Lobster's rant about commercialized weight loss is just that, a rant. Bless him and his right to an opinion but here's mine: most commercialized weight loss is probably OK. I'm not a huge fan of Jenny Craig but you know how I feel about WW and there's evidence to support the notion that WW does indeed work. People do lose weight. Yes, sometimes they gain it back, not because the program failed but rather because they have failed to address the real stuff that goes on when they turn to food for comfort, happiness, depression, anger or for any reason other than hunger. They've dealt with the symptoms but don't always tackle the "disease".
We are a nation of people plagued by conflicting messages: be beautiful and thin and while you're doing it, grab a Snickers -- it satisfies. The great wave of lap band surgeries is even proving to be a failure, since many high profile LBers are now ... that's right right, say it with me, gaining the weight back. Even with those tiny, tiny stomachs and the risk of being horribly sick.
Lately I've noticed food companies doing some new things: taking the sugar and the trans fats out, adding fiber and going to whole grains. Even more shocking, a packaged goods company (Hey Kool-Aid!) made and advertised a low calorie product to children! Food companies are businesses, created to make money. Consumers drive demand and if we ask for these products and buy them then the Krafts of the world will make them. I never realized what an outrageous reliance we have on prepackaged foods until I tried to shop in Spain. We must be one of the few countries on the planet that doesn't believe in whole food any more. It's a shame really. Instead of exporting our food culture to the rest of the world we should be importing their eating habits. Their food tastes better.
When we get serious about our own weight loss and health and stop acting like it's a fad, the corporate world will too. The buck stops here.
Thursday, March 02, 2006
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
2 comments:
Oh, good, another weight loss entry so I can comment on it without seeming lame and going back to old blog entries.
I wrote a column last year entitled "My Big Fat Self-Acceptance." Hardest thing I've ever had to write, but it was good for me.
I wasn't so much pushing fat pride as I was trying to combat fat fears. The last couple of years we've seen just about every kind of diet promoted, then debunked. Even low-fat diets have been acknowleged as hard to stay on and not necessarily a cure all.
I guess my point today is this...I've come to the conclusion that the only sensible weight loss advice I've ever heard is this: exercise more, eat less. Period. Obviously some foods work better under this plan than others.
I don't like the relationship I have to food under stress, but I also don't want to go back to the days when I was so obsessed with my eating plan I couldn't enjoy anyone's hospitality.
Good luck with your health goals; I'm rooting for you to do that and find ways to savor moments that involve food, too.
Well, in defense of my rant, I won't say there's no Americans who could stand to lose a few. I could, just ask my cardiologist.
But you're in the marketing biz, you should be able to smell Weight Watchers' shit. Who profits when people try a program 'again,' after cycling through half a dozen others? These programs could not be designed to fail more thoroughly. Check out the diet Sumo wrestlers use to gain weight. If you add in the cheats almost everyone 'on a diet' gives in to, every single commercial weight-losss program is a Sumo training table.
I'm not sure what to do for someone who's 30 or 40 years old and has already shit the nest. We're hard-wired with thousands of years of DNA that screams at us to eat. For virtually all of human history we've struggled just to eat enough not to die. All of a sudden, we're hitting 'full reverse' on that, in the face of bodies that interpret that 'full reverse' as 'famine.'
In the middle-school years, when basically healthy people get sucked into a cycle of basically permanent obesity and deiting, that's the only place I can see it stopping. I think once the ride has started, it's a rare person who can get off where they want to.
I'm easily 100 pounds overweight, give or take 15. It's not a good thing, especially for a heart-attack survivor. But paying for a diet program is not going to help. Sorry to rant so long in a 'comment,' but this is something I'm passionate about ranting.
Post a Comment