The-F-Word.org

Journalist Kate Baily wonders why more women don’t come out and tell their fat friends that they look like Shamu and need to speed dial Jenny Craig.  In an article in The Daily Express, she cites a recent study of 3,000 women in which one in five revealed she secretly thinks her best friend is fat but would never dare say so.  Baily writes:

So it seems we can’t even rely on our best friends to tell us when it’s time to quit the cupcakes.

Am I the only one who thinks that’s a crying shame? Whenever I watch TV diet programmes I am amazed that nobody has actually sat down with morbidly obese Jenny and had a word with her.

In that same un-cited study, Baily notes that one in four women “plucked up the courage” to tell a friend she should lose some of her fat ass — thus demonstrating nothing more than 25 percent of women are friends with a jerk — and of the friends in question, 12 percent “went mental” and one in five ended the relationship.  Baily wonders:

Isn’t that just a little, well, neurotic for grown-up women with jobs and families?  Shouldn’t we just be able to come right out and say, ‘You look like a badly trussed chicken in those jeans – go on a diet immediately’?

Right.  I’m willing to bet that Kate Baily doesn’t have all that many friends.

So, why don’t more women point out their gal pals’ flab? Uh, duh.  It’s because A: friends don’t police their friends’ weight or food choices and make them feel bad about themselves; B: your friend is a big girl (no pun intended) and can make her own decisions about what’s best for her and her health; and C: most fat people already know they’re fat, and therefore don’t need nor necessarily want their “friends” to hammer that point home or to offer up unsolicited weight-loss advice.  And should your fat friend ever want that advice, it’s not as if women’s magazines, television commercials, news outlets and even the White House aren’t already mass-churning out weight-loss tips and diet plans complete with fatalist warnings on how you and your fat ass are at risk for any number of so-called obesity-related diseases and are Public Enemy No. 1 to both the environment and national security.

And if it’s a case of emotional/compulsive overeating, binge eating or other eating disordered behaviors, focusing on a friend’s weight isn’t all that constructive or healthy.  Anyone who’s struggled with an eating disorder will tell you that it’s not about the weight — it’s about emotional issues, psychological and/or physical trauma, a need for power or control, etc… — and that weight is but a symptom of much larger issues at-hand.  Telling a friend with disordered eating issues that they “need to go on a diet immediately” is not only counterproductive in that it puts the focus on the symptom and not the cause, it’s also downright rude, callous and virtually irrelevant.  It’s a little like telling your unemployed friend who’s on public assistance that their clothes are shabby and unfashionable and that they need to go on a Saks shopping spree immediately.   As well, Kate Baily suffers from the culturally-driven delusion that not only is fat always unattractive, but that it’s always unhealthy — not to mention, that it’s always malleable.  When I was actively eating disordered, I received copious compliments about my weight loss that only spurred a disorder that damn near killed me.  Now that I’ve regained some of the weight I’ve lost, I’m much healthier and happier for it — something a true friend would already know.

A few of my more health-conscious friends and I discuss healthy foods and recipes and fitness and so forth, but weight rarely factors into these conversations because not only is it not all that high on our priority list, it’s also vapid and boring.  As part of my own commitment to recovery, which includes taking the pledge to end fat talk,  I actively seek to surround myself with people who respect me enough to not  infantilize me by asking if I really need that second helping and who have far more interesting things to talk about than their daily carb intake.  You?

Spam.  It’s the bane of anyone with an email address.  We all loathe and despise it, but does anyone actually buy the often ridiculous and over-the-top products being shilled?  It  turns out that when it comes to weight loss spam, young adults who think they’re fat swallow it en masse.

Researchers Joshua Fogel of Brooklyn College and Sam Shlivko of New York Law School conducted a survey of 200 New York college students about their experiences with spam email for weight loss products (published here in the January edition of Southern Medical Journal).  Participants were asked, “Do you believe that you have weight problems?”  One-third answered that they did and responses were then compared along those lines.  Keep in mind that the study only asked for a yes-or-no response as to whether someone believed they had a weight problem, meaning that this group could have realistically included both students who are certifiably fat or those who just think themselves the size of a landbarge.  Of those students who reported to have weight problems:

• 85 percent said they had received weight loss spam over the past year, compared to 73 percent of those without weight problems

• 42 percent opened and read spam email advertising weight loss products versus just 18 percent of those without weight problems

• 19 percent said they had bought a weight loss product from spam — as did five percent (!) of those without weight problems.

Researchers also measured participants’ psychological stress according to the Perceived Stress Scale and the Rosenburg Self-Esteem Scale.  Not surprisingly, students who reported weight problems had lower self-esteem and higher perceived stress, which, in part, influenced their proclivity to open, read and purchase weight loss spam.  In all, after adjusting for other factors, students with reported weight problems were about three times more likely to receive and open weight loss spam and to buy the products pitched.

So, what’s the big deal, some might ask.  We’re constantly bombarded with the mantra that “diets don’t work” and the only thing these students have to lose is their money, right?  Wrong.  As Fogel noted in his report, there is no quality control for products advertising in spam emails.  The current law on dietary supplements gives the FDA jurisdiction only after the products go on the market.  And instead of reviewing the supplements and approving them for sale, as the agency does with drugs, the FDA is limited to spot-checking manufacturers and distributors and testing products already on store shelves.  In February, the agency issued warnings for 70 weight loss supplements found to contain unlisted and potentially dangerous ingredients — see the complete list here.  And this list, most of which are imported from China, represents only a teensy tiny fraction of the dangerous and often ineffective diet pills available in what is a $1.7 billion dollar a year market.  The FDA itself admits that it simply does not have the resources to identify what may be hundreds of other drug-contaminated weight-loss supplements for sale. Some spam emails even advertise and sell prescription medications without requiring proof of a valid prescription.  And not addressed in the report is the more alarming consideration that responding to weight loss spam only reveals what may be a larger and more shadowy pattern of disordered eating and fad or yo-yo dieting, all of which take their toll on health and may even ironically lead to even greater weight gain.

Products purchased via weight loss spam can also take a blow to one’s pocketbook and even credit ratings.  Since posting my expose on one acai berry diet scam more than a year ago,  responses — 139 as of this posting — continue to trickle in from duped buyers who report being scammed charged hundreds of dollars in unauthorized expenses for “free” trial offers and when they call to cancel, either find that the customer service number has been disconnected or are put on hold for an ungodly amount of time by agents who often refuse to refund their money and sometimes even to cancel their orders altogether.

Researchers note that the findings indicate that young adults with weight problems are “apparently not seeking or not satisfied with evidence-based treatments available from physicians… or other health care providers.”  And therein lies the problem, for as physicians, scientists, researchers and specialists admit, there is no proven way to make — and keep — fat people thin.  The National Institutes of Health and other studies show that, on average, 95-98 percent of people who lose weight gain it back within five years. Only 2-5 percent of dieters succeed in keeping their weight off while 90 percent of those gain back more weight than they lost.  Even those who undergo weight loss surgery mostly become less fat, with weight regain rates both high and common.

Trust me.  If some virtuoso discovers that enchanted unicorn horn dust will magically whittle our waistlines, he/she would be hailed as a global fat-fighting hero, invited to the White House for a few cold ones (all lite, of course), awarded the Nobel Prize amidst international fanfare and be secretly masturbated to by MeMe Roth.  Insurance companies everywhere would cover these miracle pills in full without reserve; they’d be added to the water supply with fluoride and the government would pass them out like candy.  But as the old adage cautions us, if it’s too good to be true — and it’s peddled by spam-mongers — it probably is.  My advice?  Invest in a good spam filter and save yourself some time, money and sanity.

Speaking of Jenny Craig spokescelebrities…  Oh, Kirstie.  Does your masochism know no end?

The former Jenny Craig spokescelebrity and once-again fat actress has a new weight loss reality television show coming out next year on A&E.  As CNN reports, the yet-unnamed series will follow Kirstie as “she juggles producing a feature film, sticking to a new weight-loss program and raising her two daughters True and Lillie, all while looking for love.”  I wonder if the same program Kirstie will be shown following is a not-so-subtle tie-in to the anticipated weight-loss brand she announced months ago.

The network has so far only committed to to half-hour episodes, begging the question: If Kirstie loses the weight in season one, will viewers tune in for a second?   Stay tuned for more of the Kirstie Alley “fatty-roller coaster ride.”

So, there’s a lecture series called Smart Talk Connected Conversations and it’s coming to Cincinnati for the 12th year in January.  The celebrity-based spoken word series invites intriguing and influential women to present their stories in an intimate setting in what is supposed to be an uplifting, educational and empowering experience for women.  Here’s the line-up for the 2010 series in Cincinnati.  Can you spot the odd woman out?

• Helen Hunt: The critically acclaimed, award-winning actress, known for her roles in the sitcom “Mad About You” and movie “As Good As It Gets,” will speak on her experiences as a director, writer and mother.

• Ann Compton: Throughout her journalism career, the first woman to cover the White House on a fulltime basis has balanced her professional obligations with those of her family, and will share unique insight behind the headlines of Capitol stories.

• Patricia Heaton: The actress, who earned accolades as the wife in “Everybody Loves Raymond,” will discuss her idyllic childhood in Ohio, career struggles and the challenges of balancing a career and motherhood.

• Lee Woodruff: The author, journalist and contributing editor for “Good Morning America” had to face dramatic change when her husband suffered a traumatic brain injury in Iraq.

• Valerie Bertinelli: The actress, author and Jenny Craig shill spokescelebrity will relate  her struggles with dieting and weight loss.

Does anyone else find Valerie’s recounting of how she lost her not-so-fat ass while following a dubiously effective and outrageously expensive diet of refined sugar, additives, artificial ingredients, added sugars, and hydrogenated oils as vapidly uninspiring as I do?

Google the phrase “Dying to be thin” and you’ll find some 61,000 results of books, documentaries, blogs, discussions, campaigns and even a Congressional report all bearing the mind-numbingly banal platitude.  Now there’s another title to add to the list.  Investigative journalist Suzanne Marcus-Fletcher, host of the Blog Talk Radio show the Body Politic, has compiled the new series for iTunes that addresses a variety of issues related to eating disorders.

Marcus-Fletcher’s Dying to Be Thin series taps Dr. Patricia Pitts, founder and CEO of The Bella Vita eating disorder treatment centers, and discusses such topics as “How do you know if you or a loved one has an eating disorder? “Misconceptions about eating disorders,” “The rapid rise of Manorexia among male teens and men.” The Body Politic also aired an episode live yesterday that addressed “”How dieting contributes to eating disorders.”  The series can be heard or downloaded from www.blogtalkradio/thebodypolitic, at www.suzannemarcusfletcher.com, and on iTunes podcasts at BTR: The Body Politic.  For examples of some of the stories you will hear on the programs, check out this press release.

I’m currently at a local coffee house sans headphones, so I haven’t had a chance to listen to the series yet myself.  If you check it out, let us know what you think of it.

I went off and on my antidepressant medication several times during my eating disorder.  If one were to eavesdrop on the chattering debate between the angel and devil on my shoulders, this is what you might have overheard:

Angel: You need to take your medication because you can’t function without it.  You alienate yourself from your friends and family, your work suffers, you lose interest in everything and you get angry, depressed and suicidal.

Devil: Oh, sure, but just think of your fat ass.  You know you can’t lose weight unless you hate yourself, and the pills are probably causing you to gain weight.  Would you rather be depressed or fat?   Take your pick.

Now a new study confirms what so many of us know oh, too well: a dose of self-loathing is an important part of weight-loss dieting.

Researchers in Japan conducted psychological profiles of 101fat men and women undergoing a six-month “holistic” weight-loss program (the six-month study originally included 147 people, but 46 dropped out).  Participants were screened so that anyone who is fat because of endocrine or psychiatric disorders were excluded.  Among other findings, the study found that people with a happy-go-lucky outlook at the start of therapy were less likely to “succeed” (a.k.a. lose weight) than people who were more depressed, cautious and self-critical.  They termed the former as a “free child” or FC ego and the latter as the “Adult” or A ego.

The researchers concluded, in essence, that while FC ego folks were able to control negative emotions, act independently and assertively and look at the glass as half-full — which they describe as all positive aspects — this outlook also led them to be less caring of disease and more likely to give into instinctual or impulsive behaviors, which, researchers assumed, is why they were fat.  In other words, because the FC people were not as susceptible to the often commercially-funded and greatly-exaggerated OMG FAT KILLS hysteria and fear-mongering, they liked themselves more and were less willing to practice willful or unnatural self-deprivation.  Writing in the journal BioPsychoSocial Medicine, the researchers noted that: “…other studies have reported that some negative emotion has a positive effect on the control of weight and blood sugar levels. This study supports these previous findings regarding the relationship between optimism and carelessness in terms of disease prevention behavior modification.”

The scientists therefore sought to increase these critical and self-regulating A ego type characteristics in those with an FC ego in order to promote weight-loss.  The results certainly backed up the hypothesis: Those FC folks who were eventually sold on the anti-obesity mania were more likely to lose weight.  But by its very nature, the study may have been a self-fulfilling prophecy.  It’s well known that robbing the body of nutrients and energy can be a causal factor in depression and mood disorders, which, as the researchers suggest, may be necessary for weight-loss. Read the study’s provisional PDF here or check out this brief story on it by The Guardian.

That being said, I don’t think that everyone who has lost weight and sustained it for any length of time hates themselves necessarily.  While my eating disorder certainly required a great degree of self-loathing to flourish and thrive, I’ve been able to maintain a significant weight-loss healthily for six-plus years now precisely because I have come to a place where I accept and love myself.  There were times during my disorder when I would literally punish myself for breaking a 10-day fast or missing a workout by binge eating to the point where I was sure I would gain 10-pounds overnight.  “You want to be fat?” berated that voice in my head.  “Fine.  I’ll make you fat and then you see how you like it.“  Other times I’d feel so bad about myself that I self-medicated with chocolate or fast food without caring what it was doing to my body and health.

Now that my self-esteem has improved and I care about both my mental and physical health, I eat healthy and am physically active.  The key difference now however, is that I do these things without the expectation that weight-loss will naturally result.  I eat a healthy vegetarian diet because it keeps my mind keen and alert, meets my body’s energy and nutritional needs and falls in line with my spiritual and ethical beliefs; I participate in physical activities I enjoy because it helps with stress and depression and keeps my body limber and strong.  I should also note that while finally enjoying a sane relationship with food has helped me maintain a weight-loss, it hasn’t resulted in weight-loss itself — I’m simply less fat than I was before.  What my new relationship with food has given me (in addition to good mental health) is near perfect blood pressure, cholesterol, glucose, and other numbers indicative of good health.

How about you?  Do you need to hate yourself in order to lose weight?  In what ways is your sense of body image and weight intertwined?  Share your experiences below.

Reader Clare Burgess submitted the essay below about a male relative who recently tried Alli, otherwise known as the “poopy-in-your-pants” diet pill that’s been determined to be “barely effective” in clinical trials.  I think Clare’s essay is a classic example of how even men — who’ve historically not faced such stringent social pressures to diet and look a certain way as have women — are now succumbing to some of the same body image insecurities and weight-based stigma society has long heaped upon women.  Clare, 22, lives in the South West of England and blogs about her struggles with depression, feminism, volunteering with Girlguiding UK and Oxfam, and pin cushions at her blog so long as it’s black.

When he slipped the pill into his mouth it fascinated everyone. A pill that could make you thin. You can eat but the fat won’t stick to you.

We were having a meal after my cousin’s wedding and I could see the thoughts ticking over in my relative’s brain. Right then and there it seemed brilliant. An hour later they would pull their faces and think it weird. But when he took the pill we where all held captive by its promise.

What shocked me the most was who was taking it. Ever since he met my Mum they had been dieting together. She’d goad him over the table that she had lost more than him. Or the other way round. Or they would explain their fascinating new food rules.

You can imagine how well it all works. The little man on the Wii Fit is just the same size as he’s always been.

Yet, oddly enough, it doesn’t really affect anything but his clothing size. That is why I was so shocked he would take Alli. Surely he realises that his body has achieved some incredible things and weight never stopped him.

This is a man who takes long bike rides, is incredibly active in a swimming club who has travelled the world to climb mountains. His body can take him up a mountain; it just can’t get rid of his tummy.

He sees that as a problem, my Mum sees that as a problem, his Doctor sees that as a problem. And because a chemist saw it as a problem he was given Alli.

He spent his summer holiday hovering near toilets and avoiding fatty food so he didn’t have to deal with the side effects. He couldn’t go on the beach or enjoy fireworks without thinking about it.

It’s time to write a conclusion, but I’m not sure how. I want to say self-hatred is blind to our achievements. That it will hit us whatever we have done. It will always try to knock us down. And even if your achievements aren’t that great and good you can, and should, stand up and fight it. That voice in your head. Because you don’t deserve it.

But life, of course, is more complicated. It’s not just that the above is far more easily said than done. It’s that he isn’t just a victim of hate himself but someone who perpetuates it. Turns out the world is actually grey.

Anti-obesity naysayers like to say that fat kills and I somewhat agree.  Fat can kill — only not in the way they frame it.

At 244-pounds and 5-foot-9-inches, Samantha Clowe didn’t want to be a fat bride and she wanted to be respected at the steel company where she worked as a researcher (for an idea of just how fat Samantha may have been, see this woman who has similar height and weight proportions).  So, the 34-year-old British woman went on the LighterLife starvation scam diet program.  LighterLife, if you remember from this blog post, consists of drinking 530 liquid calories a day for 12 weeks.  Undercover reporters consulted two LighterLife counselors at random last year, posing as prospective clients.  The ill-informed and poorly trained counselors did not disclose the potential health risks of going on a starvation diet — which the British government recommends be overseen by a medical doctor — and even offered the program to someone with an eating disorder.

On June 28, Samantha’s fiancee found her collapsed in the home they shared in West Yorkshire.  Despite attempts to revive her, she was pronounced dead.  An inquest heard testimony that Samantha was “fit and well” and stuck to the plan’s 500 calories a day limit for 11 weeks.   The Daily Mail reports:

Home Office pathologist Dr Alfredo Walker said a post-mortem examination failed to establish a cause of death, adding: ‘But it may be related to her low-calorie diet and weight loss.’

West Yorkshire Coroner David Hinchliff said it was ‘highly likely’ the Leeds University graduate died from cardiac arrhythmia, when the heart suddenly stops beating.  Recording a narrative verdict, Mr Hinchliff said the cause of Samantha’s death was unascertained.

He said: ‘The evidence cannot point one way or the other as to whether her indulging in that diet has in any way caused or contributed to her death.’

One of the biggest misconceptions about anorexia is that sufferers simply starve to death.  The most common cause of death among anorexics is actually starvation-induced cardiac arrhythmia — or a heart attack.  My eating disorder damaged my heart and left me with a non-life-threatening condition known as mitral valve prolapse.   And you don’t have to be underweight and emaciated to be at risk for heart damage caused by starvation.  A 1992 study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition opens with the statement: “A major concern with the use of starvation or semistarvation diets for weight reduction in severely obese people has been the reports of sudden death due to ventricular arrhythmias” (PDF link here).

Yet despite this, LighterLife — which operates as a franchise by “weight-management counsellors” who receive more distance learning on sales and marketing than they do nutrition and health — seems to disregard these well-known risks.  In June of this year, the British Advertising Standards Authority determined that a LighterLife commercial breached government rules for misleading advertising.  The charges were brought by a complainant who had been on the program.  The ASA determined, among other findings, that:

We [the ASA] understood that clients treatment on the programme was supervised by weight loss counsellors who were not medically qualified and therefore the only input clients would receive from someone with a medical qualification would be when they visited their GP to have the forms completed. We were concerned that the complainant said she did not need to see her GP at all.

We noted clients were also required to have four-weekly medical check-ups, which could also be conducted by a pharmacist, once they had started the programme… We noted that a pharmacist was unlikely to have access to the clients medical records and therefore considered that they were unlikely to be in a position to offer sufficiently informed medical supervision for the programme.

The ad must not be broadcast again in its current form. We told LighterLife not to target obese people unless the treatment was conducted under adequate medical supervision.

A LighterLife spokesperson was quick to defend the company and in a statement, oh so considerately pointed out that: “When [Samantha] died she was still clinically obese.”  But, hey, at least she’ll have a lighter coffin, right?

Michelle over at the blog Fat Nutritionist today posted this gem of an it-would-be-hilarious-if-it-weren’t-real diet pop culture infomercial from the 1990s.

Ridiculous? For sure, but the crazier thing is that aromatherapy diet products are still being produced and marketed. I posted a link on the site’s Twitter page a couple weeks ago to this New York Times piece on new trends in diet aromatherapy. Diet aromatherapy products currently come in two flavors: when sprinkled on food, one variety of “crystal” granules on the market since last year heightens the scent and flavor of food with the assumption that it will suppress hunger hormones; and another, a nasal spray still in development, works by blocking smell with the idea being that, as in the infomercial above, you’ll naturally lose your appetite. “The hypothesis is that if we can alter your sense of smell we can make food less palatable, because the hedonic effect — that is, the pleasurable effect you get from eating chocolate — won’t be there,” said Christopher Adams, a molecular biologist and the founder of a company that produces the latter spray.

Find it hard to swallow? The idea certainly makes biologic sense when you consider that 80 to 90 percent of what we perceive as taste is actually smell. It’s the very reason why people on Fear Factor hold their nose when downing worms and cockroaches. The makers of diet aromatherapy products cite self-conducted, short-term studies that certainly sound promising, but the idea that altering our sense of smell will make us thin leaves a bad taste in the mouths of even those in the scent science business. Mark I. Friedman, associate director of Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia, said that while the sight, taste or smell of food may result in the release of insulin and an increase in metabolism, “those kinds of effects are short-lived. If you constantly smelled something you would adapt to the odor, and you wouldn’t smell it anymore. There’s no scientific evidence that smelling or tasting flavors is going to suppress your intake over a nutritionally significant interval.”

Smells fishy to me. And besides, who wants to live in a world without the “hedonic” effects of chocolate?

I’m a teetotaler for various reasons* — at 30, I’ve never even been drunk if you can believe that — but even if I were the most raging of party girls, Bacardi’s new “Get an ugly girlfriend” ad campaign wouldn’t convince me to buy its line of fruity Breezers.

Remember the discussion the other day on how the beauty beast pits women against each other?  This is a prime example.  The campaign suggests that women — that is, attractive women — accessorize themselves with an “ugly girlfriend” in order to make themselves look better at the mall, the beach and other social situations.  The four “ugly girlfriends” featured on the campaign’s minisite are equal-opportunity offensive, including fat, thin and disabled women.  Consider taking along the horse-like Wendy, with the “noticeable limp” and “super-active sweat glands” to the next pool party.  Or take a beach stroll with Sally, whose “lumpy rolls” will make you “look your best in a bikini, without ever visiting a gym.”  Watching your weight?  Attend a BBQ with Daisy, whose “pimpled shoulders” will make your appetite disappear.  And Lucy, with her “rubbing thighs,” “sticking out jaw,” and “drooping breasts,” is the perfect “freckled pile of cellulite” to take along shopping.  The accompanying images showing clearly Photoshopped and otherwise radiant and blissfully unaware women makes the campaign all that more nauseating.

The ads were produced by Israeli ad agency McCann Digital and launched in Hebrew and English along with a Hebrew-only Facebook page.  Tell Bacardi what you think of their sexist ad campaign here.  Update: I just tried sending an email via the contact form using Firefox and received an error, but was able to send using Internet Explorer.

Related Links

Jezebel: Bacardi ad uses misogyny to sell alcohol to women

Copyranter: Bacardi says the hottest accessory this summer is an “ugly girlfriend”

* 1) I don’t like the taste of most alcoholic drinks. 2) I’m Buddhist and find alcohol consumption inconsistent with my spiritual beliefs.  3) My husband’s father has a minor alcohol addiction and while he has never been abusive, my husband suffered through many an embarassing public display as a kid, which has turned him off alcohol.  I support him in this through non-consumption.