Volume 25, Issue 4: August, 1998

Abstract

WEIGHT LOSS EDUCATION: THE CHALLENGE OF A NEW PARADIGM

Julie Gast, PhD
Steven R. Hawks, EdD

Health educators and others typically rely on three weight loss strategies to combat obesity. These include (1) medical intervention, (2) caloric restriction, and (3) fat gram restriction. The empirical evidence for these approaches in producing long-term weight loss is weak. However, much media attention has been given to a weight loss paradigm that seemingly does not fall into the aforementioned categories, which has been called the intuitive eating paradigm. Currently there is no empirical evidence to validate this paradigm. The focus of this article is to present an overview of this weight loss paradigm, discuss its potential benefits for health education in relation to current weight loss paradigms, and critically evaluate it in terms of the usefulness and ethical appropriateness for health education.