Read Health At Every Size: The Surprising Truth About Your Weight Online

Authors: Linda Bacon

Health At Every Size: The Surprising Truth About Your Weight (26 page)

BOOK: Health At Every Size: The Surprising Truth About Your Weight
11.3Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads
 
Researchers put twenty-eight pairs of identical twins on a six-week high-fat/low-carbohydrate diet, followed by a six-week low-fat /high-carbohydrate diet.
356
In each pair, one twin ran an average of thirty miles per week more than the other. Consistent with other studies, when the men were compared to men who weren’t their twins, there were large differences in weight change. However, despite the extreme difference in physical activity, each twin had very similar changes in weight. Getting more exercise didn’t result in a weight difference! The men’s bodies so strongly wanted to maintain a certain weight that they somehow found a way to compensate for the increased energy expenditure.
 
In other experiments, identical male twins exercised on stationary bicycles twice a day, nine out of every ten days, over either twenty-two days
357
or one hundred days.
358
Diets were consistent, and the exercise caused them to use an extra 1,000 calories a day. Just as the previously mentioned study revealed, these experiments showed that each man’s weight loss was similar to that of his twin, although there was large variability when the sets of twins were compared.
 
There are plenty of thin people among McDonald’s regular customers. There are also plenty of people who are fat despite birdlike eating habits and active lifestyles. Making assumptions about someone’s habits by looking at their body size will lead you astray.
 
As discussed earlier, research shows no differences in the eating habits of the heavy and the lean.
126
Being thin or fat largely reflects how well your body is genetically predisposed to store fat.
 
6. The “Everyone Can Lose Weight” Myth
 
We believe that if we eat a wholesome diet, exercise regularly, and take care of ourselves in other ways, we can lose weight. We believe that fat people just don’t take care of themselves or lack willpower or self-respect. Though these beliefs are accepted as if they are common sense, they are not supported by the evidence. The little data gathered on what happens post-weight loss shows that the vast majority of people regain whatever weight they lose.
344
347
359
As noted in one review, “It is only the rate of weight regain, not the fact of weight regain, that appears open to debate.”
360
 
So can you actually lose weight and keep it off? First, remember that your setpoint is not a firm number, but a range, possibly from ten to twenty pounds. This fact means that for many people, a ten-to-twenty-pound weight loss may not meet with biological resistance. Since how you live your life does influence setpoint mechanisms, it may also be true that many Americans could lose
some
weight by improving the quality of their lifestyle choices.
 
However, even if everyone in America exercised regularly, meditated daily, and ate nothing but brown rice, broccoli, and tofu, many people would still be fat, and most bodies would be heavier than the ones glorified in our culture.
 
Yes, there are individuals who beat the odds and maintain large weight losses over time. Some researchers were so determined to “counter the belief that no one succeeds at long-term weight loss” that they actually designed a registry, called the National Weight Control Registry (NWCR), to track those successful losers.
361
 
 
The Few, the Proud, the Losers
 
At a recent family reunion, a large crowd gathered around a distant cousin of mine. He was sixty pounds lighter than many of us remembered and had maintained his weight loss for several years. With religious zeal, he waxed poetic about his new diet and exercise habits and how he lost the weight. The crowd was entranced, everyone anxious to learn the winning formula.
 
If you have witnessed a scene like this, you are not alone. We all know someone who has actually lost weight and kept it off. It is possible, though uncommon. It keeps our hopes up. We believe that if they can do it, we should be able to as well. So we listen closely to every story, anxious to learn the secret.
 
The commercial diet industry is savvy to our desperation and the opportunity this creates. We are easily exploited. Every advertisement draws us in with an inspiring testimonial or before and after pictures. The message is clear: I did it and so can you. (What goes unsaid: If you can’t, it’s your own damn fault!)
 
 
 
No doubt the NWCR has located some of the small minority of people who do indeed maintain weight loss long term. And small minority it is indeed. One review compares a conservative estimate of the number of people dieting to the population estimate and calculates that the NWCR researchers “demonstrate a ‘success rate’ of .001 percent, which is not even close to the dismal 5 percent estimate cited in the scientific literature.”
362
 
Their results don’t inspire optimism. First, the data they gathered is hardly long term: It includes individuals who have maintained a thirty-pound weight loss for one year or more. Studies show that two-thirds of weight regain happens within two years, and at five years all the weight has been regained.
344
So some of the individuals in the NWCR registry haven’t even made it past these danger points. And even among this elite group, 72 percent are regaining!
362
 
To maintain her weight loss, the average woman in NWCR follows strict eating rules, consumes 1,306 kcals,
363
and gets sixty to ninety minutes of moderate to high-intensity exercise daily. Do these behaviors raise a red flag for an eating disorder?
 
Clearly, the people in the NWCR are the anomalies. Just because your office-mate maintained her weight loss doesn’t mean that the majority of people can. A few individuals can also touch their nose to their toes, but the majority of us will never achieve this, even if we commit to daily stretching.
 
Despite the overwhelming odds against any one person maintaining weight loss, the fact that some do allows us to believe that we could be them, perpetuating the belief that there is something wrong with us when we can’t. Weight loss just may not be physiologically possible for many people, or at least not to the degree that we believe it is.
 
7. The “Thinner Is More Attractive” Myth
 
From an early age we are taught to despise fat. Our culture tells us that the size of our body defines our merits as a person and barrages us with images of ideal body shapes that we can never achieve. While this may have begun as a women’s issue, it has been in creasingly extended to include men. The emotional toll on all of us cannot be calculated. Few people are at peace in their bodies.
 
Every culture has its own standards of beauty, which change over the course of time. This is true of all traits that we consider beautiful, including our weight standards. Beauty standards reflect the political and economic interests of the times.
 
Historically, more often than not, a larger body was considered more desirable. It was a sign of beauty, health, opulence, sex appeal, and fertility. This current historical moment, during which flesh
isn’t
appreciated, is a rare anomaly.
 
For example, historians have found numerous depictions of the Venus of Willendorf (dating back to 24,000-22,000 BCE), a stone female figure and a symbol of female beauty. She had a beautiful rounded stomach, big hips, and huge breasts. Artwork from the ancient Greeks and Romans also show beautiful large women, such as Aphrodite and Venus, both of whom would be considered fat by today’s standards. In the seventeenth century, Peter Paul Rubens painted voluptuous women deemed beautiful in his time.
 
It wasn’t until the 1830s that thinness first came into vogue in North America, though only for a relatively brief period of time. By the turn of the century, we had reverted to a larger ideal. Lillian Russell, the leading sex symbol during this time, weighed more than 200 pounds.
 
In the early 1900s, thin women were sold pills, creams, and potions to help them get fatter. False breasts, thighs, and hips that had natural dimples (which we now call cellulite) were also sold to help women project a more attractive look. Doctors advocated for more flesh, as a heavier body fought disease better. Insurance companies even screened out thinner applicants.
 
The 1920s and 1930s brought changes, and thinness was once again in vogue for a short period, though the ideal body size was much more substantial than the one currently accepted. This standard of perfection didn’t last very long, however. By the 1940s, fashion magazines were again running articles on how
not
to be thin and larger models were again popular.
 
After World War II, the cultural climate shifted again rather suddenly. 1951 is often marked as the beginning of the war on fat, a war that has gained momentum over time. Currently, the average model is hardly a healthy role model: She is 5 feet 9½ inches tall, weighs 123 pounds, and often has too little body fat to menstruate.
 
To understand the implications of this history, consider standards of beauty other than weight. Other traits that are considered beautiful in women show similar variations across different cultures and in different time periods. For instance, in other parts of the world, the following are considered beautiful:
• Decorative scars on the face
• Stacked rings to elongate the neck
• Jewels placed in holes drilled in the teeth
• The maiming of women’s feet to make them smaller
 
Even in the United States, standards of beauty vary. For example, some consider the following beautiful, although they aren’t as universally agreed upon as weight standards:
• Decorated faces (make-up)
• Shaped eyebrows, curled eyelashes
• Tattoos
• Nose, tongue, nipple, and belly piercings
• Shaved heads
• Shaved armpit hair/leg hair
 
Notice that none of the traits in the above lists is natural. These are all ways that people manipulate their bodies in order to appear attractive and conform to cultural beauty standards. The point here is that what you and others find attractive is not objective. Some of these standards may seem unattractive or barbaric to you, but perhaps if you were raised in a different cultural environment you would feel differently. Similarly, people from other cultures may view your standards as unattractive or barbaric.
 
Why did these cultural standards evolve, and whose interests do they serve? Certainly not our own; our tacit acceptance of these standards is not in our best interest.
 
Consider conditions for women. Clearly, women’s rights have advanced tremendously in recent times. We now have choices that our mothers and grandmothers couldn’t even conceive of, such as reproductive options, higher education, and careers in most any trade, profession, or sport we could desire. Whether you exercise these options or instead prefer a more traditional role personally, the changing cultural landscape presents women with a greater sense of freedom and choice.
 
Despite these advances, and regardless of the choices we make, few women truly feel free. We share a feeling that we aren’t good enough. We are ashamed of our physical appearance and ashamed that it matters so much to us.
 
I believe that there is a connection between women’s increasing personal and professional power and our increasing disappointment in our physical selves. We are much worse off than women of previous generations regarding how we feel about ourselves physically, and I don’t think this is an accident. Instead, I am concerned that we are in the midst of a backlash against women’s advancement. This backlash is particularly insidious as it is being enacted psychically rather than politically. More so than ever before, our identity is premised upon our attractiveness (as opposed to men’s identity, which is more firmly rooted in their accomplishments). We are no longer as limited by laws, but instead by our (and others’) internalization of social beliefs about attractiveness and our failure to measure up.
 
This isn’t a conspiracy enacted by men to keep women oppressed; all of us, male and female, participate in reinforcing these social beliefs and standards of beauty, and all of us are damaged by it. Though the damage to women is obvious, we’re less apt to talk about how it also harms the “oppressor.” Think of the loneliness of heterosexual men with their “trophy” wives. Choosing women based on their looks doesn’t allow them true intimacy in relationships.
 
There are huge industries heavily invested in our acceptance of these cultural standards, and they have a big stake in convincing us to conform. The fashion, cosmetics, and diet industries survive by telling us that we are ugly and unacceptable as we are, but if we buy their products we can become beautiful. In other words, they get us to participate in our own oppression! And it seems as if advertisers have recently realized that they were so busy exploiting women’s insecurities that they’d forgotten half the population. So now they’re doing their best to make men feel equally horrible about themselves.
BOOK: Health At Every Size: The Surprising Truth About Your Weight
11.3Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Other books

Sudden Death by Álvaro Enrigue
3rd World Products, Book 17 by Ed Howdershelt
Tesla by Vladimir Pistalo
One Swinging Summer by Hellsmith, Patience
The Demon Signet by Shawn Hopkins