Intentional Weight Loss and Lottery Logic

You can’t win if you don’t play.

That’s what the PowerBall ad said. I could pay $2 for a ticket and possibly win a $20 million jackpot. Of course, I have a 99.9999997 percent chance of losing which may be why my stats teacher used to say that the lottery was a tax on people who didn’t pay attention in her class.

So why am I going on about the lottery in a newsletter about the intersections of weight science, weight stigma, and healthcare?

Because I hear a similar type of “logic” all the time from the weight loss industry, lay people, even doctors.