Fat Chicks Rule

Countdown to Revolutions!

Another short post today, since a blizzard knocked out my home interweb (BTW this fat chick trekked in the snow yesterday for fun and today to get to work) and I want everyone to continue having a festive holiday.

Every year sometime around New Year I urge that all people give up the resolution of "This year I'm going to lose weight." For a long time that was mine and it never lasted. I no longer have resolutions, I continue to work on self-improvement no matter what day of the year it is.

Remember the motto of the diet industry is "Results not Typical." Or should I say the former motto as the FTC has banned the term.  Diet ads can now only have results that are typical (But don't worry Weight Watchers, you can tout your six pound average weight loss). Results listed in diet ads are often the minority. (And I bet of the minority, a majority regain their weight.)

So this year instead of resolutions, think Revolution! Instead of going to a diet, embrace Health at Every Size. Instead of joining a gym do what I did and take a long walk in the snow (Dress warmly). Instead of eating (pun intented) the lies the media and diet industry, join a fat acceptance group such as NAAFA, ISAA or ASDAH. 

My year round revolutions are as follows:

1. Love my body

2. Nurture my body with healthy movement and foods (i.e. not diet foods).

3. Encourages others of all sizes to love theirs. 

Happy holidays and a Merry Carnie Wilson

I would like to wish everyone very happy holidays whether you celebrate all, one, or none. I won't burden you with long posts in the next few weeks. I had my annual holiday party yesterday and it was one stressful but fun day (I now owe $.60 if there was a soda tax). 

Carnie Wilson, the former poster child of weight loss surgery (she can join other former poster children of diets: the late Lynn Redgrave, Sarah Ferguson, Kirstie Alley et al) has regained most of her weight and now seems to be closer to acceptance of her own body.  

I really can't sympathize with her. I felt her own toting of how wonderful and life saving the surgery was just encouraging young impressionable people that WLS is the easy way to go. It's not. It is major surgery on a vital organ. 

 

FDA takes a step back

Although the FDA has been very good in the past couple of months rejecting two potentially dangerous and ineffective diet drugs, it's committee has recommended approval of another called Contrave. (Although a third of the committee didn't recommend it.) Contrave is a combo of anti-depression drug bupropion (brand name Wellbutrin) and naltrexone which is used to treat addiction. On a personal note: Wellbutrin is a terrible drug which I took for depression. It did not cause weight loss or make me feel less depressed. It did cause me to be more depressed, nervous, and nauseous. I wouldn't recommend it for depression let alone weight loss. Naltrexone which is used to treat drug and alcohol addiction can also cause liver damage. 

The drug "works" even though 21 people withdrew from the study and there might have been one fatal heart attack. And like many other diet drugs, you have diet while using it.

As always diet drug makers work on the premise that fat people are that way because they eat too much so a drug that causes them to eat less will make them trim. 

And I will repeat this again: NO DIET DRUG HAS EVER BEEN PROVEN TO WORK IN THE LONG RUN.

This drug looks to be same shit different day.

Be sure to contact the FDA and tell them to stop approving dangeous diet drugs:

Food and Drug Administration
10903 New Hampshire Ave
Silver Spring, MD 20993-0002
[email protected]
1-888-INFO-FDA (1-888-463-6332)

Weight Watchers

When I was 16, I went on my first commercial diet, Weight Watchers. After failing at my own diets, and OTC diet pills, my parents agreed to pay for a Weight Watcher's membership. I was excited, I would lose 50 pounds because now I had support and financial motivation. 

At this time Weight Watchers used the exchange system. Food would go into different categories. Now I apologize if my memory fails me but I believe the exchanges were 2 fruit, 2 fat, 6 breads, 4 proteins, 4 open exchanges (where you could use any exchanges you liked) and unlimited vegetables. We also got a sneaker sticker if we exercised plus we had to drink 8 glasses of water a day. Every week I weighed in with a plus or minus next to my number. In the first few weeks there would be lots of minuses. I'd share with the group the excitment of my weight loss success.

Then the hunger would sink it. I would think of food all the time and I would stop losing weight. Weight Watchers no longer has minus next to the number but pluses or slashes (indicated no loss or gain.)

Then the bingeing started. I almost timed the biggest binge right. My WW meeting was Thursday night, so right after I would go home and gorge myself. 

Before Weight watchers, I didn't binge. Maybe sometimes I would eat too much junk food, but I enjoyed myself. When I binged there was no enjoyment of eating anymore, it was like I had to shove as much food into me.

Then I would stop keeping track of my food. Then I would stop going all together.

And so this pattern went off and on for the next 8 years or so. The last time I went to Weight watchers, they had just started on their point system. And in the first week, despite being "good" I gained weight. And that was the end of Weight Watchers.

A lot of people think Weight Watchers is the better of the diet plans. But I will tell you, it made me become a binge eater. and I have long since assumed that my years of dieting/bingeing have ruined my metabolism and done permanent damage to my body. I hated vegetables and became fearful of foods that used up too many exchanges or points. 

Now I hear that Weight Watchers is revamping their point system. Because based on "Scientific studies" not all calories are the same and a lean to "natural" instead of processed food (despite this story from NPR that points out the high amounts of sodium and low amounts of fiber in a Weight Watcher's frozen dinner).

What I think is that the point system has just a much a failure rate as the exchange program did. The changes are more to do with getting the name out there again AND to hide the fact that it is and has always been just another low calories DIET like all the others.