Scientific American recently came out with an article that discusses ditching weight loss and dieting because of poor results. It refers to a man with health problems who instead of dieting began exercising and eating his fruits and vegetables. The results were minimal weight loss but an increase in health.
Everywhere we go, from the mouths of our peers, on every magazine rack, Internet ad, and weight-loss reality show, we get the message: you need to lose weight. You are too fat. Maybe it’s time to retire this line of thinking.
The article isn’t fat positive (Although kudos to their using pictures of fat people eating healthy and exercising rather than a headless fatty). It views weight loss as not important yet later says we shouldn’t judge fat people because maybe they already lost weight and it also makes no mention of Health at Every Size™ (HAES) which promotes healthy habits over weight loss.
However, it brings up the point that we push weight loss more than healthy habits. One of the reason I’m such an advocate of Health at Every Size is all my attempts to lose weight failed me. Once I realized diets don’t work for me (And for most people), I knew that I had to instead engage in healthy habits and not care if weight loss happened. I worked to make sure my meals included vegetables and fruit and that I exercised every day. I tried my best to avoid foods my body didn’t like and to not punish myself for a splurge.
Maybe it’s time to go for a walk, or eat some asparagus, just because those are good, pleasurable things to do, and will make our lives better, whatever our weight.
Meanwhile a study shows that children who get vegetables earlier tend to still eat them later in life.
Exposing infants to a new vegetable early in life encourages them to eat more of it compared to offering novel vegetables to older children, new research from the University of Leeds suggests.
I have mentioned on my blog that as a kid I loved vegetables, especially carrots, cucumbers, and peppers. Dieting ruined my love for vegetables. When I was on the dieting/binge cycle, I would hardly eat them if I wasn’t dieting.
We make habits so complex with dieting. There’s a million different diets out there, all with different advice, none of which have proved to work for most people in the long run. Meanwhile we ignore the age-old advice. Eat your vegetables and go out and play. I must rather the money from the diet industry be used to create parks, healthy school lunches and get rid of food deserts.
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