Fat Chicks Rule

Results are still not typical

Happy New Year! Weight Watchers, Jenny Craig, Nutrisystem are all reving up their media blitz because everyone ate too much during the holidays and now it's time to start the diet. Like I mentioned in 2011 the diet doesn't start on Jan 1. But usually Jan 2-5th just enough time to get finish the holiday leftovers.

Many people will make a resolution that this will be the year they will become slim. Even though I was often dieting during eating season, I often have the same resolution. Usually because I was going to Weight Watchers meetings but not really following the program closely. (Of course 3 servings of stuffing is 1 bread exchange!) So Jan 2nd (After binge eating on New Year's leftovers), I'd be back on the program usually to fall off it a few weeks later.

I don't really believe in New Year's Resolution. Why not make the resolution right now or four weeks ago or in March? However I've often asked myself the question on how can I be healthy without the dieting mentality. It's hard with 17 years of diet talk burned into my brain. However I put together five easy rules to try to be healthy without the diet talk.

1. Try to mediate every day even for 1 minute. Take deep breaths when you can. 
2. Move as much as you can. Don't worry if it's not "enough". Movement can be simple things like a leisure walk, yoga, swimming, stretching or dancing around the house. 
3. Learn to eat for your body. Know what foods your body can handle and which ones it can't. Never eliminate anything 100% (unless you have a food allergy.) If you're like me where dieting ruined your intuitive eating, read Linda Bacon's Health at Every Size for tips on how to relearn intuitive eating habits. This isn't about eating less but about enjoying and savoring your food.
4. Go to the appropriate medical tests and yearly doctor visits. This is a drag even with my doctor who is somewhat weight neutral but it's the best way to keep track of your health. 
5. Don’t fall into dieting habits. Getting healthy may not result in any weight loss. You are doing this for health, period.
6. Bonus tip! - Love your body!

Happy Holidays

No blog post today. Just holiday greetings and a belief Santa needs to stay fat. He's too jolly to go on the diet/weight gain roller coaster!

The biggest future eating disorders and yoyo dieting show!

As I sit here writing this I have never seen an episode of the Biggest Loser. I suppose one day I'll have to sit through one episode just to say I did. However, every time I go to Hulu (I don't have a TV or cable), I can't bring myself to watch even a clip. 

I've read enough stories to realize it's not only a terrible show but could be dangerous to your health and self esteem. And like most reality shows, it's a race to the bottom. 

Each week contestants face various challenges, overexercising, under eating, temptations. The show does not teach you how to follow your natural body cues. Weight loss challenges are the biggest part of the show. Contestants who lose a lot of weight can win big money at the end. 

The thing is that the Biggest Loser even contradicts sensible weight loss which isn't to lose as much as possible but to take off 1-2 pounds a week slowly. Nutition.gov's weight loss plan involves setting a reasonable and realistic weight loss goal. Six hours on the treadmill just ain't going to cut it for the majority of anyone.   

But the contestants on the Biggest Losers are adults and they can do what they want with their bodies and hey perhaps this fad diet will be better than the other ones?

The problem is now the Biggest Loser is adding three teenage contestants. While they are not actually competing with the adults, or will be eliminated or be starving themselves or overexercising yet. But let's show them they'll be treated as fat adults. And hey! Let's all gawk at the fat kids because thin kids don't have to undereat and overexercise because all thin children are healthy and eat right. No matter how "sensitive" they plan to be to the three kids, this will only be encouraging them to go to the lifetime diet train.  

Meanwhile Eating disorders tend to hit teens and young adults the most. 

Ragan Chastain has petitioned the Biggest Loser's producers to keep kids off the Biggest Loser

Besides which, there’s no proof that this will be good for the kids anyway. Studies clearly show that the techniques used by the show produce ratings-friendly short term weight loss but long-term weight regain in most people. 

I urge you to sign the petition, contact NBC and the most important part tell your friends and your family to stop watching. 

Weight watchers is still a diet

Readers of my blog know I have no love for WW. When I first decided I needed to lose weight, I tried doing my own diet. I showed little success of 3 years of diet foods and OTC diet pills, I moved to WW I believe when I was 16. I had no idea that diets didn't work and thought that if you were fat, you went on a diet, lost weight and everything would be fine. WW didn't ask for a permission slip from my parents but my parents did pay my joiner's fee and weekly fee (at least I got a discount of a whole $2 for being a student). We met in the basement of a synagogue, shared our weight loss successes and our challenges. Every week I was given a fresh booklet to check off exchanges. The team leader was a woman name Rosalie who I believe was one of the rare WW team leaders who lost weight and kept it off. She wasn't famous so she never made it into the ads. 

The time I last did WW, I was 24, had done it a number of times over past eight years. Each time it ended with me gaining the weight I loss plus more. This would be my final time because the first week I followed the plan and gained weight. I never went back. 

As far as diets being bad for your health WW seems like it's not as bad as the other. They often have ads touting it as a lifestyle change. One January, their slogan was "Diets are mean." And a recent article cover WW's CEO touts that it's not about dieting but behavior modication. 

The original Weight Watchers program centered around calorie counting which often led participants to initially lose weight but then later gain it back.

I'm not sure which original program he was talking about. I first did Weight Watchers 25 years ago and there no calorie counting. First it was exchanges, then it was point system then pointsplus, now they have something new called 360. Maybe he was talking about the original plan from the 1970's. 

To me WW is the most dangerous plan because it flies under the rader and gets labeled as the "sensible weight loss plan" rather than crash dieting of other plans. WW sneaks into your workplace, your wellness discounts, your insurance plans. 

Laura Beck of Jezebel literally has my almost exact same WW story. (And I swear I wrote the part about WW before I read the article.)

I went to my first Weight Watchers meeting when I was 12*. I attended with my mom because she always wanted to lose weight, and I was a fat kid, so it made sense. Of course, I'd been on other diets before, but this one was different, this time I would succeed through six easy meals a day and a healthy new interest in jogging. The weeklyexercise in terror meeting involved sneaking into their offices in a local mall 

In the end Weight Watchers isn't a lifestyle change or even healthy eating. Whether you count points, exchanges or apples, it still limits the amount of calories you can eat making it a diet.  

Knees please

Fat and thin people can get knee issues that require surgery, either repairs or total replacement. Many fat people have been turned down for knee surgery. Fat activist Nancy Goddess had to have gastric bypass surgery in order to fix her knee. 

A recent study from New York's Hospital For Special Surgery has said that fat people have the same outcomes as thin people when it comes to knee surgery. 

"As long as they are medically appropriate for surgery, even obese people can have excellent results from joint replacement. Obesity, in and of itself, should not be viewed as an absolute contraindication to joint replacement," said Lisa Mandl, M.D., M.P.H.., a rheumatologist at Hospital for Special Surgery (HSS), in New York City, who was involved with the study.

I find it very disturbing to be denied a quality of life surgery. And guess what? Even fat people need their knees because the majority of us exercise and have to walk around day to day.

Her finding: 29% had been exercising for six months, 39% regularly exercised and 25% thought about exercising. Only 12% said they had no intention to work out. (Yes, those numbers add up to 105%. We're assuming they rounded up.)

I don't know how doctors think that fat people will lose weight if they don't have working knees.