Find it all too much of a stretch? You’re not alone. Antidiet advice defies a US$30-billion weight loss industry, a cultural obsession with thinness and the fundamental public health tenet that it is dangerous to be fat. In Obesity Guidelines first published in 1998, the US National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute blames obesity for everything from heart disease to cancer. Within a month of the Canadian mortality report, University of Wisconsin researchers announced in Science that calorie-restricted rhesus monkeys seemed to be outliving an amply fed control group.
“Virtually everyone who is overweight would be better off at a lower weight,” said Walter Willett, chairman of the nutrition department at the Harvard School of Public Health. “There’s been this misconception, fostered by the weight-is-beautiful groups, that weight doesn’t matter. But the data are clear.”
What remains undisputed is that no clinical trial has found a diet that keeps weight off long-term for a majority. “If they really worked, we’d be running out of dieters,” said Glenn Gaesser, professor of exercise physiology at Arizona State University and author of Big Fat Lies: The Truth About Your Weight and Your Health.
Both sides agree that regular exercise, at any size, improves health. “If you want to know who’s going to die, know their fitness level,” said Steven Blair, a self-described “fat and fit” professor of exercise science, epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of South Carolina. His research indicates that “obese individuals who are fit have a death rate one half that of normal-weight people who are not fit.”
To eat well, go back to the basics
We all knew how to eat intuitively once: Infants don’t binge or starve themselves, and presumably, cavemen didn’t either. But instincts become twisted in an environment where you can hold a Twinkie in one hand and the remote in the other, surrounded by images of skinny starlets.
After near-lifetimes of restricted consumption, practiced dieters find it takes a concentrated effort to learn how to answer to their appetites through a practice often called “intuitive eating.”
Intuitive eating involves returning to basic drives, dispensing with the notion of “good” or “bad” foods and rules about when to eat. Absent a fear of deprivation, the philosophy holds, one’s hunger and taste cues — rather than cognitive rules — provide the most trustworthy guide toward balanced, healthy eating.
Kate Harding, an ex-dieter and an author of Lessons From the Fat-O-Sphere, said eating intuitively did not come easily for her at first. But eventually, she said, “If you’re actually listening to your body, instead of the voices in your head, you won’t be inclined to eat yourself sick very often.”
Intuitive eating works only when coupled with weight-neutrality, Harding said. “The first step is to take away all the moralizing and shame,” she said. To that end, she suggested, “Why not buy some clothes that fit you and turn off the TV a little bit?”
At bottom, eating is, or should be, “a basic process,” she said.
— NY Times News Service
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