Robert J. Davis, PhD Announces the Release of His New Book ‘Supersized Lies: How Myths About Weight Loss Are Keeping Us Fat – and the Truth About What Really Works’

Robert J. Davis, PhD (a.k.a. The Healthy Skeptic) announced the release of his new book Supersized Lies: How Myths About Weight Loss Are Keeping Us Fat – and the Truth About What Really Works.

"Robert Davis always tells it like it is. This book reveals surprising truths that even the savviest dieters may be shocked to learn — but also lays out practical and thoroughly researched steps to finding your own success. Truly a fantastic resource!"- Lisa Lillien, a.k.a. “Hungry Girl,” New York Times bestselling author

The world would have you believe that losing weight is easy, but the truth is, in many cases, you're being fed a generous helping of falsehoods and misguided dieting advice.

The media, celebrities, weight-loss gurus, and the Internet bombard society with recommendations about how to shed unwanted pounds: Count calories, cut carbs, exercise more, skip meals, drink more water, pop a pill. Yet as more people try diligently to follow this advice, waistlines continue to expand.

In Supersized Lies, Robert J. Davis, PhD shows you why this inability to lose weight isn't your fault as he reveals how hype, half-truths, and unproven solutions have steered you into fruitless quests that inflict emotional and physical harm.

In this health and wellness book, the award-winning health journalist, whose work has appeared on TIME, CNN, WebMD, and in The Wall Street Journal, reveals:

  • Which weight-loss measures are most - and least - likely to be effective

  • How conventional wisdom about weight loss is often wrong.

  • How to spot misleading weight-loss advice, and avoid being duped into wasting time, money, and effort.

  • How, contrary to what we often hear, effective weight control doesn't require following complicated, restrictive rules.

  • The interesting history behind flawed weight-loss advice, and the forces that currently perpetuate and benefit from it.

In addition to uncovering how and why we're being led astray, Supersized Lies lays out weight-control strategies that research shows actually work, and it tells the inspiring stories of people who, after falling victim to the falsehoods of conventional guidance, have achieved success by forging their own paths.

Written in a lively, easy-to-understand style, this myth-shattering book sheds surprising new light on old assumptions and offers an inspiring way forward to those caught in the cacophony of weight-loss advice.

Praise:

"Robert Davis does a masterful job imparting his expert insights about the many distortions that stand between you and a healthy weight." -David L. Katz, MD, MPH, Founder, Yale-Griffin Prevention Research Center & co-author, “How to Eat"

"Robert Davis always tells it like it is. This book reveals surprising truths that even the savviest dieters may be shocked to learn — but also lays out practical and thoroughly researched steps to finding your own success. Truly a fantastic resource!"

- Lisa Lillien, a.k.a. “Hungry Girl,” New York Times bestselling author

A "science-backed breath of fresh air." - The US Review of Books

"Inherently intriguing, even for those lucky people not looking to lose weight." - Kirkus

Excerpt:

(from Chapter 1)

Husky. Full-seated. Spare tire. They’re words I vividly remember clothing store clerks and family friends using to describe my physique when I was a child. Though intended to be polite, the observations still stung because even at age 8, I knew exactly what they meant: I was fat.

In an effort to help me slim down, my mother instructed me to forgo bread. The advice reflected what she’d learned growing up, that starchy foods are the main culprit when it comes to weight. I complied with her directive (at least in her presence) even at my favorite restaurant and reluctantly removed the buns from my McDonald’s hamburgers.

When I got to college in the 1980s and became interested in nutrition, I laughed as I recalled Mom’s weight-loss prescription. According to what I was now learning, she’d had it backwards. The main cause of weight gain was fat, not starches. So she should have told me to skip the burger, not the bun.

Had I been an overweight child today, my mother—who keeps up with the latest nutrition thinking—might well have fingered a different culprit and put the kibosh instead on the sugary soda that I typically ordered with my hamburgers.

Luckily for me, I became thinner as I grew. But our society has not outgrown our insatiable desire to find a dietary villain that we can blame for our expanding waistlines. We lurch from one to another, from fat to carbs to gluten to soda. Or, depending on which diet you follow, the enemy might be animal products, legumes, cooked foods, acidic foods, or foods that our ancestors didn’t eat.

It’s human nature to gravitate toward good-versus-evil explanations for complex problems. We see the same phenomenon in other areas of life, including politics. While having a clearly defined enemy may satisfy our primal need for a simple narrative to make sense of things, it can do harm if it distracts us from what really matters.

That’s what’s happened in our battle with weight. We’ve been led down one dead end after another chasing elusive bad guys that keep changing. A variety of forces have cheered us on in this chase, including diet peddlers, the news media, and food manufacturers that are more than delighted to sell us all the fat-free, carb-free, or other enemy-free foods we can eat.

Nutrition researchers, obesity experts, and government agencies also bear responsibility for leading us astray by overstating the certainty of the science when it comes to culprits. What research does show is that weight-loss diets that demonize whole categories of foods may work in the short term, but in the long run, they’re rarely sustainable. And they can make matters worse.

Book Specifications:

Title:

Supersized Lies: How Myths About Weight Loss Are Keeping Us Fat – and the Truth About What Really Works

Genre:

Health

Available Formats:

Hardcover / Paperback / eBook / Audiobook

ISBN:

978-1-7369677-0-6

Size of Print Edition:

6x9 trade

Publication Date:

9/21/21

Pages:

220

Publisher:

MediVista Media LLC; Everwell Books

Distribution:

IngramSpark

About the Author:

Robert J. Davis is an award-winning health journalist, whose work has appeared on TIME (Why Counting Calories Isn’t an Effective Weight-Loss Strategy), CNN, WebMD, The Washington Post (Breakfast really doesn’t have much to do with controlling your weight), and in The Wall Street Journal. The author of three previous books on health, he hosts the “Healthy Skeptic” video series, which dissects the science behind popular health claims. Davis holds an undergraduate degree from Princeton University, a master’s degree in public health from Emory University’s Rollins School of Public Health, and a PhD in health policy from Brandeis University, where he was Pew Foundation Fellow.

Readers can connect with Robert J. Davis on:

Facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/RobertDavisHealthySkepticInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/healthyskept/Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/4725364.Robert_J_DavisTo learn more, go to www.healthyskeptic.com

Other Books by Robert J. Davis, Phd:

For more information, to request a review copy or an interview with Robert J. Davis, please contact Kelsey Butts at Book Publicity Services at Kelsey@BookPublicityServices.com or (805) 807-9027.

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