How a Science Journalist Loses Weight
I worked as a science writer at an outlet funded by, and completely obsessed with, clicks. So I’m going to write about the thing that makes people click: how I lost 40 pounds, and also my job as a science writer.
Click Hungry
I had not tried to lose any weight between May 2018 and today, I read no nutrition books, nor counted calories. A big reason I didn’t bother trying to lose weight was that, as a science journalist, I never thought I could get a handle on the information, and misinformation, around weight loss. Certainly not enough to succeed in shedding pounds without sacrificing health and sanity. I saw that the science around weight loss/nutrition was inconsistent, complex, daunting, biased, and often funded by industry or activist groups. And I knew well that the news about nutrition that reached readers’ eyes was strained through a certain filter. I didn’t have the time or motivation to obsess over finding which nutrition facts were actually true when I was already pretty preoccupied with my career.
My career, oh, so glamorous, my dream job, in many ways. Being a good science writer was far and a way the thing I cared about most. Living in the big city, writing for a household-name publication, communicating science for the world was what I had always wanted. People trusted us to tell them the truth about all…
