Comments on: Hey looka there, it’s the New York Times.

By: NewMe

NewMe — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 17:45:36 +0000

Michelle – You are an awesome ranter! I love your stuff.

I actually linked to these two articles on my own blog a few days ago.

I’m really neither fish nor fowl when it comes to weight loss. This year, I finally came around to understanding that diets are truly the work of the devil! I refuse to count calories, carbs or anything else but I do admit to wanting to lose weight. I have a “good” (personal, health-related) reason to do so but I will admit that it’s really because I think I look better slimmer.

Since January, I have been making a concerted effort to eat intuitively/consciously. It makes perfect sense to me in a way that dieting never did and never will. I have lost a modest amount of weight, but more importantly, I’ve lost a sh*tload of anger. I eat what I want, dammit, and that usually means real food of all kinds with a happy dash of sweets from time to time.

I probably hang out too much with the weight-loss blogger crowd. There are some very fine, caring people in this community but I start feeling very frustrated reading about how so and so is “on” or “off” plan, has been “bad” or “good” and has carried their own doggie bag of “good, on-plan” food with them wherever they go. Is this a life?

I need more of the type of bloggish sustenance you provide!

By: Carolyn

Carolyn — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 00:12:33 +0000

Oh yes, because I am actually concerned with HEALTH and not just weight than I am an ignorant asshole who eats baby flavored doughnuts by the handful. Screw health amiright? We should all just look fuckable and then no one would be sad or sick.

GAAAHHHHHHH!!!

By: Jenny

Jenny — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 17:12:42 +0000

Yeah, in my case the doctors were shocked SHOCKED at how a healthy 30-year-old who, at the time, was engaging in high-intensity physical exercise almost every single day, could get as sick as I was. The pneumonia, in my case, turned septic and I was going into septic shock when I finally went to a doctor. 4 days in the ICU and another week in the hospital and six months later, I still feel very tired. I really do think dieting makes it harder for your body to defend itself against infection.

Ten Weeks, though. That’s awful. :(

By: Melissa

Melissa — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 15:14:30 +0000

Wow that video link to MeMe Roth was great!
Thank you Stuart Varney for laying it onto her! She make me ill.

By: JennyRose

JennyRose — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 18:57:39 +0000

Michelle – please post some sort of warning. Snorting coffee out my nose while I laughed kind of hurt.

Also, the day when Walter Willett doesn’t sound like a patronizing douchebag will be the day my large intestine spontaneously crawls out my ass and shapes itself into a delightful panorama depicting scenes from Little House on the Prairie.

By: Michelle

Michelle — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 16:16:07 +0000

Yep, I sure did. I picked up a respiratory virus at summer camp (I was a counselor) and it turned into a really nasty case of pneumonia that lasted ten weeks.

Not exactly “normal” for a healthy 21-year old. Don’t know if it can be directly attributed to the diet, but it never happened again once I stopped dieting.

By: Jenny

Jenny — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 16:05:11 +0000

Whoa, you got pneumonia on a diet? I am curious because after I lost 50 pounds, I got pneumonia (I also had to get my gall bladder removed from all the stones). I am just surprised that this has happened to other people.

By: Michelle

Michelle — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 14:36:37 +0000

Speaking of MR, I lol'd so hard at this.

By: Michelle

Michelle — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 14:27:30 +0000

You’re right. That is totally beautiful. And I’m sure Isaac Newton would agree. Newton vs. Willett — that’s a cage match I’d pay to see.

By: WellRoundedType2

WellRoundedType2 — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 13:45:05 +0000

I agree, I think that weight is beautiful.
As in “the force with which a body is attracted toward the earth or a celestial body by gravitation and which is equal to the product of the mass and the local gravitational acceleration.” (Merriam-Webster’s Online Dictionary)
‘Cause, without it, wouldn’t we all float away?

By: Michelle

Michelle — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 13:34:54 +0000

Yeah, the fascinating part is that the advice people like Willett and Roth hand out lead to such wonderful outcomes as the lady described in the beginning of the article — who went to Weight Watchers 27 times. Holy crap, that’s gotta be rough.

Talk about misconceptions.

By: Rachel

Rachel — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 13:28:35 +0000

Were Walter Willett and MeMe Roth separated at birth? I think some of the cold, hard science that has come out indicating that fat isn’t a death sentence might also have something to do with the “misconception” that weight doesn’t matter.

By: Michelle

Michelle — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 13:09:11 +0000

…what are you doing out of bed, young miss? Get back in there!

By: Dee

Dee — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 13:00:56 +0000

Quoted in the new York Times! How cool is that? I love this paragraph, though:

“Virtually everyone who is overweight would be better off at a lower weight,” said Walter Willett, chairman of the nutrition department at the Harvard School of Public Health. “There’s been this misconception, fostered by the weight-is-beautiful groups, that weight doesn’t matter. But the data are clear.”

How fucking patronizing. But thanks, Dr. Willett. I had no idea that I had been involved in “weight is beautiful” groups. Then, just the other day, I found myself peering into a construction site and admiring the beauty of some concrete blocks and I-beams. Now I know that I’ve convinced myself that weight is beautiful. Funny how everything out in space just looks unattractively weightless to me now – unless it passes close to a body with a strong gravitational pull. Then it’s beautiful.

By: WellRoundedType2

WellRoundedType2 — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 12:45:28 +0000

Agreed! I loved seeing that quote from you!