• The bottom line is that you provide yourself the opportunity to eat at regular times.
• The bottom line is that, at those times, you give yourself free reign to eat WHAT and HOW MUCH you want.

Until you’ve got those things down, don’t even bother with “nutrition.” It will only fuck you up.

Eating at regular times doesn’t mean “three measured meals with no snacks in between.” That is some depriving, dictatorial bullshit right there, pushed by groups like Overeaters Anonymous. Do NOT mistake any of what I’m saying here with any of the many, many tricks diet programs have pulled on you to try to get you to eat less.

I don’t want you to eat less. I want you to eat well.

Eating well means eating in a way that feels good, both emotionally and physically. It, emphatically, means getting enough to eat, and getting enough of the foods you really like.

Eating at regular times means, for most people, three meals with one or two or three snacks thrown in for good measure. Unfortunately, most adults have somehow internalized the idea that snacks are bad.

Stop right there. Snacks are not bad — snacks are essential.

Snacks are just as, and sometimes more, important than meals. Snacks get you through the period of desperation between lunch and dinner. Snacks give you a chance to eat some of the fun, bizarre, ridiculous, delicious, non-staple foods (like Cheetos) that it might otherwise be hard to incorporate into a fully-orchestrated meal. (They can also help to regulate your blood sugar, if you want to get all technical.)

They legitimize the hunger that you naturally feel at the mid-morning lull, the mid-afternoon lull, and the late-evening munchy time in front of the TV. We all feel hunger at one or all of these times. There’s no sense in denying it, so we may as well admit it, make it official, and get on with our lives.

Snacks are legitimate, snacks are official, and when you decide that you are going to eat them and make them a non-negotiable part of taking care of yourself with food, you can stop feeling guilty about them immediately.

So let’s do that right now: you are going to eat snacks. (Or snax! Because it’s so much more fun to say. Snax!) Why? Because snacks — official, pre-planned snax! — are part of life. They just are.

Providing yourself with regular opportunities to eat means that you will either pick rough times (like 6am, 9, 12pm, 3, 6, and 9pm again), or pick rough intervals (two or three or four hours) at which you will sit down with food in front of you.

You do not have to eat. But you have to sit down and look at that food and give yourself real, unconditional permission to eat if you want. And to go back for seconds, or thirds, if you need them. Or to eat half of it and change your mind and throw it away. Or to take a couple of bites and hand it to your husband. (Ahem. What?) Or wrap it back up and stick it in the fridge or freezer for another time.

Sound ridiculous and pointless? It’s not. It’s a crucial part of rebuilding trust with your body. It’s caring for your body as you would care for a child.

It’s making a promise to yourself: I will feed you. I will love you. I will let you grow.

Until the promise is made, and kept, and a relationship has been re-established, you cannot go forward toward the top of the pyramid without feeling scared, rebellious, resentful, and suspicious of yourself.

For now, build the bottom of that pyramid. Next time, we’ll dance at the top.

But you want to read something that truly blows this out of the water? Linda Bacon and Lucy Aphramor (two women who each have a large chunk of my heart — and please note that Lucy is a DIETITIAN. Yes, fat-accepting dietitians do exist; here’s another one) have just published a piece in BioMed Central’s Nutrition Journal — which means the full text is available to everyone.

Weight Science: Evaluating the Evidence for a Paradigm Shift.

Assumption: Anyone who is determined can lose weight and keep it off through appropriate diet and exercise.

Evidence: Long-term follow-up studies document that the majority of individuals regain virtually all of the weight that was lost during treatment, regardless of whether they maintain their diet or exercise program [5, 27]. Consider the Women’s Health Initiative, the largest and longest randomized, controlled dietary intervention clinical trial, designed to test the current recommendations. More than 20,000 women maintained a low-fat diet, reportedly reducing their calorie intake by an average of 360 calories per day [102] and significantly increasing their activity [103]. After almost eight years on this diet, there was almost no change in weight from starting point (a loss of 0.1 kg), and average waist circumference, which is a measure of abdominal fat, had increased (0.3 cm) [102].

Learn it. Know it. Live it.

And have an awesome weekend.

Up till now, I’ve just been too lazy to pick out some of the gems for you, but I’m going to start. There are too many hilarious, touching, and/or informative vignettes to let them pass without extra notice.

Today’s accolades go out to Arwen:

I remember reading it [Fit for Life] one hungry day – I did most of my reading of diet books to remind me why I was staying hungry – and there was something about how “people aren’t really meat eaters: you don’t see a squirrel in a park and want to kill it and eat it.”

And I thought, oh, man, squirrel. I bet that would be delicious.

Not only are they often unintentionally hilarious, but they have a certain formula and flavour that promises to reveal something about how marketing, emotion, and motivation interact.

So I’ve gathered a small collection over time. (I buy them used. For one thing, I enjoy the older ones for their vintage charm, but I also figure I’m doing a public service by removing them from the market, while not directly lining the pockets of the authors.) But collecting and actually reading them are two different things, requiring different moods.

Lately, I’ve found myself in the reading mood, and I’ve stumbled across some truly bizarre gems. Here’s one for today:

“About seventeen years ago a very close friend of mine said in a moment of anger, ‘Look, Blimpo, why don’t you just go over there and be fat!’ Blimpo? Me? This statement affected me as if someone had taken a big steel pot, put it over my head, and smashed it with a metal spoon.”

-Fit for Life, Diamond, 1985

There’s a lot of hilarity to be unpacked here, the most obvious being, to me, that the steel pot/metal spoon scenario would swiftly become violent reality if one of my “very close friends” talked to me like this.

But the underlying message here is that verbal abuse is a good motivator to lose weight…rather than a good motivator to administer a well-deserved ass-kicking.

Just think of all that wasted calorie-burning potential.

The first part of the paper, as usual, describes the set-up of the study, and the demographic details of the people who participated. This is a part of studies I always like a lot, because, if it’s an intervention study with both a treatment and control group, I like to see the wondrous effects of good randomization on the average profile of both groups. Because I am a nerd.

In this case, it’s not a treatment group vs. control group comparison, but a profile of your average Weight Watchers Lifetime Member, based on a nationwide sample. And here’s what we get:

(The red markings are mine.)

So, based on this sample, the average Weight Watchers Lifetime Member is a married female, 45 years or older, who started WW weighing 165 lbs. with a BMI of 27.6 (in the overweight range.) She has an income of at least $50,000 a year.

You probably already know that people with BMIs in the overweight range have the lowest relative risk of death:

Overweight was associated with a slight reduction in mortality … relative to the normal weight category.

…and that women tend to live longer than men:

Today, males have greater mortality than females throughout the world. The very few exceptions are in southern Asia where it has been demonstrated that females receive less food and health care than males. With relatively equal treatment, males universally experience greater mortality than females.

…and that people with more money tend to have better health:

The relationship between socioeconomic status and health outcomes is one of the most persistent themes in the epidemiological literature. The strong and growing evidence that higher social and economic status … are associated with better health has led most researchers to conclude that these factors are fundamental determinants of health.

…and that the average income of Weight Watchers Lifetime Members ($50,000 and up) is roughly at or above the median household income for the United States in 2008:

Median income (dollars) 52,175

…and that a higher BMI actually has a protective effect on mortality as people get older.

Which forces me to conclude that the people who become “successful” Lifetime Members of Weight Watchers? Not only are they not very fat to begin with, but also have few of the risk factors that contribute, systemically, to poor health and premature death.

So, for the purposes of this study, at least, we can dispense with the notion that people join Weight Watchers not to diet (since the word “diet” is now outré in diet advertising) — heavens no, but for the good of their health, darling.

In that vein, every year Frances M. Berg (a licensed nutritionist and author from North Dakota who founded the Healthy Weight Journal and wrote books like Women Afraid to Eat, which was one of the first HAES books I ever read and has an incredible list of peer-reviewed references for each chapter) publishes the Slim Chance Awards, which are sort of like the Razzies for terrible diet products.

Cited for “Worst Gimmick” in the Slim Chance Awards is one of my favourite (and by “favourite,” I mean “so ridiculous that I can’t help but laugh”) desperate late-night informercial products:

Worst Gimmick: Kinoki Foot Pads. FTC is suing the marketers of Kinoki Foot Pads with deceptive advertising for their claims that applying the pads to the soles of feet at night will remove heavy metals, metabolic wastes, toxins, parasites, chemicals and cellulite from people’s bodies. The ads also claim that the foot pads can treat depression, fatigue, diabetes, arthritis, high blood pressure and a weakened immune system. All this is based on the quack theory of reflexology, which holds that specific areas of the feet affect specifid organs and glands. Since the foot pads darken, this is claimed as evidence that toxins are being drawn out of the body, but investigators show the darkening is caused by moisture and has nothing to do with “toxins.”

I may as well out myself here as a skeptic. My education is science-based. I believe in the scientific method. And while I’d never discount the joys of the placebo effect, or of fun things that you do purely for entertainment or to gain some kind of spiritual/psychological/symbolic satisfaction, I do have a problem with placebos being marketed as actual cures. Or making claims that are patently false and easily disproved.

Two of my favourite skepty (yeah I just made that word up) blogs are Bad Science and Skepchick.

Tangentially, some people have wondered why, if this is the case, I choose to call myself a “nutritionist,” since that term has such scammy undertones, especially in the U.K. (Just to toot my own horn a little — I actually wrote a pretty scathing piece on Gillian McKeith back in March 2006, before I discovered Ben Goldacre and fell in love. I’ll dig it out of the archives one of these days.)

The short answer for now is: I’m reclaiming the word for people who, you know, actually understand science but who may not be Registered Dietitians (and, yes, there are respectable nutrition practitioners out there who aren’t RDs.) The long answer will come in its own post, later, along with more on Diet Apocrypha.

For now, just enjoy the humourous side of skepticism.

That said, I will probably surprise myself with random posting at some point between now and then — never say never.

If you’re into this kind of thing, please feel free to use this as an open thread of sorts. Random questions and arguments always welcome.

I’ll get the ball rolling by extending something I was kvetching about on Twitter — that because a therapeutic diet is used for the treatment of a specific condition or disease does not mean it is therefore a healthy diet for most people. But I see this argument used again and again by people who’ve come to Jesus (figuratively) by finding a specific diet that helps or even cures their particular ailment, as in the case of gluten intolerance.

And to that, I say, fabulous! I’m glad you found the thing that works for you. Because, truly, different people have different nutritional needs. And it’s often up to us to figure out what those needs are, and what works best, for ourselves.

What I don’t say is, fabulous! Please continue proselytizing as though this diet is now The Answer to All of Humanity’s Ills.

What I also don’t say is, fabulous! By finding a diet that treats your condition, you have also likely stumbled upon the diet that would therefore prevent said condition from occurring in other people.

Cause it just ain’t necessarily so.

Thoughts? Examples? Swearwords? You know what to do.

So, I’m working on this thing I like to call my Unified Theory of Kicking Ass. What that means is, I’m reading and learning stuff about normal eating and nutrition and how people change their behaviour.

I have a pretty decent understanding of this stuff already, since I’ve almost finished my nutrition degree, but I’m looking for something more.

Something that will really help people. Something that will totally kick ass.

The thing is, there are a lot of useful theories around. There’s intuitive eating, and eating competence, and demand feeding, and health at every size, and various non-diet approaches to good nutrition. And we’re going to discuss them all on this blog.

They’re based on solid evidence. They work. And a lot of people really, really like the idea of putting them to work in their own lives.

But that can be really, really hard to do.

I know because I went through it myself.

I had a serious Dieting Incident that really messed me up. It took me five years to relearn to eat, and move, and feel normal with my body again.

I’m not perfect by any means, but I’ve reached a place that is, apparently, enviable: I feel comfortable around food.

I don’t think of food as “good” or “bad.” I don’t see my weight as a reflection of my character. I combine what tastes good and what feels good without a lot of thought. I mostly get hungry at regular times, and I mostly eat until I feel just right. My weight is stable, finally.

I’m cool with food. And I’m pretty cool with my body, too.

Five years ago, I literally thought I would never get to this place. I cried just thinking about it. (Yeah, I’m emotional like that.)

But I’m here, and it’s every bit as awesome as I’d hoped. And the reason I’m writing about it is because, after being involved in the Fatosphere, and reading so many discussions about food and intuitive eating and whatnot, I know there are tons of people out there who feel like I did — that normal eating will never happen for them.

Well, I think it can. And I’m here to help.

Normal eating is what we’re born to do — and I truly believe we can relearn how to do it, if it’s necessary. (And it is.)

So, you’re here. I’m over the moon you’re here, because I really need your help with this.

I’ll tell you what I figure out along the way. I’ll bounce ideas off you. In return, I hope you’ll give me your suggestions, your thoughts, your stories and your support.

Help me develop this thing, this Unified Theory, and I’ll be your biggest fan. Seriously. How could I not?

Now, if my friends were the type who evangelized about diets, and overwhelmed every conversation we had with diet talk, or barged into fat-acceptance-land and started being all diety, and if I found it obnoxious and/or triggering of my own neuroses around food and weight, I think I’d start to care very much. But it seems my immediate reaction is curiosity — one of my friends said she was on Weight Watchers, and I felt compelled to ask, “Do you like it?” to which she responded, hilariously, “Well, no. I like to eat food.”

Similarly, if my friends went around bashing fat people and saying things that were patently offensive about fat people, or even just bodies and appearance in general, then I’d feel morally obligated to talk to them about that, and it might not always be while using my Inside Voice. I would expect the same from them, if I were to say something boneheaded about race or religion (which I have certainly done, and to which they have responded passionately, much to their credit.)

But I suppose I am lucky, because my friends don’t do those things. If they ever have, it was long ago, before they were aware of the existence of fat acceptance and my own involvement in it. And since I made them aware of my feelings about being fat and about how fat people are treated, they seem to have thought it over and decided, yeah, you know what? It’s not cool make nasty judgments about people based on the way they look.

Like I said, I am lucky to have awesome friends.

So, in those few instances where I overhear in passing that one of my friends is trying to lose a few, it really doesn’t bug me. I know they’re aware of my viewpoint, and I really don’t need to belabor the point — they get it, at least conceptually. I don’t expect them to line up politically with me, or to make the same personal choices I’ve made, or have a perfectly complementary worldview. I value having friends and loved ones with different opinions, as long as we can treat each other with respect.

(Now, other people in fat acceptance may not be comfortable having friends who diet, because it touches an area that remains painfully sensitive to them, and they may need to distance themselves from those friends — and that’s fine. That’s them. We do get to choose our friends, and people have varying levels of comfort for disagreement.)

Anyway, the thing I’ve noticed, once or twice, is that when a friend of mine does choose to purposely try to lose weight, I detect a — shall we say particle? — of defensiveness. That’s what I’d like to address.

Look, my very good friends who I’ve loved since childhood — you don’t have to justify your personal actions to me. You already know what I think about dieting, but this isn’t about me. Your choices are yours, and as long as they’re not harming other people, or impacting my sanity, or doing overt damage to your own well-being — (and there’s a fine line there, because you can be damned sure I’m sensitive to signs of eating-disordered behaviour if I know someone is unhappy with their body. I once had a boyfriend who claimed that it was perfectly normal to chew up tasty food and then spit it out while dieting! I had to tell him straight out, that? Is disordered eating. And he was massively offended, because eating disorders are for girls, but I wasn’t about to keep quiet on that shit) — then your choices are your own, they remain your own, and I’m not going to badger you about them.

Your shit is your shit to figure out, and sometimes the only way out is through. In fact, the way I came to the place of relative peace I now inhabit with my body was by experiencing dieting in all its fucked-upness. I am not about to take that learning opportunity away from you, if you feel you need it. And if, in the end, you decide dieting is really not a tool of the devil, and you have no particular problem with it? Then whatever. I still won’t have a particular problem with you, either, unless you make it my problem.

No, I don’t agree with it, but we don’t have to agree. We just have to love each other, and thankfully we really, really do.

A famous actress was quoted in the newspaper regarding a role that required her to gain weight. Something about the quote struck me as odd. To paraphrase, she said, “Sure, it sounds great to gain weight. You can indulge all your fantasies of endless chocolate, unlimited pasta and garlic bread…but after a while your blood glucose goes crazy, you’re all over the place, and it doesn’t feel good.”

At first blush, the quote makes sense. It’s true; if you’re eating too much for your needs, or a diet nutritionally unbalanced for your needs, it’s not going to feel good — it’s going to feel gross. Fair enough. But the thing that stuck in my craw was the idea of someone even having fantasies about unlimited chocolate and pasta and garlic bread in the first place.

Now, food fantasies probably won’t sound weird to most people, because most people — and forgive me if this sounds mean — live with a slightly eating-disordered ideation about food, thanks to our culture. But in my experience, having these fantasies, and looking forward to any ‘excuse’ to indulge in them, is highly dysfunctional.

The fact is, a person who restricts their food intake, especially due to weight concerns (or the myriad related ‘health concerns’ that are just an attempted sublimation of the desire to lose weight, look better, gain social privilege, etc.) will have food fantasies. As the food restriction gets more severe, the fantasies get wilder, and the food behaviours more erratic. Remember the details from the Ancel Keys study, “The Biology of Human Starvation.” Recall the food compulsions reported among anorectic patients, people who are supposedly ‘not hungry’ (I assure you, they are, and they obsess about food more than they would if they actually ate it.) Think of the hot-fudge-sundae fantasies that most likely drifted through your dreams last time you were on a diet; craving pasta and potatoes during Atkins’; longing for cream sauces and marbled steaks on Pritikin.

Maybe it’s not enough to do damage, the type of moderate-to-mild food restriction that goes on commonly in the culture, prompting these harmless-sounding, Willy-Wonkaesque food fantasies. Maybe not. But maybe it is.

To divert for a moment, let’s consider the Willy Wonka river-of-chocolate, candy-growing-on-trees fantasy. Who is this designed to appeal to? Children.
Because their food intake is restricted? Well, perhaps in some cases, but I think the larger reason why the Willy Wonka fantasy appeals to children is that children are at their most metabolically active. They are growing; they have huge energy and nutritional requirements by unit body mass, much larger than adults, and in such a state, it’s natural that someone would fantasize about food, crave candy and sugary treats, adore birthday cake and cookies and, well, to do all the funny things with food (and particularly, sweets) that children are renowned for. Much the same goes for pregnant women, who are nourishing a rapidly-growing bundle of cells with their own bodies.

But is it normal for most adults — who should be in a metabolically stable state — to have these types of longings and fantasies and cravings? No. It is a sign that something could be wrong with your food intake and your nutritional status, or even out-of-whack metabolically, hormonally. Maybe nothing severely wrong, not yet, but definitely trending in that direction, and definitely taking away from your quality of life — even if it’s ‘just’ from your emotional well-being. The plain fact is, if you’re not getting enough to eat, it will eventually catch up with you. You will feel tired, hungry, or irritable. You will be distracted by food fantasies and maybe by the restrictive food rules you impose on yourself. You won’t be able to enjoy social meals as much. Your quality of life will suffer, and your performance in all areas of your life will suffer.

Any why infantilize yourself like that? Why subvert your real goals, your real life, to dream about food all day long? One of the first areas where a child learns to exert control is in eating. It is an area fundamental to the awakening of human autonomy. We are big boys and girls now; we get to choose what to eat, and how much of it.

In my experience, when you do two things — 1) stop food restriction, and mentally grant yourself permission to eat whatever you want, whenever you want, however much you want — and 2) pay attention to how eating makes your body react, so that you can balance short-term pleasure with longer-term well-being, so that you are nourished both physically and mentally — when you do these things (and they are not easy, not as simple as they sound, and can take years of effort), the food fantasies will end.

Because do you find yourself fantasizing about breathing air and drinking water on a daily basis? No? Enough said.

P.S. To bring this full-circle: when looking up “The Biology of Human Starvation” on Google Books, the first ad on the side of the results page said “How celebs stay thin.” Terribly apt.

The word ‘diet’ has become terribly perverted from its original, life-affirming definition. In the original sense, diet meant: “food and drink regularly provided or consumed; habitual nourishment.” (www.webster.com.) In the last century or so, it has taken on a second, uglier definition: a particular way of eating, especially to achieve weight loss (or, euphemistically, to achieve health, which 95% of the time includes losing weight.) THAT is the kind of diet I’m talking about.

Let me fill you in on a couple things. First of all, a diet in the secondary sense is always temporary. Even if you call it “a whole new way of eating” or a “lifestyle change.” If you’re really and truly making a lifestyle change, it’s probably going to be so gradual that you can’t refer to it collectively. It’s going to fit in seamlessly with your life so that it doesn’t NEED a name all its own. This is the point.

Anyone who says they are embarking on a “lifestyle change” is going on a diet, plain and simple. Sometimes they will insist that the “maintenance” period (which comes after the weight loss) PROVES that what they are doing is for life. Actually, it proves the opposite. If you go from ‘actively losing’ to ‘maintaining’ you have been on a diet. Maintaining itself is a type of diet, though typically not as restrictive as the original weight loss diet. And the funniest part about maintenance? Ask anyone who’s done it: maintenance is hard…even harder than weight loss.

Why is that? Well, one, because the thrill of seeing your body change is gone. The excitement and novelty have worn off by the time you’ve reached maintenance. Now you’re down to the dirty work of trying to convince your body to behave at a certain weight…for the rest of your life. To eat a certain amount, to do a certain exercise. Maintenance is rigid control and every bit as dysfunctional as weight loss…though you may get to eat a whole extra 200 calories per day (yippee.) It’s not surprising that many people succeed at losing massive amounts of weight, only to trip up during the maintenance period.

For this reason, even supposed “lifestyle changes” and “maintenance plans” can be considered dieting. Why? To recap: because they’re restrictive, unrealistic in the long-term, and represent a rift in your life where you’ve abruptly gone from one mode of living to another…one different enough to be affixed with a label. No matter how you spell it, the label always reads “DIET.”

What about those people who have credible success stories? Those people who have lost lots of weight and kept it off (by doing the “diet” thing) for quite a long time? These stories are easy to access on the Internet. But you have to know that you cannot rely on anecdotal reports as evidence that something is true (this is a basic tenet of critical thinking.) The thing is, everyone is different. Why this worked for someone is a great mystery…but chances are, the same thing isn’t going to work for you. I have also noticed that, while on the surface it appears there are a great deal of success stories to be read (especially on the Internet) if you read enough of them, you start noticing that there are probably less than a fifty, just very well recycled.

For statistical evidence, check The National Weight Control Registry, an organization which boasts 3,000 registered members who have successfully kept of about 30 pounds for five years or longer. This sounds pretty impressive, doesn’t it? It gives a weight-watcher reason to hope. But wait a second. According to the Calorie Control Council, there are currently 51 million dieters in the U.S. alone. Of these 51 million, only 3,000 are KNOWN to be successful. What kind of success rate is that? About 0.00006%. You’d be better off spending your Healthy Choice frozen dinner money on lottery tickets.

Not only is dieting a dismal failure for 99.99994% of those who attempt it, studies have shown that dieting is harmful to your health. Restricting food intake can lead not only to nutritional deficiencies, but psychological stress and eating disorders. Excessive exercise can cause physical injury and can be addicting. And yo-yo dieting, the phenomenon whereby most people who lose weight gain it back (and then some) precipitating a cycle of repeated dieting and regain, has been scrutinized in research which suggests it leads to higher mortality rates and can actually make a person FATTER in the long run.

Now, if you’ve ever been duped into dieting, I’m not saying that YOU’RE stupid: not at all. In fact, based on popular information from both media and government sources, you made a pretty reasonable choice. And of course not everyone has the time to be a nutrition scholar. That’s why we have Registered Dietitians and other professionals to help guide people whose lives revolve around things OTHER than nutrition.

To help you make better choices about what to believe in the future, I offer the following advice: do not listen to the popular media when it comes to your health. In most cases, the media is there to provide hard news information and entertainment. They are not health gurus. Journalists do an admirable job to dig up interesting stories, but when it comes to health, this can only make things more confusing.

Why? Because they claim the number comes from the Ancel Keys study (which they refer to as “a single study performed during WWII.”) They fail to mention that the Ancel Keys Biology of Human Starvation study is considered the source for information about human behaviour under conditions of food restriction. The study was NOT undertaken with a view to assess the effectiveness of ‘dieting.’

The purpose of the study was to place subjects on the same rations estimated to be available in war-torn countries of Europe in order to see how people could be expected to react, and to determine a minimum level of food consumption for health and well-being. The volunteer subjects were expected to endure these restricted rations only for a certain period of time, and then undergo a ‘refeeding’ period where they regained weight and went back up to their normal level of food intake, and then assessed to see if any long-term effects of the restriction lingered. [See Ancel Keys, The Biology of Human Starvation, 1950.]

Under these conditions, how could anyone cite this study as measuring the effectiveness of weight loss diets? These men were INTENDED to gain back whatever weight they lost, so it would be impossible to determine if their ‘diet’ (aka ‘semistarvation period’) was ‘successful.’

Hogwash. None of the sources I have seen that use the 98% statistic have cited Ancel Keys’ study as the originator of this number. The most reasonable-sounding explanation so far is that this number was obtained from the Aldebaran letter, which cites a poll which I have yet to find.

Furthermore, this paper cites The National Weight Control Registry as ‘encouraging’ evidence that weight loss and weight-control are not hopeless. I have read elsewhere that this registry consists of about 3,000 weight loss successes, and their definition of ‘success’ is something like “losing an average of 66 pounds and gaining back less than 30 pounds within 5.5 years.” Not exactly flying colours, eh?

If the 98% figure is true, The National Weight Control Registry may actually be VERIFYING it with their numbers…the statistics regarding how many Americans are dieting at any given time are HUGE…even only 2% of this number would still be a considerable amount of people, though clinically insignificant. According to the Calorie Control Council, 51 million Americans are dieting. 51 million. Do you know what 2% of 51 million is? It’s over 1 million. 1 million, 20 thousand, to be exact. If the 98% figure is actually TRUE, then over 1 million people should have successfully lost weight (or lost “an average of 66 pounds and gained back less than 30 pounds over 5.5 years.”) Out of over one million people, only 3,000 of them managed to sign up with the National Weight Control Registry? 0.3% of successful dieters (which is only .00006% of all dieters?) Something seems MIGHTY fishy here. I don’t think the Registry is doing any favours for the diet industry if they can only show a success rate of 0.00006% for all dieters.

Anyway, the idea that the 98% figure originates from a study undertaken when ‘dieting’ was less common than it is today, and undertaken to study the effects of semi-starvation, not the effectiveness of dieting, is just silly. The 98% figure may very well be a myth, but if it is, it certainly isn’t one that originated from this particular study.

The rest of the PDF paper is interesting though, and I’ll be sure to read it and check out its sources.

This is turning into a wild goose-chase. I have yet to hear back from the founder of NAAFA on the 98% statistic. I think I will start checking out that ‘poll’ mentioned in the Aldebaran letter.

What about fat women who’ve tried to love themselves and have failed at that too?

It’s a curious dilemma. I mean, what do you do when not only diets have failed you, but your effort to try and accept yourself has failed? You’re kind of stuck, and I don’t think it would be a fun place to be stuck. You know that dieting is pretty stupid, but you’re starting to think that the idea of actually *liking* your big ugly body is starting to sound stupid as well…

I have a few questions, and please don’t take offense…I’m just trying to understand.

-Have you put as much effort into learning to accept yourself as you have put into dieting? Have you thrown out the ‘thin’ clothes and bought new ones that you like? Have you read books and websites?

-Have you talked to your spouse or partner about this; does your spouse or partner find your body unattractive? Have you talked to your family? Do your relatives harass you about losing weight?

-Have you found a doctor who is not prejudiced about size? They do exist.

-Have you looked for a size-friendly exercise or support group? They also exist.

The reason I ask this is because learning to love yourself is not easy. If anything, it’s even harder than dieting, but with one important difference: in the end, you will succeed. But the effort must be real. Self-love does not automatically appear when you decide you’re done dieting. It takes work and effort.

Ask yourself this: Suppose you have a set amount of energy to apply to a task. And you have two choices. Which one are you going to choose to spend your energy on? Dieting, which works for most people only in the SHORT TERM, and can make you feel worse about yourself if you gain the weight back…or self-love, which will produce long-term results and can actually improve your physical and mental health?

Making the choice is easy. It’s following through with the choice that takes work. Loving yourself requires ACTIVE changes, since everything in our culture is geared to weight loss. When you look up health, you find weight loss. When you look up nutrition, you find weight loss. When you look up body image, you find weight loss. Therefore, if you sit passively back, the tides of our culture will gradually erode your resolve not to focus on weight loss. You must actively seek out size-positive information and support.

If anyone needs resources for self-love, ASK ME. I have tons, and am more than willing to share. There are websites, books, advocacy groups, dietitians, doctors, and researchers galore who believe in health at any size.

And, for the record: I do not advocate weight gain. My agenda is encouraging people of all sizes to live healthy lifestyles, regardless of weight. I actually believe that keeping a STABLE weight is healthiest of all, whether you start off fat or thin. Sometimes you will gain or lose naturally; but that is not my concern. My concern is for people to love and respect themselves, their bodies, and each other.

One last thing: a note on medical conditions. PCOS has been mentioned to me more than once now, by two different people. I don’t know the specifics of the disorder other than what I have read here, but what I’ve heard is that the condition results in a higher weight, and a harder time controlling weight for women who have it.

To this I offer the following logic: we’ve determined that for perfectly healthy people, controlling weight is near impossible, unless through extreme, unhealthy measures (we’re talking self-starvation, bulimia, compulsive exercise, weight-loss surgery, etc.) In fact, it is so difficult for normal people to control their weight that many health professionals have decided to encourage people not to worry about weight, and focus instead on living healthfully (which means eating nutritious food and exercising regularly.)

Therefore, if you have a medical condition which makes losing weight even MORE difficult than it already is for normal people, why would it make sense to try losing weight? You’re fighting a losing battle. For anyone with a medical condition, I think it is conservative to say that you should eat well and exercise moderately. Why add to the stresses of your condition the impossible task of trying to control an uncontrollable weight?

When I turned 16, something weird happened. I got pretty. And suddenly all those people who once told me I was ugly and fat and a dork, were now telling me I was desirable. I couldn’t buy it. Those people had betrayed me before, and I frankly didn’t give a fuck to hear any more of their opinions. All the same, I felt the need to live up to some kind of expectation. I was concerned with my looks and would not leave the house unless I felt I looked good enough. There were many times I skipped school simply because I had a big zit or had picked my face raw (one of my many ways of dealing with anxiety) the night before. I weighed around 160lbs. during this time.

When I got out of high school, and away from all that kind of pressure, I became more independent and stopped being so worried. So by the time I left home to get married, I thought I had outgrown these problems. I was wrong.

About six months into our marriage, I noticed I had gained weight. I was now about 200lbs. Hitting the 200 mark was a blow, as much as I hated to admit it. I wanted to pretend I didn’t care, but I no longer could. My jeans were uncomfortably tight…I had trouble tying my shoes…I felt depressed and lethargic (no thanks to the oppressive Ontarian winter) and I felt the need to DO something.

For a few months, I studied nutrition on my own (at this time I was immigrating, and therefore forced into housewifedom with no job and no school) and tried to figure out the best way to get healthy. After researching for a while, near the beginning of summer I finally decided to put what I’d learned into practice. I vowed to myself that I would do this ‘the right way.’ This meant no fad dieting, no starving myself, and no compulsive exercising. I would simply keep a log of what I ate, make sure I ate the daily requirements from the four food groups, and exercise moderately, keeping my calories around 1800 a day. I made sure to keep telling myself that this was not a diet…it was a lifestyle change, and after I reached my goal weight, I would stick to a maintenance program for the rest of my life.

By no means is this extreme practice…most commercial diets hover around 1000 calories a day. I signed up with an online dieting website for moral support, and most of the women there were doing their own thing, like me, but were eating about 1200 calories a day. I would later learn that 1500 calories is considered semi-starvation, and that, not much below 1000 calories, you’re getting into anorexia nervosa territory.

It started off well. I felt an incredible surge of pride and almost euphoria. For once in my life, I was doing The Right Thing. I was doing something that everyone I knew could be proud of. I was encouraged by my husband, my mother and brother, my in-laws, and their friends. I even worked out a system where I could still eat as much chocolate as I wanted…whenever I wanted a candy bar, I simply had to walk to the store to get it (which, according to my calculations, burned about the same amount of calories as was in the chocolate, and so they canceled each other out. Theoretically, I could have eaten five chocolate bars a day and walked to the store five times a day, and not derailed my program at all.)

The weight came off around 1-2 pounds a week. I didn’t weigh myself more than once a week, and I tried not to get too wrapped up in the weight game. I set my goal weight for around 120 lbs., which, for my height (5’4″) is quite reasonable, according to the BMI. I only hesitated for a moment on the thought that I hadn’t weighed 120 lbs. since I was 11 years old.

On a bit of a side note, I went away to be a volunteer counselor at a camp for kids whose lives have been affected by cancer for two weeks during the summer. I returned home tan, happy, but with a small cold virus. The virus bloomed into pneumonia, which stayed with me for ten weeks. It drove me crazy because I could not exercise much while I was sick, but I stuck to my plan as much as I could.

Soon I found myself celebrating my ten pound weight loss. Not long after that, it was 20. I was so happy. I was putting away $10 for each pound I lost, with a view to buying myself a whole new wardrobe with the money once I reached my goal weight. I noticed something funny, however. Though I could now look at myself in the mirror with a feeling of approval, I was feeling slowly and slowly worse about myself. My body felt huge and wrong to me when I was not looking at myself; the feeling would persist until I proved it wrong by checking the mirror or stepping on the scale.

When the Sears Winter Catalog came out, I ordered a new pair of winter boots. They were black leather, mid-calf height, with a zipper up the side and high heels. Very cool. When they came, I was a bit disappointed that they wouldn’t zip all the way up my plump calves. I carefully wrapped them in the tissue paper they came in and put them in the closet, knowing that soon they would fit.