More notes from the inaugural “Your Weight Matters” conference last weekend in Dallas...

The "Center for Consumer Freedom," the Big Food-funded mouthpiece whose falsehoods begin with its name, cites the “latest study” when it serves its purposes, and mocks it the rest of the time. Sometimes this happens in back-to-back posts. They deserve the scorn of every thinking person on earth. But anyway.

I mention CCF because I respect science whether I “agree” with it or not. My observations in Dallas do not mirror what I’ve read about bariatric-surgery data, in that many of the people I met had had more than one procedure, or had had one but were slipping and were fearful that the weight is coming back.

One of the first fellows I met walked up to our booth and baldly asked, “what can you do for me?” He’d come from Alaska, still seeking help despite having had three procedures.

I related strongly with another fellow who’d just come out of a session, rueful in his misery, saying he’d heard several things he knew he has to get back to, actions that had worked until he stopped working them. For me, it was a reminder of the aftermath of dieting, when I had gone from solid forward momentum, to a waning commitment, to an inability to diet even though my ability to do so was fresh in my memory.

I don’t regard the dissonance between the studies and my observations as proving anything — science is science, and this was a self-selecting group of people eager enough for a solution that they were willing to expend their time and money (Alaksa!) to attend.

Still, it was striking, to meet so many post-surgery strugglers.

Still more conference notes to come ...