Weight,Health,and Culture: Shifting the Paradigm for Alternative Health Care

Abstract

Promoting weight loss through dietary restriction and behavior modification rarely succeeds, often results in weight cycling (repeated bouts of weight loss and regain) with the potential for serious physical and psychological health risks and contrib utes to a growing epidemic of dangerous eating disorders. Therefore, continuing to promote such approaches for the purpose of improving health is scientifically indefensible and ethically unacceptable. Contrary to conventional wisdom, body weight is neither an appropriate nor valid measure of human health or self-worth. As with other aspects of Western health care, however, traditional approaches to weight management remain rooted in a biomedical, reductionism paradigm. Prac titioners and advocates of alternative and complementary health care must not fall into the trap of merely "plugging in" alternative therapies to this flawed paradigm. This paper will examine the failure of current approaches to weight management, explore the underlying assumptions and basic components of an alternative para digm for weight and health and discuss the practical implications of this information for alternative health care.