What I learned....

Often times I'll turn on a TED talk on my drive home.  It's a nice way to decompress from the day, change gears in my mind and the talks, generally, provoke some inner sense of optimism.   I don't discriminate on topics --- and will tune into anything and everything from economics, psychology, social science, neurology, innovation etc.   Compelling research, regardless of the topic, fascinates me.

However, my brain is a bit of a haphazard mess these days.  I've got thoughts on what needs to be done at work, notes to remember to buy Joseph swim diapers, recipes to try for dinner and too many emails I need to send.   So, while I enjoy the TED talks immensely, I wish I retained a bit more of the fascinating statistics and theories.

Enter, What I learned.   This is just a post to summarize a few bullet points from an interesting TED talk.  Maybe you will find it interesting but more importantly it's an exercise to help me remember some of the information I found relevant and worth remembering.   Bear with me, as I said the topics I listen to on any given ride home are random.  As will be these posts.

Sandra Aamodt: Why Dieting Doesn't Usually Work 
Psychologists classify eaters into two groups, those who rely on their hunger and those who try to control their eating through willpower, like most dieters. Let's call them intuitive eaters and controlled eaters. The interesting thing is that intuitive eaters are less likely to be overweight, and they spend less time thinking about food.

Diets don't have very much reliability. Five years after a diet, most people have regained the weight. Forty percent of them have gained even more. If you think about this, the typical outcome of dieting is that you're more likely to gain weight in the long run than to lose it.

Let's face it: If diets worked, we'd all be thin already.