Behind the Cover Story: Tara Parker-Pope on Weight Loss
Tara Parker-Pope is the creator and writer of Well, a daily health blog and weekly column for The New York Times. She wrote this week’s cover article, “The Fat Trap.”
Q.
You write that the human body continues to fight against weight loss long after dieting has stopped. How did you first become acquainted with this research?
A.
Of all the issues I have written about during my past 12 years as a health writer, I think the topic of weight consistently generates the most interest among readers. Last summer I was working on a story about food cravings and how our own biology can influence our ability to resist tempting foods, and I began talking to Dr. Michael Rosenbaum, an obesity researcher at Columbia. We spent a long time on the phone discussing the research that shows a biological and metabolic backlash triggered by weight loss. Suddenly, so many of my own struggles with dieting made sense, and I wanted to learn more about the topic.
Q.
A lot of journalism around the topic of obesity focuses on fat or carbohydrates or some component part of the problem. How does reframing it in this larger way change the conversation?
A.
I think most of the time we talk about weight, the focus is on
