If I was to have any concerns over WLI, it would be that WLI focus almost wholly on a number on the scale, and health is so much more than that!
We live in a society that celebrates being slim and is fat phobic, whilst tempting people to overindulge everywhere they go, by the sheer volume of fast food/coffee shops/bakeries/sweet shops/takeaways.
We can get processed food delivered to our doors every single day, and the supermarkets have multiple aisles of processed snacks and ready meals.
We have been taught from as far back as we can remember that we need to eat at least 3 times a day, and we are bombarded with food at every angle, from cooking programmes on tv to all of these places we can buy food that is rubbish but oh so convenient.
High calorie/processed food gives a dopamine rush, and when people are living lives that are more stressful than ever before, and food is so convenient to buy, it is an easy way to get a dopamine fix.
People are encouraged to incorporate food into almost every celebration, and we now eat for pleasure and to treat ourselves rather than for sustenance, and yet we simultaneously criticise people for being obese.
It seems it is okay to enjoy food and eat what you desire, so long as you aren't fat!
As soon as you are fat, you are supposed to exercise an incredible amount of self control and ignore all of the temptation regarding food that is out there, and stop using food as a reward or a pleasure, yet the people who have been using food as a way of making themselves feel temporarily better, are given no effective alternatives, so they just end up feeling deprived.
Many people I know who are obese use food as a coping mechanism, it makes them feel good, they look forward to 'treating' themselves, they can't afford the money or the time for good therapy and food is a quick fix.
Imo, eating crap gives many people a temporary lift and that's how they cope.
My mother is a prime (possibly extreme) example. She is morbidly obese, has chronically low self esteem, has been in abusive relationships, has almost no friends, is desperately lonely and has turned to food to fill the emotional void inside for decades.
My mother doesn't eat because she is actually hungry, she eats because it makes her feel good, she sees it as a treat, and she feels so shit so much of the time that it is a relief to feel good some of the time.
My child, who fortunately is not overweight, has ADHD, and eats crap to get a dopamine fix, because ADHD feels like shit.
In both of those examples, WLI would only reduce the hunger AFAIK, but it wont give my mother her self esteem, because her self esteem was destroyed years before she was obese, and it wont give my mother or my child the dopamine or comfort they use food to get.
It will simply reduce their appetite.
And while the weight loss may give them a temporary boost mentally, the old issues are still there!
So instead of focusing on the number on the scales, we need to look deeper at why people are using food to feel better in the first place, to the point where it is affecting their health.
Obviously this doesnt apply to every overweight person, but it does apply to many.
A lot of overweight people are not over eating because they are hungry, my mother doesn't know what it feels like to be hungry. They are using food as a crutch, a temporary relief from issues they are dealing with, and while WLI mean you lose interest in food, the original issues are still there, you just don't want to use food to deal with them.
That doesnt mean you are 'cured' of your issues, so how do WLI help long term?