The-F-Word.org

Proponents of fat acceptance are well aware of the “obesity paradox,” a term defining the mounting evidence which shows being fat isn’t deadly. Sandy Szwarc has a good series on it here, here , here, and here.

I’d like to hijack the term and introduce the “dieting paradox.” Take these two stories, for example, the first written by an Anthem Blue Cross/Blue Shield exec and the latter published by the University of Minnesota researchers.

1. Tackling the issue of obesity in teen girls

The problem of obesity among teenage girls has reached near-epidemic levels in the United States.

Nearly 15 percent of children and teens ages 6 to 19 are overweight, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That’s triple what the proportion was in 1980. In addition, another 15 percent in that age group are considered at risk of becoming overweight.

Compared with:

2.
Use of diet pills by teen girls nearly doubles

The use of diet pills by high school-aged females has nearly doubled over a five-year period from 7.5 percent to 14.2 percent…

Over the five-year period… results showed that 62.7 percent of teenage females use “unhealthy weight control behaviors” and 21.9 percent use “very unhealthy weight control behaviors.”

Teen girls are dieting – and in some cases engaging in eating disordered behavior – in record numbers…. so why are they fatter than ever? While correlation does not always indicate causation, UMN researcher Dr. Dianne Neumark-Sztainer hazards a hypothesis for the apparent contradiction between the two reports.

“We have found that teenage females who diet and use unhealthy weight control behaviors are at three times the risk of being overweight,” said Neumark-Sztainer. “Teens who feel good about their bodies eat better and have less risk of being overweight. Parents can play a key role in helping their children to build a positive body image and engage in healthy eating and physical activity behaviors.”

Dieting is a Sisyphean act of futility, proven to be ineffective at long-term weight loss – for the why, read here. Despite the fact that most dieters regain not only the weight they’ve lost, but more within a five year period, dieting is still the recommended and sometimes unsolicited advice by many health professionals.

But what came first, the so-called epidemic of obesity or the epidemic of the diet mentality?