Your fetus, your diet, and you

I’ve been quietly (or not so quietly as my husband who has to listen to my various outbursts and scornful scoffs as I read) taking in the latest news on the dieting front.  Mainly the news of a new trial study to put overweight pregnant women on a drug intended to prevent their fetus from gaining too much weight.

I think Dances with Fat really did a fabulous look into the many reasons that this entire concept is just entirely disturbing.  A bit of that post which really keeps resonating for me is this:

Weight and Health are two different things and cannot be freely substituted for one another.  Health is multi-dimensional and includes things in our control and things out of our control such as genetics, environment, access, stress and behaviors, and being healthy is not the same as being thin. There are healthy and unhealthy people of every shape and size. (emphasis is mine)

I think that in all the fervor to ensure that our children and our general population masses stay healthy; we’re really focused on weight because it is perceived as far easier than focusing on the multi-dimensional reality of health. If you prepare a program intended to create weight-loss; that is far more easily measured than, say, determining all of the many variant factors tied into the concept of Good Health. Yet, as Dances with Fat and many others have pointed out time and again, Thin(ner) is NOT, nor should it be, a synonym for Healthy.

So much gets missed when size is  pushed forward as the best, nay the ONLY metric for measuring a body’s health.  My fear is that in this zeal and zest (and other “z” words) to Think About The Children, we’ve actually gone and forgotten all about them.  Children are merely another pawn in this War on Fat being waged.  Like the rest of us; they only stand to lose from such a position.

I don’t see how this sort of fetus-dieting study can possibly benefit anyone; let alone our children. These initiatives to drastically attack a body’s fat (or in this case a fetus’ potential to gain fat) can only serve to further reinforce already damaging stereotypes about  fatness, health and worth.

Michelle Obama’s “Fight the Fatties” mentality in addressing the United State’s “Obesity Problem” via the Let’s Move campaign seems ripe to instead (or additionally?) help INCREASE bullying and increase the prevalence of destructive behaviors (such as disordered eating); all in the name of fixing a purportedly drastically growing problem that DOESN’T REALLY EXIST!!!

In case you don’t click that last link, it leads to the CDC’s own admission that childhood obesity levels have LEVELED OFF. Since 1999! “Between 1999–2000 and 2007–2008, there was no significant trend in obesity prevalence for any age group”  Despite a recently released letter from the same CDC advising immediate actions to fight this disastrous scourge on our nation that is a fat body, there is NO EPIDEMIC of an increasingly fat nation. (PS: this rate has also been level for adults for a while now.)

Lifespan is at an all-time high in the US, and is increasing. Has been for nearly a decade.  Yet, why use such a silly measure of health as Life Expectancy?  That’s not a quick and dirty way to quantify an individual’s unique health profile! Weight is by FAR easier to track. Less work, easier to assign blame on the individual when efforts fail rather than on the initiative itself.  Hmm.  Some might think researchers and obesity experts were lazy or something?  Nah.  Only us fatties get that moniker: Lazy.

Deaths associated with fatness are being revealed to have less direct one-to-one Fat-to-Death correlation than assumed: “Overweight was not associated with excess mortality. The relative risks of mortality associated with obesity were lower.” Yet, despite studies cropping up with these and similar findings about the intricate (at the least) relationship between body size and health; initiatives continue to crop up destined to give us all the quick-fix marketers seem to feel we crave: that Get Thin Quick scam that we all know deep down (skin deep at least) is based upon shallow measures of appearance; not true measures of health.

Children, like adults, are not just bodies to be measured and judged.  They are people.  We are people. People  should not be judged Healthy or Not based upon the size of the bodily container they inhabit. Health should not be a metric by which a person’s worth is measured.

Int’l No Diet Day was May 6th

I’m sure anyone reading the Fat Feeds got the news bulletin as I did that the 19th celebration of Non-Dieting was to be celebrated.  I merely point it out today for two reasons: 1. I’m finally done with classes and have that final grade in-hand so aside from walking in the ceremony on the 20th, I’m DONE! 2. There were some great posts on the topic that I wanted to point out here.

Fat Chicks Rule marked what changes have occurred since 1992 with a post reciting words from Mary Evans Young (founder of the famous day).  How are we doing since 19 years of this day of international non-dieting? “But, the pressure is still on us all to be other than we are…Whether child or geriatric. There’s far too many people ever ready with their knives. And quacks peddling magic drugs and potions. Fat remains an easy and socially acceptable target and a useful vehicle for others to project their self hate.”

Big Liberty compiled some of the many ways that, on a holiday a mere 3 days after International No Diet Day, mothers are told “If you’re fat, we hate you”.

Zaftig Zeitgeist offers up two options for the sorts of eating advice you might consider healthier: the rather obvious malarkey offered up by a thin nutritionist, for whom nearly 1/3rd of her daily intake involves a box of macaroons late at night after a day of semi-starvation, or the more even-keeled advice of the Fat Nutritionist who supports “All food contains nutrients” and a balanced approach to eating habits.

Dances with Fat has a few videos up of their wonderful burlesque dancing that really made me cheer.  I LOVE watching these folks in action and feel that their energy and enthusiasm for the dance (as well as their grace and beauty of dance) is one more reminder that you should NEVER be waiting until a certain body size or shape to dance if you want to dance; to live the way you want to live!

Communications of a Fat Waitress has a great rumination on how, upon giving up on the FoBT, a person can go about loving their body. “I love my body every year that I fight back against the standards which dictate that my body is inherently bad, I love my body every month that I eat foods without fear of the choices I make, I love my body every week I make time to find joy in movement, I love my body every day that I look in the mirror and only love what is reflected at me, and I love my body every second that I don’t allow my mind to be filled with hatred and shame.”

Big Fat Blog did a round-up of some other great posts on the topic.

So, I’m back in the swing of a life, lived roundly, with no more late-night homework sessions to fill my weeks, and lots of wonderful thoughts to get down on electronic paper!  There are many book reviews and recipes still to come that I look forward to getting up on here as well as dancing videos, thoughts on fat and eating and movement, who knows what else.

My FA suggestions for this Lenten Season

I am reflecting this Ash Wednesday on the season of “Lent”.  Today starts those 40 (or 46 if you count the Sundays) days that are so often considered a re-boot of flagging or failed attempts to kick-start new “healthy habits” (aka: Diets Lifestyle Changes intended to garner lost weight) that were resolutely announced for New Years Resolutions.

However, rather than take this ancient season of fasting and spiritual reflection as another call to shrink your body; I’d offer up a few other suggestions. This Lenten season why not consider giving up The Fantasy of Being Thin? Make a pledge to lessen your Carbon Footprint? INCREASE the time/money/energy you commit to helping others? Feel free to share in comments alternate ideas might you have for things/actions to “give up” (or, in what I think is a more encouraging phrasing: “to give of”).

Forget making this time before Easter yet another reminder of the ways in which you consider your body to be a failure by taking on yet another calorie-restriction or food-denial or body-shrinking initiative.  Talk a breath, reflect on how God created you in hir image, and find another option waiting there for you this season.

I have a distinct impression that God cares less about you pledging to refrain from eating chocolate than you’d like to think. You are free to disagree, of course, and may even now be saying “But April D! This is a season of Fasting!  I’m SUPPOSED to diet!”  I firmly argue that fasting, the restriction from meat and all the spirituality in the world don’t mean much if it is simply done with an eye towards a smaller body.

In a time when “46 days to Get That Bikini Body in Time for Summer” are gleefully encouraged, and that temptation to make Lent yet another kick-start of dieting habits revs up, I can’t help but think of this humble line: “Remember that thou art dust, and to dust thou shalt return.” Genesis 3:19.

Your body is the wondrous shell in which your spirituality is contained. But that is all. No more, no less. It does not define who you are or the relationship you have with any higher beings you worship or wonder about.  Don’t lose sight of that in the hustle and bustle of Lenten Dieting Initiatives.

Dieting Habit Holdovers

I’ve noticed, after 2+ years of non-dieting, that the habits I practiced for so much of my life, still can come back with haunting clarity at the oddest moments.  This is a collection of a few of the bizarre ways that my near decade of dieting practices have left a mark upon my life. Since I’ve done many different dieting/lifestyle changes in my life, many of them for years, the effects were bound to be long-lasting.  I guess sometimes I forget just HOW long-lasting.  I am reminded though when moments such as these come upon me.

I’m not sure what counts as “triggering” for folks but thought that since these reflect years of dieting rhetoric that have ingrained themselves into my mind I’d put the warning out there: Some of these might be triggering.

• When I prepare my morning toast; almost EVERY time I find myself thinking “Was that more than a tablespoon of Mayo?  Don’t you realize that has 100 calories?! Oh my gods I think that might be 1.5; maybe even 2 whole tablespoons!!”
• Pasta usually makes me ponder how many cups I could get for the fewest points depending on the size of the pasta shape.
• Sometimes while swimming laps I’ll find myself debating doing “just one more” because that would mean more Points to spend later.  I still have to shake that one away before I’m able to really analyze if I WANT to go a bit longer or should stop.

So, how do I move past such moments?  Usually I can laugh them away with a head shake at my past obsessions; much in the same way I will point at and scoff at the commercials promoting the newest pill/machine/mechanism touted for weight loss online or on tv.  Sometimes I have to close my eyes and remind myself that those behaviors and thoughts are no longer a part of my life and I’m happier for it.  Still, sometimes they just linger there, little demons of a past destructive life, waiting in the recesses of my mind, waiting for me to succumb again to their siren-song of empty weight-loss promises.  I guess that just means that healing a body and mind which has spent so many years fighting against itself is a really long process.

What sort of diet behavior/thought holdovers do you still struggle with?  What mechanisms do you use to cope/push away such destructive thoughts and behaviors?

MY most memorable doctor experience: ReVolution

In lieu of a cooking post, which is almost ready and lacking only pictures, I wanted to reminisce a bit about what I consider to be the most memorable bad experience I had with a doctor in my youth.  This is in the spirit of ReVolution; it is a memory which sparks, even now, my urge to push the fat-friendly message of loving your body As It Is Right Now. And, all considered, it isn’t that horrible a memory.  But is HAS stuck with me a long time…

Flash back with me now…further and further, further and further…. I am young.  Very young.  Perhaps 7 or 8.  I am sitting on the crinkly paper of the exam table. The dressing gown covering me is, of course, not quite able to fully close in the back.  My mother is dressed in street cloths and hovering beside me, awaiting the doctor’s feedback. I am pretty sure this was a normal physical exam, routine.

The doctor enters.  Her body fills the room.  I remember distinctly, even now more than 25 years later, how she sat on the short black-plastic-covered stool and her butt-checks seemed to ooze over the sides.  My doctor was a large woman, but more importantly,  she had my file in hand.

She asked a few questions, got my nervous answers; and then she said to my mother the words that my young and already self-conscious mind dreaded, “Well, she could stand to lose some weight.”

I was baffled.  I mean, I already felt uncomfortable in my body at this young age, knew I was a huge encumbrance and awkward, but here was this huge woman, spilling over her seat, and looking me in my little 7 or 8 year old eyes and telling ME that I needed to work on shrinking myself.  I was aghast, devastated, and PISSED.

I don’t even know what else she might have said at that point because I was fuming and internally fighting the tears burning at my eyes for the indignity of it all. The minute the doctor left the room I turned to my mother and with a hiccup that proceeded my shame and anger I said, “That fat COW tells me *I* need to lose weight?!?”  I still remember it.  I don’t remember my mom’s exact reaction; perhaps a shocked giggle and admonishment, who knows.  But I will for some reason always remember the unfairness of a woman who was clearly already HERSELF a very large body; telling my much smaller body to shrink.  It felt…awful honestly.

I railed and ranted and raged against the doctor to my mother on the drive home, calling her all sorts of names and bemoaning that here was a woman proscribing a “treatment” which had so obviously failed even her to a girl who DIDN’T eat Twinkies and sit around all day. It felt like the most cruel injustice in the world to my 7 or 8 year old mind.  It was like my first ever trollish encounter: someone filled with self-hate, pinning all their own failings onto me instead (though at the time I would not think of it as anything other than a jerk telling me to do what she couldn’t even manage).

Through my life that label of “Medically Fat” has followed me and resulted in what have been sometimes tearful, sometimes hopeful, sometimes frustrating, sometimes encouraging medical appointments.  One other, more recent, doctor experience was at the gyno.  I was getting chatted up by the nurse as she got my information, etc.  She was all friendly and happy-go-lucky; until she saw my weight number.  Then the tone became less happy and friendly and seemed to take on that of a friend calling on a sick or dying loved one; concern and anxiety.  All due to the way that those damn weight numbers affect our perceptions of a person’s health.  (PS: Yes, I was fine at the appointment and have been since too; no need to speak as though I am at death’s door, okay?)

So, anyways, where does that bring me today?  Aside from the twinge of shame that I STILL get from this memory for the name-calling I did for this doctor, there is a bit of instruction in it for me.  Mainly it reinforces to me the reality that even people who have been continually failed by diets; will dutifully proscribe them as a cure-all.  Maybe my former doctor from my youth truly believed in her hearts of hearts that a simple “Eat Less, Move More” mantra was only failing her because she was somehow doing it wrong; not because Diets Don’t Work.

Sadly, this continues even today.  It wasn’t a fluke of medicine that this woman would proscribe for others a failing prospect with little to no success rate to speak of.  Everyone just “KNOWS” that in order to not be fat, in order to prevent diabetes and all sorts of horrible fates, one MUST diet and be shamed into doing so; because the only way to GET Fat, of course, is by a lack of self-control leading to sloth and gluttony.  No.  And you know what, even if that IS the manner in which a person went about “Getting Fat”; it all boils down to what I consider one of the few universal truths: “It is none of anyone else’s business”.  Got that? HOW or WHY a person is fat, or otherwise does not fit your narrow perception of Ideal Health and Beauty, is irrelevant: no one is beholden to you to look the way you think they should.  No one.  Every person’s body is their own.  Bodies are personal, got it?  Your own judgments on it or suggestions for it are worthless in the face of that one solid grain of truth: it is not your business.

So that’s what I get from this memory.  A reminder that even 25 plus years ago people were failing at the very “cures” they would continue to proscribe to me throughout my life for “fixing” a body that was actually working very nicely to do all the things it needed to do, thank you very much.  But doesn’t it sting, even just a bit, to realize just how many people get through all day without once thinking of how amazing it is to have The Body They Have Right Now?  Take a moment now, reflect upon the fact that, no matter your issues with it, chances are your body still does some pretty amazing things on a very regular basis: and it is all your own.  Doesn’t that make it worth loving and treating well?  And not hating and trying to force it to look different?

On being a skinny…food?

Okay so I’ve been watching some of the kerfuffle via Sociological Images and Jezebel regarding the Snack Factory Pretzel Crisps ads appearing around New York City. My take? The folks at the pretzel company are being willfully dense about the entire thing, even though they ARE taking steps that MIGHT (I hope) lead to reconsidering not just one ad but the entire campaign.

To sum up, in case you haven’t been watching or just haven’t caught wind of it yet, apparently the company began posting this ad around NYC (Via Sociological Images):

Oh really?

A bunch of twitter-pating and such later and the company begrudgingly removed this ad.  However it turns out this was just one in a set of four; of which this second is still being promoted (Via Jezebel):

Again...oh really? This isn't striking the same tone as the FIRST disputed ad?!?

According to the twittering pretzel folks “We’re a thin pretzel cracker… ‘Thin’ just happens to be a good word to describe the shape of our product.”  Well you know what else might work?  How about I find you a few words to replace “thin” and “skinny”, words so intrinsically tied to body image no matter what you are trying to willfully claim here?

I mean, come on, really?  Just because you don’t follow PETA standards or high fashion protocol by having bikini-clad normatively beautiful women draped over your damn product doesn’t mean you aren’t fully aware of EXACTLY the social meme you were hoping to capitalize upon with these very precisely worded ads.

Words MEAN things people.  Either you’re willfully ignoring this in communicating to those objecting to these ads or you’re living in some sort of beautiful fairy world where “thinspiration” and the Fantasy of Being Thin  is not a way of life. I mean, really, I’d like to live in the imagination world these folks inhabit where such phrases can possibly be interpreted in a non-weight-loss-inspired (even pro-ana) way.

So how about I give you a few other words you could have used, eh?  I mean how about one of these instead:

bony, cadaverous, emaciated, fragile, gangling, gangly, gaunt, haggard, meager, narrow, peaked, pinched, puny, scrawny, shriveled, skeletal, skinny, spindly, starved, undernourished, underweight, wan, wasted, wizened

Huh?  Not quite the image you were going for?  Oh.  Okay  Well, sorry, but looking up “skinny” brings up pretty much the same list as for “thin”.  So does “thin” really describe what you’re going for here? A nice emaciated pretzel?  Very taste-inspiring, no?

Okay, no, you’re right.  I should be fully honest; that wasn’t the full list of possible words. I could have chosen (*cough*justlikeyoucouldhave*cough*) some of the OTHER, less obviously part-of-a-negative-body-image-discourse, sorts of synonyms for “thin” or “skinny”.  How about one of these?

delicate, ethereal, featherweight, fine, light, narrow, slight, small

How about “So light and airy, we think the feather might fall faster”.  “Just a slight reminder of how tasty we can be”. “Delicately delicious”.

See what I did there?  I’m not even IN marketing and yet I managed to quickly choose a few words (and even come up with slogans, you’re welcome) which don’t necessarily bring immediately to mind the half-naked, weight obsessed women you’re so proud you didn’t drape around your ads (at least in images)  like so many others blatantly do.

So while the company has taken the first step by agreeing to remove the first objected-to ad because they “didn’t intend to advocate unhealthy weight loss”, there is still this lingering wonder I have if the entire campaign will be rethought or if this one action was taken as a token gesture of “See, we capitulated to the masses.  Now hush-up and leave our remaining pro-ana-inspired ads alone you meanies!”

Come on Pretzel Crisps; prove me wrong for worrying. You claim to understand that images of women as objects and props used to sell food is tacky.  You also took down one offensive ad clearly promoting the ideal that a person (or pretzel?) can NEVER be too thin. Brava! Now take that one small step past this and realize that it isn’t just that one ad; that words can do just as much harm as pictures, and remove those equally damning slogans as well.

I’m hoping myself that the company will choose to take a fresh eye to these sorts of slogans and recognize just how harmful a mentality they come from and end up promoting.

Again, one more time (sing it with me if you’d like), in closing, I would like to remind Pretzel Crisps and everyone else: Words MEAN things.  They don’t exist in a vacuum. Words are informed by the culture in which were are seeped and it is blatant ostrich-head-in-sand behavior to just ignore this when crafting ads.

Words.  They mean things.

No. I DON’T give a shit about your “Weight Loss Diary”. Let me explain…

Beauty is not defined by the size of your jeans..

It seems with the warm weather waxing into full summer swing up here in the Northeast that I’ve been inundated with friends (particularly in Facebook) who are excitedly proclaiming their New Commitment To Dieting Lifestyle Changes or eagerly fishing for compliments by posting about how many ounces/inches/calories they’ve lost that day.

I’ve already “hidden” posts on my news feed from folks who seem to think that a running litany of everything they ate/didn’t eat wanted to eat/didn’t want to eat or weight they lost/gained inexplicably was the utmost in fascinating conversation.  Even the comments posted ON those posts by other “friends” or even those people’s siblings deserve a bit of head-shaking sadness.

Yesterday this passive-aggressive “Do what you want, it IS your life/body but I don’t have to watch…. and you’ll never know that! *Hide!*” response was not possible when a woman actively messaged me to ask why I hadn’t joined (or “liked”?  I’m not sure which) the page she’d set up to log all her Weight Loss Adventures.  I haven’t responded because I hate being confrontational but I’m wondering if I should and if so, what to write.

I’m very active (to the level I’m able depending on how many classes I’m taking and how intense the workload is) in the FA blog sphere (For 2 years now even!  Happy Blog-iversary to me!).  I often LINK to my own thoughts or those of others on the Fat and Size acceptance circuits in my own Facebook comments.

Here is where MY mind sits on diets

Yet still, this woman who is dealing with her own body image issues and health issues (which, as we know, get so very quickly and easily wrapped up together in an inseparable knot of pain and frustration), felt that pointing out I hadn’t joined the bandwagon on her own “Yay!  I’m CHANGING!  My Body!” bandwagon of support was the way to proceed with me.

Now I’m torn.  Part of me wonders if this action was actually a small cry for help; a plea for me to actually respond politely and explain WHY I refuse to join and support this group; perhaps in doing so validating her desire NOT to do this Life Change crap.  My own reasons have a lot to do with not supporting dieting for losing weight for the Get Healthy goal.  But I’ve discovered after thinking last night and again this morning: I also just don’t want to get sucked into that mindset again.

In a bent of self-preservation I have been avoiding mentions of active dieting/dieters (which is really difficult if you have to put away the new “Woman’s World” magazines in a library) because I fear falling into those old habits of self-hatred inspired calorie restriction insanity.  I’m a pretty impulsive woman as far as how quickly I can make up my mind to do or not do something.  A bad downfall to this though is that it often means that a good argument for/against something can sway my own opinion far more easily than I think it would, if I were somewhat more slow-paced in my decision-making processes.  Reading about the latest/greatest “Three Month Calorie Burn, Lose 100’s of Pounds” or “Fat Redux in just Two Weeks of Painful Poo-ing” or even “How Lifestyle Changes Made me Happy Thinner” end up having this unerringly distinct ability to tug at the corners of my well-constructed defensive mechanisms against pervasive marketing strategies.

And then I end up feeling shitty about my own body. Which is completely the opposite of what SHE’S trying to do for herself: you know, feel better about herself and her life/body (even if it is by means dictated by the society around her which constantly pressures anyone fat to feel that All Would Be Better (in some magical Unicorns Shit Rainbows for your Breakfast sort of way) if they were thinner).

So if I do end up explaining why I refuse to join/like/be a part of this woman’s diet journalism I feel that it will come off as extremely self-serving; a bunch of whining about how HER decision to diet is making ME feel bad about myself.  But part of me doesn’t care because a lot of feeling good about myself and learning to love who I am, in the Shell of Life that I ALREADY inhabit, has required copious amounts of editing out those parts of the world around me.  A world which tries to constantly push me into the tiny niche my social environment has deemed appropriate for a huge woman (you know, that tiny niche of Self Flagellation for the Way I Am cycled against Hopeful Dieting Lifestyle Changes to Become Who I Should Be (ie: thin, taking up minimal space, quiet, calm, poised, a Better Me… in a tiny package which is pretty, sexually appealing to the male gaze and unthreatening to those around me). I refuse to get caught up in that crap again.

I mean, a huge part of why I’ve never done a week (or month) of photo blogging my eating habits to “prove” that I eat very much the same as someone thinner, has to do with the fact that doing so would also spiral me into the same mental tizzy that calorie counting did. You know, that mental space where food becomes an all-consuming pre-occupation; when knowing how many crumbs or bites you are “allowed” becomes more important than any other thought; when food is no long a sustaining or even minutely pleasurable concept and instead becomes the Enemy of My People or, in other words: my Body.

That’s not a mental space I ever wish to inhabit again.  As my husband has often pointed out: Non-dieting April is a HAPPY April.  And I like that.

So that’s why I have no interest in hearing about others’ weight loss successes/struggles.  Is it rude to not want to partake in something that does become such an overwhelming part of people’s lives?  Perhaps.  But just as no one has to read here to find out my views on how destructive dieting is to your mind and body, on how playing the role of the Dieting Fatty further perpetuates the idea that we have to somehow EARN the right to live our own lives, I should have the option to not be inundated with someone’s self-abusing revamp of their own dieting process, right?

Again, a large part of me doesn’t care even if such a response is rude because my own mental health is dependent on keeping these sorts messages about negative body image OUT of my life in order to find that stability of self-image and balance of life that I’ve been creating for myself for over 2 years now.

So I’m unsure at this point how to respond.  Do I just ignore the blatant note as I did the original group/page invite request?  Do I respond with a few key phrases indicating why I won’t be watching her dieting journey?  Do I inundate my own page with further links and posts about how destructive such cycles of hatred and body-crushing eating and living habits can be?  Or is there some other option out there that I’m missing?  Does it make me some sort of jack-ass to not support people in what I consider to be another foolish attempt to do something that will only end again in heartache and frustration?? I’m sure to some it would be like actively not supporting someone’s efforts to quit smoking; but then again that assumes the constantly continued and ever more often challenged (though not by the media or weight loss companies, even when the studies are right there) belief that Fat and Fitness are forever and unchallengeable in their inverse relationship.

I refuse to apologize for being happy with who I am.  But should I apologize for not wanting to be happy with who she is/wants to be?  After all, we’re both adults, working to live and make peace with the world around us….

Ease into Monday Feb. 1

“Nothing in the health and medical fields has been proven more soundly, than the fact that focusing on weight loss is unlikely to lead to permanent weight loss and more likely to lead to weight cycling and weight gain. People who diet repeatedly over the years end up weighing more than they would have if they had never dieted. Weight cycling can make all the health problems weight loss supposedly helps (diabetes, hypertension, lipid abnormalities, etc.).”

~ From Dr. Jon Robison’s recently published Special Report through the Wellness Council of America (WELCOA) called “10 Things You Can Do Right Now to Ease Concerns About Your Weight And Improve Your Health.”, via More of Me to Love blog.

It was an interesting read from Dr. Robinson that I suggest perusing if you have the time and inclination.  A few other good tidbits:

“Wouldn’t a quick fix to chronic and sometimes serious problems like overweight, diabetes, heart disease, and just plain low energy be terrific? If an advertiser or television personality tells you that they have the answer, and that medical practitioners either don’t know about it or don’t want you to know about it, be suspicious!”

“Terms such as “clinically proven” or “research proves” have no meaning. What clinic? What research?”

For those interested in knowing where information comes from; it looks as though Jon Robinson is a PhD holder and Holistic Health Promoter.

This was a fun way to start my Monday and I wanted to pass along the joy of reading a bit of proposed sanity mixed into the usual Monday bent of “Gotta make up for a weekend lapse, get those diets on track!” blather.

In other news; I started my spring semester of courses this past Thursday.  Both professors seem to really know their stuff and were interesting to listen to. I look forward to the coming discussions this week!  One professor who spends ample time going to Vietnam to work on building up libraries and library systems, also puts a head to those headless fatty photos in an amazing way.  She stalked around the room with ease and confidence and told of her encounters around the world.  I feel a bit awe-struck by the things she has done with her life.  She is definitely not someone who waited around thinking “I’ll go help those folks across the globe as SOON as my hips are slender enough for those airlines to approve of me”.  Fat life in action (which is just like other lives minus the mind-debilitating fear of living-while-fat) is a beautiful thing to see and hear about. I look forward to more on international librarianship from her.

Tis the season to Tagalong

I’ve noticed today that a co-worker has brought in that sign-up sheet for Girl Scout Cookies today.  And I’ve been giggling all day because all I can keep thinking about is this post from around this time last year combined with the fact that I still have two opened boxes of these cookies in my freezer left over from ordering them last year.  Considering that during my Dieting Days I would have guiltily scarfed these down within the month (or days?) of purchase I think it is a very telling testament to how normalized my eating has since become when a box of cookies that would have one time sent me into a frenzy of eating over-doing and a few moments of bliss followed by a guilt-chaser; is now still waiting out in the freezer for me to remember they are there and develop a craving for them!

So now I don’t know about ordering more of my usual favorites (the Tagalongs) since not only do I still have some left but I’ve discovered dark chocolate Reese’s cups have been released again and have definitely taken over during those few moments of chocolate/pb craving.

For those looking to make a resolution NOT weight related…

I know some people wait to make a resolution until a week or so into the new year.  I’m not personally one to make resolutions; they just bring too quickly to mind the awful “I WILL lose weight” mantras which dominated many of my new years in the past; creating more and more disappointment as I set myself up each time to be a failure.

So in the spirit of trying other adventures I found someone suggesting instead making 2010 a year of “52 adventures“.  With the thought that never should you hold off for a thinner tomorrow what you can do already today I wanted to pass the link along as a suggestion and also a reminder that life doesn’t have to wait for any particular weight (hah, see what I did there?  Ahhh I’m such a clever writer sometimes…)

For myself I still think of the “adventures” as being too reminiscent of those weight-challenge lists I made as recently as 2 years ago (drop waist size to this number, get weight to this number, etc) so I will leave it to those who don’t fear it triggering such a weight-loss mania.  Though some of the lists people are creating are generating some very interesting ideas: Carve something out of wood, Pick fruit, Make a French recipe.

However, I am toying with endeavoring to read one book a week as it seems reasonable and fun and vaguely job related as I am a librarian.  Currently I’m reading “Life is not a dress size” and “The Arkadians” and should have some reflections on those very soon to share. I still hesitate to call it a resolution but maybe I can make it a fun challenge for the year instead? Is that the same as calling a diet a lifestyle change?

What sort of adventures would you like to have this year that may even have to do with your own personal health or fitness but yet are not so tied to simple calorie reduction diets and over-exercise mantras?