This is a fascinating topic and I really appreciate the perspective.

I also appreciate how absurd Beck and her lifestyle of denial is, but as someone whose lost significant weight over a lifetime, I will say: it's really, really hard. The fact remains that 95% of Americans who diet to lose weight fail. They "succeed" for short periods of time but can't make it stick.

Sustained weight loss is the hardest educational project of my life, and I have a couple of advanced degrees.

Why IS it so hard? I believe it's primarily because of very poor food advice from doctors. nutritionists, the USDA + a horribly unhealthy food environment (carbs, snack foods, fast foods, cheap foods, etc.) And, because making a radical change to diet for the rest of your life is simply tough. It's analogous to people who give up drinking and go to 12-step meetings the rest of their lives. The meetings save their lives, but a lot of alcoholics delay going, never go in the first place, or go for a while then quit.

And they are facing family pressure, medical problems, and sometimes legal trouble.

It's possible for an individual to lose weight, but it requires deep commitment to searching for the truth in an environment of misinformation. A lot of people don't want to do that or don't have the bandwidth - they'd rather devote their lives to other pursuits.

I've tried to follow "good advice" which proved to not be good, and done all the right things. It still took massive amounts of self-education, sefl-experimentation, and healing a chronic disease before I made progress. When you are a child with a weight problem, it's a giant life change to figure out why and how to fix it.

What she's doing is wrong, but you have to admire her abilty to find others like her, because there are tens of thousands who want to believe just what she believes: health isn't really in our control. On a certain level and for a whole lot of people, that feels true.

Sorry this is so long. I should've just written an article.