Thinking in Circles About Obesity: Applying Systems Thinking to Weight Management

by Tarek K.A. Hamid

Today’s children may well become the first generation of Americans whose life expectancy will be shorter than that of their parents. The culprit, public health experts agree, is obesity and its associated health problems. Heretofore, the strategy to slow obesity’s galloping pace has been driven by what the philosopher Karl Popper calls ‘‘the bucket theory of the mind. ’’ When minds are seen as containers and public understanding is viewed as being a function of how many scientific facts are known, the focus is naturally on how many scientific facts public minds contain. But the strategy has not worked. Despite all the diet books, the wide availability of reduced-calorie and reduced-fat foods, and the broad publicity about the obesity problem, America’s waistline continues to expand. It will take more than food pyramid images or a new nutritional guideline to stem obesity’s escalation. Albert Einstein once observed that the significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them, and that we would have to shift to a new level, a deeper level of thinking,tosolvethem. Thisbookarguesfor,andpresents,adifferent perspective for thinking about and addressing the obesity a systems thinking perspective. While already commonplace in engineering and in business, the use of systems thinking in personal health is less widely adopted. Yet this is precisely the setting where complexities are most problematicandwherethestakesarehighest.

486 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2009

About the author

Dr. Tarek K.A. Hamid is a Stanford- and MIT-trained expert in system dynamics, with a deep interest in human metabolism and energy regulation. He holds a Master’s from Stanford and a PhD from MIT and is a professor of System Sciences at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, CA, where he received the Faculty Performance Award for excellence in research and teaching.


With a career spanning four decades, Dr. Hamid has applied systems thinking to a wide range of complex challenges—from NASA’s project management practices to economic performance and, more recently, health and obesity. His interest in weight regulation took off in the mid-1990s when he recognized striking parallels between human metabolism and the kinds of feedback-driven systems he had spent years studying. This led him to further studies at Stanford, where he later became an affiliate of the university’s Medical Informatics Department.

In 2009, he published Thinking in Circles about Obesity (Springer), an academic book exploring the obesity epidemic, which earned a “Highly Commended” distinction from the British Medical Association’s Book Awards.

A few years later, he led the Systems Inspired Global Obesity Study (SIGOS), an international research effort involving scientists from seven countries. The study uncovered widespread misconceptions about weight gain, weight loss, and how people—both laypersons and healthcare professionals—misjudge obesity risks.

When he’s not teaching or writing, Tarek enjoys sailing with his wife on their traditional Alden 45 sloop.

Reviews

[Ala · Rating 5 out of 5]

An awesome book to set the truth about obesity. Unlike many books that try to simplify the struggle and give simple answers, this book is unashamed to relay the multidimensional factors that plays into the global obesity struggle. It even tries to avoid being pessimistic and shine severally beacons of hope to the several advances in simulated technologies and preventive measures that are being taken as humanity fights back.
Not another magic bullet, product pushing, solution, but a genuine book of hope.