On women's glossy magazines

[davywavy]

My sister, I've mentioned on these pages before, is lots cleverer than me. To illustrate this, she has a degree in advanced cleverness from Oxbridge University, whilst I studied a social science at a former polytechnic - which intellectually means that my eyebrows grow together and my knuckles drag along the ground.
In the light of this it always surprises me that she seems to have an odd addiction to the astonishingly brain-dead glossy magazines which fill the 'womens lifestyle' shelves at WHSmith in drifts. She's an avid reader of Vogue for instance, although it's a mystery to me how anyone can 'read' it - there don't seem to be any words in it, just page upon page upon page of endless pictures of overpriced shoes and handbags.
Sometimes she brings home a copy of something like Red or Marie Claire, which at least have some writing in them, and occasionally an article with a title like "Sex - what he's really thinking" which are always good for a laugh.

Last night she came gamely tripping along with a copy of Easy Living, the cover of which declares it to be the 'New year weight loss issue - your ultimate guide to losing weight!'. Now, over Christmas I accidentally fell face-first into a tin of florentines and had to be cut free by the fire brigade so I might have gained the odd ounce here and there, so I picked it up for a browse to see if I could pick up any tips.
By the time I'd finished reading the 10-15 page feature on losing wieght for the new year I was nigh-apoplectic with shock. In the space of those 10-15 pages and thousands of words of text not once - and I went back and checked - was the word 'exercise' used. Not once. Nor was 'gym', walking', or 'try moving around a bit more'. The whole thing, all of it, was just articles and features on what to eat and how to make your diet work. All of this despite the first article in the feature acknowledging that research indicates that diets alone do not work, with 93% of dieters ending up heavier than when they started - but is there any indication of what you might add to 'diets alone' to make them work? There is not. Instead we get a lengthy piece on 'Your relationship with food'.
I don't know about you but I'm not sure that I have a 'relationship with food'. If I do, it's roughly similar to the 'relationship' I'd have with girls I met in the Union Bar when I was a student - I've got a hearty appetite, I'll help myself to other peoples if they're not looking, and any still there in the morning can be warmed up for second helpings.
There's a lot of text about various dietary supplements to suppress appetite or prevent your body digesting fat, but nothing whatsoever about how you might help your weight loss intentions by occasionally moving more than rummaging for the remote control down the back of the sofa. It beggars my comprehension how you can run an 'ultimate' guide to weight loss without suggesting that burning extra calories might in some way aid the process, but somehow Easy Living manages it.
Easy Living sells more then 200,000 copies a month and claims more than double that number of actual readers - that's over 2% of the adult women in this country reading this fatuous crap. The feature goes on to say Show me a woman, and I'll show you someone who is on a diet, has been on a diet, or is going on a diet. That can't be strictly true, can it?

Can it?

[Poll #1115516]

Comments

[madwitch.livejournal.com]

I'd dispute quite strongly a belief that the results of 'eating better and exercising more' aren't typical. It's the most effective way to lose weight etc for most people. Not all, but most.

Diets are far more harmful to the body.

[taimatsu]

I see what you're saying, and I agree that 'eating right and exercising more' is likely to help anyone who's not doing that to be healthier (which is not the same as losing weight) but the trouble is that 'eating better and exercising more' can shade into, well, a diet. I mean, if you eat a standard 2000 calories a day and exercise a fair bit, and you don't lose weight when you're supposed to, what do you do other than eat less and exercise even more? And so on and so forth.

This is sounding a bit like "Diets don't work but...".

[gnommi.livejournal.com]

chronic overeating or being overweight for a long time can lead to peripheral insulin resistance and and a spectrum of other metabolic abnormalities that can need other hacks to get around, such as altering the food types that you eat rather than just calorific intake/output per se, as your ability to metabolise fats and sugars and other individual food groups can be compromised

but in general reducing input and increasing output works best for the majority of people

[taimatsu]

There are health risks associated with being overweight. There are also, studies suggest, health benefits associated with being overweight.

The thing I object to in all this is the idea that it is simple or easy for most people to lose weight, via any normal means, whether that's a diet or an eating plan or lifestyle changes or anything of that sort. There's a whole industry (several, actually) whose profits come from convincing people that thin is good, thin is healthy, and thin is actually very thin and very thin is normal. And then, on top of that, that fat is bad, fat people are unhealthy, fat people must lose weight, and diets/commercial eating regimes are the answer. Weight Watchers is currently marketing themselves with the idea that diets are bad so do WW instead. Many, many fat people *do* eat normally and exercise, and still don't lose weight. There is a culture which then claims that fat people must be lying about what they eat or do, because obviously if they ate like normal people they would lose weight. This emphasis on 'just eat a bit less and walk a bit more', even with tweaks, kind of presupposes that fat people are stupid and haven't considered this. It's a whole world of aaaargh.

I could spend hours rambling about BMI categories, the effect of starvation on the body, and so on, but I am not a scientist, I don't have the data at my fingertips and it's pointless to make huge rants of unsupported claims. I just want to suggest to anyone who is still remotely interested in this thread that it is Not That Simple, and you might consider looking at blogs such as Junkfood Science and Shapely Prose if you want to think about other possibilities.

[commlal.livejournal.com]

The BMI index is flawed, in quite a major way, since it doesnt take into account the build of an individual. If you looked at the likes of a lanky sprinter, they would be about 16BMI which is clinically underweight. A rugger player would be about 30-35, chronically obease. I would love to see some condasending goverment type tell the English rugby squad that they had to cut back on the beers and pies!

Look at me, 5ft2 and weigh about 93kg, I must therefore eat shite and sit around all day, obviously??!!?? No, I'm on my feet for eight hours a day running in circles and go to the gym at least once a week, and I eat my 5 fruit and veg a day and less than 2000cals a day. In theory I should be a skinny rake since to maintain the weight I'm at (with a fiddly calculation my mum showed me) I can eat up to 2800!!! Thats like all the food in the world.

For the eat healthy (rather than less) and walk a bit, thats my mothers answer to most people a little on the porky side, it worked for her as she went from a 24 to an 18 dress size. Shes been a dietition for about 30 years so she must know what she is talking about. Even she says BMI is rubbish.

[gnommi.livejournal.com]

Sorry I didn't intend to suggest that it Was That Simple. It's not (I am a PhD student working in Diabetes and Metabolic Medicine and if it was, I wouldn't have any funding!).

Just that if you have the Fell-Into-Some-Florentines-Over-Xmas-Lard-Trauma, then less in-more out is IN GENERAL far more effective than any other bizarre diety thing TM

[taimatsu]

Yes, absolutely - I spent a couple of weeks last month living on chocolate crispie cakes and cocktail sausages (coursework crisis) and hey, my clothes are kinda tight. That is weight I could lose sensibly by walking about a bit more and eating less chocolate rather than more, and that's fine. But I'm not convinced that eating a normal diet and exercising a normal amount is actually going to make me lose the *rest* of the amount I'm technically overweight, because this is the size my body is and it's probably programmed to hang onto my fat reserves, not ditch them. But I'm not even thinking about trying, because I am fortunate enough to like and be comfortable at the size I am. :)

[gnommi.livejournal.com]

=D

[commlal.livejournal.com]

Its the major factor in the development of Type 2 diabetes and if you have other factors it can lead to a condition called Metabolic Syndrome which is as close as you can get to being diabetic with out the cool free prescriptions.

Thats another rant in itself, how apparently Type 2 is the less serious of the two types. *grrrrrrrrr*

[gnommi.livejournal.com]

and of course, metabolic abnormalities exist outside of pre-existing obesity!
bah curse my brain today

[gnommi.livejournal.com]

just had a nose at your LJ... apologies!

BUT This (http://www.pingmag.jp/2007/01/15/haramaki-a-granny-item-made-fashionable/) is SUCH a great idea! Now I know what I can do about all of my tops that suddenly don't meet my trouser waistband any more but otherwise still fit! No more cold kidneys for me!

Genius!

[taimatsu]

They are cool, aren't they? I haven't made one yet but as soon as I get my craft table cleared up the sewing machine's coming out :)

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

There are some exceptions to the D-plan diet. For example, Dr. Steven Blair who is both clinically obese and an accomplished marathon runner, but such excpetions are just that - exceptional.

[taimatsu]

No, really, it's not that simple. Except that, yes, if a person eats less food and takes more exercise they will definitely lose weight eventually - in the sense that if they eat *almost no* food and do *almost constant* exercise they will starve themself into thinness. But not healthy thinness. For some people it might genuinely take that level of self-denial to lose any appreciable amount of weight.