This old commercial shows the AYDS Diet Chews. I remember my mom tried them. They didn’t help her lose weight. I tried them, thinking that I might lose weight. They tasted like Tootsie Rolls.
It seems like every decade has their own strange diet remedies. They were just as bad in the 1980’s as they are now. In twenty years, the Trimspa commercials will seem just as strange, except for the unfortunate choice of names.
Once again, Terry talks about diet, weight and our emotions. This time, she attacks the feelings of food as a moral issue.
She is astute enough to notice that she has made food a moral issue. How many times have I felt just as she does here?
“At the end of the day when I tally up the calories in my diet notebook, I feel smug and virtuous when the total is minuscule and guilty when it’s higher than the day before. I don’t just feel that I’ve let myself down. I feel like a bad person.”
When faced with 300 calories of Lean Cuisine or 300 calories of ice cream, she has very strict ideas. Dinner is GOOD and ice cream is BAD. Fortunately, she is working to change her perceptions.
“I don’t think the choice should carry a moral imperative. A once a month serving of ice cream shouldn’t have the ability to destroy my sense of self. But in the moral universe, it does.”
In the end, she’s right. Learning to love ourselves when we’re thin and when we’re overweight is the only way to have a healthy body AND mind.
“Beating ourselves up in self-loathing isn’t conductive to improving our nutrition. In the end, it’s no one’s business but our own. I can’t change anyone else’s judgment of me, but I can change my own.”
Good for you, Terry! Keep up the good work!
MSN has an online slideshow of a map of the United States showing the obesity rates from 1985 to 2004. You can see it by clicking on the map below:
The problem that I have is that this information is presented as fact when the map was created using questionable data:
In 1998, the CDC changed the BMI numbers corresponding to obesity. With a change in accounting, suddenly the United States became “fatter.”
The CDC is based on self-reported height and weight collected through telephone surveys rather than actually weighing people. Not only is this data based on heresay, it is only a measurement of people willing to answer telephone surveys.
In actuality, this map tells me nothing. Is Utah less fat than Texas? I don’t know and I can’t depend on MSN to give me a legitimate answer if they consider the phone surveys from CDC to be “good enough.”
It appears that the major media is really spreading the idea of the Obesity Epidemic. I’m not buying it. I want to eat healthy and exercise so I can live a long time and look good, but I don’t think anyone has been “scared straight” when it comes to eating healthy.
Via: Boing Boing: Animated map of American obesity 1985-2004
Once again, Terry nails a food issue on the head. This entry, “Food as Power,” talks about some news events in which parents have starved their children:
For all those parents out there thinking about putting your overweight child on a diet, consider this:
“I’d be willing to bet that every fat person has been put on a diet by a parent at some time in their youth. Someone else decides what you’re allowed to eat, someone who withholds anything forbidden and doles out everything else on a schedule. Food becomes a battle, with the adult, who holds all the power, on one side and the child on the other. All control is taken from the child, leading to resentment and secret binges. The plan seldom works for this reason.”
Terry goes on to say that food is ultimately about power. Parental power over children. Familial power over siblings. Our power over ourselves.
“In all facets of our lives, food becomes a struggle for power. That’s not just for the overweight. It’s an issue for thin women, too. Food gets separated into categories of virtue and sin, and we monitor our intake as a measure of strength or weakness and fear it having power over us. Our weight is a visible sign of how much self-control we have.”
If you feel out of control in other aspects of your life, does it affect your eating? I’ve noticed that I binge more when my life feels out of control. Being able to eat whatever I want in large quantities seems to give me an illusion of control over the rest of my life. The same has been said for those fighting with anorexia. Refusing food gives them a sense of control in their lives.
So, the question for me is:
What can I do to exert control over my life that doesn’t involve food?
Colleen Wainwright had a stomach incident with a bowl of cherries and it showed her what people who purge deal with on a regular basis.
She has never had a problem with bingeing and purging, but a trip to the porcelain goddess can educate quite well what some put themselves through:
and as I tried not to look
at the film of yuck
coating the porcelain
because seriously,
if I didn’t already have to puke
it would have made me…it occurred to me:
those skinny, skinny girls
who look so sick to me
probably are.Probably worse than I know.
Because seriously—
would you do that
if you didn’t have to?Frankly,
whoever did make them think
they had to—
those are the sick ones.
For me, my bingeing is caused by not taking care of myself. If I limit my calories too drastically, it sets off a binge. If I start talking to myself negatively, I binge. If I let my head get into a sad spot without taking care of my emotions, I binge. It all has little to do with fashion magazines and celebrity gossip. I don’t blame anyone for my eating problems except myself.
It’s nice to know that other people understand a glimmer of how I feel, though.
Yesterday, I talked about the hot dog eating contest that was sponsored by Nathan’s Hot Dogs. Rob Parrish was at a bar when the contest was televised and posted this video.
We are at war with a country far, far away. People on both sides are dying. To celebrate our nation’s birthday, Nathan’s Hot Dogs sponsored an event that just makes them hate us more: a twelve-minute spectacle that glorifies gluttony.
No wonder they hate us…
This article is talking about governmental regulation of “junk” food.
Not only does this article suggest that the government should create regulation concerning the food industry, it alludes to the idea of creating an environment of “social disapproval” of obesity.
“Several factors have led to a reexamination of the historical view that food consumption and physical activity are inappropriate subjects for government regulation. Among the ‘triggers to action’ that have catalyzed government intervention in other areas of private behavior, such as alcohol and tobacco use, are the development of a scientific base and social disapproval. Both these triggers are now in play with regard to obesity.”
I think that people who are struggling with weight issues have enough disapproval to deal with. We don’t need the government to come in and tell us what is wrong and what is right. If Twinkies are outlawed, then anyone who is overweight will be under scrutiny. People will assume that overweight people are eating “contraband.” Being fat could be excuse enough for a police search of our homes and vehicles.
The last thing I need is the government to watching over every bite I take.
I struggle with binge eating and even I don’t understand competitive eating events. What possesses someone to try to win a hot dog eating contest and, even more strange, set a world record?
Susan McQuillan, a New York registered dietitian, commented on the amount of food consumed by a competitive eater during competition.
“In twelve minutes, they will consume a week’s worth of calories, 5 times the recommended daily limit for cholesterol, 17 times the daily limit for total fat, 21 times the limit for saturated fat, and more than 2 weeks worth of sodium.â€
I don’t think any of my binges have been that amount of found in that short of a time. Why are these competitive eaters shown on ESPN2? They aren’t athletes, they have an eating disorder just like I do.
It looks like both Jan Ullrich and Ivan Basso are out of the Tour de France this year because of doping allegations. Both are contesting that they haven’t done anything wrong.
There are so many things that can tip off a drug test that the two of them might actually believe that they haven’t done anything wrong, yet some of their “supplements” might have caused this problem as it did with Kicker Vencill before the 2004 Olympics.
Remember, if a product is promising “performance” or weight loss without diet and exercise, they are either doping you up, or selling you sugar pills. There is no such thing as a magic pill that can make your fat go away or make you faster on your bike. Depend on yourself and healthy food.
Via: kottke.org
Over at Big Fat Blog, they rant about the fat hatred that runs rampant in the techie industry.
“I read a lot of techie blogs. I’m a techie. I love the web, I love keeping tabs on memes, I love me some open source software. I’m a total geek, and I’m not ashamed of it. But I have had it with the tech blogs out there posting anti-fat entries, and/or allowing anti-fat comments to run rampant.”
A unkind entry on the 37 Signals website was the straw that broke the camel’s back. The worst thing to realize is that David Heinemeier Hansson, the author of that particular entry at 37 signals, is a high power executive who is making these comments.
Do you think he’ll hire an overweight programmer?
Fat discrimination is REAL. Someone who is overweight can be just as good a programmer as a thin one, but the fat person isn’t going to get the job.
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