Possibly since the whole thing is like buying a woman from her dad it might be like washing a car before the buyer (husband to be) signs on the dotted line. He signs and feels reassured that he won’t experience buyer’s remorse when he sees how shiny/thin his purchase is.

writing that made me kind of sad.

Your logic is solid as far as a) the inefficacy of yo-yo dieting, b) the evil of the diet industry, c) the largely transparent way in which personal anxieties are focused into profit centers for capitalists, d) the entire evil of the bride/wedding industry, and especially e) the sheer stupidity of the arithmetic mean. So, great work.

But, and this isn’t meant to express eye-rolling toward the “fat acceptance” movement, I think you’re kind of missing one of the main points about both yo-yo dieting in general and the pre-wedding diet in particular.

It’s gratifying to yo-yo diet, much more so than just changing your habits permanently. You can prove to yourself how disciplined and iron-willed you are, get your life back in order, show that entropy and aging process who’s boss. There it is, a target number, and you can achieve it if you blow a willpower point whenever you’re around french fries. It’s challenging, but by no means impossible (if you’re not disabled) to get there, and then when you get there, you can announce it and throw a party and everyone will pat you on the back and express envy that you have such strength of character. Plus, you can have cake, and it will be fucking delicious.

You can, and should, rag on the whole concept that one’s “natural” tendency is to lapse into sloth and bonbons, and that a period of asceticism and extra exercise is the exception to that norm. You can, and should, rag on the way in which the diet industry exploits this inversion in order to profit from the insecurities most people have around aging and their bodies. But if you diet and drop that 23 pounds before your wedding, whether male or female you will have a lot of pictures that a lot of people over the years will see, and you will look fucking great in them.

Changing your habits permanently is much more effective. But it’s boring, and nobody will really care, or they’ll think of you as one of those tedious people who wants to tell you about the twigs and berries they subsist on, and you never get to eat cake again. And, not incidentally, it doesn’t ring up a lot of profit for people with a big advertising budget.

Pharmakos @1, only a little sad? 

It makes me a bunch sad just reading it.

Amanda above talking about “doubling down on the idea that, being female, you will never be good enough” was painful, also.  It’s a terrible way to live—I’m only just, at age 50, starting to come out of it, and I’m not even female.

I think I can explain why some people are drawn into pre-wedding diets, bootcamps, etc: wedding photos.

Don’t only something like 30% of American women “always” or “usually” achieve orgasm during sex?  I mean, if I had to pick between magicking away some weight I don’t feel so great about and not having, say, 10 orgasms, I’ve little doubt I’d pick the weight, too.

Brides fall into the trap of wanting everything to be Perfect on the Bride’s Special Day.  Part of this is the idea that you can enjoy it more if you have “earned” it by getting skinny, as noted in the post.  Part of the motivation also is the fact that you are on display at the wedding and also in the photos forevermore.

(I admit that, while I didn’t exactly diet, I did cultivate a tan and I made damn sure that I didn’t gain any weight before the Big Day.)

The pressure to lose weight before the wedding is related to the Fantasy of Being Thin You’re supposed to have this perfect fantasy wedding day, and being fat doesn’t fit into that fantasy. In order to envision yourself as a truly happy, confident, glowing, loved, beautiful bride, you automatically envision yourself as thinner.  You feel like you can’t really deserve to get married and have this party and wear a pretty dress unless you’re thinner.

Also, you’re the center of attention and a million pictures are going to be taken of you. If you are even slightly insecure about your body, this can cause you to freak out about losing weight so you’ll look good in front of everybody.

This definitely happened to me. Even though I was all “I’m not going to be one of those brides who freaks out about losing weight!” I totally snapped under the pressure to be perfect and beautiful on my wedding day, and wanted to lose 20 pounds to do it. (Mind you, I did not actually succeed at losing weight, because I was so busy with schoolwork and wedding planning that I totally failed to keep up with my planned “ZOMG 45 minutes of cardio every day!” program.) I just wanted everyone to look at me and think “She’s so beautiful,” and I couldn’t believe that they would, since I felt like my body was so imperfect.

The process of buying a wedding dress doesn’t help either. You have to buy it 6 months or more in advance, and either stay the same size or get smaller (because it’s easy to take the dress in but hard to let it out). And plus-size wedding dress availability is very limited, so a lot of women who are just barely into plus sizes want to drop a size or two so they can have more options. Furthermore, like 99% of wedding dresses are strapless, so a lot of women feel like they have to look good in a strapless dress.

It makes me a bunch sad just reading it.

I was kind of hoping that someone would tell me that it was a stupid theory. Oh well at least there is the photo idea.

I do think we are far more screwed up than most cultures when it comes to food. Food is sold to us on the basis of being fast and cheap since most of it is processed junk. When it is unsatisfying, or spikes our blood sugar to make us hungry again, we are fools with no will power when we want to eat again.

Re-reading my comment in light of felagund’s comment, especially the sentence:

You can prove to yourself how disciplined and iron-willed you are, get your life back in order, show that entropy and aging process who’s boss.

—it also clicked that pre-wedding weight loss can be about a desire to regain control, when wedding planning is making you feel totally out of control and stressed out. You may not be able to deal with your mother guilt-tripping you for not getting married in a Catholic church, your mother-in-law inviting 200 extra guests, your uncle insisting you change your wedding date because it conflicts with his very important weekly poker game, your fiance calling you a crazy bridezilla for being overwhelmed by having to pick just one of 500 wedding invitation options*, and the general doubts and fears that come with making such a big life change—but by god, you can control how many calories you eat, how many calories you burn, and you can make that scale keep going down.

*None of these happened to me.

It makes me kind of sad that there’s so much “You’re not good enough!” surrounding weddings.  I look at the pictures from my wedding and in all of the ones taken after the ceremony, I have this big grin on my face.  (In the ones taken before, I look kind of nervous and stiff).  Weddings should be happy!  Stupid diet/beauty-industrial complex.

It’s gratifying to yo-yo diet, much more so than just changing your habits permanently.

I think this is a symptom of our issues with food and weight.  It wouldn’t be anywhere near as gratifying if we didn’t reward weight loss so lavishly.

I think you’ve fixated on one tree, and missed the whole forest.  The New York Times noted that being overweight can cost you tens of thousands of dollars over your lifetime in health care costs, and women who were obese according to their Body Mass Index (BMI) in both 1981 and 1988 earned 17 percent lower wages on average than women within their recommended BMI range.” 

Yeah, being overweight might affect your love life, and we can all see how that is going to come to people’s attention, but that simply isn’t all of it, or even close to all of it.

Would you give up sex for three months for a 17% raise?  That’s part of it too.

Your concern is noted, Dana.

Wait, I’m totally confused about what the forest is. We should be encouraging women to diet so that they can improve their financial status as well?  And for the 95% of people for whom that’s effectively impossible?  Should we just shame them more?

no we make them fight lions in the arena. oh wait no that was the romans not us.

yeah, mockery is the probably the way its going to go down. That and sell them more bad food at low prices so large corporations can get more subsidies, cut public transport so they can’t get around and try to deny them healthcare because they push our premiums up.

Having been through the whole wedding process, I can explain that it’s because everybody looks fatter in a big white dress.  It’s the exact opposite of a little black dress.  And you know they’re going to take a hundred photos of you looking fat in it, and you panic.

I was at my all-time heaviest on my wedding day.  I hadn’t been getting enough exercise because I was too busy planning the damn wedding.

Note also that the wording of the question omits the yo-yo part. “Would you give up sex for three months to lose 23 pounds, if you knew that six months later you’d be back at your original weight…”

(And my recollection from talking with women friends is that giving up sex tends to be correlated with weight gain.)

I wonder what the answer would be to “how much weight loss would it take you to commit to having sex every day for three months?” But I don’t think anyone would even dare ask that question.

One of the things I like about your posts, Amanda, is that you constantly go after the neo-Puritan* tendency to conflate virtue with suffering.  It’s a frustratingly self-destructive attitude, and it gets into all levels of political discourse.  Lately Fred Clark at Slacktivist has been pushing federal job creation as the best way to fight the economic recession.  His theory is that more people don’t support the idea precisely because it doesn’t cause misery for anyone or demand a lot of empty tough talk about sacrifice and “belt-tightening.”

In one of his recent posts, he called these people “the same sort of people who believe that a healthy diet must taste like straw or else it can’t possibly be good for you.”  I think he’s on to something.

*Not even a Puritan would do Atkins.

I have a two-month-old and a four-year-old. I’ve both gone 3 months without sex and gained 10 pounds.

Same here.  Only my kids are 5 and 8 now and make that 30 pounds (leftover from kid #2 and that won’t seem to go away).  And when I was pregnant and post-partum with kid #2, there was a quite long dry spell, because I wasn’t even remotely interested in sex. 

The whole thing about dieting really, really does not make sense to me.  I mean, sure, I’d love to lose that pesky 30 pounds and be my pre-baby size again, which was actually fairly thin.  But the only way that will happen is if I more or less just stop eating, because a moderately healthy diet and daily exercise surely isn’t doing the trick.  And yeah, I’m a touch chubby these days, but I’m also healthier and in better shape now than I was when I was thin, because the post-baby metabolism has made it necessary for me to eat healthily and exercise in order to avoid getting even bigger.  And as I refuse to give up on sweets and bread entirely, thin won’t happen for me ever again.

@Dana

Women diet because they want to earn more money, and there is a massive movement for men to wear heels to work.

While obesity had a slightly negative effect on a man’s earning power, height seems to play a much more significant role in determining a man’s salary, with shorter men getting the “short end of the stick.”

This is also why diets advertisements are full of women in business/business casual doing “cool non-specific media jobs.”

The wedding industry exacerbates this by using a different sizing standard than the rest of the American apparel world - if you’re a size 12 in everyday life, chances are good you’re going to be a size 16 in your wedding dress, and that is a very harsh blow indeed, especially since we tend to be so fixated on that number.

Sadly, I knew a woman who went on one of those panic diets before here wedding. ‘Sadly’ because absolutely nobody thought she needed to diet. I don’t know much about women’s sizing, but I’d put money on a single digit size and probably a low number to boot. Despite practically everybody saying they thought she was crazy, she still did the whole diet shake routine in an effort to lose fifteen or twenty pounds.

I pretty sure my sister even went through it, though I try not to dwell on that period too much…

I’m getting married in about a year, and I’m feeling some of this pressure right now. And for me it is absolutely about the pictures; I have a round face and I wear glasses, and the way I have to hold my head in order not to get lens-glare gives me a bit of a double chin at my current weight. I do not want a double chin in the four thousand pictures that will be taken of me that day! I want to be able to look at the pictures and think something other than “ugh.”

The other thing is that I’m fairly athletic, but I’ve been injured the last few months and gained a few pounds. I’ve just recently started getting active again, and the weight will probably drop off once I’m back to my normal activity level, so it wouldn’t be unrealistic to go down a size in a dress… but then again, it might not, and then omgdietingdrama. Do. Not. Want.

This whole mandate is straight from the ugliest corner of heteronormativity, but it doesn’t make sense even assuming the logic of heteronormativity.  After all, you were validated by a man’s love when he proposed to you; I highly doubt most marriage proposals come with the caveat that you’ll be loved and adored if you can just be 10 pounds thinner.  You just got your heteronormative female validation!

Isn’t that just an indicator that it’s about homosociality instead of heteronormativity?  I.e., the weight thing is a contest between women disguised as a heteronormative rule.

@Paul, It’s take about 180 lb gain for me to commit to having sex every day for three months. That should be about right for a second husband to take up the slack.

I’d certainly take losing 10 lbs over sex in the summer. Too hot to even touch down here. Triple digits with heat indexes around 120.

I’m one of those who should lose about 100 lbs. That would put me around 160, which is a very good weight on my 6’ frame. I’m enjoying Weight Watchers. I get to eat everything I like (in smaller quantities: 2 slices of pizza instead of 11). I’m encouraged to try new foods. And it has me exercizing for the first time ever. The trick will be staying on it when I’m back down where I want to be.

I didn’t diet before my wedding. I was hot at 155 and knew it. I still lost weight from the hot summer and hard work and stress.

I just want to add something to my above post.

I really didn’t mean for my above comment to be, in any way, bodysnark. I don’t judge other people’s bodies, under any circumstances—I’m a pilates instructor, and it’s a point of professional pride to me that I just don’t go down that road. Whatever shape someone is is the shape they are, and that’s fine, and that goes for myself, too.

My issue is more that having a double chin makes me look less like myself, if you see what I’m saying; I know what my face and smile look like, under normal circumstances, and that’s what I want in my wedding photos.

Sadly, I knew a woman who went on one of those panic diets before here wedding. ‘Sadly’ because absolutely nobody thought she needed to diet. I don’t know much about women’s sizing, but I’d put money on a single digit size

Why is it “sad” when a thin woman hates on her body, wraps the value of an experience up in how thin she is, deprives herself of enjoying food, starves herself, and embraces disordered eating ... but not “sad” if a fat woman does it?

Dieting sucks and is torture and is ultimately completely futile 95% of the time. Dieting is a lie. Dieting is sad no matter what shape the person doing it is.

A wedding, just like a Summer trip to the beach, is an opportunity to comment on a woman’s body in a way that leads to too much of the euphemistic bullshit that people say when they’d rather not say the truth.  (Swimsuits are a slightly different story, but the focus on the woman’s body is the same.)

Men and women are both expected to tell the bride how beautiful she looked while telling the groom how lucky he is.  Interesting how that’s the focus in marriage, but that’s what it is.  Anyhow, most people don’t want to hear bullshit if they can avoid it, so they try to make the comments—which will come—be truthful.  Fat people know they’re fat, and even those who have gone past the idea of hating themselves don’t want to be lied to if they think the fat isn’t attractive.  Those who are fat but still find themselves attractive will be fine, but probably tell people they’re dieting just so morons will lay off.  And some succumb to pressure and diet.  It’s partially about the pictures as well, but mostly about the obsession/fantasy of being thin.

As for the giving up of sex, I’d do that to lose a lot of weight and get more exercise in.  But I’d hate myself for it, mostly because I’d be doing it for the wrong reasons and probably not keep the leaner self.  But give up masturbation?  Not. Gonna. Happen.

“Why is it “sad” when a thin woman hates on her body, wraps the value of an experience up in how thin she is, deprives herself of enjoying food, starves herself, and embraces disordered eating ... but not “sad” if a fat woman does it?”

On the one hand, yes, you’re absolutely right about it being sad no matter who does it.  On the other hand, I think for a lot of us it turns into the sort of inescapable and harsh illumination of the sort of “heads I win, tails you lose” situation society puts women in.  If even objectively thin women can’t escape the body-hatred and forgo the diet cycle, what hope do the women society will never judge as such have?

I should add that it’s a tough thing to reconcile to even for women who are already pretty aware of feminist theory and the fact that it’s a bullshit double-standard that’s a feature, not a bug.  Unless you’re super-optimistic about the potential for social change in the immediate future, it’s a bitter reminder.

preying mantis @34, yes, I guess that’s a fair point. It *is* true that no matter how many pounds a woman loses there are always 5 pounds more that can be lost before she’s really, really good enough.

The thing is, there are fat anorexics. And they often don’t get treatment, even though they are putting themselves through the same disordered, dangerous, self-harming behaviors as the rail-thin anorexics everyone recognizes as anorexic. But see, fat women are expected to engage in self-destructive, self-hateful, self-punishing, body-hating, unhealthy behaviors surrounding food. People only go “omggggg it’s so saddddd” when someone does it who is already thin.

and bad jim @32—there are still OBs who tell women to lose weight during pregnancy. Or limit their weight gain. And still lots and lots of people who praise women for only gaining X pounds during pregnancy. So yeah, there are women who diet during pregnancy, no matter how much we know it’s stupid and unhealthy and potentially dangerous to do so. That’s how deep the poison goes.

Food can be abused. Just like booze and other drugs.
Add into this the sedentary lifestyle encouraged by cars and living in suburbia.  Add in long hours of stressful work with lunches grabbed on the run.

Food porn in the media. When I quit smoking I gained weight.  When I quit drinking I gained weight.

As I gained weight my joy of living lessened due to the extra effort to go and do things.  Who wants to take a five mile walk up a trail to take pictures when one is hauling around an extra 50-100 pounds.

If you want to know what it is like strap on a 50 pound pack for a day.

All the fat acceptance spiel in the world doesn’t make knees or feet ache any less.  Nor does it replace the physical freedom I had when I was nearly 100 pound lighter.

I think we as a culture don’t differentiate between a woman who is 22% BMI vs 32% vs 42%.  Each is a different class of weight (healthy, overweight, and obese) and can seriously effect your lifestyle.  I doubt we differentiate between men for that matter.  Should it matter if you’re at 22 or 32?  Not really, at 42% one must recognize they have a problem and it needs to be taken care of because it isn’t a matter of beauty but a matter of health.  Living a life where you can’t walk a mile is not a good life.  I’m still up in the 30s for my BMI and am only slowly lowering it.  But I feel better and if with some minor surgery am able to finish pulling up some skin I would be quite satisfied to stay this way forever. 

I think people are arguing so many different angles nobody really has set a general parameter for what is a healthy BMI and what we should shoot for.  Most of our status symbols are under their recommended BMI because of the way the camera accepts light.  Then people get upset when women get slightly over recommended.  Being curvy is not a sin but if the person can’t run a few tens of yards then something is wrong and needs to be resolved.  I try not to weigh in on the weight topics because I don’t know how others have done it or are doing it but I watched myself get pathetic and so overweight I could feel my heart race going upstairs.  Now i’m down almost 15% of the BMI from where I topped out at and I feel a great deal better, I can’t imagine living a life where I didn’t go to the gym or be active walking around and doing. 

I just called my mother and talked with her tonight about gastric bypass surgery and she basically broke down and cried because she admitted food is one of her last joys though she is a diabetic and in a fairly overweight state.  She won’t give up her food and nothing will change that.  She would rather die than pass up that food and I have resigned myself to let her do that.  People become addicted and it hurts but when they reach that point only they can help themselves.

@Xeranar. Is it addiction? Or is it the difference between living a life and simply existing?

Xeranar wrote:

I just called my mother and talked with her tonight about gastric bypass surgery and she basically broke down and cried because she admitted food is one of her last joys though she is a diabetic and in a fairly overweight state.

There is a strong relationship between gastric surgery and the remission of Type 2 diabetes.  It does not work in curing diabetes in everyone, though the probabilities are around 75%.  This is something about which she’d need to speak to a surgeon who knows the subject.

That’s all very fascinating, Dana—-particularly your apparent assumption that being fat only hurts women’s health—-but it doesn’t explain why it’s a good idea to lose weight occasionally only to gain it all back.  I agree that obesity is linked to all sorts of health problems.  Yo-yo dieting doesn’t prevent obesity, though.  In fact, the evidence seems to indicate that it contributes to it.

But I will say in my experience, conservatives tend to be a lot more invested in yo-yo dieting than liberals. I know way more conservatives who live on a diet of crap and then, after the scales tip a certain point, go into starvation mode to lose (some) of the weight, start eating crap all over again, gain it all back plus some, rinse, repeat.  The people I know who tend to focus on eating healthy and in moderation all the time, backing it up with a lot of exercise, are mostly liberals.

Sac @27: I think you’re a tad overeager to blame women, as if they invented the patriarchy.  Homosociality as you’re thinking of it is indivisible from heteronormativity.  For men, you see this in the constant gay-policing and using of terms like “fag” and “pussy” to keep each other in line.  Yes, female homosociality is used to pressure women to conform to patriarchal norms, but I wouldn’t say that’s because men are indifferent to those norms, and somehow naturally morally superior to women.  I’d say it’s actually a way of releasing men from the shit work.  Diet whining amongst women is like housework—-if women stopped doing the heavy lifting, you’d suddenly find out exactly how much attention men are paying while they pretend not to.

Xerenar @39: BMI is not a percentage, it’s a height-to-weight ratio, and a fairly bogus one at that.

Most of our status symbols are under their recommended BMI because of the way the camera accepts light.

No, most of our status symbols are under their recommended BMI because of the way the society accepts our bodies (or more properly, doesn’t accept them). The whole “the camera adds ten pounds” thing is a myth - the camera, being bounded by the properties of physics, reflects you precisely as you are, barring any dirty tricks by the photographer and in post-processing. What is skewed is our perception of what a healthy body size is and how that relates to beauty. The camera doesn’t make normal-size models look fat, Americans just have such a messed up idea, collectively, of what normal is, that we see a normal-size model and believe that she’s fat, and that being fat is bad (as a moral judgment, not simply as a health judgment).  Therefore our role models must be skinny, otherwise they are bad role models. Take, for example, your own comment - you are labeling your own mother as an addict for refusing to undergo a dangerous, expensive, and uncertain procedure, eliminating one of the few things she apparently enjoys in life, in order to possibly correct a health problem that, while not ideal, is certainly manageable without the extremes of bariatric surgery.  Can’t you see how messed up that is?

Should it matter if you’re at 22 or 32?  Not really, at 42% one must recognize they have a problem and it needs to be taken care of because it isn’t a matter of beauty but a matter of health. 

This is part of the toxic diet culture mentality I’m talking about.  While I get into it with fat activists about whether or not obesity is bad for your health, I definitely agree with them that the possibility of turning a fat person thin is statistically low.  But that’s the thing—-Americans are encouraged to Always Be Fixing.  We think of problems as things you develop and then fix.  Our health care system is built around sickness.  Our food culture assumes a cycle of overindulgence and deprivation.  All or nothing, all or nothing. 

I’m a fairly thin person who tends to eat healthily most of the time and who exercises, and I cannot tell you how many people have taken notice of these personal habits and wonders why, when I don’t “need to”.  The cyclical thinking kicks in again!  Of course, the flip side of that is that fat people, particularly women, often find they’re shamed for exercising.  Anything that runs against the “overindulge/deprive” cycle is seen as suspect.

The main problem with the BMI, from what I can see, is that a tool that’s effective at monitoring large populations isn’t necessarily such a great thing on an individual basis.  I’m going to avoid disingenuous examples I see from fat activists, such as pointing to the rare individual who is large by virtue of weight-lifting but has barely any body fat.  But some people are thin and out of shape, and some people are in good shape but stout.  Doctors do need a way to predict future health problems, which is why they turn to the BMI.  You may have good cholesterol now, but for some people that will change in the future. 

Of course, the flip side of that is that the advice is the same for all people, which some exceptions for people suffering from disabilities or who have a genetic tendency towards high cholesterol: eat a high fiber diet that’s low on animal fats (except fish) and get regular cardio-vascular exercise with strength training on the side.

The problem, Libertarian, is that realistically, you’re going to feel more like you look good if you just get clothes that flatter your body in the first place.  In my experience, it’s much easier to feel good if you put on clothes that make you look up and go “a-ha!” rather than clothes where you think, “Maybe this will be acceptable if I lose a few pounds.”  Of course, I’m generally a rebel.  My feeling upon hearing that white draws out some bride’s anxieties is to think, “Why wear white, then?”  But then again, I’m already skeptical of the big white wedding the first place.  But I seriously don’t get why brides feel they have to wear white.  I would love going to a wedding where the bride was like, fuck it, and wore a red dress.

purpleshoes@42:
Enh, honestly, most of the data I see? says that if you start eating a balanced diet and exercising regularly according to your abilities right now your “reward” will be that you’ll probably be about the same size in ten years. Not thinner. Just about the same size, give or take a couple pounds, and I mean a couple.

In my experience, this is absolutely true.  I used to be quite thin, before I had kids.  But pregnancy and all that has reset my metabolism and that’s just the way it is.  I’ve mostly accepted it.  However, sometimes I’ll get comments from people who aren’t related to me (because the same thing has happened to them) and who knew me back in the day about how much larger I am now.  They also marvel that my diet is way, way healthier than it was then and that I exercise regularly (which is something that I never did before), and yet I’m no longer thin.  I keep telling people that the only way that I could go back to that would be to starve myself and exercise constantly, and while I don’t mind moderate exercise, it isn’t my favorite thing in the world to do, and plus I like baked goods too much to give them up completely.

rhiain @26:
I have a round face and I wear glasses, and the way I have to hold my head in order not to get lens-glare gives me a bit of a double chin at my current weight. I do not want a double chin in the four thousand pictures that will be taken of me that day! I want to be able to look at the pictures and think something other than “ugh.”

I also have a round face and wear glasses and I’ve always had a bit of a double chin.  Always.  Even back in my early 20s when I was skinny, I had a double chin.  It seems to run in my dad’s family.  It’s one of those things that I really, really wish would go away, but there is absolutely nothing that can be done about it.

I think it says something about how fat is viewed in our culture that a post about how bad it is to feel compelled to yo-yo diet to achieve a most-likely unrealistic weight for ONE DAY in your life provokes several comments about how no, really, being fat is so bad for you! Like you can’t say that fat people are allowed to have pleasure in their lives while still being fat without a requisite round of fat-shaming.

Libertarian and Ms. Marcotte,

After one decides to accept the big wedding, the ceremonies, the dinners, the catering, the flowers, the deejay, the toasts, the Honeymoon, the giving away of the bride, the white dress, and all the rest, some sort of cram diet seems almost normal in comparison.

Xerenar/others/everyone,

BMI is just one of many tools to measure the body, but it’s got some serious limitations.  Mostly, it’s ridiculous that is has “mass” in the title when it doesn’t effectively measure the difference between muscle and fat percentages in a body.  Ideal weight is itself a ridiculous measure, since ideal health should be the goal.  Sure, there’d be a lot of correlation between whatever charts measure health and what we already think of as “ideal”, but there’s no single easy way to measure someone’s overall health.

You don’t need wedding pictures.  You need a good marriage. 

Not that they are mutually exclusive, but the big wedding is just one of those conspicuous consumption displays that have nothing to do with your relationship, and everything to do with showing off your wealth and status.  And wealth and status, for women, include being thin.  In this case, I think the dieting has nothing to do with being validated by a man, and everything to do with showing off wealth.

@37
It’s not stupid to diet during pregnancy.  Considering that the average American’s eating habits include hearty doses of Mc Donald’s, diner fare, KFC, ridiculous amount of added sugar, margarine, artificial sweeteners, caffeine, trans fats, sodium, preservatives, it would be stupid not to use a pregnancy as an added incentive to build better eating habits.

@42 purpleshoes:
I’d love to be the same weight 10 years from now, considering that 10 years ago I was 24lbs lighter, that would be like a net loss of 24 lbs!

@49 Amanda,
I know it’s supposed to be really hard to get an obese person back to a healthy weight, but I have a couple of American friends in my home country who arrived fat and left a few years later, maybe still bigger than my average compatriota, but their knees, ankles and wrists were not puffed up like doughballs anymore. 
Fat acceptance is all good and great, but I think fat people should use their lobbying power to target the fast food industries attack on their health and make changes to cities to make them safer and more pleasant to walk in.

Hey purpleshoes, you are purposefully misconstruing what I say.  If you’re average day include 3 donuts and a decaf sugary drink, then you have a candy bar at work, then a sodium filled lunch at the office, then some more soda and candy at work, then McDonald’s on the way home, then fried chicken or chinese take-out w/hubby while watching TV before bed, surely your baby would benefit from an over haul that includes more fish, dairy, veggies, whole grains, lean meat, and generally food. 

I am not saying (Christonthecross!!!!!!!) that pregnant women need to count calories or starve themselves.

I know saying doughballs is awful, I am sorry.  They look mighty uncomfortable too.  I can see why you thought I meant “pregnant women are fatties” throwing around words like “doughball”. 
And you are right, the culture is bad for thin people too, we somehow don’t show as much.  The first 9 months I lived in this country I gained 14lbs.  Still look “thin”, but it can’t be healthy.  Every year I have to venture into middle-America for 6 weeks and by the end of it, I am at least 10lbs heavier.  Still look “thin” but feel like shit.  Takes about 4 months to take off by moving back home.  No dieting or exercising, just moving back home. 

Can you imagine? 
6 weeks living with Americans (no purposeful gorging or anything)= 10lb gain
4 months living at home (no dieting or exercising or anything)=10lb loss.

Breast feeding burns up about as many calories a day as running 5 miles every day.  I would say that’s it’s beyond question that the handful of pounds a woman has over what she weighed when she got pregnant after delivery is nature’s way of feeding the baby.  I think that’s actually not even a controversial position, but just something that’s been understood for a long time.

To defend not raspberry’s shaming language, but the general idea—-yes, I absolutely have seen a drastic difference in how Americans eat, at least middle Americans.  It took my digestive system a week to recover from Las Vegas.  Every time I go to West Texas, I run into the same problems.  Austin is great—-it’s a health conscious foodie culture, and even when people overeat, it’s just not the same as everywhere else.  The drenching of things in butter, mayo, and cheese, and the constant ingestion of sugary shit in most places is mind-boggling if you’ve been folded into a a culture like Austin’s or Brooklyn’s, where portion size is much calmer and there’s simply less reliance on fat and sugar in cooking.

And the results are obvious, as well.  In Austin, I had visitors from back home gawk at how healthy everyone looks, regardless of whether they’re slender or stout.  It’s not just about weight, though there’s absolutely more obesity in some parts of the country than others.  But it’s also about how people’s skin looks and how their energy levels are.

“If you mean “adding produce and whole grains”, say that - that’s adding foods, not subtracting them.”

I think most people say “diet change” or “diet overhaul” when they mean “completely revamped my diet due to pregnancy/medical diagnosis/personal epiphany.” Which is a fairly common response to an unexpected pregnancy, since what you need to keep an adult reasonably healthy in the short-term is not necessarily what you need to keep an adult who is manufacturing another person reasonably healthy in the short-term, and most people with the resources to do so are shooting for more than “reasonably healthy"and “short-term” while pregnant.  As opposed to the unfortunately resurgent practice of actually dieting during pregnancy lest you become one of those horrible fat women giving birth to horrible fat babies who you just know are going to turn into horrible fat children and then horrible fat adults.  Seriously, when did we start thinking that fat babies are the worst thing ever?

I think there’s a bit of dodginess in the talk about “subtracting foods”.  I agree 100% that fully depriving yourself of treats means you’re buying into the feast-or-famine mentality, and odds are when you fall off the wagon, you’re going to binge.  But the problem is that treat food is not treated like treats in most of America.  It’s just food.  So people do need to “subtract” that food, at least most of the time.  Sometimes drastically changing your diet and then slowly adding the treats back in as occasional treats can work.

purple, I can see why it’s hard to study, but probably because women continue to eat as much as they did while pregnant as when they’re breastfeeding, making baby weight permanent weight.  But the fact that breast feeding itself burns a ton of calories is pretty indisputable.  I agree that it’s terrible to use that to shame women who can’t breastfeed at all, or can’t breastfeed as long as they like.  The point is that the small amount of weight gain over and above the actual baby during pregnancy evolved precisely to feed the baby; we have to remember we evolved in a world where there wasn’t really an overabundance of food.

I have always been annoyed when looking for recipes that “healthy” just means “diet” (300 calorie portions, as little fat as possible, etc). And if it’s not especially for dieting, the recipes don’t take health into consideration at all. I want to eat like a reasonable person who is not trying to starve themselves but doesn’t want to go overboard, but apparently there’s not a defined market for that. I also have been cutting back on my meat intake, but there’s nothing between vegetarian and steaks all the time either.

(In the end I just ended up learning to make a bunch of Indian and Middle Eastern dishes, as well as some vegetarian main dishes to balance out the occasions I go out for wings.)

Xeranar, I feel for your situation, but I do want to point out the ableism of the “can’t run ten yards” thing. I think a lot of people confound developing invisible disabilities and gaining weight, and blame the weight - there are a lot of people who develop the disability first, and of course when your body starts to crap out and it’s hard to find exercises that work that you can stand, weight regulation becomes more difficult.

It was more so a generic measuring stick for one’s personal ability.  I was in that boat for a few years while I was studying.  I just ignored it, suffered, and blamed it on the weight.  Now the weight is coming off slowly but I feel substantially healthier, running is actually probably a bad measurement since it is a high-impact activity and bad on the joints at any weight.  Bipedal locomotion is bad for everything sadly. 

Xerenar @39: BMI is not a percentage, it’s a height-to-weight ratio, and a fairly bogus one at that.

Go to a nutritionist, if they have the stupid chart hanging on the wall rip it down and beat them with it.  That one is from the insurance company and takes no account for differences in width and general body type.  There are more complex ways of measuring body fat but I just got lazy and called it BMI, my fault for being inaccurate.  But if you’re body fat is creeping into the 40s you’re in serious trouble.  The bypass doctor I went to discussed the options and pointed out I was substantially under the requirement and really most people are, even if over their optimal body fat level.  It is a matter of eating healthy and exercising more often than not. 

Of course, the flip side of that is that fat people, particularly women, often find they’re shamed for exercising.  Anything that runs against the “overindulge/deprive” cycle is seen as suspect.

I can only anecdotally state this but I think the women at the fitness center tend to be in better starting shape than most of the men.  That is to say the women who go are generally thinner and in better shape while the men tend to be more like myself, heavier, but working it off.  I think a good portion of society has told women that going to a gym is silly and that simply not eating or as you put it “overindulge/deprive” cycle is better.  I think also many men specifically instill it to avoid having to go to the gym themselves in a relationship. 

Then again one can probably point out that as our free time dramatically increased in the last 75 years as our access to free activities dwindled substantially.  Recreation centers dried up in most inner-cities and were never built in the suburbs.  Once out of high school basically most of our society never looked at a basketball court except when they were watching the Lakers vs Celtics.  The British had a similar problem in the 19th century (though more so due to malnutrition) that was resolved by building up sporting bodies for average people.  Something this country should have been doing rather than shutting them down.

I can only anecdotally state this but I think the women at the fitness center tend to be in better starting shape than most of the men.  That is to say the women who go are generally thinner and in better shape while the men tend to be more like myself, heavier, but working it off.

Just have to point out that this observation feeds my point about how cycles are emphasized in our culture over lifestyle changes.  Everyone at the gym is assumed to be *working towards* something, and then what?  When they get to it, they quit, put a bunch of weight back on and have to start over?  Sadly, in many cases, yes.

purple, setting weight aside, I have to say that I really don’t think it’s wise to suggest that as long as you get a minimum of some nutrients, then an excess of things that are bad for you is A-OK.  Too much animal fat simply will clog your arteries.  Too much sugar simply will induce diabetes.  Drenching your veggies in fat and sugar isn’t really that great an idea.  I find it’s better to enjoy treats by lingering over them, so that you are less inclined to scarf them down.  Training your tastebuds to enjoy some of the subtler flavors of more healthful foods is probably the most important strategy of all.  People can and do eat to excess if they have too much food on their plate; you often don’t know you’re full until 30 minutes after you actually are.

Not that it really matters for the gist of the discussion, but not all doctors who advise women to limit weight gain during pregnancy are crazy or sadistic. Pregnancy is a perfectly natural process during which the fetus does its level best to get the woman around it to have as high blood sugar as possible and gain as much weight as possible so that it can grow as big as it wants without restriction. If a woman develops gestational diabetes, not controlling it is really going to suck for both her and her baby. But that’s based on objective measurable criteria, not just on “Eww, you shouldn’t gain so much weight during pregnancy.”

As for wedding dresses—mine was black and sparkly.  It’s too big for me now, but it fit great when I wore it again a couple of years after the wedding.  As an extra in a John Waters movie.

Who wants to take a five mile walk up a trail to take pictures when one is hauling around an extra 50-100 pounds.

If you want to know what it is like strap on a 50 pound pack for a day.

Look, this is bullshit.

First of all, I take exception to the framing that weight someone else thinks shouldn’t be there is “extra” weight, because none of our bodies is a chunk of flab strapped to our torsos; all of our weight is a part of us no matter how much the fantasy of being thin makes us desperately want to believe there’s a real “thin person” inside the fake “fat person” that we are if only we can just! let! her! out! of her fleshy prison! to fly! and be free!

Second, lots of people are stick freakin’ thin and don’t have the energy to take a five mile walk up a trail. If being fat = lack of energy, then why is this? Could it be that lack of energy = lack of energy? Radical thinking, I know.

Third, having 50 lbs more weight on your frame than the person next to you is not the same as having a 50-lb pack strapped to you. If that were the case, football players would hardly be able to stagger around. Generally when we gain weight we gain it gradually and our frame gets used to carrying that weight around. Whereas if you strap on a 50-lb pack, the weight is there all at once and if you haven’t trained to carry heavy things, you’re going to be overwhelmed by it.

I hear that you had joint problems and a lack of energy. What I don’t understand is why the improvement of those conditions can’t be attributed to moving your body more and getting more fit. Yes, maybe you became more active and ended up at a lower weight, but a lot of people become more active and don’t end up at a lower weight, or gradually regain weight despite maintaining their activity level.

I moved from an overweight BMI to an obese one two years ago, when I worked very hard in dance class and at conditioning my body and gained a shit ton of muscle and endurance. I’m not obese now, for the record, because I went on thyroid meds and dropped a lot of weight. But although I’m thinner than I was, I also laid off the intense conditioning and I have a lot less endurance than I did before. Despite losing what you describe as a 50-lb pack, I would be the one struggling to hike up the trail now.

The problem is that people associate weight loss as being the primary benefit of exercise and eating changes. It’s not. If you eat things that make you feel good you’ll feel good. If you move your body you’ll have more energy and get more fit. Those things are true whether the needle on the scale moves or not. But because we have this obsession with “healthier = thinner” people start exercising and changing their eating habits and then when they see that no weight loss results, or they start gaining back the weight they lost, they give it up as not working, which is really sad and complete bullshit.

Whoever said that the reward for eating right and exercising is that in 10 years you’ll weigh what you do now is completely right (although realistically it’s probably closer to 5 years from now). But you’ll also probably have more energy and be healthier, so why can’t we aim for that instead of for shedding pounds? It’s a way more sensible rubric.

I meant to say, too, that this construct of “You can’t enjoy a 5-mile hike with all the extra weight, ya fatty” really harms fat people. It does. Because it reinforces the idea that people can’t truly live until they’re thin. That life will begin when the last 10 pounds comes off. We waste months and years of our lives hating our bodies, obsessing over what we eat, weighing ourselves. We don’t get that time back as a reward for meeting our goal weight. Fat people CAN take 5-mile hikes. Fat people, generally speaking, can do anything thin people can. Having a life is not a reward for being smaller.

Still fitting into a size 6 really would really make me happy . . . . . I think.

It wouldn’t. I know it’s kind of obnoxious for me to say that as a complete stranger, but it wouldn’t. There will still be something. There’s always something. I spent years wishing I could fit into the sizes in the regular part of the store instead of having to shop for plus sizes. Now I do, and you know, I am not any happier with how I look in those smaller sizes. I am not any happier with how my body looks naked. To be happy with my body I have to work on being happy with my body, not fitting into a smaller pair of pants.

Purple, I honestly don’t understand why there’s so much disdain for the use of the rational mind to control what you eat. I think putting that on folks won’t work—-most people have to relearn to eat. I don’t eat right by accident! I used my rational mind. I eat a lot of veggies as a matter of design. It’s not an accident.

We quite likely evolved large brains specifically to manage our diets through mental processes instead of just urges, in fact.

Or, you keep coming back to “right now”. How will someone learn to like veggies without piles of disguising cheese if they don’t use the rational brain to try it?

@81 or so -

One of the reasons you may find the population of female gym users skewing toward the “already thin enough” end of the spectrum is that plus-size athletic wear can be frustratingly hard to come by, especially at the low end of the market.

I have been looking for 2X gym pants for the last four years and haven’t turned up anything I can afford.  Sooner or later my last pair of old ones is going to wear through in the you-know-where, and then I’m not sure what will happen.  (Other than fleshy thigh explosion, anyway.)

Comment #46: Amanda Marcotte on 08/14 at 08:51 AM

Sac @27: I think you’re a tad overeager to blame women, as if they invented the patriarchy.

Well, I honestly don’t think I am.  It’s just that I come across a number of situations where a form of conduct that women nominally pursue in order to please men is conducted with a zeal and consequences that clearly exceed the nominal goal.

Homosociality as you’re thinking of it is indivisible from heteronormativity.  For men, you see this in the constant gay-policing and using of terms like “fag” and “pussy” to keep each other in line.  Yes, female homosociality is used to pressure women to conform to patriarchal norms, but I wouldn’t say that’s because men are indifferent to those norms, and somehow naturally morally superior to women.

But that “moral superiority” thing you bring up was nowhere near my mind.  And anyway, it’s not like I was positing some sort of picture where men are uniformly indifferent to patriarchal norms about women and women are hypersensitive to them.  I expect there should be examples that go both ways—examples where your caricature of what I was saying is in fact what happens as well as examples where your critique of it is right.  And I also expect that the homosocial-dominated case is not the most common one.

I honestly don’t understand why there’s so much disdain for the use of the rational mind to control what you eat. I think putting that on folks won’t work—-most people have to relearn to eat. I don’t eat right by accident! I used my rational mind. I eat a lot of veggies as a matter of design. It’s not an accident.

I also eat the way I do as a matter of design, but I think you and I are the kind of person for whom that’s relatively easy. I find it easy to get used to different flavors and textures in my food. My husband and son don’t. They just don’t.

At which point we have to question whether it’s a moral imperative to use “the rational mind” to control what we eat. I don’t think it is. I don’t think there’s any reason why a person should suffer, if it really feels like suffering to them, to eat what you or I think would be better for them to eat.

The only way I like cauliflower is covered in Parmesan and cream or shredded in a salad that has bacon and cheese. Eating it steamed with salt and pepper feels like chewing on flavorless cud to me. And I dislike raw broccoli;  it’s like gnawing on tree bark for hours with no real flavor payoff (I love cooked broccoli). And you know, life is just too short to chew on shit I don’t enjoy. I’m going to eat food I like, and I don’t blame anyone else for doing the same; I think there is a high quality-of-life value to actively enjoying every bite that goes in our mouths. I think that value is often dismissed, and it smells a lot like Puritanism to me.

That’s a good point, purpleshoes, a lot of us have dieting baggage. If trying to eat steamed broccoli trips all those triggers and reminds you of spending lunchtime gagging down raw cabbage or some crazy shit for a diet, and being absolutely miserable, it can be positively healing to make the rational decision “I am going to enjoy this broccoli with cheese sauce. I don’t have to force myself to eat anything I dislike. No pressure.”

And no, I don’t think that’s an extreme situation for someone to be in, either; dieting is fucking miserable for a lot of people and a lot of people have gone through multiple absolutely insane iterations of dieting, and are turned off in the long term by things like cottage cheese and raw vegetables because they gagged down so much of the damn stuff when they were otherwise starving and miserable.

It’s interesting to me that the vast majority of cases I’ve heard where grown, rational adults turn their noses up to even trying to eat subtler flavors of healthier foods, those people are male.  IBTP.  The messages about health and fitness aren’t aimed at men in nearly the same degree, so they can afford to be picky. 

There are quick and easy ways to cut out entire pointless sources of saturated fat and sugar in your diet without feeling deprived.  Like, for instance, I like cheese like it was my job to eat it.  But I only eat cheese if it’s in an ideal cheese situation.  Cheese sauces, mediocre cheese, fake cheese—-I just don’t eat it most of the time.  I try to reserve my cheese-eating for those times when it will really count, when I will get the maximum amount of pleasure from the cheese.  In a way, I think I feel *less* deprived, because my cheese-eating experiences are maximized.

As for veggies, the great thing about them is there are gazillions of them.  There’s no real reason to eat cauliflower if you can barely choke it down, as long as you eat something else.

I mean, I don’t disagree that you start where people are at.  But I think that’s better managed by appealing to the rational brain.  Telling people their “hunger cues” will manage their diets for them is simply not true for most people, and I’m frankly skeptical of the idea that you can really, truly train yourself to eat correctly without putting your brain into it.  Believe me, I wish!  But I literally have to think, “Don’t pig out,” because my tendency would be to pig out every single time if left to it.  I’m definitely not alone in this.

That does sound good, purple.

I do think that another useful strategy where the rational mind can really come in to play is really thinking about how perhaps you didn’t like a vegetable because it was badly prepared.  An overcooked vegetable or an unsalted food can often be awful.  Something underripe, same thing.

Thumbs up for the rational mind!  I recently decided I was packing too much around, looked at my serving size, halved it, and big surprise, not overly hungry and dropped 15 pounds.

Rationally, I was eating too much, so breaking habits is the ticket.

“a guest from, like, the American Blueberry Council suggested it, and the hosts knocked themselves out racing to the mic to say that fat-free yogurt and some flax meal with no sweetener were Wholesome Alternatives.”

Diet-Jesus save us from fruit and honey with some cream.  It really is disturbing by the way how “healthy” something is is measured by what it doesn’t have rather than what it does.  No fat!  + No sugar!  != Must be good for you!  I mean, I get where people are coming from when they say “Food is not poison.” in response to people bagging on junk food, but the biggest objection to it is that is has all this fat and all these simple carbohydrates and not a whole fuck of a lot else.  If you took a magic wand and instantly banished all the fat and sugars from a Whopper, you’d still have something that usually wasn’t really worth eating for dinner.  If you’re pushing a diet that’s more remarkable for banishing as many fats and carbs as possible than it is for providing you with vitamins and minerals and being sustainable for a non-ascetic, you’re not doing anybody any favors.

And when I saw a neurologist a couple of years later for chronic and debilitating sciatica he told me that the problem was “You’re too fat”. 

Anecdotally, I’ve heard that myself.  I have congenitally malformed ankles and feet (most of my family have had corrective surgery at some point in their lives), which has nothing to do with my weight.  Sure, losing *cough*cough* pounds would help, but I’d still have malformed ankles and feet.  But does an orthopedist start with that?  Noooo…. it’s “all caused by your weight”.  Suppose that fixing the pain in my feet would help me work out more?  *grumble*

I will say that I’m loving the YMCA over regular fitness clubs.  A lot of equipment options, water aerobics and swimming, walking track, personal trainers, and no judgment.  I always felt out of place at regular clubs, kind of the opposite of those height markers on roller coasters (“you have to be *this* thin to work out here”).

probably because women continue to eat as much as they did while pregnant as when they’re breastfeeding, making baby weight permanent weight

I realize the discussion has moved on a bit, but this isn’t quite right. You need about 200 extra calories a day while pregnant and about 500 extra calories a day while breastfeeding. Most medical professionals will advise you to eat at least as much while breastfeeding as while pregnant because you need those calories, and speaking anecdotally, from my own experience and those of friends, you get absolutely ravenous while breastfeeding in a way I never did while pregnant.

A lot of women find they don’t lose the last 10 pounds or so until they wean their kids, though that wasn’t my experience, and the best guess there is that the body’s metabolism changes to maintain a reserve during breastfeeding.

I do think in some women their metabolism changes permanently.

I also think it can get a lot harder to eat well when you’re also caring for a newborn. I know with my first, there were a lot of days that I ate like shit because I was just grabbing whatever was quick and easy and we definitely ate more processed food, but I have good/lucky genetics and good underlying habits that I returned to as the baby haze lifted.

I’m late to the party, but I wanted to throw in another voice on both the “try to look rationally at what you eat” and “eat what good stuff you like” lines.  I learned to cook at the same time as my mother started focusing on cooking ‘healthier’ meals, and her theory was simple: focus on getting as much of the stuff that’s good for you as you can, and if you still crave other stuff, eat it in small quantities.  Nothing forbidden, but try to sneak in more of what you like.  If you’re totally addicted to strawberry milkshakes bought from Your Generic FastFood Joint, try going home and making yourself a strawberry milkshake by grinding up some frozen strawberries with your milk, and then adding strawberry ice cream.  Minor difference, but a little more good stuff than otherwise, and the flavor’s really nice.

On the same note, a big slice of blueberry pie is probably just as filling as the same amount (by either volume or mass) of cheesecake, plus it has antioxidants and other good-for-you stuff in it—so if you’re talking to someone who Cannot Conceive Of Not Having Sweets Every Day, pointing them towards the fruit pies can be a big help.  The line Butter-Based Cakes -> Fruit Pies -> Fruit Crumbles -> Fruit Salad is all baby steps, but telling someone to go from step one to step four and trust that they will learn to like it is more… intimidating.

One other thing about pregnancy weight gain: A lot of women feel pregnancy is the one time where they have permission to eat whatever they want, so they end up gaining more weight than they should (or at least more than they need to to have a healthy baby). If we had a less fucked up relationship to food pre-pregnancy, more women would probably gain less weight. And it’s always going to be easier to not gain weight in the first place than to lose it later.

slightly off topic but I’ve been wanting to complain about a teeth whitening commercial that is based on the idea that one’s wedding would be ruined if one’s teeth were not abnormally white. 
Now, really, how closely do you look at a bride at a wedding?  Are you really thinking, “geez how awful, her teeth aren’t as white as the icing on the cake.”  And, I’m sorry, but I don’t think that—even in the age of Facebook—people should obsess so much about pictures.  How much time do you think people are going to spend on your wedding pictures? 
I would hope one could focus on “weren’t those some great vows and don’t they both look so happy” instead of “why didn’t she lose 10 pounds…”
And it would probably be wonderful if everyone had a class in high school or earlier that showed how airbrushing changes “reality” into fantasy…

How much of being able to eat different things is biological, and how much is environmental? My parents said, “This is what you get, eat it or don’t.” I would eat what was for dinner, now matter how much it made me shudder. So I’m willing to try different things, and appreciate different flavors now. But then my taste changed over time too. When I was a kid, I absolutely refused to eat asparagus. Now, I love it. I think about that whenever I hear about picky eaters. Is it OK to be picky? Or is it better to teach your kids to eat different things?

My parents said, “This is what you get, eat it or don’t.”

I raised my son like this and a huge list of foods and textures still literally make him gag.

Antigone: I wasn’t trying to say they were equal, but they do both fall into the category of “foods usually prepared for dessert”.  A huge number of people would consider simply cutting out desserts to be a reasonable diet (and honestly, I’ve tried that one), but if you’ve got a real sweet tooth, you just wind up sneaking treats in.  If you pick and choose your treats (and the substitutions are very personal!  I just happen to really like blueberry pie ), sometimes it works out better.

I may see improving diet particularly as a ‘substitute within the category’ game because I’m often cooking for a crowd, and I feel I do have to provide something as dessert.  Is cheesecake somebody’s favourite?  Yes.  Can I forestall the “somehow I don’t feel full, I’m going to go find myself x” after dinner by using a pie instead?  Also yes.  They’re not the same, but for some people, they’re interchangeable enough.  The theory is to choose at-least-somewhat-healthy foods in place of super-unhealthy foods where it is to your/our/one’s taste.  I’ll never give up potato chips entirely, even though I know they’re pretty much horrible for me, but I will try to snack on other things whenever the urge is “I want something crunchy for while I watch this” instead of “I want Lay’s Dill Pickle Potato Chips and nothing else will satisfy me.”  If I were a perfect dieter, I’d banish the snacking entirely, but then I’ll wind up stalking the kitchen at odd hours and eating stuff I don’t really want, just so I have something crunchy between my teeth.

There’s middle ground between forcing a kid to eat stuff they hate—-which will probably make a picky eater—-and just indulging them.  I think it lies in appealing to the rational brain.  It’s the “just try a bite” method.  My dad stepped it up further, by flattering our abilities to be smart.  We played a game where he would blindfold us and have us eat stuff that we didn’t know what it was.  If we liked it blindfolded, then he would encourage us to use our brains and realize that means we liked-liked it.  We liked a lot more food blindfolded than we thought. It created a lifelong willingness in me to try foods with as open a mind as possible.  Which means a lot of my adult life was realizing I did like foods I thought I didn’t, including eggs.

Hi Purpleshoes!
I’m from South America.  But now, when I say home, I also mean Brooklyn.  As long as we’re doing the cooking, and using the public transportation, it’s home.  My people (that expression cracks me up!) eat sitting down, yes.  But not all the time.  You can buy fruit in the street.  And candy, cake, sandwiches, meat on a stick, everything.  But check this out:  I LOVE candy.  Average candy bar in the US has 240 calories, average candy bar where I’m from has 100. 

My experiences make me very skeptic of hunger cues.  After seeing how quickly I can put the weight on in Middle America without ever feeling overly full, and how it comes off when I’m home without ever staying hungry, I think my neighborhood, not my hunger cues, is keeping me from obesity. 

And I really, really apologize for the shaming language. 

@88 kristin,
I had knee problems at 26 that went away when the weight came off.  And when the weight comes in, the pain does too.  But you are right, it’s probably how fast you gain it that is the problem. 

I used to hate all fruits (I still hate the smell when they start to decay, and have nightmares about a few of them) and this is a way I have tricked myself into trying and liking more fruits: slice really, really thin and evenly(3mm), set nicely on a pretty plate, sprinkle with lemon.
Huh, sounds really dumb when spelled out, but it has been like magic to me.  Now I eat apples, pears, peaches, plums. 

Amanda wrote:

That’s all very fascinating, Dana—-particularly your apparent assumption that being fat only hurts women’s health—-but it doesn’t explain why it’s a good idea to lose weight occasionally only to gain it all back.  I agree that obesity is linked to all sorts of health problems.  Yo-yo dieting doesn’t prevent obesity, though.  In fact, the evidence seems to indicate that it contributes to it.

and

But I will say in my experience, conservatives tend to be a lot more invested in yo-yo dieting than liberals. I know way more conservatives who live on a diet of crap and then, after the scales tip a certain point, go into starvation mode to lose (some) of the weight, start eating crap all over again, gain it all back plus some, rinse, repeat.  The people I know who tend to focus on eating healthy and in moderation all the time, backing it up with a lot of exercise, are mostly liberals.

Talk about projection!  Where in what I wrote does it specify that being overweight is an issue for women’s health only?  My first link noted that being more than a few pounds overweight (the article specified 30 to 40) means that people will have tens of thousands more in health care expenses over their lifetimes.  The third concerned whether gastric surgery can cure diabetes, again, specifying only people, not women.

Diabetes is something I know about, because it has been a common problem in my family.  I’m not diabetic, but my wife, both of my grandfathers, one of my sisters, both of my wife’s parents and all four of her grandparents all are/were diabetic.

Infinite cake FTW!

One of the things I like about your posts, Amanda, is that you constantly go after the neo-Puritan* tendency to conflate virtue with suffering.
Comment 20—Shaenon

The same impulse, though, is probably behind the value of supporting the underdog.

when I was pregnant and post-partum with kid #2, there was a quite long dry spell, because I wasn’t even remotely interested in sex.
Comment 21—ks

It’s not exactly a “dry spell” if you’re not interested, though.

As I gained weight my joy of living lessened due to the extra effort to go and do things.  Who wants to take a five mile walk up a trail to take pictures when one is hauling around an extra 50-100 pounds.
Comment 38—Suzan

As I lost weight my joy of living lessened due to a lack of energy to go and do things. Who wants to take a five mile walk up a trail to take pictures when one barely has the energy to stand up.

I’m sorry you felt you had a diminished quality of life when you were heavier. But arrogant as it is to say everyone else will have the same experience, it’s even more arrogant to say everyone else should have the same experience.

The camera doesn’t make normal-size models look fat, Americans just have such a messed up idea, collectively, of what normal is, that we see a normal-size model and believe that she’s fat
Comment 48—katydid

This inspired me to look again at Kate Harding’s BMI Project.
I don’t think my opinion should matter, so I’m keeping it to myself, but I wonder how effective it really is at illustrating the inadequacy of our collectve mental model of what a healthy weight is. I don’t think it would mean anything to someone like, evidently, Xeranar, or possibly Suzan, who sees anyone who isn’t rail-thin as a disgusting pig.*

*I’m not sure pigs are inherently disgusting, by the way, just ask E.B. White.

The main problem with the BMI, from what I can see, is that a tool that’s effective at monitoring large populations isn’t necessarily such a great thing on an individual basis.  [...] some people are thin and out of shape, and some people are in good shape but stout.
Comment 51—Amanda

“Healthiness” really can’t be reduced to a single number. There are too many factors, even if we only count measurable factors that interact in well-understood ways. Even “fatness”/“thinness” is probaly measured at least as well by dress size (for people who wear dresses) or waist measurement.

The best that can be said about BMI is that, without looking anything up, I’m open to the possiblity that people who lead a generally healthy lifestyle tend to have BMIs in the “normal” range more than people who don’t. But that doesn’t mean “normal” BMI is an inevitable result of a healthy lifestyle, or that only a healthy lifestyle can put your BMI in that range—Goodheart’s Law in action. Of course, since BMI is used by insurance companies to drop people for being too fat, the stated “normal” range probaby doesn’t correspond to the range of which what I just said is true, if indeed it is.

realistically, you’re going to feel more like you look good if you just get clothes that flatter your body in the first place.
Comment 52—Amanda

“Hot” is, ideally, orthogonal to “thin”, but it’s probably easier to look good in flattering clothes than naked. At least, anyone who looks good naked will look good flatteringly dressed, and the inverse doesn’t hold.

My dad stepped it up further, by flattering our abilities to be smart.  We played a game where he would blindfold us and have us eat stuff that we didn’t know what it was.  If we liked it blindfolded, then he would encourage us to use our brains and realize that means we liked-liked it.
Comment 117—Amanda

The main thing I find odious about the idea of sneaking vegetables (or anything) into kids’ meals is that if the kid doesn’t know it’s there, they’ll continue to think they don’t like it, and if you tell them it’s there, they just get suspicious of anything you cook.

I just came back from visiting family in the Midwest and I have to say, raspberryjamba is on to something when she talks about our bad eating habits.  My mother-in-law gave us potato chips and tortilla strips prior to feeding us pizza for dinner, and she eats like this all the time.  Fortunately, G and I hit the grocery store when we first arrived and had cereal and fruit at the hotel room, or we would have come back feeling even more crappy than we did.

My parents weren’t much better since they took us to Olive Garden, Chili’s and Applebee’s and spent the whole time telling us they weren’t supposed to be eating what they were eating.  (And since my dad is on dialysis, there really are specific things that he’s not supposed to eat because they can interfere with the treatment.)

I tried to work in veggies and lower-fat foods when I could, but it was much harder than I expected.  I know we get very spoiled living in California with our year-round fresh produce, but damn.

@Mnemosyne - Yeah, I went back to Michigan for a funeral this spring, and because we were in a hotel and running around like maniacs trying to get all the funeral stuff done, we ate out at what was available.  I was so freaking sick from all the grease and fried foods (Big Boy, Cracker Barrel, etc…)  I couldn’t even LOOK at fried food for months.

However, I am going to say that at home (Seattle), we have eliminated HFCS from our diets, eat organic veggies and free-range meat, only buy cruelty free eggs, all that good stuff.  I walk to the bus every morning and back home each evening… And…. still fat.  My room-mate who is bigger than I am is more active and eats even less after years of yo-yo dieting including a stint on Nutri-System her parents bullied her into as a teen, is also still fat. 

Unfortunately, the way the narrative on food and dieting and health works in this country, health comes a distant second (if that) to appearance.  I just had to listen to my kid sister, who is mostly vegetarian, walks 4+ miles a day and hikes every weekend tell me that since she was still fat doing those things, she was starting to not see the point of it anymore.

Why be healthy when she’s still fat?  When people, including a lot of people here, are going to look at her and think she’s a lazy, stupid glutton.  I told her, “You’re healthy!  You’re in awesome shape!  You run circles around me and most of the population!”

Her response?  “It doesn’t matter, because no one actually cares if I’m healthy.  They care if I’m thin.”

And that’s what it boils down to, doesn’t it?