User:WaitingforGodot/dieter's guide to woo

A Dieter's Guide to Diet Woo is a collaborative essay about losing weight and milling the crap from the seeds of truth in the Woo.

Losing weight is, in theory, the single easiest thing to do - eat less than you burn, and in practice one of the hardest things to pull off. Because of that strange dichotomy, it is one of the single ripest places for woo. There are very real issues about metabolism, starvation mindset, and short term-placebo diets that make it hard to figure out exactly how much to eat, and what type of foods. And almost no one, especially someone who's had a lifetime of overeating, will feel satisfied on a typical "diet" diet. Real physicians and dieticians line up right beside quacks, profit mongers, and well intentioned but ill informed "friend once told me..." And sites like Weight Watches, or Sparks.com, not matter how good the actual source material is, is filled with a community all too happy to sell you on the newest products, the greatest "tricks", and the easiest methods to lose that weight. Most of which is flat out useless, but it does make you feel as if you are doing something other than starving.

This is my attempt to help the lowly dieters wade through the woo, and the real, studied, but confusing (and often unhelpful) studies and issues.