Pushing my dieting button
Sep. 9th, 2005 10:24 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sarahmichiganIf you see me post articles or rants about my anti-diet views, don't be sure that I'm directing them at you in particular. I know of at least three people on my friends list who are on Weight Watchers, and at least a few others who are doing various things to maintain or lose weight.
I may scroll through your posts about your diet plan, or I may comment occasionally if I feel compelled, too, but make no mistake: I do not support your diet. I won't try to sabotage your efforts, but I will state here and now that I think you are doing something that can potentially have very bad effects on your mental and physical health.
Dieting doesn't work. The odds are 9-1 against you that you'll keep the weight off and there's a good chance that you'll end up fatter. Chances are that you'll have to keep going on diets to maintain your weight or lose the weight you've re-gained, and yo-yo dieting is extremely unhealthy.
You may think you deserve to know what it's like to be in a thinner body, but it's most likely a pipe dream. There's no good evidence that you can modify your body shape to a signifcant extent (more than about 10 percent of your original body weight) and maintain that new shape. (For the record, I've been on Weight Watchers twice. The first time, I lost 41 pounds. The second time, I lost 36 pounds. I gained it all back.)
Health gurus are always going on about the conditions that are exacerbated by excessive weight, and they assume that losing weight will improve the condition. But there are NO good studies about whether long-term weight loss will improve your health because such a tiny minority of people who lose a large amount of weight are able to keep it off for more than a year or two.
There are, however, many studies that show that chronic dieting makes your heart health, blood pressure, and other measures of health WORSE.
Dieting causes compulsive eating habits. A weight-loss diet is just a doctor-approved eating disorder. I would not try to aid you in your efforts to be a bulimic or an anorexic, and I do not support your efforts to develop an eating disorder, which is what weight-loss dieting is, when you strip off all the pretenses.
Everyone I've ever known who has gone on a weight-loss regimen has become completely obsessed with food. Weighing food, measuring food, thinking day and night about what fits the plan and what doesn't. It's just like the mentality of the friends I've known who are anorexic and are constantly measuring what they eat and thinking all day about what they can and can't eat.
Do I support teaching yourself more about nutrition? Sure! Do I support the idea that Americans have a distorted sense of what a reasonable portion of food is? Sure! Do I support improving your eating habits to include more fiber, fruit, and vegetables and less processed food? Sure! But if your focus is on losing weight regardless of how the method will affect your long-term health, I can't support that.
I'm especially leery of commercial weight-loss plans, because it is not in their best interest to see you succeed, because then you will not keep paying them your hard-earned money. Their bottom line is making money, not your health. Did you know that Weight Watchers has a policy that if you're five pounds over your MINIMUM weight, they will help you lose weight? That means if they decide your optimum weight range is 108 to 128 pounds, and you come in weighing 113 pounds, they will help you lose weight until you're 108 pounds. If health was their focus, they would tell a woman who is 120 pounds and who wants to be 114 pounds to see a psychiatrist about her distorted body image instead of telling her they can help her lose those "last six pounds."
I'll continue to post anti-diet rants and articles about studies which point out the destructiveness of dieting, so if that bothers you, you may want to scroll on through. . .
I may scroll through your posts about your diet plan, or I may comment occasionally if I feel compelled, too, but make no mistake: I do not support your diet. I won't try to sabotage your efforts, but I will state here and now that I think you are doing something that can potentially have very bad effects on your mental and physical health.
Dieting doesn't work. The odds are 9-1 against you that you'll keep the weight off and there's a good chance that you'll end up fatter. Chances are that you'll have to keep going on diets to maintain your weight or lose the weight you've re-gained, and yo-yo dieting is extremely unhealthy.
You may think you deserve to know what it's like to be in a thinner body, but it's most likely a pipe dream. There's no good evidence that you can modify your body shape to a signifcant extent (more than about 10 percent of your original body weight) and maintain that new shape. (For the record, I've been on Weight Watchers twice. The first time, I lost 41 pounds. The second time, I lost 36 pounds. I gained it all back.)
Health gurus are always going on about the conditions that are exacerbated by excessive weight, and they assume that losing weight will improve the condition. But there are NO good studies about whether long-term weight loss will improve your health because such a tiny minority of people who lose a large amount of weight are able to keep it off for more than a year or two.
There are, however, many studies that show that chronic dieting makes your heart health, blood pressure, and other measures of health WORSE.
Dieting causes compulsive eating habits. A weight-loss diet is just a doctor-approved eating disorder. I would not try to aid you in your efforts to be a bulimic or an anorexic, and I do not support your efforts to develop an eating disorder, which is what weight-loss dieting is, when you strip off all the pretenses.
Everyone I've ever known who has gone on a weight-loss regimen has become completely obsessed with food. Weighing food, measuring food, thinking day and night about what fits the plan and what doesn't. It's just like the mentality of the friends I've known who are anorexic and are constantly measuring what they eat and thinking all day about what they can and can't eat.
Do I support teaching yourself more about nutrition? Sure! Do I support the idea that Americans have a distorted sense of what a reasonable portion of food is? Sure! Do I support improving your eating habits to include more fiber, fruit, and vegetables and less processed food? Sure! But if your focus is on losing weight regardless of how the method will affect your long-term health, I can't support that.
I'm especially leery of commercial weight-loss plans, because it is not in their best interest to see you succeed, because then you will not keep paying them your hard-earned money. Their bottom line is making money, not your health. Did you know that Weight Watchers has a policy that if you're five pounds over your MINIMUM weight, they will help you lose weight? That means if they decide your optimum weight range is 108 to 128 pounds, and you come in weighing 113 pounds, they will help you lose weight until you're 108 pounds. If health was their focus, they would tell a woman who is 120 pounds and who wants to be 114 pounds to see a psychiatrist about her distorted body image instead of telling her they can help her lose those "last six pounds."
I'll continue to post anti-diet rants and articles about studies which point out the destructiveness of dieting, so if that bothers you, you may want to scroll on through. . .
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no subject
Date: 2005-09-09 10:32 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-09-09 10:36 am (UTC)Reducing calories and/or portion control with the explicit and main goal of losing weight.
I believe the only "healthy" weight loss is as a *side-effect* of eating better and getting more exercise. Generally rapid weight loss (more than a pound or two a month) is unhealthy and un-sustainable. There's evidence that rapid weight loss is associated with worse measurements of health (blood pressure, risk for cancers, etc.).
no subject
Date: 2005-09-09 11:29 am (UTC)I knew people in high school who prided themselves on only eating a tic-tac that day. *cringe* That kind of reducing calories is obviously unhealthy. And I can agree that obsessively measuring calories or portion sizes is unhealthy too. (I certainly don't want to be on WW all my life.)
But the general principles of reducing calories and portion control aren't bad. You can eat better and reduce calories - in fact, I see them as tied. Obviously veggie burgers on whole-wheat buns and fruit salad are going to have fewer calories than a fast food combo meal. And I don't see anything wrong with ordering a small fry rather than a jumbo size, or having a small dish of ice cream after dinner rather than a sundae.
I also think you're being too hard on health issues. Yes, certainly weight loss that occurs in an unhealthy and unsustainable way can lead to the health problems you've described. But are you really suggesting that people suffering from certain health problems (I'm thinking especially insulin-related disorders such as diabetes and PCOS) can't benefit from healthy, sustainable weight loss?
I do agree with a lot of what you've said. There has to be a middle, healthy ground between obesity and fad dieting. It constantly amazes me that our country, as a whole, can't seem to find that middle ground.
no subject
Date: 2005-09-09 11:37 am (UTC)No, what I'm saying is that for the average person, permanent weight loss of any significant magnitude is virtually impossible. It's like the doctor saying, "You know, your diabetes would be better if you could be a mermaid instead of a human."
"OK, doc, I'll try to be a mermaid, but I'm not sure if it's sustainable long-term. I can only hold my breath for 90 seconds."
There's good data that exercise, *regardless of weight loss*, helps with insulin issues, especially if it's muscle-building exercise, because the more muscle you have, the better you process insulin.
You can use the "eat when hungry, stop when full" approach that the Overcoming Overeating people advocate even if you have diabetes.
http://www.overcomingovereating.com/diabetes.html
no subject
Date: 2005-09-09 12:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-09-09 12:30 pm (UTC)http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B758G-48KMC8J-8&_coverDate=04%2F30%2F1996&_alid=311664971&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_qd=1&_cdi=12926&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=ecc96cdd0ce046e2d1651efa30f07f34
Results At 1 year, no significant differences were noted among the three groups. The diet-only group lost 6.8 kg, the exercise-only group lost 2.9 kg, and the combination group lost 8.9 kg (P=.09). During the second year, the diet-only group regained weight — reaching 0.9 kg above baseline; the combination group regained to 2.2 kg below baseline; and the exercise-only group regained slightly to 2.7 kg below baseline (P=.36). Repeated measures analysis of variance showed a group-by-time interaction (P=.001); data for the dieting groups best fit a U-shaped regain curve (P=.001).
Applications The results suggest that dieting is associated with weight loss followed by regain after treatment ends, whereas exercise alone produced smaller weight losses but better maintenance. The large outcome variability and unequal difficulty of the regimens across groups limit the generalizability of the findings. J Am Diet Assoc. 1996; 96:342-346.
no subject
Date: 2005-09-09 12:41 pm (UTC)http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/pa-files/PA-04-092.html
"Although there are many well-accepted methods to reduce initial body weight by 7-10%, long-term maintenance of that lost weight is more problematic. On average, among treatment-seeking populations, approximately 1/3 of lost weight is regained by one year; by 5 years most or all previously lost weight
is regained."
no subject
Date: 2005-09-09 12:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-09-09 12:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-09-09 01:16 pm (UTC)People at the low end of the "ideal" BMI range have worse mortality rates than people who are in the "mildly overweight" BMI range, for instance.
no subject
Date: 2005-09-09 01:01 pm (UTC)I had an old gynecologist tell me that my dysmenorrhea (or however you spell the word for bad periods) was from me being fat. Um, no, bitch. I had terrible periods when I was much thinner. Next idea?
no subject
Date: 2005-09-09 11:58 am (UTC)http://www.hhpr.org/currentissue/fall2003/gaesser.php
"Improvements in insulin sensitivity and
blood lipids as a result of aerobic exercise
training have been documented even in
persons who actually gained body fat during
the intervention."
no subject
Date: 2005-09-09 10:50 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-09-09 11:12 am (UTC)More than two dozen studies in the last 20 years have found that weight loss of more than 10 pounds leads to an increased risk of premature death, sometimes by a margin of several hundred percent. Only about four studies in that same period found that weight loss leads to lower mortality rates: one of them found that a permanent weight loss of 50 pounds would help you live about another month longer.
An American Cancer Society Study in the early 1990s showed that weight loss was associated with higher mortality even after screening out smokers and all deaths that took place within a few years of an individual's entry into the study (to screen out people who were losing weight because they were sick with an incurable disease). A follow up to the study found that obese women were better off if they didn't lose weight. Healthy women who intentially lost weight over the span of a year or longer suffered an increased risk of premature death from cancer, heart disease and other causes that was up to 70 percent higher than that of healthy women who didn't intentionally lose weight. A 1999 report on men found similar results.