Scientists have done another study on BMI and have found, once again, that it doesn't have much to do with how healthy you are. As most data from previous studies have shown, BMI is just a silly set of numbers that don't affect much in the real world, and shouldn't be used to gauge a person's health and certainly not how much a person should be paying for insurance.
I don't understand why people are so ready to use BMI to attack people who are big. In the book Body of Truth, the author talks about how people have started using health as a reason to attack and shame fat folks because it's no longer politically correct to make fun of fat people outright. Instead of saying we're fat and ugly, they tell us that we're ruining our health, that we're going to die young, that we're wasting billions of American dollars on medical costs, all because we're fat and lazy and we won't lose weight. None of which is true.
I'm tired of the fat shaming. Yes, I'm fat, and I'm pretty sure I'm always going to be fat. But that doesn't mean I'm unhealthy or that I'll live a short life. It also doesn't mean I spend tons of money on medical stuff, either. I bet I go to the doctor less than most people do, actually. I'm hardly ever sick, and when I am, it generally goes away quickly. And as far as fatness shortening my lifespan, scientists have been coming to the conclusion lately that the number one determining factor in your lifespan is your genetics, and environmental things only play a small part in that. My grandma lived to 102, and I have aunts in their 90s. I'm pretty sure I'm going to live a long life.
So what if I'm obese? It's just a silly term the government scientists made up so they can categorize us and tell us what we should do. It didn't even have an official meaning until the 90s, seriously. Well, I'm tired of it. I'm not a number, whether it be weight or BMI. I'm a human being.
Showing posts with label bad science. Show all posts
Showing posts with label bad science. Show all posts
Friday, February 5, 2016
Friday, May 8, 2015
The Lure of Skinny: Part 2
Skinny is such a powerful thing in our society. If you're skinny, you have power, social power; the power to attract the opposite sex, the power to get many more jobs and have more opportunities, the power to make friends and to be seen as trustworthy, the power to tell (fat) people what they need to do to become skinny as well. For reasons that are very hard to understand, our society today puts skinny on a pedestal and makes it the highest level of moral rightness you can ever achieve. You're seen as trustworthy, well disciplined, highly motivated, energetic, and healthy, just by the way you look.
On the flip side, fat people are seen as lazy, lairs, gluttonous, self-centered, having no self control, and on the verge of death every time they put anything in their mouths that isn't a leaf of lettuce. We're told that we should be ashamed for the way we look, because obviously we just need to eat less and exercise more and we can be just like the skinny people. And the sad thing about it is, fat people absolutely believe that 100%.
Is it any wonder, then, that so many overweight and obese people are desperate to lose weight? The message to lose weight has become so frantic, so terrifying, it's as if it's a highly contagious disease, and if we don't take action right now, all will be lost! Many fat people are lead to believe that they're just months away from diabetes and heart disease, even if they're physically very healthy. And so they take on the task of losing the weight, for themselves, for their families, for society as a whole (because everyone knows that obesity is a drain on the medical system).
This desperation is what feeds the $60 billion dollar diet industry. If being skinny is so good morally, socially, and physically, it's worth spending money on, right? Well, according to recent studies, no, not really. Only 5% of dieters keep the weight off for 5 years, and the ones that do keep it off make it their life's mission. Several of the people who told their diet stories in the book Body of Truth said that maintaining the weight loss was a full time job, and they had to stay at it constantly. But that's the great thing about the diet industry; they know that their business model works really well. The dieters lose weight initially, they keep it off for 6 months to a year, then start gaining it back. They can then say, "Hey, the diet isn't at fault; you just didn't stick to it!". And because people are so desperate to lose weight, they believe it and come back for more punishment.
I don't know how well the low carb and paleo diets work long term. I do know of several people who have kept the weight off with low carb for many years, but I know of even more people who have gone up and down with it. As for the paleo diet, I don't know if what we call "paleo" today (as opposed to Lorren Cordain's paleo, which I understand is low fat and anti-saturated fat) has been around long enough to see if many people can keep the weight off long term. As I said last time, this doesn't mean I don't think these diets are great; I think they're wonderful ways to get back to health, for sure. What I really don't know is if they're any better at keeping the weight off compared to any other diet out there. If anyone has any info on this, I'd love to see it.
The most damaging aspect of this whole get-skinny-to-be-healthy mindset is that it skews a person's idea of what healthy really is. You begin to think that anything that makes you skinny is healthy, even if those methods are clearly dangerous. Or at the very least, you use that as justification. Truth be told, I'm fairly certain that health is only an added bonus to weight loss for most people. Even if they don't say it out loud, I'm pretty sure that the number one reason people attempt weight loss is to look good, and to be socially acceptable. It's so easy, when you're thinking about or doing something dangerous to lose weight, to give yourself and others the justification that, hey, you were unhealthy as a fat person, so this can't be bad for me!
A case in point of this disturbing mental gymnastics is the Kimkins disaster. I know I've talked about it briefly before in my blog, but I never went into much detail about it. Back then, I was fascinated by the drama of what happened, and how Heidi (Kimmer) could put herself into a situation like that. I found myself reading the whole drama again recently, though this time, I see something a lot more disturbing. I paid special attention to the blogs of people who went on the diet and were deep into it, but because of the fraud, they left the site and started talking about their experiences. I see people who were so desperate to lose weight and be beautiful, that they rationalized a 300-600 calorie low carb/low fat diet as a way to get healthy. They believed, despite being intelligent well educated people, that this was enough food to fuel them for the whole day:
And if that wasn't doing it for them and they found themselves in a weight stall, they could try this for their daily intake instead:
(Both pictures are from Mariasol's anti-Kimkins blog. I highly suggest reading through their blog and those they link to if you're interested in this fascinating side of low carb history.)
The most disturbing part about this epic tale of self-deception and desperation is the long term effects. Many people (mostly women) who stayed on this diet for months started to have side effects; losing hair, brittle nails, feeling nauseated, dizziness, blacking out, heart flutters, and in some cases, serious heart problems. And yet, despite all of these issues, they were brushed aside as if they weren't a problem, not just by the owner of the site and her admins, but also by the members. They were told, and believed, that there was no such thing as starvation mode, that the side effects were normal, and that whatever they were experiencing was temporary and worth it to be skinny and healthy.
But there is such a thing as starvation mode. It's called YOU'RE STARVING! Anyone with a functioning brain should know that eating very tiny amounts of food is what starvation is. By definition, it's to "die or suffer from lack of food." SNATT is a term that was used frequently on the Kimkins website; it stood for Semi-Nauceous-All-The-Time, and it was a state you wanted to be in. If that's not suffering from lack of food, I don't know what is.
The other side effects aren't normal, by the way; they're signs that your body is suffering. You lose hair because your body is in shock. Your nails become brittle because you're not providing your body with the proper amount of nutrients and good fats and protein. You get dizzy and black out for several reasons, including low electrolytes, hypoglycemia, and low blood pressure, all of these things linked to the starvation diet. As for heart problems, well... when you're on a very low calorie diet, your body starts to eat away at your muscle tissue just to keep you alive, and of course your heart is a muscle. It's not a secret that many anorectics die from heart problems.
That's the lure of skinny. Intelligent, healthy people, who perhaps have more padding than society deems proper, put their lives at stake just to fit into the crowd. The really sad part is that it's usually all for naught. Scientists have not only shown that 95% of dieters regain the weight, but that yo-yo dieting is very bad for your health and leads most people to an even higher weight than when they started. I don't exactly trust scientists, not after reading many of the scathing reviews of studies done by the low carb/paleo community, but there's a cultural component to this idea of yo-yo dieting. The fact that so many people have lived through the up and downs of weight cycling and ended up heavier than before should tell us that there's at least some truth to it.
So why do we, as a society, continue to promote dieting to people who are otherwise healthy? I think the idea of weight=health is so deeply ingrained in our culture that it's impossible to believe a fat person is perfectly fine. It doesn't help that "health experts" are out there vehemently rejecting the idea of healthy obesity, screaming that this plainly wrong idea is costing us all money and making people sick and dead, despite the mounting science that shows that obesity isn't really that big of a health risk (or one at all, in the case of overweight).
I wonder sometimes if this will ever change. Will doctors ever promote a good diet and exercise as ways to get healthy rather than skinny (and then be satisfied if the patient gets healthy but doesn't lose weight)? Will women's magazines have cover stories about how to get healthy in 30 days with a beautiful round woman showing off her incredible biceps (as opposed to a tiny skeletal woman standing in one leg of her former pants)? Will we ever be told by our government the truth that dieting is actually very bad for us, and encouraged to eat wholesome, natural, real food for whole body health?
I suppose only time will tell.
On the flip side, fat people are seen as lazy, lairs, gluttonous, self-centered, having no self control, and on the verge of death every time they put anything in their mouths that isn't a leaf of lettuce. We're told that we should be ashamed for the way we look, because obviously we just need to eat less and exercise more and we can be just like the skinny people. And the sad thing about it is, fat people absolutely believe that 100%.
Is it any wonder, then, that so many overweight and obese people are desperate to lose weight? The message to lose weight has become so frantic, so terrifying, it's as if it's a highly contagious disease, and if we don't take action right now, all will be lost! Many fat people are lead to believe that they're just months away from diabetes and heart disease, even if they're physically very healthy. And so they take on the task of losing the weight, for themselves, for their families, for society as a whole (because everyone knows that obesity is a drain on the medical system).
This desperation is what feeds the $60 billion dollar diet industry. If being skinny is so good morally, socially, and physically, it's worth spending money on, right? Well, according to recent studies, no, not really. Only 5% of dieters keep the weight off for 5 years, and the ones that do keep it off make it their life's mission. Several of the people who told their diet stories in the book Body of Truth said that maintaining the weight loss was a full time job, and they had to stay at it constantly. But that's the great thing about the diet industry; they know that their business model works really well. The dieters lose weight initially, they keep it off for 6 months to a year, then start gaining it back. They can then say, "Hey, the diet isn't at fault; you just didn't stick to it!". And because people are so desperate to lose weight, they believe it and come back for more punishment.
I don't know how well the low carb and paleo diets work long term. I do know of several people who have kept the weight off with low carb for many years, but I know of even more people who have gone up and down with it. As for the paleo diet, I don't know if what we call "paleo" today (as opposed to Lorren Cordain's paleo, which I understand is low fat and anti-saturated fat) has been around long enough to see if many people can keep the weight off long term. As I said last time, this doesn't mean I don't think these diets are great; I think they're wonderful ways to get back to health, for sure. What I really don't know is if they're any better at keeping the weight off compared to any other diet out there. If anyone has any info on this, I'd love to see it.
The most damaging aspect of this whole get-skinny-to-be-healthy mindset is that it skews a person's idea of what healthy really is. You begin to think that anything that makes you skinny is healthy, even if those methods are clearly dangerous. Or at the very least, you use that as justification. Truth be told, I'm fairly certain that health is only an added bonus to weight loss for most people. Even if they don't say it out loud, I'm pretty sure that the number one reason people attempt weight loss is to look good, and to be socially acceptable. It's so easy, when you're thinking about or doing something dangerous to lose weight, to give yourself and others the justification that, hey, you were unhealthy as a fat person, so this can't be bad for me!
A case in point of this disturbing mental gymnastics is the Kimkins disaster. I know I've talked about it briefly before in my blog, but I never went into much detail about it. Back then, I was fascinated by the drama of what happened, and how Heidi (Kimmer) could put herself into a situation like that. I found myself reading the whole drama again recently, though this time, I see something a lot more disturbing. I paid special attention to the blogs of people who went on the diet and were deep into it, but because of the fraud, they left the site and started talking about their experiences. I see people who were so desperate to lose weight and be beautiful, that they rationalized a 300-600 calorie low carb/low fat diet as a way to get healthy. They believed, despite being intelligent well educated people, that this was enough food to fuel them for the whole day:
 |
| 594 calories |
And if that wasn't doing it for them and they found themselves in a weight stall, they could try this for their daily intake instead:
 |
| 376 calories |
The most disturbing part about this epic tale of self-deception and desperation is the long term effects. Many people (mostly women) who stayed on this diet for months started to have side effects; losing hair, brittle nails, feeling nauseated, dizziness, blacking out, heart flutters, and in some cases, serious heart problems. And yet, despite all of these issues, they were brushed aside as if they weren't a problem, not just by the owner of the site and her admins, but also by the members. They were told, and believed, that there was no such thing as starvation mode, that the side effects were normal, and that whatever they were experiencing was temporary and worth it to be skinny and healthy.
But there is such a thing as starvation mode. It's called YOU'RE STARVING! Anyone with a functioning brain should know that eating very tiny amounts of food is what starvation is. By definition, it's to "die or suffer from lack of food." SNATT is a term that was used frequently on the Kimkins website; it stood for Semi-Nauceous-All-The-Time, and it was a state you wanted to be in. If that's not suffering from lack of food, I don't know what is.
The other side effects aren't normal, by the way; they're signs that your body is suffering. You lose hair because your body is in shock. Your nails become brittle because you're not providing your body with the proper amount of nutrients and good fats and protein. You get dizzy and black out for several reasons, including low electrolytes, hypoglycemia, and low blood pressure, all of these things linked to the starvation diet. As for heart problems, well... when you're on a very low calorie diet, your body starts to eat away at your muscle tissue just to keep you alive, and of course your heart is a muscle. It's not a secret that many anorectics die from heart problems.
That's the lure of skinny. Intelligent, healthy people, who perhaps have more padding than society deems proper, put their lives at stake just to fit into the crowd. The really sad part is that it's usually all for naught. Scientists have not only shown that 95% of dieters regain the weight, but that yo-yo dieting is very bad for your health and leads most people to an even higher weight than when they started. I don't exactly trust scientists, not after reading many of the scathing reviews of studies done by the low carb/paleo community, but there's a cultural component to this idea of yo-yo dieting. The fact that so many people have lived through the up and downs of weight cycling and ended up heavier than before should tell us that there's at least some truth to it.
So why do we, as a society, continue to promote dieting to people who are otherwise healthy? I think the idea of weight=health is so deeply ingrained in our culture that it's impossible to believe a fat person is perfectly fine. It doesn't help that "health experts" are out there vehemently rejecting the idea of healthy obesity, screaming that this plainly wrong idea is costing us all money and making people sick and dead, despite the mounting science that shows that obesity isn't really that big of a health risk (or one at all, in the case of overweight).
I wonder sometimes if this will ever change. Will doctors ever promote a good diet and exercise as ways to get healthy rather than skinny (and then be satisfied if the patient gets healthy but doesn't lose weight)? Will women's magazines have cover stories about how to get healthy in 30 days with a beautiful round woman showing off her incredible biceps (as opposed to a tiny skeletal woman standing in one leg of her former pants)? Will we ever be told by our government the truth that dieting is actually very bad for us, and encouraged to eat wholesome, natural, real food for whole body health?
I suppose only time will tell.
Tuesday, May 5, 2015
The Lure of Skinny
I've been doing a lot of thinking lately, about weight and food and what it means to be healthy. I read Body of Truth, which is a scientific look at obesity and how it affects health. I've been doing some soul searching. What I've discovered, through all of that searching and thinking and reading, is that our society and their longing for thinness is pretty messed up.
It actually makes me pretty mad, if I had to be honest. Mad at scientists, at doctors, at women's magazines, diet gurus, Hollywood, the weight loss community, and myself. I've been trying for a couple weeks to get these feelings into words, but I've been struggling with it. My emotions are so raw and tangled up. It's almost the way I felt when I first watched Tom Naughton's Fathead documentary and found out that the low fat/high carb standard American diet was a sham that was making us all sick. Only this time, it's somehow worse.
Why am I mad, exactly? I talked about it some in a previous post, but I didn't go into a bunch of detail there. And since I wrote that, I've read Body of Truth, which is just fascinating. I read it in two days, I think, which is very quickly for me, and I plan on reading it again soon with highlighters in hand. It all goes back to weight and health, with one equaling the other in the collective mind of our society. A skinny person is healthy, and a healthy person is skinny. You're fat because you're unhealthy, and you're unhealthy because you're fat.
When I joined the low carb scene back in 2012, I was totally revved up to get going on this plan. I was a diehard believer, and I knew that in just a short while, the weight would start falling off of me. So I buckled down, ate as low carb as I could manage as a vegetarian, and watched the scale. However, aside from an initial 7 pound drop the first week, the scale never moved. I started eating meat a few months later (because vegetarian low carb is really really hard), and waited for the scale to move. Again, it never did. I tricked myself into believing I was getting smaller, losing inches, but looking back at it now, I don't think I actually did. I have a way of making myself believe something when I really want it.
Then Chad and I started cutting out the junk and went more of a paleo bent. Again, I waited for the pounds to drop. I started lifting weights and I was running. No change. I gained a little while on vacation, and lost it again when I went back on the diet, but that was the extent of it for me. Meanwhile, Chad was losing weight and it made me feel bad that he could do it but I couldn't.
That's not to say I don't think these ways of eating are bad. While I was watching the scale, waiting for a miracle to happen, my health was improving tremendously. I had more energy, I was feeling stronger and happier and more clear headed, my ice pick headaches went away, my menstrual cycle normalized, my fingernails started getting stronger, my moodiness went away (mostly; I am human, after all).
But because the weight wasn't coming off, and everyone in the low carb/paleo crowd said it should be, I thought I was a failure. I kept all of these feelings inside, though. I didn't want anyone to know that I was feeling like that, or that I couldn't lose weight even though everyone else seemed to have no problems with it. In my mind, I was clearly doing something wrong. It felt like my dirty little secret.
Then, like I explained in another post, I gained 10 pounds over the 2013 holidays, and then another 5 pounds over the 2014 holidays, and no matter how hard I try, how many carbs I cut, how small my portions are, how much fat I eat, how much I exercise, how much I watch sugar and grain consumption, how much I cut calories, no matter how much I desperately I want it, I can't lose that weight. I've literally tried everything I can think of to lose this weight, to the point where I got obsessed with it. I would look at myself in the mirror and get so angry at myself and swear that I would do better the next day. My binge eating got worse, and I felt so out of control. I'd be so good for weeks, but nothing changed on the scale, so I would binge, and that would make me feel even worse about myself. I cried because I feared that I would continue to gain the weight and there would be nothing I could do about it.
(To be clear, a binge eating episode is different for everyone who has the problem; some people consume 5000 calories, while others only eat 100. The real sign that it's a binge is that you can't stop yourself from starting, you feel like you have no control over yourself while you're doing it, and once you're done you feel absolutely terrible and guilt stricken. For me personally, a typical binge is probably 400 calories, and since I don't drive, it's almost always food in the house which is all whole natural foods, usually of a fatty nature. Not that I'm trying to justify what I binge on; I just want to make the picture clearer.)
And then by chance, I found the book Women Afraid to Eat, read it through, then bought and read Body of Truth shortly after. Weight isn't equal to health, these books said. Weight loss is incredibly hard to maintain (yes, even for some low carb/paleo people). Your body fights too much weight loss. Dieting is bad for you! The effects of dieting are far worse than the effects of being overweight as far as health goes. Actually, being overweight (bmi of 25-29.9) is a pretty healthy place to be, as far as longevity goes. And the terrible thing about this is, scientists have known all of this since the 60s. More modern science only confirms what these earlier researchers found.
I have totally cut out the schemes to lose weight. For one blessed month now, I have had no get-skinny-quick plans. I have eaten mostly very healthfully; lower carb paleo WAPF style foods; veggies, eggs, meat, dairy, raw milk, fruit, good oils and fats, resistant starches. I have mostly tried to eat at meals (breakfast at 7am, lunch at 12pm and dinner at 5:30pm), and only until I'm satisfied. However, I'm not being strict about it, either. I've eaten cake and ice cream at a party, I've made peanut butter chocolate chip cookies, I munch on candy when I visit my mom's house, and Chad and I have gone out for ice cream a couple of times. Thirty blessed days of no binging and no emotional eating. Thirty days! And I haven't felt guilty eating the junk, either. I try to keep it low, because of course I know it's not good to eat sugar all the time, and I know that it will make me feel bad and be tired and moody.
I'm trying not to think about weight at all. I'm trying to eat for health and wholeness, and let the scale fall where it may. I do check my weight occasionally, though, because of my intense fear that I'm going to start gaining a bunch of weight. After a month (a month!) of eating whatever I wanted, and eating sugar and other junk whenever I wanted (within reason), I haven't gained any weight at all.
I've read a lot about set points and how your body wants to be at a certain weight. Not many people in the low carb/paleo community seem to like this idea (for that matter, I don't know any diet group that does, and why would you? That's basically saying dieting is going to fail). I have a bunch of reservations about it myself, but I can't help wondering if it's really true. Is my set point 200 pounds? When I weight 275 pounds, was it because I ate so much junk that I forced my body to gain all that weight against its will? When I got down to 175, I was absolutely miserable and couldn't stay there for more than a few weeks. I was happy at 185, but it's been five years since I got to that weight, and that's the amount of time when a dieter starts creeping back up to their starting weight. Am I going to get back up to 215, where I was before going on a low calorie diet? I hope not. I'm having trouble fully accepting these extra 15 pounds and loving my body with the extra roundness. But if I do gain the other 15 pounds, it won't be because of my diet or lack of self control. I know that now. I also know that the extra 15 pounds won't make me unhealthy, either. I bet I'm healthier than most thin people eating a SAD.
The real reason I started writing tonight was because I wanted to talk about the lure of skinniness and what it can do to a person. Since I've spent so much time rambling tonight about everything else, I think I'll save that post for another time.
It actually makes me pretty mad, if I had to be honest. Mad at scientists, at doctors, at women's magazines, diet gurus, Hollywood, the weight loss community, and myself. I've been trying for a couple weeks to get these feelings into words, but I've been struggling with it. My emotions are so raw and tangled up. It's almost the way I felt when I first watched Tom Naughton's Fathead documentary and found out that the low fat/high carb standard American diet was a sham that was making us all sick. Only this time, it's somehow worse.
Why am I mad, exactly? I talked about it some in a previous post, but I didn't go into a bunch of detail there. And since I wrote that, I've read Body of Truth, which is just fascinating. I read it in two days, I think, which is very quickly for me, and I plan on reading it again soon with highlighters in hand. It all goes back to weight and health, with one equaling the other in the collective mind of our society. A skinny person is healthy, and a healthy person is skinny. You're fat because you're unhealthy, and you're unhealthy because you're fat.
When I joined the low carb scene back in 2012, I was totally revved up to get going on this plan. I was a diehard believer, and I knew that in just a short while, the weight would start falling off of me. So I buckled down, ate as low carb as I could manage as a vegetarian, and watched the scale. However, aside from an initial 7 pound drop the first week, the scale never moved. I started eating meat a few months later (because vegetarian low carb is really really hard), and waited for the scale to move. Again, it never did. I tricked myself into believing I was getting smaller, losing inches, but looking back at it now, I don't think I actually did. I have a way of making myself believe something when I really want it.
Then Chad and I started cutting out the junk and went more of a paleo bent. Again, I waited for the pounds to drop. I started lifting weights and I was running. No change. I gained a little while on vacation, and lost it again when I went back on the diet, but that was the extent of it for me. Meanwhile, Chad was losing weight and it made me feel bad that he could do it but I couldn't.
That's not to say I don't think these ways of eating are bad. While I was watching the scale, waiting for a miracle to happen, my health was improving tremendously. I had more energy, I was feeling stronger and happier and more clear headed, my ice pick headaches went away, my menstrual cycle normalized, my fingernails started getting stronger, my moodiness went away (mostly; I am human, after all).
But because the weight wasn't coming off, and everyone in the low carb/paleo crowd said it should be, I thought I was a failure. I kept all of these feelings inside, though. I didn't want anyone to know that I was feeling like that, or that I couldn't lose weight even though everyone else seemed to have no problems with it. In my mind, I was clearly doing something wrong. It felt like my dirty little secret.
Then, like I explained in another post, I gained 10 pounds over the 2013 holidays, and then another 5 pounds over the 2014 holidays, and no matter how hard I try, how many carbs I cut, how small my portions are, how much fat I eat, how much I exercise, how much I watch sugar and grain consumption, how much I cut calories, no matter how much I desperately I want it, I can't lose that weight. I've literally tried everything I can think of to lose this weight, to the point where I got obsessed with it. I would look at myself in the mirror and get so angry at myself and swear that I would do better the next day. My binge eating got worse, and I felt so out of control. I'd be so good for weeks, but nothing changed on the scale, so I would binge, and that would make me feel even worse about myself. I cried because I feared that I would continue to gain the weight and there would be nothing I could do about it.
(To be clear, a binge eating episode is different for everyone who has the problem; some people consume 5000 calories, while others only eat 100. The real sign that it's a binge is that you can't stop yourself from starting, you feel like you have no control over yourself while you're doing it, and once you're done you feel absolutely terrible and guilt stricken. For me personally, a typical binge is probably 400 calories, and since I don't drive, it's almost always food in the house which is all whole natural foods, usually of a fatty nature. Not that I'm trying to justify what I binge on; I just want to make the picture clearer.)
And then by chance, I found the book Women Afraid to Eat, read it through, then bought and read Body of Truth shortly after. Weight isn't equal to health, these books said. Weight loss is incredibly hard to maintain (yes, even for some low carb/paleo people). Your body fights too much weight loss. Dieting is bad for you! The effects of dieting are far worse than the effects of being overweight as far as health goes. Actually, being overweight (bmi of 25-29.9) is a pretty healthy place to be, as far as longevity goes. And the terrible thing about this is, scientists have known all of this since the 60s. More modern science only confirms what these earlier researchers found.
I have totally cut out the schemes to lose weight. For one blessed month now, I have had no get-skinny-quick plans. I have eaten mostly very healthfully; lower carb paleo WAPF style foods; veggies, eggs, meat, dairy, raw milk, fruit, good oils and fats, resistant starches. I have mostly tried to eat at meals (breakfast at 7am, lunch at 12pm and dinner at 5:30pm), and only until I'm satisfied. However, I'm not being strict about it, either. I've eaten cake and ice cream at a party, I've made peanut butter chocolate chip cookies, I munch on candy when I visit my mom's house, and Chad and I have gone out for ice cream a couple of times. Thirty blessed days of no binging and no emotional eating. Thirty days! And I haven't felt guilty eating the junk, either. I try to keep it low, because of course I know it's not good to eat sugar all the time, and I know that it will make me feel bad and be tired and moody.
I'm trying not to think about weight at all. I'm trying to eat for health and wholeness, and let the scale fall where it may. I do check my weight occasionally, though, because of my intense fear that I'm going to start gaining a bunch of weight. After a month (a month!) of eating whatever I wanted, and eating sugar and other junk whenever I wanted (within reason), I haven't gained any weight at all.
I've read a lot about set points and how your body wants to be at a certain weight. Not many people in the low carb/paleo community seem to like this idea (for that matter, I don't know any diet group that does, and why would you? That's basically saying dieting is going to fail). I have a bunch of reservations about it myself, but I can't help wondering if it's really true. Is my set point 200 pounds? When I weight 275 pounds, was it because I ate so much junk that I forced my body to gain all that weight against its will? When I got down to 175, I was absolutely miserable and couldn't stay there for more than a few weeks. I was happy at 185, but it's been five years since I got to that weight, and that's the amount of time when a dieter starts creeping back up to their starting weight. Am I going to get back up to 215, where I was before going on a low calorie diet? I hope not. I'm having trouble fully accepting these extra 15 pounds and loving my body with the extra roundness. But if I do gain the other 15 pounds, it won't be because of my diet or lack of self control. I know that now. I also know that the extra 15 pounds won't make me unhealthy, either. I bet I'm healthier than most thin people eating a SAD.
The real reason I started writing tonight was because I wanted to talk about the lure of skinniness and what it can do to a person. Since I've spent so much time rambling tonight about everything else, I think I'll save that post for another time.
Thursday, April 23, 2015
Single Focus
As I said recently, I've been reading an interesting book called Women Afraid to Eat. I don't agree with it 100%; it was written in the late 90s, so there are suggestions to go low fat and low sodium sprinkled throughout, but the rest of the book is fascinating. It's a shocking exposure of what our society's focus on weight really does to women. It's definitely opened my eyes.
The author, Frances Berg, talks about a lot of things; the shocking long term results of dieting both physically and mentally, the fact that 70% of women don't get enough of the nutrients they need to be healthy, how people unfairly judge women based on their appearances, and the surprising fact that the health benefits that you get from dieting and losing weight are very tiny compared to the health risks. I haven't quite gotten through the whole book yet, but I'm finding it to be pretty inspiring and I plan on looking into these subjects more soon.
The last point there is the most annoying to me. People that are obese or overweight are, yes, statistically at more risk for many health problems, such as hearth disease and diabetes. The risk, according to Frances, isn't as high as you might think, considering how loudly health experts are yelling about it. In some ways, it's actually healthier to be overweight or even obese; some recent studies have shown that overweight people actually live longer than normal weight people, and are less likely to get dementia. And race plays a big role in it, too. Apparently, black people can be healthy at slightly higher BMIs than white people, and Native American people can have much higher BMIs than white people and still be healthy.
So what's the deal? Why is skinny "ideal", anyway? I just don't get it. And I certainly don't understand those people who are in favor of public fat shaming to get people to lose weight. As a person who has never been a normal weight, I can tell you for sure that fat shaming doesn't work. It rips a deep scar into your heart that never goes away. I'll never forget being called hippo hips, or thunder thighs, or being barked at and called a dog. I think the one that hurt the most when two boys came up to me, and one said, "I think you're pretty, but my friend thinks you're ugly. That must mean you're pretty ugly." It's hard to look in the mirror and see a beautiful woman; all I see is an ugly fat person. And there are health experts out there that want to promote this kind of treatment!
A recent study really got me riled up. It was a cohort study that tried to see if there were different kinds of obese people. And, apparently they found six types, though because this was focused on a group of people in England, they suspect there are even more groups globally than they found. I think this kind of study is awesome; they're actually looking at obesity as a set of different types of people instead of fat vs. skinny. I went into the article with high hopes, thinking yes, now they'll see there are some healthy obese people. And they did find healthy obese people! Obese young women, and obese older affluent adults. Great, wonderful, glad to hear them say they're healthy.
But then they go on to say that these two groups, the healthy obese women and healthy obese affluent older adults still need to lose weight.
Why?! Why do they need to lose weight if they're healthy?! That makes no sense! If they're healthy, and living a health promoting lifestyle, why does it matter if they lose weight or not? Shouldn't health be the first priority? RRR!
We're all individuals. I can never be skinny; my genes won't allow it, and I'm not just blowing smoke here. My mom was a beautiful woman when she was younger; she lived on a farm, in the days when everyone walked everywhere (she walked to town most days, a five mile hike up and down a huge hill), and she ate real whole food her parents grew and that grandma cooked with love. But she was still a size 18 at her smallest. All of my maternal female relatives (seven aunts and many cousins) were like that; we're a family of strong, tall, big boned, robust, and voluptuous women. Grandma was never skinny (though never fat, either), and she was vibrant and healthy until her death at 102.
I tried to find the data behind the news article for that study about types of obesity, but apparently you have to email the lead scientist for it. Although I'm interested to see what it says, I'm not really that good at sorting through the data. Besides, I doubt they'd send it to me for a blog post a few people are going to read.
I came across an article on the New York Post's website, with an excerpt from a book called Body of Truth. After reading the article and the reviews of the book, I had to order it. It's a serious look at the science of obesity and what it honestly says about the health risks of being fat and also of dieting. I feel like I need to get to the bottom of this. I want to read about the real science behind obesity, rather than just what the health experts are screaming.
So that's my rant for the day. Hopefully, when I read more into the book, I'll have something more interesting to say than RRRRR!
The author, Frances Berg, talks about a lot of things; the shocking long term results of dieting both physically and mentally, the fact that 70% of women don't get enough of the nutrients they need to be healthy, how people unfairly judge women based on their appearances, and the surprising fact that the health benefits that you get from dieting and losing weight are very tiny compared to the health risks. I haven't quite gotten through the whole book yet, but I'm finding it to be pretty inspiring and I plan on looking into these subjects more soon.
The last point there is the most annoying to me. People that are obese or overweight are, yes, statistically at more risk for many health problems, such as hearth disease and diabetes. The risk, according to Frances, isn't as high as you might think, considering how loudly health experts are yelling about it. In some ways, it's actually healthier to be overweight or even obese; some recent studies have shown that overweight people actually live longer than normal weight people, and are less likely to get dementia. And race plays a big role in it, too. Apparently, black people can be healthy at slightly higher BMIs than white people, and Native American people can have much higher BMIs than white people and still be healthy.
So what's the deal? Why is skinny "ideal", anyway? I just don't get it. And I certainly don't understand those people who are in favor of public fat shaming to get people to lose weight. As a person who has never been a normal weight, I can tell you for sure that fat shaming doesn't work. It rips a deep scar into your heart that never goes away. I'll never forget being called hippo hips, or thunder thighs, or being barked at and called a dog. I think the one that hurt the most when two boys came up to me, and one said, "I think you're pretty, but my friend thinks you're ugly. That must mean you're pretty ugly." It's hard to look in the mirror and see a beautiful woman; all I see is an ugly fat person. And there are health experts out there that want to promote this kind of treatment!
A recent study really got me riled up. It was a cohort study that tried to see if there were different kinds of obese people. And, apparently they found six types, though because this was focused on a group of people in England, they suspect there are even more groups globally than they found. I think this kind of study is awesome; they're actually looking at obesity as a set of different types of people instead of fat vs. skinny. I went into the article with high hopes, thinking yes, now they'll see there are some healthy obese people. And they did find healthy obese people! Obese young women, and obese older affluent adults. Great, wonderful, glad to hear them say they're healthy.
But then they go on to say that these two groups, the healthy obese women and healthy obese affluent older adults still need to lose weight.
Why?! Why do they need to lose weight if they're healthy?! That makes no sense! If they're healthy, and living a health promoting lifestyle, why does it matter if they lose weight or not? Shouldn't health be the first priority? RRR!
We're all individuals. I can never be skinny; my genes won't allow it, and I'm not just blowing smoke here. My mom was a beautiful woman when she was younger; she lived on a farm, in the days when everyone walked everywhere (she walked to town most days, a five mile hike up and down a huge hill), and she ate real whole food her parents grew and that grandma cooked with love. But she was still a size 18 at her smallest. All of my maternal female relatives (seven aunts and many cousins) were like that; we're a family of strong, tall, big boned, robust, and voluptuous women. Grandma was never skinny (though never fat, either), and she was vibrant and healthy until her death at 102.
I tried to find the data behind the news article for that study about types of obesity, but apparently you have to email the lead scientist for it. Although I'm interested to see what it says, I'm not really that good at sorting through the data. Besides, I doubt they'd send it to me for a blog post a few people are going to read.
I came across an article on the New York Post's website, with an excerpt from a book called Body of Truth. After reading the article and the reviews of the book, I had to order it. It's a serious look at the science of obesity and what it honestly says about the health risks of being fat and also of dieting. I feel like I need to get to the bottom of this. I want to read about the real science behind obesity, rather than just what the health experts are screaming.
So that's my rant for the day. Hopefully, when I read more into the book, I'll have something more interesting to say than RRRRR!
Wednesday, May 22, 2013
Pure Nonsense
Bariatric surgery is becoming a pretty big deal in the mainstream media lately. Everyone's all in a tizzy over the findings that OMG GASTRIC BYPASS CAN CURE DIABETES! Quickly, everyone! Let's cut open every diabetic within reach!
I'll admit that it's pretty exciting news that scientists have said out loud that you can cure diabetes. It seems like almost every doctor and every nutritionist is determined to make diabetics believe that diabetes is something you have to fight tooth and nail every day of your life until it kills you, and that there's no such thing as a cure for diabetes. So to actually hear someone say, hey guys, I think we can cure this thing... That's pretty cool. But then all the smart people in the room start talking about the possible ways it's happening. The surgery must alter your hormones! It makes it so you can't absorb all that harmful glucose! It changes your whole system so you can work more properly!!! But no one in the spotlight was asking, what about the diet?
Gastric bypass surgery has been kind of a miracle procedure since they first started reporting on it, really. Can't lose weight? Well, let me rip you open and connect this thingy to that thingy, and voila! You're now 100 pounds lighter! No need to diet, or cut out junk food, or try to lose weight. Except, yeah, after surgery you can only eat tiny portions and you have to cut out all junk or else you'll throw up all over the place. I know that it's really hard for very fat people to lose weight with the carb-heavy calorie restricted diets they're recommended by, well, everyone, but I also know that bariatric surgery is the easy way out for a lot of people. I've personally known a handful of people who have the attitude of , hey, I'm going to eat all the cake I want because if I get really fat, I'll just get that newfangled surgery and I'll get skinny in no time.
But what's really bothered me about gastric bypass surgery is that it seems like no one is asking the most obvious question. What happens when you just eat the diet recommended to surgery patients?
It's not a fun diet, let me tell you that. The Mayo clinic website has a pretty good description of what you eat after gastric bypass. It comes in phases, depending on where you are in the healing process, but in every phase, they emphasize eating high quality protein foods along with vegetables and fruit. So meat, eggs, dairy, vegetables, and fruit. Gosh, that sounds like a low carb diet.
Let's do a little math for fun (oh god, I'm turning into Chad...) It's hard to pin this information down on the internet, but I found that the calorie goal of patients is no more than 1000 calories a day (many people say it's hard to eat more than 700 calories), and the recommended protein intake is about 75g a day, though some doctors recommend up to 100 g. But for this thought experiment, we'll stick with 1000 calories and 75 g of protein. On this page, I found that patients are told to keep their fat intake below 30 g a day. We'll say the patient was behaving themselves and ate only 20g of fat. So let's see what this looks like so far.
75 g of protein = 300 calories
20 g of fat = 180
300 + 180 = 480
1000 calories - 480 calories = 520 calories from carbs
520 / 4 = 130 g of carbs
That's not a super low carb diet, but you know what? That's still pretty darn low. Especially considering gastric bypass patients don't absorb all the food that they eat. Now for fun, let's calculate out what I found on the internet most people end up eating (I looked through some diet journals on myfitnesspal.com of surgery patients who are successfully losing weight), which is about 700 calories, 80 g of protein, and 35 g of fat.
700 calories a day - 320 calories of protein - 315 calories of fat = 65 calories of carbs.
65 calories of carbs = 16.25 g of carbs a day.
16 carbs a day?! That's what I would call a VERY LOW CARB DIET.
So why haven't scientists tried studying the diet alone to see if it's just as effective as the surgery? Well, as it turns out, they have done just that recently. Someone finally thought to themselves, hey guys, maybe we should, you know, see if it's the food or the horrible gut slicing that's helping these people. And you know what they found out? It's the food.
At least when it comes to diabetes control. I'll admit that this is a pretty small study group (n=10), but it's still really promising. They took ten people and had them eat the post-surgery diet for ten days, then several months later those same ten people had gastric bypass surgery and ate the exact same diet. Both times the patients had improved fasting glucose, but the diet-only part of the experiment showed the best improvements.
So now we have a pretty good clue. The next time you hear someone saying that bariatric surgery is the cure for diabetes, slap them with a clue-stick and tell them, no, idiot, it's the diet.
The worst part of this study, though, is one of the researches ended up saying,"Unfortunately, such a restrictive diet is nearly impossible to adhere to long-term in the absence of bariatric surgery." Dude, what? Are you dumb? Have you no clue? DO I NEED TO GET MY CLUE-STICK?! Yes, it's true that it's going to be nearly impossible for most sane people to eat 700 calories a day, but why can't we combine what we learned with this study with what we've learned from low carb studies and say, hey guys, low carb helps you lose lots of weight and also helps you control your diabetes. There's no need for bariatric surgery. It's a waste of money, a waste of time, and it's a waste of a perfectly healthy body that, given the right food, can heal and lose the weight all by itself.
I'll admit that it's pretty exciting news that scientists have said out loud that you can cure diabetes. It seems like almost every doctor and every nutritionist is determined to make diabetics believe that diabetes is something you have to fight tooth and nail every day of your life until it kills you, and that there's no such thing as a cure for diabetes. So to actually hear someone say, hey guys, I think we can cure this thing... That's pretty cool. But then all the smart people in the room start talking about the possible ways it's happening. The surgery must alter your hormones! It makes it so you can't absorb all that harmful glucose! It changes your whole system so you can work more properly!!! But no one in the spotlight was asking, what about the diet?
Gastric bypass surgery has been kind of a miracle procedure since they first started reporting on it, really. Can't lose weight? Well, let me rip you open and connect this thingy to that thingy, and voila! You're now 100 pounds lighter! No need to diet, or cut out junk food, or try to lose weight. Except, yeah, after surgery you can only eat tiny portions and you have to cut out all junk or else you'll throw up all over the place. I know that it's really hard for very fat people to lose weight with the carb-heavy calorie restricted diets they're recommended by, well, everyone, but I also know that bariatric surgery is the easy way out for a lot of people. I've personally known a handful of people who have the attitude of , hey, I'm going to eat all the cake I want because if I get really fat, I'll just get that newfangled surgery and I'll get skinny in no time.
But what's really bothered me about gastric bypass surgery is that it seems like no one is asking the most obvious question. What happens when you just eat the diet recommended to surgery patients?
It's not a fun diet, let me tell you that. The Mayo clinic website has a pretty good description of what you eat after gastric bypass. It comes in phases, depending on where you are in the healing process, but in every phase, they emphasize eating high quality protein foods along with vegetables and fruit. So meat, eggs, dairy, vegetables, and fruit. Gosh, that sounds like a low carb diet.
Let's do a little math for fun (oh god, I'm turning into Chad...) It's hard to pin this information down on the internet, but I found that the calorie goal of patients is no more than 1000 calories a day (many people say it's hard to eat more than 700 calories), and the recommended protein intake is about 75g a day, though some doctors recommend up to 100 g. But for this thought experiment, we'll stick with 1000 calories and 75 g of protein. On this page, I found that patients are told to keep their fat intake below 30 g a day. We'll say the patient was behaving themselves and ate only 20g of fat. So let's see what this looks like so far.
75 g of protein = 300 calories
20 g of fat = 180
300 + 180 = 480
1000 calories - 480 calories = 520 calories from carbs
520 / 4 = 130 g of carbs
That's not a super low carb diet, but you know what? That's still pretty darn low. Especially considering gastric bypass patients don't absorb all the food that they eat. Now for fun, let's calculate out what I found on the internet most people end up eating (I looked through some diet journals on myfitnesspal.com of surgery patients who are successfully losing weight), which is about 700 calories, 80 g of protein, and 35 g of fat.
700 calories a day - 320 calories of protein - 315 calories of fat = 65 calories of carbs.
65 calories of carbs = 16.25 g of carbs a day.
16 carbs a day?! That's what I would call a VERY LOW CARB DIET.
So why haven't scientists tried studying the diet alone to see if it's just as effective as the surgery? Well, as it turns out, they have done just that recently. Someone finally thought to themselves, hey guys, maybe we should, you know, see if it's the food or the horrible gut slicing that's helping these people. And you know what they found out? It's the food.
At least when it comes to diabetes control. I'll admit that this is a pretty small study group (n=10), but it's still really promising. They took ten people and had them eat the post-surgery diet for ten days, then several months later those same ten people had gastric bypass surgery and ate the exact same diet. Both times the patients had improved fasting glucose, but the diet-only part of the experiment showed the best improvements.
So now we have a pretty good clue. The next time you hear someone saying that bariatric surgery is the cure for diabetes, slap them with a clue-stick and tell them, no, idiot, it's the diet.
The worst part of this study, though, is one of the researches ended up saying,"Unfortunately, such a restrictive diet is nearly impossible to adhere to long-term in the absence of bariatric surgery." Dude, what? Are you dumb? Have you no clue? DO I NEED TO GET MY CLUE-STICK?! Yes, it's true that it's going to be nearly impossible for most sane people to eat 700 calories a day, but why can't we combine what we learned with this study with what we've learned from low carb studies and say, hey guys, low carb helps you lose lots of weight and also helps you control your diabetes. There's no need for bariatric surgery. It's a waste of money, a waste of time, and it's a waste of a perfectly healthy body that, given the right food, can heal and lose the weight all by itself.
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