Fat Chicks Rule

More proof HAES is a better way of living

As an addition to last week's post, Linda Bacon and Lucy Aphramor just put out a study of Health at Every Size (HAES) related studies and came up with some results that are contradictory to "Obesity-related science".  They talk a lot about weight cycling which I believe not only makes people fatter but causes some of the ill health effects associated with "obesity."

Weight cycling can account for all of the excess mortality associated with obesity in both the Framingham Heart Study [69] and the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) [70]. 

As I mentioned in this blog before, I have a history of weight cycling. For 17 years I lost and gain weight plus more repeatedly. Had I never dieted I would have been fat, but much less than I am now. And with every diet cycle, I began to suffer new health issues, including bad cholesterol, fatigue, heart palpitations, and low immunity. None of which I had before dieting. What upsets me most is that if I have some kind of "Obesity related illness" in the future, it will all be blamed on my body size and not weight cycling. 

HAES doesn't have weight cycling. If you commit to HAES, you may lose weight, you may stay the same. But this article shows HAES is beneficial in health indicators regardless of weight loss. 

Some people might say HAES is a cop-out and that people are using it as excuse to not lose weight, but it isn't. Because I no longer deprive myself, I no longer crave high calorie junk food. Because I no longer associated exercise with dieting, I have increased my movement.  HAES (and studies that used HAES tenets before the term came into existence) indicated:

Evidence from these six RCTs indicates that a HAES approach is associated with statistically and clinically relevant improvements in physiological measures (e.g. blood pressure, blood lipids), health behaviors (e.g. physical activity, eating disorder pathology) and psychosocial outcomes (e.g, mood, self-esteem, body image) 

Six studies isn't enough but there will be more in the future.  

Tell me this, is it better for the population to try to eat right and exercise or repeatedly give up any kind of health behaviors when they fail to get to some arcane number?  

Once more for Revolution.

It has been said that a definition of insanity is to do the same thing over and over again and expect different results.

Says the first line of this amazing article by sociologist Pattie Thomas. Pattie points out that people repeatedly do diets and expect that this time it will change. She further points out the diet industry is a $58 Billion dollar entity where we always blame the dieter and never the diet, and that the war on obesity is more of a moral panic than about health. I get many comments on this blog from people who think they are holier than thou because they are thin. 

Fat activists are often accused of being paranoid when they blame the weight loss industry for the panic over the "obesity epidemic" but $58 billion is a lot to be paranoid about. Especially when the diets tend to fail in the long run. (See Archives of Internal medicine, Nutrition Journal, and JAMA to name a few.) 

Thick skulled naysayers often think my call to end or actively trying to lose weight means that I am lazy, jealous, stupid, and encourage everyone to eat McDonalds for every meal. They Ignore my call to embrace HAES and eat healthy without worry about weight. Sure there are some people who do lose weight and keep it off longer than five years but they are the exception not the rule (I'm thinking that some people naturally lose weight after when they give up dieting, eat healthy and move. Or their goal weight isn't a "thin" number. Or they become OCD about dieting and count everything while ignoring hunger cues.) 

Last week was Healthy Weight Week. Make your healthy weight be whatever you are when you eat normally (i.e. follow your own hunger cues) and have fun movement. If you need help learning intitative eating, try HAES by Linda Bacon or Overcoming Overeating.

And to find fun movement try out different things and see what you enjoy. I just found out last weekend I love to snow shoe. 

Tune in next week

In Vermont. Where this fat chick snowshoed and walked in almost sub zero temps. New post next week.

The Good, the Bad and the WTF?

The Good

A doctor in Canada is talking about what I have said all along that yoyo dieting has a lot to do with people getting heavier. I probably would have been fat but if I hadn't gone on diets I probably would have weighted a good 50 lbs less right now. Not only did he blame yoyo-ing but said that exercise while beneficial did not really help weight loss. He also said:  "I think one of the biggest misconceptions when we talk about obesity in general is that obese people are obese largely because of their lifestyles and because of the way that they live," Dr. Arya Sharma of the University of Alberta, told CBC News.

The Bad 

Stephens College prostituted itself by going on a weight loss challenge. They lost a certain amount of weight and dignity, because some anonymous woman offers them a million dollars to do it. Now when they regain the weight, will they have to give it back? 

The WTF

I don't know really where to start with the Gymanimals. Should I start with the anti-fat rhetoric? The encouragement of eating disorders? The stereotypical gender roles? The terrible clip art graphics? The horrible music that won't shut off? Or the fact when I searched for the URL, google suggested gay animals? (I would much rather have seen a site about a gaggle of gay gooses.)

The gymanimals the latest site to exploit fat children would like boys to be big and buff and girls to be thin and dainty. Probably what bothered me the most was the anorexic villain. This site vilifies not only fat children but children with eating disorders as well. And sites like this only encourage more eating disorders and bad habits. Better to send the animals back into the wild where they can eat and move normally.

Even More ReVolutions

Diets usually start the day after New Years. There is still leftover "bad food" in the fridge and you didn't actually stop drinking after midnight and have a salad? Right?

When I did Weight Watchers, no one dieted during the holiday season so it was only a handful of us at the meetings. Come January the place would overflow sometimes to standing room only. WW was supposed to be a lifelong lifestyle change yet very few people seemed to do this during the holidays. So what they meant by a lifelong lifestyle change was only January to September.

The difference between Health At Every Size (HAES) and Weight Watchers (and most diets) is this: I do HAES every day during the holidays, after the holidays, on my birthday and I do it for my health NOT for weight loss. On Weight Watchers, cheating meant the diet was over maybe just for the day or the week or for good.  It also could mean a massive binge. There is no cheating on HAES. HAES has led to less binging. WW and diets involve restrictive eating, meaning you restrict the amount of food you eat causing your body to crave food. HAES what's called intuitive eating meaning you eat because you're hungry. Did I overinduldge during the holidays? Yep. But compared to my dieting/bingeing days, it was nothing.

Healthy Weight Week celebrates the diversity of healthy weight (and not the narrow BMI chart) and every year announces the worst diet products of the year.

Viva La ReVolution

Are you dreading January, the month full of watching friends and loved ones setting themselves up for failure with unrealistic New Year's Resolutions to diet/lose weight? Want to do something different, something inspiring, instead? Join the New Year's REVOLUTION and give yourself some self-love for the New Year! Check out the webpage that tells you about of this ReVolution and provides incredible resources for you to use throughout the coming year: 
http://2011revolutions.blogspot.com/ 

Starting January 1 and throughout the month of January, we will flood popular social media with HAES-friendly, anti-weight-loss-dieting messages. 

Action Item: Profile Picture
Please participate by changing your Facebook and Twitter profile pictures to an image of something that makes you feel good about and in your body. Not sure what to post? How about the HAES text image created by Amanda ofFatWaitress.com specifically for the New Year's Revolution event: 
http://img443.imageshack.us/img443/8328/haesborder.jpg 

Action Item: Facebook Status
Please post one of the following messages, or something similar, on January 1 to explain your new profile picture. Consider reposting the message throughout the month of January so that it continues to capture attention. 

• I'm starting a New Year's Revolution. I've changed my profile pic to an image that inspires me to love my body and seek out Health at Every Size, and I'm participating in the 31 Days of HAES at (insert linky here). New Year's Resolutions are so often about body hate and not being good enough just as we are. Join me and spread body love, acceptance, and liberation! Change your profile pic to an image of something that makes you feel good in your own skin, and repost this message to encourage others to do the same. 

• I'm part of a New Year's Revolution. I've changed my profile pic to an image that inspires me to love my body and seek out Health at Every Size. Change your profile pic to an image of something that makes you feel good in your own skin, and repost this message to encourage others to do the same. For extra credit, take action to reinforce body love TODAY. Visit (insert 31 Days of HAES linky here) for ideas to get you started! 

• We're creating a New Year's Revolution! My profile pic is an image that reminds me to love my body and screen out negative messages this month that tell me otherwise. Let's not let the diet industry tell us how we feel about our bodies, our beauty, and our worth. Instead of New Year's Resolutions this year, what is your New Year's REVOLUTION? Join the New Year's Revolution FB Event or visit (insert linky) for 31 Days of HAES inspiration! 

Action Item: Twitter Posts / #HAES Hashtag
Please post about the New Year's Revolution on January 1, and use the hashtag #HAES. We hope to have #HAES reach the top 10 most popular hashtags on New Year's Day! 

In your Twitter posts, be sure to direct people to the New Year's Revolution Facebook Event: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=170500166324089 and/or the New Year's Revolution Webpage:http://2011revolutions.blogspot.com/ 

Viva La ReVolution!

Professor Calls for an End to New Year’s Weight Loss Resolutions

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact:  Jon Robison, PhD, MS

Phone:  (517) 507-0287

E-mail: [email protected]

 

Professor Calls for an End to New Year’s Weight Loss Resolutions

(Okemos, Michigan) Ordinarily, the Holidays are a time for planning New Year’s resolutions -and more often than not, weight loss is at or near the top of the list.

Time for a change, according to Dr. Jon Robison, nutritionist and health educator at Michigan State University. 

“The research over the last 25 years is quite clear. There is no evidence that any of the popular approaches such as low fat, low calorie and low carbohydrate results in long-term weight loss for the vast majority of people who engage in them,” says Robison.  “There are no exceptions and none of the approaches works any better than any of the others.”    

Despite this complete lack of evidence, however, people are still being seduced into trying to lose weight with the latest reincarnation of these approaches from a diet industry with $50 billion in annual revenues.  Furthermore, the relentless pressure, particularly on women and children, to lose weight increases the likelihood of eating disorders, disordered eating and body hatred.

 

To reduce anxiety about food and weight while at the same time promoting good health,

Dr. Robison recommends that people discard the weight loss focus and embrace a scientifically supported Health-Centered Approach.

 

Dr. Robison recently summarized this approach in a special report, “10 Things You Can Do Right Now to Ease Concerns about Your Weight & Improve Your Health.”  The report is currently available, free-of-charge, on his website at http://jonrobison.net/?page_id=217.

Here is a sample of the 10 Things: (discussion of each suggestion follows in the report)

 

#1 – Save Your Time & Money! – Don’t spend another dime on anything or anybody that even remotely suggests they will help you lose weight permanently.

 

#2 – Just Say No! – Do not use (or let anyone else) your weight, BMI or any other measurement of body size or composition as an indicator of health!

 

“While this approach differs substantially from the traditional wisdom about weight and health, please keep in mind that the traditional wisdom in this case is clearly not working or helping and may, in fact, be causing considerable harm,” Robison says.

 

Jonathan Robison holds a doctorate in health education/exercise physiology and a master of science in human nutrition from Michigan State University where he is adjunct Assistant Professor. A former co-editor of the journal Health At Every Size - he has been helping people with weight and eating-related concerns for more than 20 years.  From Keynotes to Intensive Training Workshops, Dr. Robison is available to help both lay and professional groups understand and implement Health-Centered Approaches for helping people with weight- and eating-related struggles. For more information visit his website, www.jonrobison.net.

 

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More Revolutions

Check out an awesome website showing you can partake in ReVolutions, not resolutions.