French Women Don't Get Fat

[sarahmichigan]

I recently commented in loba's journal that I just finished reading the book "French Women Don't Get Fat," and while I don't agree with every detail of what the author said, I think she's right that, in general, Europeans have a healthier attitude toward food.

French women eat real, dark chocolate, real bread with real butter, coffee with real cream. In small amounts and a few times a week. American women feast on nutrasweet-filled low-fat over-processed crap, or alternate between bingeing and starving.

French women walk three times more in a given day than American women, on average.

French women NEVER talk about dieting at parties and while they may watch portions, they rarely count calories. American women gab on their breaks and at parties about how much they've lost or how they're "bad" because they've gone off the diet, and obsess about how many calories are in each thing they eat.

(yes, these are generalizations and I realize it's not true of all French women or all American women)

I really think that obsessing in a negative way about food, restricting calorie intake so that you feel deprived, thinking about food and about your eating habits in black and white "good/bad" terminology has done more to contribute to weight gain in America than any other phenemenon.

Here's an article that's a little old, but good. Lots of good links to other articles about weight and obesity in the sidebars, too.

http://www.techcentralstation.com/071803B.html

excerpt:

But as dieting has become increasingly more widespread in America, body weights have increased, the January/February 1999 issue of Healthy Weight Journal, after an extensive examination of the evidence surrounding dieting, reported.

In fact, dieting is a predictor of fatness. Among girls who diet their risk for obesity is 3.24 times greater than for nondieters. Dieting among adults is similarly associated with an increased risk of long-term weight gain, according to studies by Allison Daee, R.D., and colleagues at the University of Missouri.

Comments

[pstscrpt.livejournal.com]

In fact, dieting is a predictor of fatness.
But a perception of fatness causes dieting, and I don't think you can deny there's at least some connection with the perception and the reality.

[sarahmichigan.livejournal.com]

I thought I knew what you were saying, and then I wasn't sure.

Are you saying, "Well, sure, fat people diet, so it's obvious that people who diet are more likely to be fat?"

If that's what you're saying, I don't think it's universally true. If you mean, "People *think* they're fat (even if they're) not, and then they diet, and that leads to them getting fatter, not thinner," then I think that's true.

Care to expand/clarify?

[pstscrpt.livejournal.com]

People who think they're fat diet. Quite a few people who think they're fat are correct.

Yes, dieting may frequently make it worse, but I wasn't getting into that.

[sarahmichigan.livejournal.com]

OK, fine, but many girls start dieting at young ages, and that is a predictor for being overweight when they're adult, regardless of whether they actually *were* fat to begin with.

And regardless of all of that, yo-yo dieting almost always makes you fatter in the long run, not thinner. Even the NIH's own study found that the majority of dieters put the weight all back on within 5 years.