Michael R Lowe

In recent years, Dr. Lowe has increasingly turned his attention to why psychological treatments for eating disorders and obesity are relatively impotent and have improved so little in the past several decades. In short, he has written about two diverging trends that may provide an explanation. For eating disorders, treatments have become increasingly mentalistic in nature, overlooking the powerful influences of genetics and weight history, as well as how the neurobehavioral consequences of eating disorders makes them self-perpetuating. For obesity, the impact of behavioral and lifestyle treatments are relatively weak and transitory because they are based on self-regulation techniques that are over-matched by powerful environmental and biological factors that strongly resist attempts at weight reduction. Consequently, the fields’ current funding and publication practices too often involve the pursuit of recycled rather than innovative treatment strategies.