The Gravity of Weight: A Clinical Guide to Weight Loss and Maintenance

There are currently 54 million people on a diet in the United States. The Gravity of Weight: A Clinical Guide to Weight Loss and Maintenance is perhaps the first comprehensive integration of the psychological and physiological aspects of the mind, brain, and body to explain why weight control seems so daunting for so many people. In The Gravity of Weight, authors Sylvia R. Karasu, M.D., and T. Byram Karasu, M.D., review more than 900 published reports, from some of the early classical papers to the most recent research, to synthesize information regarding the methodological issues involved in obesity research, the controversies regarding obesity as a disease with morbidity and mortality, discrimination against the obese, and the fat acceptance movement. The authors distinguish between weight loss and weight loss maintenance and detail the extraordinary metabolic complexities, from adipose tissue to set point, involved in weight control. They explore the importance of genetics and psychological predisposition, as well as the contribution of the environment in sabotaging weight loss efforts, the importance of exercise and sleep, and the relevance of circadian rhythms to weight. They also review some of the most popular diets, including the significance of calories, as well as the psychotherapeutic, pharmacological, and surgical options that are currently available for the overweight and obese.

Sylvia R. Karasu, M.D., is Clinical Associate Professor, Department of Psychiatry, Weill Cornell Medical College, and Associate Attending Psychiatrist at New York Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center in New York, New York. T. Byram Karasu, M.D., is Silverman Professor and University Chairman of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, and Psychiatrist-in-Chief, Montefiore Medical Center in Bronx, New York. Foreword by Albert J. Stunkard, M.D., is Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and Founder and Director Emeritus of the Center for Weight and Eating Disorders at Penn.