Lara Frater's Blog, page 5

More reasons that dieting doesn't work at all

Market Watch has a top ten list of what the Diet Industry won't tell you.

#2 is dieting makes you fat.

While the point of a diet is to lose weight, often the reverse happens: We end up fatter than when we started. “Diets don’t work long-term,” says psychotherapist and eating coach Karen R. Koenig...

I have been blogging for almost 10 years where I have repeatedly said dieting makes you fat. I have always believed that if I had HAES instead of a diet,  right now I would weigh less and love my fat body more.

The constant pressure to diet does nothing, and can even makes things worse. The only purpose of dieting is to lose weight. People don't go to Weight Watchers, Jenny Craig, do the Paleo diet or Atkins because they want to stay the same weight. They go to lose and when the weight loss stops, so does the diet.

Meanwhile Health at Every Size removes the weight loss component and focuses on health. Health can't fully be identified. As ASDAH defines:

The Association for Size Diversity and Health (ASDAH) affirms a holistic definition of health, which cannot be characterized as simply the absence of physical or mental illness, limitation, or disease. Rather, health exists on a continuum that varies with time and circumstance for each individual. Health should be conceived as a resource or capacity available to all regardless of health condition or ability level, and not as an outcome or objective of living. Pursuing health is neither a moral imperative nor an individual obligation, and health status should never be used to judge, oppress, or determine the value of an individual. 

ASDAH has updated the definition of HAES to further remove healthism (Healthism is the bias against a person because they don't fit the "picture of health". For fat people, a fat person who eats right and exercise is defined as morally superior to a fat person who doesn't).

The Health At Every Size® Principles are:

Weight Inclusivity: Accept and respect the inherent diversity of body shapes and sizes and reject the idealizing or pathologizing of specific weights.
Health Enhancement: Support health policies that improve and equalize access to information and services, and personal practices that improve human well-being, including attention to individual physical, economic, social, spiritual, emotional, and other needs.
Respectful Care: Acknowledge our biases, and work to end weight discrimination, weight stigma, and weight bias. Provide information and services from an understanding that socio-economic status, race, gender, sexual orientation, age, and other identities impact weight stigma, and support environments that address these inequities.
Eating for Well-being: Promote flexible, individualized eating based on hunger, satiety, nutritional needs, and pleasure, rather than any externally regulated eating plan focused on weight control.
Life-Enhancing Movement: Support physical activities that allow people of all sizes, abilities, and interests to engage in enjoyable movement, to the degree that they choose.

As I mentioned last week (And many other times), the stigma fat people get just trying to exercise. Making fun of someone who is slow or can only manage a walk around the block does nothing to help them by healthy.

Further than before

I have written multiple times about the stigma fat people face when they try to exercise. They feel uncomfortable with stares and ridicule. Recently dancer Ragen Chastain completed a 26 mile marathon because she was slower than the rest, she was ridiculed. Including a comment such as this:

This is ridiculous. The author wasn't trained to do a marathon and wallowed through the course at 28min/mile pace. How is doing any physical activity at barely over TWO MILES PER HOUR anything other than just sad?

I recently came back from Colorado. On vacation I'm often move more because I have the time. On the second day I was there we went to the hot springs where I swam as much as possible in bath-like water.

The next day we did the Mantiou Incline. The incline is a railroad track with the steel beams removed and the wooden tracks used as steps. There are three points up. The half-way point (More like 60%), the false summit, and the actual summit. I knew we were planning to do it and even though I'd rather swim three miles than walk up one, I had planned to at least do it part of the way. Because it was later in the day, we planned to just go to the halfway point.

It was extremely difficult. About half-way there, I thought my heart was going to fall out of my chest. I had my friend screaming at me to get moving because the sun was going down and we were all going to freeze to death (we weren't) while I had my husband quietly assuring me I could make it because I was the strongest woman he knew.

This was my response to my friend.

Feeling bad about my body has always lowered my self-esteem and made me think I was incapable of finishing anything that meant success for me. I wasn't surprised as I got closer to the end, I stopped more and more frequently. A fat person was not allowed to make this feat. After all, fat people aren't supposed to be athletic, they are supposed to be lazy slobs.

Coming down off the mountain, I got a lot of kudos from people who passed me as I huffed and puffed up the mountain. Part of me felt this was condescention, that yes a fat person made it to the halfway point, but instead I thought they were just being supportive and didn't want me to give up.

The point here is not that you have to make it up the Manitou incline but that fat people not only deserve movement without stigma and that we cannot allow stigma to block our way to the top.

Next year I will get to the summit.

 

 

Accepting that it just doesn't work

No blog post next week. I will be away.

In 2013, Sandra Aamodt, a neuroscientist, who does not appear pro-fat acceptance gave a Ted talk were she tells the audience that dieting doesn't work and can be harmful. She further points out that controlled eating leads to binging where mindful eating leads to less thoughts about food. In her  talk she pretty much says something like Health at Every Size is the right way to go as far as getting healthy. She points out a study where people who do four health habits: eating right, exercising, not smoking and drinking in moderation, lived about the same if they did all four habits. Only when they didn't do any of these habits did weight matter.

Dieting on the other hand did more harm than good.

The Fox Run inn in Vermont has taken over the Slim Chance Awards. Which annually gives awards to the worst of the worst diets.

This years winners were: The Special K Challenge, Non-Invasive Body Contouring, Cotton Ball Diet (which may be an urban legend), and the Tongue Patch.

At the same time the FTC has yet again cracked down on diet scams and has charged these diets with fraud: Sensa Products, L’Occitane, HCG Diet Direct and LeanSpa all have to pay consumers for misleading advertisements. Although they will admit no wrong doing. I much rather they admit it they lied than pay. As they take advantage of the desperate.
 
It's time to start accepting that Diets (those who make you eat less than your body needs) do not work in the long term and can also be dangerous. And it's best that we chuck the WW membership, the Jenny Craig food, the fad diets, and instead create actual healthy habits.
 
 

 

 

2014 the year to love your body all over again.

Happy New Year!

I guarantee this year all woman (and now even men) will hate their bodies. They will think it's too fat, too skinny, too old, not enough or too much hair, too curvy or not curvy enough. They’ll hate their nose, lips, eyes, ears. Women will cover their lovely complexions with make-up, while men will cover bald spots.

January is the time that we reflect on what changes we want to make for the year. Some people make resolutions. One of the big ones is to lose weight and/or get in shape. Some will do DIY dieting, others will commercial plans like Weight Watchers. Gyms will fill up. Since late December, I’ve been getting a ridiculous amount of groupons for gyms, gym equipment, diet supplements, and diet foods.

Usually things are fine in the beginning then results taper off. Weight loss stops, hunger takes over as the body rebels against not getting enough food. Then the diet ends with the person feeling like they not the diet fails. Not everyone who diets is "fat". We are far too pressured to fit into what I call the Hollywood cookie cutter that considers Jennifer Lawrence and Kate Winslett fat. Women feel they need to get into a body that doesn't belong to them instead of learning to love the body they are in.

I believe if you can't love your body with all its "flaws" you cannot love yourself. I say for 2014, let’s make a resolution everyone should do. Skip the dieting and instead work on loving the body you are in.

Result Still Not Typical

Weight Watchers Centers all over are preparing for the January rush. Every January people guilty due to overeating during the holidays will make it their New Year's Resolution to lose weight. Even though they did exactly the same last year. After they ditched their diet the previous year. Maybe they made it to March or even to Halloween. The halls of Weight Watchers usually empty after that because in reality WW isn't a lifestyle change but a diet. Something you can't stick to during the holiday months.

During my dieting years, I actually stuck with WW for the holiday season. Granted I had figured out patterns where I could binge eat, namely Thursday night right after the meeting. I think I managed to lose weight on WW only because I started when I was 16 and hadn't yet damaged my metabolism.

Now, I don't diet come January or through the holidays. Yes, I eat more. I won't deny that. I have a lot more parties to go to. There are leftovers, gifts of desserts, and after Christmas sales. What I make sure I do is to keep up my healthy habits. I make sure I eat my vegetables, I make sure that I move and I don't care if I've gained weight or not.

Resolutions to be healthier don't have to start on Jan 1 (or in dieter's cases Jan 3, after all the junk food is gone). When you want to do something for your body. Do it right now. In fact I'm just about to get it a cup of water.

Have a Happy New Year! Remember Results Not Typical. 

 

I see you in the mirror

Pick up almost any book by a fat person about their diet history, it will be almost the same story. Even books like Diary of a Fat Housewife where the author was "victorious over fat" has the same story of the diet cycle. This cycle involved going on a diet, losing weight, feeling "great" and then slowly the diet would fail. The person would regain the weight plus more and feel terrible about themselves. Every time I read these stories, I saw my own. I found I had higher self-esteem the more weight I lost. When the loss would stop, I would become depress and hate myself.

I'm always annoyed that studies showing fatness being worse than Hitler  don't include a dieting history. Maybe they might find chronic dieting to be the culprit of many "obesity-related diseases."
My own diet history had almost everything I read in other books, except I never got prescription diet pills or had WLS. Perhaps it was because at the time I was under the glass ceiling of size 16. Size 16 and under meant you should continue dieting, but it's not as serious because you don't have death fat. Death fat is where fat because unacceptable and dangerous, whether it is or not. I was fat but not death fat and doctors didn't push pills on me (instead I used OTC ones). Their treatment was often lectures on going on diets with no real practical advice on getting healthy. The stories I read about fatties with the dreaded death fat were similar to mine but the dieting was often more extreme. For example this woman who had "Death fat." Her story is similar to mine as we both hated our bodies. But she never accepted herself and did anything she could to lose weight including surgery that nearly killed her (Warning it is graphic).

I weigh 165 now, and that's still too much for me. I have become much more comfortable with my personality and just being me, but I only really feel at home behind a computer, where I can hide my body. I don't know if I'll ever feel comfortable in my own skin. I still hate my body, every day. I still have all the internal demons of 28 years of everyone telling me I was wrong for looking the way I looked, and that I was less of a woman, and worthless as a person, because of how I looked.
The sad part is her story it is remarkably similar to one written at least 30 years ago in Shadows on a Tightrope about a woman who got WLS not for her health but because she couldn't live in a fat hating world anymore.

Everyone have a lovely holiday and a Merry Christmas or just a nice day. Remember the best present you can give yourself is loving your body!

Why I walked towards HAES™

In 2002, I stopped dieting. For 17 years, I lost weight, then gained weight, plus more. I believe dieting caused my weight gain. When the diets failed me, I always ended up around the same number: 235. All attempts to change that set point either through “sensible eating plans” or crash diets had failed miserably.

All diets (including the sensible eating plans and the crash diets) had the same issues. I'd get bored, hungry, and obsessed with my food. During low-carb dieting, I dreamt about eating bread. On all diets, my self-esteem plummeted when I didn't lose weight. When the weight loss stopped, I would stop doing any healthy habits.

When I stopped dieting, I had no idea how to eat. I hadn't eaten intuitively since I was a child. When I was a kid, I ate candy but I also loved carrots, peppers and cucumbers and ran and biked like a maniac. I didn’t become aware of my food until I gained weight and the adults began chastising me for any junk food I ate.

Now I had to figure out how to eat healthy and move for my body rather than weight loss. I had to make sure that I didn't vilify foods. I had to ignore the scale for the first time in 17 years and eat and exercise not based on what it said.

Recently a pro-weight loss blog posted an article from an "anonymous commenter" claiming that those who preach HAES (tm) have disordered health, whatever that means, and that people who preach HAES is only meant for fat people.

The "community" has become less about health at any size. It has become "Only healthy at larger sizes". It was noted that people who gained weight for health reasons were OK (that intentional weight change is acceptable). People who benefited from weight loss, however, were villains, lying, or anomalies. (Their intentional weight change is bad, offensive, and "dangerous") Health concerns for people at smaller sizes were/are irrelevant.

I am a member of HAES community and I have find that while HAES tends to be more for larger people (As they are the most affected by the dieting/binge cycle), HAES is weight neutral. So if you happen to be anywhere on the BMI ruler: 17, 40, 37, 23 or 25, It’s not about losing or gaining weight, it’s about eating and moving for your body and loving yourself. The whole idea of HAES is to continue these good habits whether or not there is weight loss or gain.

Or maybe it’s because HAES is not a money maker.

  

Fat? Fit? Myth? Or Something else.

I mentioned last week another study proving fit and fat. Literally on the heels of that study was another one that the media including NPR screamed "No, that's wrong. If you are fat down the line you will die of something."

This new study said that fat (only those with 30 BMI or over) people who were metabolic healthy were 24 percent more likely to be metabolically unhealthy 10 years later.

Of course when the media picks it up, they assume this must mean that you cannot be fat and fit. 

Except.

The study didn't include physical fitness. The study didn't take into account fat people who were physically active. This means that they don't know if metabolically healthy fat people stayed that way if they were physically active. I have mentioned before on this blog that there are barrier to fat people exercising. Bikes aren't weight rated, fat people get starred at the gym, fat people exercising are told they aren't "Graceful" or how miserable we look.

That means NBC's headline -- "New Research Disputes Fat But Fit Claim" -- is simply wrong because the meta-analysis didn't take physical fitness into account, so "fat but fit" (where fit means being physically fit) was never actually tested.

The study also didn't include chronic dieting. Every single fat person I know (And I know a lot) except for one has a history of dieting. Before I did the Atkins diets, I was metabolically perfect. After Atkins my cholesterol went up to 232. To the point I had a doctor want to put me on drugs for it. Only through healthy eating and exercise was I able to bring it to almost normal with  no weight loss. I find it terrifying that dieting history is often overlooked or ignored when doing studies on fatness.

"The study is silent on the health impact of pursuing weight loss, because it does not compare people who were fat who lost weight to people who are still fat," she (Deb Burgard) wrote. In fact, she continued, fat people who repeatedly try to lose weight are more likely to yo-yo diet, or weight-cycle, than they are to maintain weight loss permanently. And because weight-cycling has been linked to cardiac disease and other problems, overweight people who are metabolically healthy could increase their risks of the very diseases they tried to avoid in the first place if they lose weight and gain it back again.

It all goes back to the Flegal and similar studies. This study proved that people with normal and overweight BMI had the same risks. 

NPR's is just inaccurate; in fact, the meta-analysis showed that overweight, healthy people's risks were so similar to the control group's risks that the difference was statistically insignificant.

 This study only strengthens the Health at Every Size argument. You can make countless studies showing fat is evil and bad but with no method of weight loss proved to work in the long run for most people, it would be better to focus on increasing physically activity.  Another study shows a change of healthy habits not weight loss is responsible for improvement in health indicators.

What’s more, the few health benefits they found appear to be the result of participants adopting specific healthy habits such as exercising and eating more fruits and vegetables. Weight loss—or lack thereof—was apparently not the defining factor. 

I much prefer when "Obesity experts" focus on reducing stigma. You shouldn't have to be thin to exercise and you shouldn't have to eat less than what your body needs. 

Workplace wellness still doesn't work

The mainstream diet industry is having financial difficulties as more people are realizing that they are a waste of time and money. Unfortunately people are turning to DIY and fad diets which also haven't been proved to work, but are at least cheaper.

One place that seems to be making money is workplace wellness. Granted, it too, is a waste of time and money, but it like the diet industry, has bamboozled HR managers with the same empty promises. It seems to have promised to make the workforce slim and trim and lower health care costs despite the RAND's report that this is not even a little true.

Now workplace wellness has gone a step further: you will do this "voluntary" dieting or exercise or face penalties. It doesn't matter if you (a) regularly exercise, (b) eat healthy or (c) have nothing physically wrong with you, (d) have tried every single method to lose weight only to lose weight, gain it all back plus more. This time it will be financial penalties that will try make the failed programs work. You will be thin or else. Despite that yet another study came out showing you can be fat and fit.

They found that fitness levels, not weight, predicted whether or not a participant had died in the study's intervening years. Unfit people, regardless of their weight, had twice the risk of dying during the study than fit people, and overweight and obese people who were fit had similar mortality risks as fit, normal weight participants. Another way of putting it: thin, unfit people had twice the mortality risk as obese fit people.

Workplace wellness eliminates your right to have a life outside of work and it's extremely discriminatory as poorer people tend to have a higher BMI and may not have access to healthier foods and gyms (I know that when my salary went up, I was able to afford more organic food). Try telling a working mother that she has to find 30 minutes per day to walk or pay $300 more a year.  And even if she does manage to find the time, if she doesn't lose weight, she'll still have to pay $300 or more.

“Employers are at risk of creating a wellness system that is used not to improve health, but to discriminate against those with obesity in order to improve their bottom line,” stated Dr. Tsai. “Employers should avoid BMI targets as the basis for any financial penalty or incentive, and instead reward employees for engaging in specific behaviors. Corporations need to encourage employees to maintain healthy eating habits, increase exercise and participate in weight management programs.”

To me this is all a big trick to make money for workplace wellness companies and for employers to get rid employees that are deemed "unhealthy" and shift their costs away from them and unto their employees. 

Meanwhile there is no proof that shaming and penalizing a person will making them lose weight and keep in off.

But there is proof it makes things worse.

Participants who experienced weight discrimination were approximately 2.5 times more likely to become obese by follow-up (OR = 2.54, 95% CI = 1.58–4.08) and participants who were obese at baseline were three times more likely to remain obese at follow up (OR = 3.20, 95% CI = 2.06–4.97) than those who had not experienced such discrimination.

Surviving the Holidays

 Every year I go to Amish Country in Lancaster, PA. While I partake in other activities, the simple reason we go is to eat. Amish buffets are amazing. Filled with all kinds of dishes roasted, baked and cooked with full fat. When I go to Amish country I do not stick to any of my normal rules. I don't have diet rules anymore but I try to eat foods my body can handle. I see no reason that three days out of the year I can have my buttered noodles.

Thanksgiving and other holidays are similar to Lancaster. There is a lot of food around and the diet centers are empty, waiting for the January rush. But if you are a former dieter like me, it's hard to figure out exactly how to eat. You don't want eat more than your body can handle but you don't want   to follow diet rules so serving sizes, calories, or overexercising to the point of exhaustion.

I am giving you a few tips for survival. If you find you need more, my friend Golda is doing a HAES for the Holidays teleclass for $49 to help you get through the holidays without going insane (at least from food decisions).

1. Enjoy your food and listen to your hunger cues. If your body says you've had enough, that's it. If it says it really wants a slice of homemade pumpkin pie, have a slice. Mostly enjoy your food. Enjoy the taste, the colors, the texture. Savor it.

2. Do not beat yourself up if you "overeat". Most of the time I eat normally, but I sometimes overeat, and about 5 days a year I gorge myself silly. Don't focus on the food. Don't worry if the portion is too much or how much fat and calories are in it.  

3. Don't  you allow family members to harass you about your eating. Tell them it is unacceptable. If you have to leave, do it.

4. The holidays are about more than food. They are supposed to be a time to appreciate family and friends, go to fun parties, and give and get presents. Remember that focusing on food takes away from your enjoyment. 

5. It's okay to eat your veggies and to exercise. As a former-dieter, one of my biggest issues doing exercise and eating my vegetables for health not weight loss. Vvegetables give you a good amount of fiber and vitamins. Exercise releases endorphins to help with that after eating lull. 

Above all, have a wonderful holiday.