*!$%&£! oppressive diet culture

[ajva]

Im very confussed about something, I dont eat alot, or on a regular basis, but when I do eat I get all the essitials...well atleast try to, I dont eat chips, or big out on bon bons or anything, But I just cant lose weight if anything ive packed it on more then lost it, I dont know If its all the caffine I drink thru out the day, ive heard thats a bad thing, or if im just naturally fat, how can my eating help me lose weight, and is the caffine im drinking a bigger issure then the food im eating?
-Dallas

An average comment from caloriecounter.co.uk, also the site of gems like this one:

I hate myself so much. I weigh 140 Lbs. and I am 5'5" I just started not Eating anything, because nothing else works. I have tryed everything and nothing will work, so this is my only option. I don't even care if I die, I would rather be dead than continue life fat. Seriouslly, I hate myself so much. I don't think about anything except for how fat I am. I can't take it anymore. Please help me.

and this:

Recent studies show that fasting can be really good for you in moderation and it doesn't neccasseraly mean no food at all, it can mean just liquids so that you can have soups and things. Fasting should not be 10 days at a time if your nat experienced. Try 1-2 days a week for a while. If you fast not only does it give your organs a little break it also flushes your body out of all toxins and impurities as well as burning off excess fat.

TIPS FOR FASTING-
1) Drink plenty of water do prevent dehydration.
2) boil veg and drink the broth so that you still get essential vitamins.
3) take calcium supplements.
4) meditate and keep your self busy.
5) dont eat loads after ending a fast, slowly re-introduce fruit and fibre first and then the rest a few days later

I HATE THIS FUCKING INJUSTICE!!!!!!!!! IT'S A FUCKING SCANDAL TO BRING UP LITTLE GIRLS TO BELIEVE THAT IF THEY EAT A CERTAIN AMOUNT, AND EXERCISE A CERTAIN AMOUNT, THEN THEY WILL ACHIEVE THE IDEAL WEIGHT AND IF THEY DO NOT IT IS BECAUSE THEY'RE NOT TRYING HARD ENOUGH!!!!! IT'S A FUCKING LIE!!!! I WOULD NEVER LOOK SLIM UNLESS I WERE DYING!!! AND IT'S SO ALL-PREVALENT AND ACCEPTED AND INSIDIOUS THAT EVERYBODY BELIEVES IT, EVEN A LITTLE BIT!!! SO LET'S GO OVER THAT AGAIN, AND ASK YOURSELVES THIS TIME HOW MUCH YOU AGREE WITH WHAT I SAID "I WOULD NEVER LOOK SLIM UNLESS I WERE DYING". NO - YOU DON'T FUCKING BELIEVE IT, DO YOU - A PART OF YOU THINKS THAT IF I DIETED AND EXERCISED ENOUGH I WOULD BECAUSE ISN'T THAT THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD? BUT NO IT FUCKING ISN'T BECAUSE THAT'S NOT THE WAY THE HUMAN BODY OR THE NORMAL DISTRIBUTION WORK!!!! SO IF EVEN YOU LIBERALS THINK LIKE THIS, AND IF EVEN DOCTORS THINK LIKE THIS THEN WHAT FUCKING HOPE IS THERE THAT WE WILL EVER BE FREE? AAAAAAARGGGGHHHH!!!!!!!! IT MAKES ME SO FUCKING ANGRY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Comments

[ajva.livejournal.com]

This is exactly it, Karen. This is exactly the problem. There is no need to get defensive here - nobody's blaming you for diet oppression or insisting you become all militant and deliberately become very obese to make a political point. I'm not going to criticise you for wanting to lose weight. I'm criticising the culture. But you say it is a "valid choice" for you to do so. this is true to the extent that you are free to do as you please IMO, but it is untrue in the very crucial sense that you, as well as other women, have no choice whatsoever in this matter. If you were truly free to make a decision you would not consider yourself excessively overweight. You would like your body and not feel pressure to get smaller. Who told you you should be smaller? The oppressive, profit-making diet culture. Is it right? No. Is it your fault that you want to lose weight anyway? No. Do you need to lose weight? No. Is this a valid, freely-informed choice? No. You choose to diet much as a lab rat chooses to scarper round a maze in a laboratory.

This is exactly the problem, Karen. Your reasons make sense on the surface but dieting won't help with them. You are made a victim by this and it isn't your fault, but please don't think you are free in your making of choices because none of us is. I am not blaming you. I am blaming the pressure. Please don't take offence here. I understand the urge to diet as I've felt it myself.

[valkyriekaren.livejournal.com]

I disagree. To do what the majority do is implicitly not a free choice? Well, if that's not a free choice, then in what way is deciding not to do it 'free'? There's no choice at all. You're either an automaton, or rebelling for its own sake.

To my mind, that's analogous with saying that someone who practices monogamy is wrong, because that's what the majority of people do. Even if that person has truly considered the options, maybe even tried other lifestyles and decided that this one is right for them, they can't be making a rational choice but are just giving in to social conditioning?

[ajva.livejournal.com]

Crucial element in my argument: dieting doesn't work.

So what good is dieting for your health issues?

[valkyriekaren.livejournal.com]

On the health side, a diet that cuts down my intake of saturated fats will mean I'm less likely to have a heart attack when I'm in my 40s, and end up in hospital and on even more meds for the rest of my life, or dead like my Aunt Mary, or my grandfather who I never met.

On the image side, dieting to lose weight, for me, is a form of body-modification. You wouldn't be angry at me if I wanted to, say, die my hair blue, get a tattoo or pierce my nipples (ow!), so why is this particular choice about how I want my body to look so contentious?

[ajva.livejournal.com]

You wouldn't be angry at me if I wanted to...

I am not angry at you. I am not angry at you. I am not angry at you. I am not angry at you. I am not angry at you. I am not angry at you. I am not angry at you. I am not angry at you. I am not angry at you. I am not angry at you. I am not angry at you. I am not angry at you.

Right, now we've got that out of the way...

ergotia has already said that she believes her constant dieting was a factor in her development of diabetes. There are severe health risks to dieting, but you are still saying you need to do it to be healthier?

[ajva.livejournal.com]

If you are just moderately cutting down on sugar and fat in order to eat more healthily then of course even I think that's sensible, btw. My ranting here is just because I got the impression that your overriding concern is to lose weight. If that's not the case i.e. if changing your diet without losing any weight at all would truly satisfy you, then I apologise without reserve if I've ruffled you (although no offence has been meant).

as James says...

[ajva.livejournal.com]

And the other thing is, in order to avoid having a heart attack in your 40s it is much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much more important to give up cigarettes for good. There is absolutely no comparison between the effects of saturated fats and the effects of smoking in this regard. If you are serious about your health, there is no better thing to do than give up the fags. Harsh truth, but there you go. You know it makes sense.

Re: as James says...

[ergotia.livejournal.com]

Agreed, but what sort of response are you expecting? Do you really think anyone is going to disagree? And if not, what is the point of your comment?

Re: as James says...

[trishpiglet.livejournal.com]

Tend to agree that giving up smoking highly important, having done so and seen lots of improvements - not just to my health but to the way I look and smell, the way I feel.

I hope nobody will start making people who still smoke feel bad about it, though (am not saying anyone will, but just in case). It is one of the most difficult things I have ever had to do and has taken me more attempts than I can count.

[ergotia.livejournal.com]

Paul, what the fuck do you know about any of this? I mean really *know*, from years of experience?

a rough explanation...

[ajva.livejournal.com]

In the long term, dieting doesn't work. Simple thermodynamics alone cannot account for the processes at work here. If dieting worked long-term, obesity would be rare!

But dieting has a success rate of between 2-5% i.e. many studies have shown that, of individuals who have slimmed down to their target weight, 95-98% of them will have regained some weight 3 years later, and one third of them will have regained more.

Part of the problem is that restricting your diet doesn't just burn fat. It also consumes lean tissue. When you regain wait, it is more fat than lean tissue. Lean muscle burns more calories than adipose tissue. Think about it in percentage terms.

Suppose you are 120 lbs, made up of 30% fat and 70% lean tissue. Dieting, without exercise, you will lose both types of tissue. Fasting, most of the weight loss will be lean tissue (54%) and the rest fat tissue (46%). The percentages change as you increse the calorie intake. So at a diet of 1,000 per day you will be losing roughly a third lean tissue and two thirds fat (assuming no increase in exercise levels). Now suppose you lose 20 lbs. You have lost 6.6 lb of lean muscle and 13.4 lb of fat.

Your basal metabolic rate has decreased because you are lighter (and have less muscle) and because your body is producing a backlash starvation response to protect against losing its energy stores. So when you eat 2,000 calories a day you start gaining weight again but a higher percentage of it is fat. This is reasonable. The body believes itself to be in a semi-famine situation and is using tricks to try to make sure you don't starve. You do not regain as much as 6.6lb of muscle when you regain the 20lb you lost as you are not exercising differently(and even if you were it probably wouldn't be enough; building muscle is hard graft). Thus when you are 120lb again you have a higher body fat percentage than you did in the first place. Thus you burn fewer calories for the same (or greater) physical effort (because muscle burns more calories than fat). Thus you put on a wee bit more weight than you started with.

So then you think it's your fault, you go on your next diet, and it starts all over again.

My figures are roughly accurate but not entirely I don't think, but I can probably find some research papers on it if you'd like to pin this down.

Re: a rough explanation...

[ajva.livejournal.com]

Simple thermodynamics alone cannot account for the processes at work here

I should have said - the simple principles of thermodynamics alone *as you are applying them*

Re: a rough explanation...

[ergotia.livejournal.com]

You are not going to convince Paul though, because he is going by physical principles and research, unlike us silly girlies.

[ergotia.livejournal.com]

Why have you deleted your next post?

[djm4]

Simple thermodynamics dictates that the amount of energy stored in your body is dictated by the difference between the energy you consume and the energy you use.

That's true as far as it goes, but it doesn't really go very far. For a start, we're endotherms, which means that a large proportion (80%, I think) of energy our body produces is produced in the 'non-useful' form of heat. Against this background, talking about energy 'used' runs the risk of looking unscientific.

Not only that, but the energy we consume is not equivalent to the energy that passes therough our mouths - our bodies vary a lot in the proportion of energy that they extract from our foods. This makes measuring energy consumption difficult. Two people eating the same food will not be 'consuming' the same energy, and nor will one person eating the same meal from week to week.

Thirdly, the human metabolism is a complex interlocking set of systems, with many different ways of dealing with an imbalance between energy intake and energy output. Not all of them involve fat production, and not all fat production is a direct result of an energy surplus (as Anne points out in her post).

Even a very vigorous and daily exercise programme won't make *that* much difference to the energy you use...

Source? Figures?

...so dieting is the most effective technique.

That conclusion just seems to come out of left field to me. At best, you've proved that exercise doesn't make a lot of difference (and even that's a dubious conclusion in the absence of hard data about energy use), but you haven't even addressed the question of whether the body consistently responds to a reduction in calorie intake by becoming thinner. You've said nothing about the effectiveness of dieting at all in fact, you're just taking for granted that it must somehow be more effective than this other thing that you've showed not to be.

And as for your snarky deleted comment - sheesh! Lisa was talking about experience, which is a perfectly valid counter argument to some pseudo-scientific twaddle invoking the first law of thermodynamics in a situation where it doesn't really apply. If you say 'Science shows that X always leads to Y', it's perfectly reasonable to ask why, in that case, X led to Z last Thursday. It's then up to you to demonstrate that Z was actually Y (or that X wasn't X at all), not to say 'well, I'm being scientific and you're not, nyaah!'.

[ergotia.livejournal.com]

Absolutely - you should not be defensive about wanting to lose weight any more than anyone should be defensive about not losing weight(a *possible* exception to the latter might be where someone has been advised unequivocally that if they do not lose weight they will drastically shorten their life expectancy, such advice being founded on irrefutable research funded by a nuetral body).

To my mind fat activism involves women supporting each other in whatever choices they make about their body size, but this also involves supportive non - critical consideration of the reasons given for those choices. For example, why do you think you will have more energy if you lose weight? I mean, you might, but there might be a number of other reasons why you have less energy now than you did at whatever time you are comparing yourself to.

Please dont take any of these comments as personal criticisms , because they are not.

[ergotia.livejournal.com]

Although, picking holes in my own example, a)no such thing as a neutral body b)still the choice of the person concerned, at least for me because I support the right to commit suicide. I guess such choices are still subject to criticism, but that does not mean person so choosing should be defensive in an emotionally negative way.

[ajva.livejournal.com]

:o)

Well, absolutely. Choice in the sense that we have complete free will - of course. At one level everything has to be a choice. But there are free choices, educated choices, informed and uninformed choices, hopeful choices, group choices, individual choices and choices just generally influenced by things other than the entity making the choice.

But yes, choice nevertheless. All I'm saying is that in a less oppressive culture the menu of choices could be broader. :o)

[ajva.livejournal.com]

And if they were broader, other natural instincts (e.g. the urge to eat until full) might inform the choices we'd generally make, and there wouldn't be the extra pressure in the other direction pushing us towards choices we'd rather not make, all things considered.

I mean, does anyone *really* want to have to feel guilty about eating a big slice of chocolate cake? Or indeed not eat it at all ever?

[valkyriekaren.livejournal.com]

For example, why do you think you will have more energy if you lose weight?

I always have more energy at times when I cut down on the fat and sugar in my diet - I've done this several times, either in an attempt to lose weight, or as a detox exercise.

[jhg.livejournal.com]

Ah, right, fair enough then.

We really should define 'diet', or list some sub-categories of it if we're going to get in an, ah, discussion like this...


J