Did Yo-yo dieting Give Tom Hanks Diabetes?

I have a lot of trouble feeling sorry for celebrities.  I mean, I do applaud Tom Hanks for being open about his type II diabetes  (adult onset, often associated with factors such as aging and being overweight).  I have seen and heard too much about stereotypes of people as being overweight and lazy and old when they are type II diabetic.

I have always been concerned about people who have lives of such unrelenting boredom and mundanity that they choose to live through being fans of celebrities.  Many beloved patients and one beloved husband think I should be a celebrity, for having done things.  This, of course, would fly in the face of numerous celebrities who have done little or nothing identifiable, such as the Kardashians, but I am assured it is still possible.

The implication of the article cited is that the reader is supposed to feel sorry for Tom Hanks since his gaining and losing weight for various roles is a supposed factor in the onset of type II diabetes.

Huh??

As far as I can tell, the study of “weight cycling” or “yo-yo dieting” goes back to the distinguished professor of psychology with a specialty in food, Kelly Brownell of Yale.

The biggest study I could find that had anything to do with this followed 1,476 subjects.  It found the general tendency toward obesity is lots more significant than the cycling, which seems to me to be of questionable if any significance in terms of later diabetes development.

In other words, this weight cycling has got to be pretty frequent as I have seen it in my own family of origin, as well as my patients.  Dieting for a limited period of time certainly seems less daunting than a complete lifetime lifestyle change.

I always wondered if people who did the same thing every day for a long enough time were not at least a little bit obsessive compulsive.

It is neat to know that this study comes from Framingham data.  I remember that town that looked so disturbingly blue collar when my parents of blessed memory used to drive through on the Massachusetts Turnpike on the way to Springfield.  I remember how curious everyone was then that Harvard had picked them as somehow “typical” and collected scads of data on everybody — and I’ll bet people are still pulling things out of it.

The take home message is this; people should not let the fear of, the danger of “weight cycling” or “yo-yo dieting” prevent them for going for the lifestyle changes that can help them definitively reach their ideal weight.