more burdensome than it's ever been. The only thing we have to fight this attitude is the catchphrase. “correlation is not causation”.

I suggest that we be very cautious in the way we allow media claims to influence us into making personal changes in our own behaviors, ... especially in relation to the way they tend to limit our personal choices of the foods we eat, and the way they tend to add to our personal expense and health risks through recommendions of unnecessary drugs. 

Mistaking correlation for causation finds a cause that simply isn't there.

   
Being Resilient is a very good thing.

What is Resilience?

“Resilience is an individual's tendency to cope with stress and adversity. This coping may result in the individual "bouncing back" to a previous state of normal functioning, or simply not showing negative effects.”

“Resilience is that quality which allows some people to be knocked down by life and come back stronger than ever.”

“Resilience is a dynamic process whereby individuals exhibit positive behavioral adaptation when they encounter significant adversity, trauma, tragedy, threats, or even significant sources of stress.”

Today, for me, personal resilience means that after overeating yesterday, this morning, I have been able to encourage myself to put forth my best dieting efforts, yet again.

I enjoyed this video, although I am a “cat person” rather than a "dog person",  Perhaps you will too.

Achieving personal weight-loss and maintenance of that weight loss is a problem for many people, including me. I tend to work off the premise that a solution exists for most problems.

General problem solving skills apply here. When I can’t find any solution for a personal problem, then I try to more clearly identify the problem, or even re-define it. Sometimes I find that my best action plan for a solution to a problem is the simple Acceptance of the Reality that an ongoing problem is likely to remain in existence throughout my lifetime.

To come up with a new approach to an old problem, it often helps to look at the problem differently. If we do the same things, we will get the same results. In my experience, when a new solution is required, one of the best things I can do is to change my perspective on the problem.

Sometimes this means looking at different graphics, or reading about new diets, or asking myself new questions. When I explore new angles of a problem, I often see something new, which will give me an idea of a new way to approach it.

How does this mental process work?

When faced with a puzzle, we solve it by first running through all of our usual obvious solutions.

First we engage our left brain by recalling the obvious tried and true solutions. Sometimes these ideas work, sometimes they don’t. As soon as our left brain has exhausted all ideas that don’t work, we get frustrated and hit the wall. The wall is the inability of our left brain to create new connections from our old ideas. We are unable to connect the old ideas with fresh ones, to find different solutions with the same methods. The only way to get unstuck is to try to see the problem in a new way.

At the point of total frustration, our right brain engages. Our right brain solves problems with images. Once the left brain has gotten out of the way in total frustration, our right brain is able to freely associate in the language that it knows: pictures. Then, it hits — the connection is made, and all of a sudden, we have a glimmer of a new idea, our mind goes off in a different direction, and things start falling into place. What we have just done is literally created a new connection in our brain.

Sometimes we don’t get an answer to our problem because we aren’t asking the right question. If we ask the same question over and over, we will most likely get the same answer. So, we need to figure out how to rephrase the question or ask a new question. Sometimes changing the wording we use is helpful, sometimes it helps to look at a different graphic.

When working with data like weight or calorie numbers, I think about how I can display or visualize that data in a new way. Looking at the same data in different formats enables me to see new things. I see different things when I look at different charts and graphics even when they reflect the same basic numbers.

Looking at the big picture often leads to a new way of seeing the problem. Sometimes zooming out, helps me realize that I’m asking the wrong question.

DietHobby, under RESOURCES, Links, Tools, contains links to some online sites which use different methods of graphing weight. I find a consistent use of these different visual aides helpful to motivate me, and these visuals often provide me with insight about my own behavior.

In my own case, one personal solution for the weight-loss and maintenance problem has become my choice to make Dieting into an ongoing, enjoyable hobby for myself. For more on this, see "Dieting Is My Hobby. Another part of the solution for me, is to ACCEPT certain personal Realities as Truth. For example:

• I will never achieve perfection in any aspect of my life;
  
• Eating the way my own body is naturally programmed to eat will cause me to be morbidly obese,
  
• At this point …and probably forever, maintaining my weight-loss requires constant, consistent monitoring of my own personal food intake;
  
• People are different, there is more than only One “Right Way”.
  

What’s the Difference between a Diet “Cheat” and a Life “Choice?

  What do you mean when you say you cheated on your diet?

Do you mean you ate a food that was high in calories?
Do you mean you used food for a role other than fuel?
Do you mean you veered from a path of food restriction paved by an “expert”?

It’s important that we make informed choices in our lives,
and if our weight is a consideration,
the amount of food, and the calories of food, can be important.

 But if a person can’t decide to have food as a pleasure in one’s life,
then that person is probably not living a realistic life.

It seems to me that the choice to embrace a such a Fantasy,
will more likely lead to overall failure in one’s weight-loss or maintenance
than any independent choice concerning a particular food.

                                                 
In the video located at the bottom of this article, USTV anchor, Jennifer Livingston, delivers a well-thought out response to an attack on her physical appearance by an e-mail bully, who declared that Jennifer was a bad model for viewers because of her obesity, and that “Obesity is one of the worst choices a person can make and one of the most dangerous habits to maintain“.

The statement that obesity is a "choice", implies that the opposite is also true. It is a widely held notion that  anyone can simply "choose" not to be fat, despite the fact, that the vast majority of people who "choose"  to lose  weight, actually end up putting it back on (and more). The belief that anyone can lose weight and keep it off if only they "choose"  to do so, is  widely accepted. Even people who have been battling their weight all their lives tend to take the concept as TRUTH.

Most obese people blame themselves for their excess weight, and blame themselves for not trying hard enough or for failing again. It is one thing for the non-obese public to think of obesity as a self-inflicted matter of choice, but it is something entirely different, for a person who has spent an enormous amount of time and effort on losing weight, over and over again, to blame themselves for failing to make the right “choice”.

I know about the difficulty of losing weight and maintaining weight loss from my own personal lifetime experience.  Managing weight is not easy, and the truth is, that....despite the current hype ... weight has never actually been a good measure of health or of a healthy life style anyway.

Is obesity a choice?  The term “choice” implies that one has the freedom to choose from different options which are available to them, and the power to make that option a reality.

We make many different choices during our Lifetime, both small and large. We choose what Results we would prefer to see in our lives. Married or Single? Children? Education? Career? Our small daily Behavior choices have a great deal with determining our lifetime Results… but not everything.

I chose to get up and get dressed today. I chose to blog here. I chose to get married. I chose to get an doctorate. I chose to become a lawyer. I chose to spend 25 years practicing law. I chose to be a homeowner. I chose to become financially secure. It turned out that I had the power, through my actions, to make these choices into reality for myself. Some choices don’t carry that power with them.

I have the freedom to choose to fly like a bird, but I don’t have the ability to make it happen. I can follow through with my choice by jumping from a high-rise building, but the physical law of gravity will interfere to keep me from attaining success.

Most people “choose” to be healthy. Few people “choose” to have cancer, or heart disease, but it happens…to people of all ages ... even to non-smoking, marathon-running, normal-weight, organic-eaters.

Obesity belongs in the Health category. The condition of obesity involves genetic predisposition, an environment of stress, sleep deprivation, sedentary employment, abundant and omnipresent energy dense foods, unhealthy body-image promoting media, and one’s individual physiological and psychological makeup.

Some people have bodies that can overcome their health environment, and some don’t.
After surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy, some people with cancer go into remission. Most don’t.
After dieting, and even surgery, some obese people become normal weight and maintain there.
Most don’t.

Much of the 25 years I spent as a lawyer, my personal appearance and attitude was similar to what we see of Jennifer Livingston in the video below, except that often I was even heavier. Although 20 years of Therapy didn’t make me thin, it did teach me to love and respect myself fat. I am pleased to see the self-respect that Jennifer portrays here.

I spent a great deal of my life being Obese. At present, I am fortunate enough to be normal weight. I didn’t “chose” to be fat, and then change my mind and “choose” to be normal weight. Always, being normal weight was my personal “choice”. From age 9 to here in my 60s, I’ve worked for my entire life ... through dieting, therapy, exercise, and even surgery and more dieting  … to make that option into a personal reality. The weight I am now is a Result of everything I’ve experienced, and all of my lifetime actions linked together. Before this present time, I was obese, not because I "chose" the option of obesity, but because I did not have the power to make the option of normal-weight a reality.