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Originally posted by Sioni Sais:
The "Celebrity Diet" programs on VH1 go pretty damn close: anything that celebrates how someone went from a dress size 12 to 6 (UK size) is downrightright dangerous. These shows advocate every diet fad in the book and quite a few outside it. I don't think I have seen bulimia advocated but it's a close run thing.

As for people being on TV because they are thinner and prettier than the run of the mill, that is horseshit. Most people get on TV because they are prettier or more handsome. Thinner doesn't come into it, in Britain anyway. Failing that they can go into politics, aka "Showbiz for ugly folks".

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]Originally posted by Iole Nui:
The issue for me is that when official agencies start to give sanction to people's prejudices, and implement policies that feed into people's need for a sense of superiority, offer up a scapegoat on a plate, then things turn a lot nastier very quickly.

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Originally posted by Moo:
I think a lot of children do not have a safe place to play outdoors. In the inner city many children are parked in front of the TV as soon as they get home from school. If I were a parent living in a dangerous neighborhood, this is what I would do.

In more affluent communities, children are driven to various activities, many of which do not involve much physical excercise.

I don't see the answer.

Moo

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Originally posted by Gwai:
I strongly believe that one's body does often know what one needs to eat.

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Yeah, well, I think my body must be a filthy rotten liar then. It keeps telling me it needs Mars Bars more than broccoli, and this is evidently not true !

Ans: who's been fighting the voices from within for quite some time now.....

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Originally posted by duchess:

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Originally posted by The Bede's American Successor:
I'm not going to deny that in many cases, you are right. But, take a look at this.

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Great. Something that now I am scared I have! I actually have some of these symptons. I have to now get married so that I can permit myself to have a "bed partner" (like the article says). Then I will know for sure!

[eta: Lightning striking Silicon Valley twice...hell freezing over...and the jackpot in VEGAS suddenly becoming mine.]

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Originally posted by saysay:
And during all my years of physical education - which mostly consisted of playing kickball or walking around the blacktop/gym - once a year we were given the presidential fitness test, in which you had to do pull-ups, sit-ups, and timed runs of different lengths.

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Originally posted by WatersOfBabylon:
As an aside, I've talked to several people who said that the "good" pro-recovery websites aided their disordered eating habits. I even had a friend develop an ED in middle school when someone came in to talk to the young women about EDs. By telling them what not to do, this friend got ideas.

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Originally posted by Anselmina:

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Originally posted by Gwai:
I strongly believe that one's body does often know what one needs to eat.

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Yeah, well, I think my body must be a filthy rotten liar then. It keeps telling me it needs Mars Bars more than broccoli, and this is evidently not true !

Ans: who's been fighting the voices from within for quite some time now.....

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Well, yeah, there's that...

Although IME when I eat a more-or-less balanced diet, or take multivitamins, chocolate cravings seem to diminish (they never go away )

The kind of craving I was experiencing was different, though-- it seemed to have nothing to do with my usual "taste" preferences. It was like "No, not chocolate, not the croissant-- chedder cheese. Lots of it. And meat, too. Hell with the bun"

Or "Apple juice. Not water, not soda-- apple juice."

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Originally posted by Autenrieth Road:
We had those too, in elementary school. They seemed like part and parcel of everything else we did in P.E., which all seemed designed to show what a clutz I was and at the bottom of the heap in everything. No additional embarrassment attached to doing them though, everyone already knew I sucked in gym.

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Originally posted by Kelly Alves:

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Originally posted by Anselmina:

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Originally posted by Gwai:
I strongly believe that one's body does often know what one needs to eat.

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Yeah, well, I think my body must be a filthy rotten liar then. It keeps telling me it needs Mars Bars more than broccoli, and this is evidently not true !

Ans: who's been fighting the voices from within for quite some time now.....

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Well, yeah, there's that...

Although IME when I eat a more-or-less balanced diet, or take multivitamins, chocolate cravings seem to diminish (they never go away )

The kind of craving I was experiencing was different, though-- it seemed to have nothing to do with my usual "taste" preferences. It was like "No, not chocolate, not the croissant-- chedder cheese. Lots of it. And meat, too. Hell with the bun"

Or "Apple juice. Not water, not soda-- apple juice."

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Originally posted by CrookedCucumber:
Anyhow, if you're the kind of person who needs very little food to maintain reasonable weight, as I am (for various reasons), then maintaining weight has certain costs. These are mine: regular, punishing exercise; never eating socially; weighing and measuring all your food, every meal; no alcoholic drinks except on feast days (yikes!); absolutely no relaxation of the regime, even on holiday, or on business trips, or in periods of illness; absolutely no choccy, sweets, nuts, cheese, cake, etc., even at Christmas.

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Originally posted by Iole Nui:
I think you are right, and this is how quite a lot of people have to live to maintain their weight. Which is why it is terribly irritating when well meaning people say things like 'Oh, just drop the cream cakes and take the stairs occasionally, that's all I had to do to lose weight' or 'Come on, join in, a treat once or twice a week won't do you any harm'.

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Yeah, life's a bitch. There are no `treats' of that kind in my life. I don't even eat cake at Christmas.

On the other hand, I find it hard to understand why my students have such difficulty passing examinations. After all, all you have to do is a bit of study, right? That's all I did! In other words, the fact that -- because I am a middle-aged, hypothyroid, desk jockey -- maintaining my weight is such a pain in the arse, hasn't made me any more sympathetic to other people's different problems. Lord, have mercy

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It is interesting, I think, that I've read a lot recently saying that a strong, active network of friends is one of the greatest indicators of likely good health and good life expectancy. Given that so much eating is social, it makes me wonder whether maintaining a social life at the expense of gaining a few pounds is actually better for your health.

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Maybe; the problem is whether one could limit it to a few pounds. Because I travel a lot on business, social eating and drinking has the potential to be a huge problem for me (and for many others, I guess). If I could eat socially and only gain a few pounds, I would. It's the few stones that worry me more My rule is that I just don't do it.

Incidentally, concerning the question ``How do we teach our children about weight management?''...

I think it is important to teach children (and maybe adults) that appetite is a bad indicator of food needs. Since the human body is well adapted to survive periods of scarcity, over-eating when food is plentiful has a survival advantage. We are all descended from people (and maybe apes) who like to eat more than they need.

What this means is that (sadly) for most of us, calorie-counting is a more reliable guide to our food intake than our own bodies are. Once we get past childhood, weight management for many (most?) of us will inevitably equate to a good deal of hunger, a good deal of the time

Ultimately, people need to know that weight control is a cost-benefit decision. Both the costs, and the benefits, will vary from person to person and from time to time. It is utterly unreasonable to condemn those people for whom the costs outweight the benefits, and very few of us will get the benefits without the costs,

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I think it is important to teach children (and maybe adults) that appetite is a bad indicator of food needs. Since the human body is well adapted to survive periods of scarcity, over-eating when food is plentiful has a survival advantage. We are all descended from people (and maybe apes) who like to eat more than they need.

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Originally posted by Telepath:
In English-speaking cultures, "loving your food" means eating as much of it as possible. Would anybody accuse the French of not loving food? It's just that their version of loving their food involves actually tasting it, and enjoying it with friends. It involves eating like civilized humans, not feeding like animals.

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Originally posted by Telepath:
[QB]

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I think it is important to teach children (and maybe adults) that appetite is a bad indicator of food needs. Since the human body is well adapted to survive periods of scarcity, over-eating when food is plentiful has a survival advantage. We are all descended from people (and maybe apes) who like to eat more than they need.

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If that were really true, children would not have to be trained, from the youngest possible age, to ignore their appetites. And yet they are trained to keep eating long past the point of hunger, so as not to "waste food". It seems that most tiny children are trained in this way. It seems to be the norm.

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It is also certainly the case that the more food is put in front of people, in terms of portion size, the more they will eat.

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And yet few people, presented with unlimited quantities of the foods they like, will keep eating and eating until their stomachs rupture.

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But if anyone is really going to insist that it was wholly biologically "natural" for him to overeat so grossly, despite great discomfort, I don't agree.

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Yes, our appetites are not an infallible guide, because our appetites grow with what they feed on.

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Then they say, "oh I'm stuffed, replete, I feel sick," - implying and sometimes stating that their enjoyment is directly proportional to the amount of food consumed. Quite often, they spend the rest of the evening groaning with discomfort.

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We assume that God and/or nature are cruel, and that what nourishes us destroys us. Like Puritans, we assume that a healthy diet is one utterly devoid of pleasure.

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Originally posted by Iole Nui:

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Originally posted by ken:

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Originally posted by Iole Nui:
It seems undeniably true that if you're gaining weight, then you are ingesting more calories than you are expending (excepting for the sake of argument a few rare medical conditions)

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Rare? Find even one and you can probably win a Nobel Prize, and we can all go to Mars.

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I thought there was some thyroid thing? And there are some drugs with weight gain as a side-effect, aren't there?

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Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:

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Originally posted by Iole Nui:

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Originally posted by ken:

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Originally posted by Iole Nui:
It seems undeniably true that if you're gaining weight, then you are ingesting more calories than you are expending (excepting for the sake of argument a few rare medical conditions)

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Rare? Find even one and you can probably win a Nobel Prize, and we can all go to Mars.

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I thought there was some thyroid thing? And there are some drugs with weight gain as a side-effect, aren't there?

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There are, but only because they massively decrease the calories expended.

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We need spinach, but in times of scarcity our need for energy-rich foods is more pressing.

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Originally posted by Telepath:
Karl, is it really a dichotomy between cauliflower on the one hand, and chips on the other?

Given a plate of homemade chipped potatoes fried in fresh olive oil, and a plate of shop-bought pallid grubs deep-fried in reheated lard adulterated with crankcase oil, which would your kidlets choose then? Is there any chance they would choose the homemade ones, which contrary to stereotype, actually is healthy?
<snip>

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Originally posted by Telepath:
Karl, is it really a dichotomy between cauliflower on the one hand, and chips on the other?

Given a plate of homemade chipped potatoes fried in fresh olive oil, and a plate of shop-bought pallid grubs deep-fried in reheated lard adulterated with crankcase oil, which would your kidlets choose then? Is there any chance they would choose the homemade ones, which contrary to stereotype, actually is healthy?

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Plus, there must be something in the vegetable kingdom that is not potato-based and nevertheless would still appeal to your kiddies.

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Indeed. We ate a lot of carrots (one of my picky nephew's early favorites) and green beans (nephew eats those too) when I was a kid. Since we usually put gobs of butter on them, they weren't low-cal, but we ate them (and graduated to less-adulterated veg as we grew). There are also a lot of ways to cook potatoes that aren't fries/chips.

Charlotte

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WTFWED? "Remember to always be yourself, unless you suck" - the Gator
Memory Eternal! Sheep 3, Phil the Wise Guy, and Jesus' Evil Twin in the SoF Nativity Play

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Originally posted by Telepath:
And if you were to give them carte blanche in an environment with no junk or fake foods, I do believe that it would take longer for your children to eat enough fruit to become ball-shaped than it would in this one, where snacking, eating confectionery, and eating between meals is particularly widespread.

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Since processed foods contain a lot of sugar, but very few ingredients with much nutritional value, you can easily eat 1000 calories' worth of junk food and be hungry again within a very short time.

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However, with the right information, it is relatively easy and even enjoyable to attain a healthy weight without sacrifice or misery, outwith physical or psychological illness.

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Indeed but, although refined sugar is a pernicious substance, the staple food of most cultures is quite calorie-dense too. In terms of calories per gram, bread isn't very different from sugar. And nuts are worse.

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...

but...

Bread is bread... it isn't sugar.

Nuts are... well.. nuts. They are not sugar. They are, however, enormously nutritious and a really satisfying snack. You can get no end of Vitamin D (or is it some other vitamin, I forget) from a handful of yummy almonds. They make a good contribution towards the nutrients we need to build our bodies every day.

That you can run certain numbers against sugar and come up with favourable/unfavourable comparisons strikes me as a very foodophobic attitude. What matters is what you're eating when you're eating n calories.[1]

Cotton wool compares very favourably with both bread and nuts in terms of calorie content, in that it has few or no calories (to my knowledge; I could be wrong). It is also very filling. Some people find it to be an excellent tool for weight management for that reason. That doesn't mean cotton wool is good to eat, or even edible!

My opinion FWIW is that your kids' not liking green vegetables is nothing to worry about. Unless there are no fruits or vegetables that they will ever eat at all, and even then I'd suggest giving it time because tastes change. But what do I know!

As to your point about people enduring hunger - I wasn't actually thinking of you specifically, it's just that I so often hear people say that the abject wretched sheer bloody agonizing horror of exercise and eating healthfully is Just! Not!! Worth!!! The!!!! ANGUIIIISSSHHHHH!!!!! And I don't think all of them are exaggerating, I think many of them really do experience it that way for one reason or another.

As to your recent point, yes, I agree, there is some hunger involved, especially in the process of rediscovering the appetite. That hunger a) soon goes, and b) is no big deal, frankly. In fact, getting hungry prior to one's next meal frequently enhances enjoyment of said meal!

[1] Yes, I know that eating 3000 calories' worth of yummy nutritious almonds would not be a good idea. So yes, you do have to watch those portions. That still doesn't make sugar a contender in the fight against almonds.

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Take emptiness and lying speech far from me, and do not give me poverty or wealth. Give me a living sufficient for me.

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Originally posted by Telepath:
Originally posted by CrookedCucumber:
but...

Bread is bread... it isn't sugar..

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yes it is!

Its starch which is made of sugar

Takes a little longer to digest of course

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Ken

L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle.

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Originally posted by ken:
Takes a little longer to digest of course

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Originally posted by CrookedCucumber:

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Originally posted by Telepath:
However, with the right information, it is relatively easy and even enjoyable to attain a healthy weight without sacrifice or misery, outwith physical or psychological illness.

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I don't think I suggested that weight control would necessarily be a misery -- merely that it comes at a cost. Whether you call that cost a `sacrifice' or not is a matter of semantics, I guess. I never eat cheese or nuts, for example, though I would like to. Is that a sacrifice? I don't know.

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Originally posted by Telepath:
Nuts are... well.. nuts. They are not sugar. They are, however, enormously nutritious and a really satisfying snack. You can get no end of Vitamin D (or is it some other vitamin, I forget) from a handful of yummy almonds. They make a good contribution towards the nutrients we need to build our bodies every day.

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As to your recent point, yes, I agree, there is some hunger involved, especially in the process of rediscovering the appetite. That hunger a) soon goes, and b) is no big deal, frankly. In fact, getting hungry prior to one's next meal frequently enhances enjoyment of said meal!

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Iole Nui,

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The anglo-saxon determination to link enjoyment of food with sin for instance - in our secular society food is probably the only context in which sin is regularly mentioned

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What follows may seem like a tangent for a while, but it's not. Please bear with me.

As an acne sufferer, I've observed things that lead me to conclude that acne is looked upon as an outward manifestation of inner impurity. When people were still embarrassed about sex, acne was popularly imagined to be caused by too much, ahem, self-love. Now that people are proud of sex and ashamed of eating, acne is popularly imagined to be caused by eating junk food and a variety of non-junk foods. Much of this advice, which is usually couched in terms both specific and vague, implicitly excludes almost everything except raw fruit and vegetables (without dressing), grilled chicken and fish, honey, herbs for flavour, and a few spices thought to have magical qualities.

To my knowledge, only shellfish and red wine have been shown to provoke acne, and you'd have to consume a lot of them. I mean a lot lot. Inconclusive single studies get seized upon and misreported in the press all the time, overlooking the fact that, even if the foods under discussion did worsen acne, that doesn't necessarily mean it would be a good idea to eliminate them from your diet.[1]

I feel sorry for the many bewildered acne sufferers who seek advice from dubious sources, only to be told that they must change what they eat before they can be helped. Parents routinely use this as a way to manipulate children into eating better. Of course the sufferers who submit to this cannot improve their acne for all their strenuous dieting, but since they will inevitably fall off the wagon from time to time, they can continue to take the blame for their condition. All the time they are being blocked from getting any effective treatment, as people who should be helping them look on with satisfaction at a teenager/vain woman/fill-in-the-blank who's only reaping what she sows.

I read one personal account from an acne suffer who became anorexic after following this kind of "advice"; I wonder how many more there are like her.

While on the one hand you have people telling you to diet your disease away, on the other hand you have people picking up on the old myth that a good shag will clear up your skin. The difference is that nowadays people will actually recommend that you do so... indiscriminately? At any rate, there don't seem to be nearly so many conditions attached to the latter kind of advice.

So I think that my adventures in acne have given me a good view of what society considers impure and sinful, as if we didn't know already.

Not that we don't have ample evidence from the existence of TV programmes like "You Are What You Shit", in which human beings are overidentified with their own fecal matter, which is publicly reviewed for its quality, and poor quality feces attributed to impurity in the victim's character as metonymized by their diets... eurgh. I don't think "evil" is too strong a word.


[1] OK, hypothetically if something had been proven to be causing your skin to become infected you would have a stronger-than-usual argument for not eating it... but it's still a decision to be weighed carefully against other factors.

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Take emptiness and lying speech far from me, and do not give me poverty or wealth. Give me a living sufficient for me.

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Originally posted by Iole Nui:
It sounds, though, like you are one of the unfortunate people who has to take more extreme measures than most to control their weight. I don't think that entirely invalidates Telepath's points.

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I'm not sure. My calorie requirements are somewhere in the region of 1000 per day. I can't work it out with precision, because my weight isn't perfectly constant, and the amount I exercise varies with the weather But it's somewhere in that region.

The only odd thing about that is that I'm 6'4". But I'm hypothyroid and I have a sedentary job, so it's not entirely surprising. My wife needs about 1500 calories per day, so what she eats isn't very different from what I eat.

But I don't think it's any more of a problem for me, eating 1000 calories a day with a requirement of 1000 calories, than someone eating 2000 calories with a requirement of 2000. I get hungry between meals, but I think everybody does (or, at least, should). I mildly regret not being able to have wine with meals, but my life doesn't revolve around the meal table so it's no biggy.

There is potentially a problem for people with low calorie needs, in that they tend to eat less food in general, and so are likely to eat less of stuff that is really essential, but doesn't contribute energy. For example, I take calcium supplements because I know my diet is deficient in it.

So on the whole I feel a bit unsympathetic towards people who claim that their weight problems come from having a low metabolic rate, or whatever. If you have a low metabolic rate, you need to eat less, but you don't need to eat less than you actually need. People in that situation need to be a lot more careful about what they eat, however, to ensure proper nutritive balance.

However -- and this is what pricks my guilt gland a bit -- maybe my restrictive diet is no problem for me because my life is so good in so many other ways? I'm a happily married family man, and I don't lack for friends, companionship, sex, money, or self-affirmation. Food is, and always has been, a very peripheral part of my life. I would miss sex, and even music, a lot more than I miss the food I can't eat. Perhaps if I were more dependent on the pleasures of the table things would be more difficult?

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If we could break away from the baggage, and enjoy food for what it is instead of hanging all sorts of symbolism on it, maybe we could actually eat sensibly, practise reasonable moderation, accept hunger as good spice, and take pleasure in what we do eat.

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I wouldn't presume to comment on your particular situation but for most people a stirfry made with cashew nuts, garlic and tasty spices, for instance, would be a healthier and lower calorie alternative to one made with cheap, factory farmed, hormone laden chicken and a sticky shop-bought sauce.

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