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by ryanwaggoner 2756 days ago
800 calories per day for three months is hardly just "cleaning up your diet".
2 comments

Oh yes. Its a drastic cut in calories from what these participants consume normally. 800kcal is probably not sustainable long term unless you weigh 90lbs and are sedentary. This is just a quick fix. In the end these people need a lifestyle change and a diet they can stick to indefinitely.
Exactly. This seems like an Onion headline: "We have your cure for diabetes! Just eat a ridiculously low amount of food, fatso."

I don't mean to sound like a whiner, but ... if it were that easy to cut down my food consumption, I wouldn't be going to a doctor in the first place!

It's like telling people with extreme loneliness or social anxiety to "just strike up a conversation with someone!" Or PTSD suffers: "Geez, just don't freak out so much, take a deep breath or something."

Or narcissists/sociopaths: "Just, you know, think more about how your actions hurt other people."

Given Herculean willpower, most diseases of civilization can be conquered. Don't pat yourself on the back for calling it "prescription".

It's not like that because it's all about how you approach the problem. It's easy to do all those things if you have the right mindset. Creating that mindset isn't easy, but wording everything in the worst possible manner is a sure way to make it more difficult.

In the case of diabetes, it's saying: here's an alternative prescription that will cure you, we have good evidence it will work, you can afford it, here are the steps to follow, each of which looks easy by itself...

>In the case of diabetes, it's saying: here's an alternative prescription that will cure you, we have good evidence it will work, you can afford it, here are the steps to follow, each of which looks easy by itself...

We had "just eat less, weak-willed fatso" fifty years ago. This isn't progress.