Pushing my dieting button

[sarahmichigan]

If 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. . .

Comments

[stacycat69.livejournal.com]

Your rants dont bother me.

In fact, they were a contributor to me wanting to start working out :-)

And, the information you provide is a good service, to me and to others. Keep it up!

[dionysus1999.livejournal.com]

Feeling ornery lately? ;)

[lefthand.livejournal.com]

I saw a study in college (which, of course, makes it really dated) in which the presented silhouettesof women from Auschwitz skinny to morbidly obese. The participants were asked to pick the silhouette that was the most attractive. Oddly enough, men consistent picked a form that was 10-15 heavier than the women picked. That makes that last ten pounds a lot more of a vanity item than an actual social detriment (if one is looking to get laid). Personally, I like women with hips, they look like grown-ups.

[aiela.livejournal.com]

Perhaps if there are people who do not like reading such things, you could take volunteers for a filter for these types of posts.

Myself, I have found Weight Watchers to be a god send for many of my friends who have found their relationship with food spiraling out of control. By chosing to work on -portion control- via Weight Waters vs. deprivation, they've been able to eat all the things they enjoy while retraining their brains to what is an appropriate amount of food to eat.

Myself, I worry more about the people rushing headlong into WLS (and paying CASH for it, because their insurance companies won't pay for it unless they've exhausted all other methods of losing weight, and they aren't willing to do the work to try) than I do someone who decides to go on a diet.

[rikhei.livejournal.com]

This brought up a lot of issues for me, but before I comment on them, what I'd like to know is: how do you define dieting (and weight-loss dieting)? How do you define healthy weight loss?

[razzle.livejournal.com]

Brava!

[m0n90053.livejournal.com]

I crawled over here via your comment to (http://www.livejournal.com/userinfo.bml?user=novapsyche)novapsyche (http://www.livejournal.com/users/novapsyche/)'s Thursday post about wearing short, revealing clothing...

I have seen your icon & username on several comments to her entries in the past, and have been somewhat intrigued, but between your comment to her post and this entry [and now that I've taken a look, several others on this page- I haven't clicked back 20 yet, and probably am not going to do so 'tonight')- I'm not sure what to call how I am feeling at the moment- something between active interest and 'in love'?

(I see from one of your posts that you are married, which causes a mild pang of heartbreak, even though I'm engaged myself- I'm just selfish that way- but in no way do I wish you anything but joy with himself... this is nothing to take seriously, I fall in love at the drop of a hat and am used to it and used to it being nonrequited- I'm no solipsist, to demand that the world overall and with its own desires conform to my own... now I feel I've overcomplicated the issue, and maybe I just shouldn't have mentioned it. At any rate, though I was born in Michigan and have lived there since then (Albion for both, though growing up we also lived in Saginaw for a year or two), I've been gone for 12 years now and have no intention of returning.)

Anyway- I appreciate your candor and lack of rancor in this entry, and also like your take on the matrix poem, except for the last bit, but that must be the really tricky part, and as I haven't tried my hand at it myself, I'm in no position to criticize, so don't take it that I am doing so.