Dr. Val FarmerDr.Val
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Rural Mental Health & Family Relationships

Dieting Is Not The Answer To Weight Loss

January 29, 1996

Chronic dieters, here is a weight control plan you probably won't like, but it makes sense.

I. Change your lifestyle and eating habits first and your weight may or may not go down.

2. Eat when hungry. Eat moderately. Pay attention to body signals and stop when full.

3. Choose the foods you like. There are no bad or good foods. Eat balanced meals. Use restraint with high fat foods.

4. Be active and exercise regularly.

5. Manage the stress in your life and watch stress related eating.

6. Don't diet. Diets are anything but healthy.

7. If your body size is bigger than the norm, keep your weight stable and try not to gain additional weight. Avoid yo-yo dieting. Monitor for cholesterol, blood pressure and blood glucose. Accept yourself as you are and enjoy life without guilt or self-reproach for not having the ideal body size being pushed by advertisers and culture. The author of this really seditious program is Frances Berg, a licensed nutritionist and family wellness specialist. She is the founder, editor and publisher of the Healthy Weight Journal and author of a recent award winning book, "Health Risks of Weight Loss."

Diet facts. Consider these facts Berg has pulled together about the frequency of dieting.

  • Forty percent of women and 25 percent of men are dieting at any given moment. Sixty percent of women diet at some time during the year. Twenty percent of women over 70 are dieting.
  • Sixty-two percent of teenage girls and 28 percent of teenage boys are dieting.
  • Approximately 75 percent of American women consider themselves "too fat."
  • The ideal female body type portrayed in the media is now at the thinnest 5 percent of the normal weight distribution. This excludes 95 percent of women. A "statistical deviation" has been made to seem the norm. Millions of women believe they are abnormal or too fat. This mass delusion causes enormous anguish and suffering.
  • Over the past two decades, the acceptable female body size has been reduced by a third. There has been a parallel rise in eating disorders. Female athletes in gymnastics, dancing, running and skating and male athletes in running and wrestling are especially vulnerable. As many as 80 percent of all girls age 10 and 11 have an eating disorder and are restricting their eating.

Psychological effects of dieting. Jean Kilbourne, Ed.D., author of "Still Killing Us Softly: Advertising and the Obsession with Thinness," states, "The tyranny of the ideal image makes almost all of us feel inferior. We are taught to hate our bodies and thus learn to hate ourselves. This self-hatred takes an enormous toll in feelings of inferiority, anxiety, insecurity and depression."

In her book, "Health Risks of Weight Loss," Berg documents a psychological syndrome that goes with chronic dieting: lack of concentration, lack of ambition, irritability, moodiness, apathy, depression, ineffectiveness in daily living and an increased focus on self. Studies on starvation show an increase in self-isolation, antisocial behavior and self-absorption.

Berg believes that self-starvation in the quest for thinness make people less generous and less inclined to volunteer. The higher status conferred on people with thin bodies helps create an atmosphere where people concentrate on themselves - their own good, appearance and personal development - to the exclusion of neighborliness and human kindness.

The health risks of dieting. Health professionals are now questioning the wisdom of weight loss in overweight individuals because of its harmful effects. The Michigan Health Council Task Force to Establish Weight Loss Guidelines cites these negative effects of weight loss.

  • Health complications from the weight-loss process, such as cardiac arrhythmia, hypokalemia, hyperuricemia, gall bladder damage and death.
  • Initiation of binge eating and eating disorders following semi-starvation.
  • Long term complications and indirect ill effects.
  • Damage from weight-cycling, repeated weight loss and regain.
  • The National Institute of Health Technology Assessment Conference in 1992 issued the following statement after their review of voluntary weight loss and control.
  • Weight loss strategies have caused harm.
  • Most often weight lost is regained.
  • Dropout rates are high.
  • Repeated loss and gain cycles may have adverse effects.
  • Trying to achieve body weights and shapes presented in the media is not an appropriate goal for most people.
  • Many Americans who are not overweight are trying to lose weight. This may have significant physical and psychological health consequences.

In her Healthy Weight Journal, Berg exposes the health risks of nutritionally deficient diets, very low calorie diets, vitamin injections, food supplements, herbal tea diets, fad diets and diet pill abuse and the general ineffectiveness of dieting overall. These are misguided strategies used in our obsession with thinness.

The $30 to $50 billion dollar weight loss industry wants people to think otherwise - to keep on chasing the holy grail of thinness. That dollar amount doesn't include the clothing industry, cosmetic firms, tobacco companies or media and advertising businesses, all highly involved in promoting thinness.

Berg's sobering message goes against the grain of our cherished and culturally programmed view of what we should look like. It is hard to give up our dream of being thin and accept ourselves as we are. I told you you wouldn't like it.