Tag Archives: weight loss

The End Is Near!

Posted on by
Reply

Seven years ago, when I saw Chic in concert for the first time, Nile Rodgers used the interlude in one of their songs as an opportunity to tell the crowd about his recent cancer battle, which he ultimately won. The songwriter and producer explained that receiving the news inspired him to go on a music-making binge, as he figured he only had a short window of time left to express his art.

Earlier today, as I was driving home from the beach with our daughter, that memory crossed my mind. Since she will soon be restarting school, we have been trying to cram in as many daddy-daughter activities and outings – the Museum of Science, the Butterfly Place, farms, the zoo, fruit picking, restaurants, train rides, the aforementioned beach, etc. – as we can before the start of the school year interferes and forces these bonding experiences from frequent occasions to relative rarities. Before we have even left the parking lot of one activity, I am already thinking about the next one and all of the others that I hope to shove into our remaining time before it runs out. We have fun, but part of me is distracted, anxious, and sad as I think about the end.

Deadlines have their upsides because they can push us to accomplish tasks and achieve goals that might otherwise remain unfulfilled, but they bring with them stress and general feelings of unease that detract from the experience.

Life-threatening illnesses and the school calendar are examples of deadlines imposed upon us, realities that we just have to do our best to roll with, but sometimes we needlessly impose deadlines upon ourselves. A person who wants to get married by a certain age may settle because the timing is right even though the partner is wrong. Someone I know recently spent a hot summer evening in the emergency room with heat exhaustion and dehydration because they stubbornly kept hacking away at a tree they really wanted to cut down before dinnertime rather than conceding they should take an additional day to complete the project. When we were adolescents, a friend of mine wanted to bench press a particular weight before a school dance, and he ended up having to fight to free himself as the much-too-heavy bar laid across his chest.

Because this is a nutrition blog, I am of course thinking about the predicaments we can put ourselves and our relationships with food in due to self-imposed deadlines. An obvious example is the melancholy and frantic overconsumption that precedes a scheduled diet. Trying to lose weight before a wedding or another similar function is a common – yet problematic – behavior that is most likely to result in eventual weight gain and increased risk for developing a wide range of health woes. Someone I know severely dehydrated himself on his birthday and spent much of it at the gym because he had set a goal to be at a particular weight by his new age, and while he did survive and recover, he put himself in a dangerous situation for the sake of an arbitrary goal.

Imagine what these scenarios could look like instead without the needless deadlines. No diet on the horizon could mean more peaceful and intuitive eating without the threat of self-imposed food insecurity looming. Foregoing an attempt to lose weight before an event reduces the chances of harmful and discouraging weight cycling and creates space for the person to focus their time and attention on the big day itself and to go into it full of energy instead of depleted. Personally, I can think of more fun ways to spend a birthday than sweating out as much fluid as possible on an elliptical machine.

Time and opportunities are finite resources, and while we never know when they will run out, we can make life easier for ourselves by leaving self-imposed deadlines in the past.

When Family and Friends Lose Weight

Posted on by
1

It’s the beginning of summer, and one theme in particular has been popping up a lot lately in my appointments with patients. It seems like everyone’s mother/uncle/friend from college/cousin has gone on a “weight loss journey” since the winter. As you might expect, witnessing your loved ones and/or friends and acquaintances engage in intentional weight loss can stir up a lot of feelings in those of us who are trying to embrace the bodies that we have. Research on intentional weight loss has found “almost complete relapse” after three to five years. Other data are more specific and suggest 90% to 95% of dieters regain all or most of the weight within five years, while other research has found that between one third and two thirds of people end up heavier than they were at baseline. It can be hard to watch others receive the praise and acceptance that often comes along with these “weight loss journeys.” It’s difficult to watch these folks gain more and more privilege while we remain in bodies that often put us at a disadvantage in our fatphobic society. So what are we supposed to do with all of these feelings?

First off, I try to remind my patients that their mother’s/uncle’s/friend’s/cousin’s bodies are not our business. I firmly believe in body autonomy, or as Ragen Chastain calls it, “The Underpants Rule.” In essence, what someone chooses to do with their body is up to them (as long as it is not harming others). Our family and friends will often make choices that we don’t agree with. And those of us who are trying to fight the near-constant onslaught of fatphobia we are fed on a daily basis feel strongly that these friends/family members are doing harm to themselves and perpetuating diet culture. But at the end of the day, we aren’t in charge of others’ bodies. Just like we wouldn’t want someone telling us how to live in our own bodies, we can’t police others.

That being said, I think there is nothing wrong with protecting oneself and setting boundaries around diet and weight loss talk. If you are active on social media and the friend/family member is an active poster of weight loss updates, befores and afters, or touting their new “healthy lifestyle,” it might be time to either snooze them for a short while or hide them from your timeline indefinitely. This can be done by clicking the “unfollow” button on someone’s Facebook profile or clicking the “mute” button on Instagram. By doing this, you are removing the element of surprise from seeing these things popping up on your timeline. It’s hard to look away or unsee some of these posts, so preventing them from appearing on your social media from the start can be helpful.

Another way that you can set a boundary is by being up front with the friend/family member about how their diet/weight loss talk is affecting you. Sometimes I will help my patients role play what they would like to say to the friend/family member who brings up their diet/weight loss. In these types of situations, I encourage patients to try to give their friend/family member the benefit of the doubt. That is, it is very unlikely that they are intentionally causing you harm or distress; they just are unaware of how this kind of talk can be triggering. Here’s an example of how these conversations can be broached: “Hey, I know that you aren’t intending to, but when you talk about your diet/lifestyle/weight loss journey with me, it makes me feel uncomfortable. I am happy that you are happy with what you are doing, but hearing about it is unhelpful for me as I’m working on accepting my body and letting go of diet culture.” If you are struggling with an eating disorder (and this person knows about it), it could be helpful to also say, “Part of my eating disorder recovery is not engaging in diet/weight loss talk as it can make my symptoms worse.”

If after these tactics, the message is still not getting through, it is within your right to limit your exposure to these individuals. This might mean doing shorter meet-ups rather than long, drawn-out hangouts, limiting your time spent at family gatherings, or getting together less often. If this is not an option, you can take space when you need to at these events, excusing yourself from the room or going for a walk by yourself, for example. I also highly recommend cultivating your own “anti-diet” community either online or in person if you are able to. There are many fat-positive folks all over the world, and it can feel less lonely when you are around those who “get it.” Instagram and Facebook can be helpful in finding these people and connecting with them.

At the end of the day, I hope that the one thing you will remember is that just because your
friend/family member is actively engaging in diet culture, you do not have to go that route. You deserve to embrace and live in the body you have, and you do not have to change it. Your body has never been the problem – our fatphobic culture is.

Pancakes

Posted on by
Reply

Some months, coming up with a newsletter topic is unusually challenging. For the last few weeks, Joanne and I were both scratching our heads, as the ideas we had were for research pieces that would demand more time than either of us is able to dedicate at this point in time. Being silly, I facetiously asked our four-year-old daughter what I should write about this month. “Pancakes,” she responded, “Pancakes and maple syrup.” Joanne and I laughed, and I walked out of the room, but I quickly returned and told them I was going to use her idea.

Our daughter’s suggestion reminded me of a quote from one of my earliest patients many years ago, and what the latter said to me felt significant enough that I wrote it down as soon as she left my office. “One day, you will have a baby boy who will love you,” my patient said, “and then he will grow up to hate you. But then one day he will love you again and say, ‘Hey, Dad, let’s go out to breakfast, just us guys,’ and then you will go to Bickford’s, and you will have an apple pancake, too.”

At that point in my career, I was still doing the kind of work that most people figure dietitians do: putting people on diets in the pursuit of weight loss. My prescribed diets were low in carbohydrates, especially grains, and so restrictive of calories that if my patients were living in a different region of the world, the United Nations would have sent cargo ships full of food to help them. While I did not author these diet plans, which seemed concerning to me at the time because of their restrictive nature and the good/bad food dichotomy they established, I did dole them out as instructed, and for that I have nobody to blame but myself.

These diet plans typically “worked” in the sense that my patients lost weight, but rarely – if ever – did the weight suppression last long term. At the time that I left the medical center where I was working and stopped doing that kind of work, I did have some patients who had maintained their weight loss thus far, but I have no idea what happened to them later. Given that most weight regain happens two to five years after baseline, I can only assume that at least some of these patients, if not all of them, regained weight after I was out of the picture.

Diets fail for a number of reasons. Most significantly, the physiological mechanisms that kept our ancestors alive through periods of starvation kick in when we restrict and promote weight regain. Another factor, the one that my patient was trying to make me aware of via her aforementioned quote, is that diets are incompatible with real life. After all, if I were following the low-carb, low-grain, low-calorie diet that I had put her on, I would be unable to both remain on the plan and partake in her breakfast scenario. The dietary expectations I had set out for her were unrealistic, which was exactly the point she was trying to get me to see. Point taken.

Now that I am a dad myself, I have greater first-hand life experience to reinforce my theoretical understanding. Numerous times over the last few years, I have eaten foods I was not in the mood for because sharing an eating experience with my daughter was more important to me than eating exactly what I wanted. For example, the food at Chick-fil-A rarely sounds good to me, and I certainly would have preferred something else for dinner last Tuesday night, but I took her there because she loves it, she asked me if I would take her, and I prioritized making her happy and sharing one of her favorite meals over eating what I really wanted.

If I was on some diet plan that restricted foods like Chick-fil-A, such as the plan I had given to the patient in question, I would have had to choose between breaking the diet or missing out on a family bonding experience. When I was a young adult and somewhat orthorexic, I prioritized “healthy behaviors” to the detriment of other important areas of my life. After turning down plans with friends so I could exercise after work and go to bed early, some of them began to distance themselves from me and stopped extending invitations. My insistence on only eating food I had brought from home kept me from joining co-workers for lunch, and my rapport with them weakened. If you have ever been on a diet yourself, consider the ways in which sticking to the plan came at the expense of other facets of your life. My guess is that if you look back, you will find examples in your own life similar to the ones I just described.

Furthermore, remember how you felt when you inevitably deviated from your diet. In Reclaiming Body Trust, authors Hilary Kinavey and Dana Sturtevant succinctly describe the pattern of dieting with a diagram that they entitle “The Cycle.” At the 12 o’clock position, the circular diagram begins with “The Problem,” which then leads to “The Shame Shitstorm” at three o’clock, followed by “The Plan” at six o’clock, then “Life” at nine o’clock, and then back to “The Problem” as the pattern indefinitely repeats. Delving into the particulars of these positions is beyond the scope of this blog, but the overall pattern is one to which many of us can relate: We identify a problematic eating behavior, feel bad about it, desperately grab for a plan that will supposedly rescue us from ourselves, abandon the plan when it proves itself to be incompatible with life, and the cycle repeats.

If a diet puts us in a position to choose between (A) sacrificing important parts of life, such as sharing a bonding experience with our kids, in order to remain on the plan, or (B) breaking the diet and perpetuating a cycle of shame and unsustainable attempts to deal with our problems, then perhaps dieting and living a full life are simply incompatible.

Blaming the Victim

Posted on by
4

Perhaps you caught last month’s news story about a tech CEO who was hit by a car and killed crossing a street in Acton. He was a friend of mine from college. The driver took away a leader from a company, a husband from a wife, and a father from two young daughters, and severely derailed the trajectory of their own life in the process.

Some of the details omitted from the published story include that he was crossing the street to meet his wife for dinner and that the driver hit him while he was in a crosswalk. Try telling that to the internet trolls who left some ignorant comments suggesting that my friend may have been looking at his phone or crossed without looking.

Their comments got me thinking, and I remembered that blaming the victim is largely about fear. Admitting that we have limited control over our fates is scary, so much so that some of us find some comfort in assuming that a victim must have made some error and brought their end upon themselves.

Looking back, I experienced some of this myself with my three back surgeries. When I had the first operation to remove a tumor, some people questioned how I could possibly have developed one and suggested that I must have grown up under high voltage wires or that I did not take care of myself. No, my environment was fine, I was an athlete, and I had a balanced diet (by adolescent standards). When I had my first spinal fusion, some people assumed I must have done something stupid in the weight room to necessitate the repair, but no, it was really just the fallout from a freak accident and residual structural issues from the tumor. The next year, when I had to have a second fusion because the first one did not work, some people figured the surgeon must have screwed up or that I did something wrong with my rehab. No, sometimes surgeons do everything right and the patient can look on paper like the ideal candidate to heal well, and yet, in a small percentage of cases – including mine – problems still arise.

Our health is no exception to the reality that our outcomes are only somewhat in our control. We live in a culture that blames “overweight” people for their size, that if they only were disciplined enough to eat less and exercise more that they would be thinner, while the reality is that long-term weight regulation is largely regulated by factors unrelated to our behavior. We look at scary diseases and hope we can ward off morbidity and mortality by creating and avoiding dietary demons, yet people of all ages and behavior profiles still get sick and die.

A few days after my friend was killed, my daughter and I had a close call ourselves while I was walking her to school. We got to a crosswalk, I hit the button to activate the flashing yellow lights, the cars in both directions stopped for us, and we began to cross. Before we could make it across, an SUV pulled out from the school’s driveway. Perhaps the driver saw the stopped cars and thought they were waving her in. Regardless, without looking in our direction, she turned onto the street towards us and hit the accelerator. I started running, and it was a close enough call that I arched my back in order to avoid the corner of her front bumper. When I glanced back at the driver, she looked horrified. As we continued on our way, the driver repeatedly yelled to us, “I’m so sorry!”

I was angry, just as I was when I heard my friend died. I was angry at both drivers, and I was mad at our society that normalizes and enables careless driving. However, beneath my anger was fear. We live in a world in which someone can do everything right and still have things go very, very wrong, which is horrifying, and we attempt to shield ourselves from this fear by assuming that victims brought their fates upon themselves.

“As long as you’re healthy . . .”

Posted on by
1

“Health.” It’s a simple one-syllable word with a deceptively simple definition: “the state of being free from illness or injury.” What I have come to realize over the decade-plus that I have been practicing nutrition therapy as a registered dietitian is that health means many different things to different people. Health is not black or white, but a million shades of gray. But the wellness industry (diet culture’s shapeshifted cousin) would have us believe that health is not only easy to define and simple to identify, but also easy to achieve, if we just try hard enough. Well, sorry, it’s not that simple.

When I was a preteen, I remember feeling like my body was wrong, too big, taking up too much space. My mother and I would go to my pediatrician appointments, where my doctor would hem and haw about my weight. I had always trended on the 95th percentile on growth charts, and every year my pediatrician would comment on it in a concerned way. My mom would echo these concerns at home, gently reminding me that my doctor was worried for my health. When I would cry to my mom about being in a larger body than my peers, she would always come back to this statement: “You are a beautiful girl. We could make some changes to how you eat and exercise. I just want you to be healthy.”

“I just want you to be healthy.” These words ring in my ears as they have been spoken to me in different iterations throughout my life. From concerned college friends after I had gained a significant amount of weight during my freshman year (post diet, of course): “We are just worried about your health.” From my first adult PCP when I was 22 years old: “We just want to make sure you are healthy.” From my mom when I announced that I would be going on a low-carb diet at age 25: “as long as you’re healthy!”

Everyone seemed to say that my health was the most important thing and that being healthy meant being in a “healthy-looking” body. When I actively engaged in dieting, restricting, tracking every morsel, weighing myself multiple times a day, exercising even when I didn’t feel like it or was sick or injured, eschewing lunch outings with friends, losing my period – during these times, everyone marveled at how “healthy” I was. “It’s so nice to see that you are finally taking care of yourself!” my family would crow. “Keep going, get healthy!” my doctor cheered. Little did they know the personal hell I was living in. But at least I “looked” healthy. Or at least my body fit the social norm for what we collectively believe is healthy, i.e., it was no longer considered fat. But inevitably as the weight would come back on, the concerns for my health would resurface.

When I finally gave up on dieting and learned about Health at Every Size® and intuitive eating, I was ready to hear the message. At last, I didn’t need to micromanage my intake and output. I didn’t need to obsessively count and weigh and measure. I didn’t have to give lunch outings with friends a second thought. It was like a freedom I hadn’t felt since I was a child, before I was told that I had a body that was “wrong.” I began to realize that health is not one-size-fits-all and that it looks different for different people. With individuals who have chronic illnesses such as celiac disease or cystic fibrosis or those with physical disabilities such as paralysis or amputation, they would never be able to achieve a state of being “free from illness or injury.” How about the millions of people who deal with depression or anxiety? Are they unable to achieve health as well?

I feel that we need to change our beliefs and expectations around health. In my opinion, health is a multifaceted amorphous concept that is not always attainable. It is also something that changes during our lifespan for a multitude of reasons. Even if we engage in all of the “health-promoting behaviors” we have been told to do, there is no guarantee that we will be healthy. In addition, there is no moral requirement for us to engage in these behaviors. As the wise Ragen Chastain so eloquently states: “Health is not an obligation, a barometer of worthiness, completely within our control, or guaranteed.”

The wellness industry loves to prey on our fears of illness and death. It purports to give us the answers to living longer, healthier lives. All we need to do is buy their program, supplement, or detox, and we can unlock the secret to immortality. It’s a brilliant marketing scheme that swindles millions upon millions of people every year. What if we decided to care more about our mental health and wellbeing? What if we made healthcare accessible to everyone? What if we eradicated weight stigma from the medical field? What if we decided that health doesn’t look the same on every body and that this is okay? My guess is the wellness industry would lose billions of dollars. Worrying about and obsessing over our “health” is most definitely not good for us. I wonder when our society will figure this out.

WHETHER U BELIEVE U CAN OR CAN’T ONLY SOMEWHAT MATTERS!

Posted on by
Reply

“Anything is possibleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!” Kevin Garnett was already one of my favorite basketball players long before he came to Boston and helped the Celtics to win the 2008 championship, but his famous post-victory line made me cringe. No, Kevin, while I understand you were excited and trying to inspire, empower, and motivate, let’s be real: Anything is not possible.

The message board outside Needham’s Mitchell Elementary School triggered a similar reaction when I passed by it earlier this month. “WHETHER U BELIEVE U CAN OR CAN’T YOU’RE ABSOLUTELY RIGHT!” What are we teaching the children in this town, I questioned, and I am not even referencing the problematic grammar that seems to acquiesce to the texting generation.

As someone who was raised on The Little Engine That Could, I can appreciate the power of motivational messages that encourage children to believe in themselves, show courage, and put forth their best efforts. After all, sometimes we sell ourselves short and assume something is out of our reach, when really we could have grasped it if only we took a chance and tried.

However, the little engine’s famous mantra is “I think I can,” not “I know I can,” and the difference of just a single word reflects a broad and important truth: While we can control our behaviors to an extent, outcomes depend on more than just our actions and are often subject to factors that are out of our hands.

Competitive runners learn that time is more in their control than placement, as the latter depends on who else is racing. For example, I may go into a race fully believing in my heart that I can finish in the top ten, but if the Kenyan national team shows up to run, all the self-belief in the world is not going to overcome my competition’s skill. Even finishing time, which is more in one’s control than placement, is still subject to exterior forces, such as weather, that can slow down the entire field.

Life experience has taught me that someone using the language of certainty, such as the verb “will,” when discussing outcomes that are only somewhat in their control is a red flag that the person has lost some touch with reality. One of my first jobs as a dietitian was at a startup medical clinic that boasted that they would expand to 50 locations across the country and build a headquarters complete with a farm and even their own medical school. The leaders disapproved of and took exception to pragmatic questions about the feasibility of their stated goals and used language of certainty when discussing the company’s future. A few years after I left the company, they went out of business completely, having expanded to a total of two locations.

My gripe with the quote outside Mitchell School is not technical, unlike the guy who used logic and mathematics to pick apart the semantics of Wayne Gretzky’s famous quote; nor is it theoretical, as if I were overly worried about a potential impact that may never come to fruition.

Rather, my concerns are based on real experiences I have had with my patients, including children, who cite these sorts of motivational quotes as justification for putting themselves in harm’s way. This most commonly occurs in the context of a desire to lose weight, as some children have told me that they believe they can lose weight and keep it off if only they try hard enough.

While I admire their self-confidence, which will likely serve them well in so many other areas of life, weight regulation is the wrong place to assume that belief in oneself and hard work is enough to get the job done. The truth is that while numerous methods of inducing short-term weight loss exist, nobody has demonstrated an ability to produce long-term weight loss in more than a small fraction of the people who attempt to achieve it.

Some research has found “almost complete relapse” after three to five years, other data are more specific and suggest 90% to 95% of dieters regain all or most of the weight within five years, while other research has found that between one third and two thirds of people end up heavier than they were at baseline. Research in adolescents has found that dieters were three times more likely than non-dieters to become “overweight,” regardless of baseline weight.

To suggest that the people who regain weight simply did not believe in themselves ignores the reality that behaviors play only a small part in weight regulation while factors out of our hands, such as genetics and our gut microbial population, are largely responsible. As an example, consider folks with atypical anorexia nervosa who can implement life-threatening levels of restriction without experiencing weight loss.

Unfortunately, striving for weight loss is not a benign pursuit in which the worst-case scenario means that one simply returns to where they started. Research has shown that weight cycling – repeatedly losing and regaining weight – is associated with numerous health problems, including a higher overall death rate and an increased risk of dying from heart disease, regardless of one’s baseline weight.

Teaching self-confidence is important, but I think we can do better than overly simplistic messages that children can – and will – take literally to their own detriment.

Stop Complimenting Weight Loss

Posted on by
Reply

On the surface, complimenting someone’s weight loss seems like a benign and positive affirmation, but there are a number of reasons why doing so is problematic.

First and foremost, unless we have been told by the individual that their weight loss was intentional, we really have no clue as to why someone is losing weight. It could be due to illness, grief, or depression. It could also be as a result of an eating disorder (ED). Many of my patients say that comments about their weight loss when they were in the throes of their eating disorder fueled the disorder and made them feel like they had to keep up their disordered behaviors in order to keep their body “in check.” This goes double for patients with anorexia who are in larger bodies. These individuals often go undiagnosed with an ED because their weight loss is seen as a positive thing, never mind that they are engaging in extreme restriction and over-exercise to achieve this loss.

While I was never formally diagnosed with an ED, I myself remember when I was a teenager and engaged in very disordered eating and exercise habits and ended up losing a significant amount of weight in a short period of time. Despite the fact that I had lost my period, had very little energy, avoided going out to eat for fear of having to eat “junk” food, and overall felt awful and obsessive, I got compliment after compliment from family, friends, and even from my doctor. I even remember my doctor saying to me, “I don’t care what you are doing to lose the weight, just keep doing it!” I cringe just thinking about it!

Another reason to stop complimenting weight loss? It inherently implies that there was something wrong with the person’s body before they lost the weight. Think about it – do we ever comment on someone gaining weight in a positive light? Nope. These weight loss compliments also imply that being smaller or skinnier is better than being larger. The truth of the matter is that bodies come in all shapes and sizes, and they all deserve respect. Placing smaller bodies on a pedestal reinforces the idea that people in larger bodies are less than. This is weight stigma, and it has been shown to negatively affect us not only psychologically, but physically as well. Furthermore, since we know that 95-98% of intentional weight loss attempts result in weight regain, the silence when someone regains the weight they lost can be deafening.

Finally, and possibly the most important reason, is to stop modeling this behavior for our children. Little ones are like sponges, and from a young age, they are acutely aware of our society’s dislike of fat people. One study found that children aged 6 to 11 hold considerable negative attitudes towards their heavier peers, being more likely to describe these “overweight” peers as “mean, stupid or dirty” than average-weight peers. Other studies found that “nearly a third of children age 5 to 6 choose an ideal body size that is thinner than their current perceived size” and that “by age 6, children are aware of dieting and may have tried it”. When we compliment another’s weight loss, we are telling our kids that to be smaller is better and that being fat is a bad thing.

What can we do instead? Don’t comment on another person’s body. Full stop. If you feel compelled to give a compliment, try complimenting the person’s kindness, humor, intelligence, or other attributes not related to body shape or size.

Cause and Effect

Posted on by
2

The Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics releases a daily Nutrition and Dietetics SmartBrief, which contains summaries of and links to recently released health and nutrition articles. Earlier this month, a headline in a recent issue read, “Too much sitting increases risk of early death, study says.”

The problem is that no, that is not what the study says. In fact, the HealthDay article that the SmartBrief links to states, “The study couldn’t prove cause and effect . . .” and a couple of paragraphs later, the article continues, “It’s not clear why prolonged sitting is unhealthy, Patel [lead researcher, Dr. Alpa Patel] said. It’s possible that people who spend a lot of time on the couch also have other unhealthy behaviors, such as excess snacking, she suggested.”

Okay, let’s back up a moment. First, the author who wrote the SmartBrief’s headline misrepresented the study’s findings by implying causation, and second, Dr. Patel herself seemed to disregard the limitations of her own research by labeling sitting as “unhealthy” based on an association.

This was not just a SmartBrief problem. Other news outlets picked up the story and similarly misled consumers. For example, the headline on NBC News read, “Here’s more evidence sitting too much can kill you,” with the subheading, “Sitting more than six hour [sic] a day during your free time raises the risk of early death by 19 percent.” No, that is not what the research found at all, but such sensationalism probably draws more clicks than a mundane – but more accurate – headline.

We see similarly misleading language when it comes to reporting on the research that investigates the relationship between weight and health. Headlines summarizing these pieces oftentimes imply a causal relationship between increased body weight and morbidity. Remember, however, that when researchers set out to investigate the consequences of obesity, they are also studying the impacts of weight stigma, dieting, weight cycling, socioeconomic disparity, healthcare discrepancies, and everything else that tends to come packaged with the experience of having a bigger body in today’s world.

While increased adipose tissue in and of itself could be a causal factor for certain health conditions, similar to how having fair skin increases one’s skin cancer risk, establishing a causal relationship is extremely difficult given the confounding variables. To assume causation because of correlation is premature at best, and at worst, it could be completely wrong.

Next time you see a headline that implies causation, remember that said headline might be more sensational than factual, as the actual research behind it is probably more complex and nuanced than can be accurately distilled into a single line of text or a sound bite.

He Said, She Said: MEDA Conference Takeaways

Posted on by
Reply

He Said

Today’s society is talking more and more about the idea of privilege. We often hear about white privilege, male privilege, and straight privilege, but people less commonly discuss another form that directly impacts our nutrition work: thin privilege.

My thin privilege became obvious to me four years ago when I went to the doctor about back problems. In early 2016, I wrote a blog reflecting on how different my healthcare experience was than that of many of my larger patients who go to their doctors about similar woes. Not only did I receive evidence-based medicine instead of a directive to lose weight, but some of my doctors even made assumptions (incorrect assumptions, at that) about my diet based on my size. That is thin privilege.

While I was already aware of some aspects of my privilege, the most powerful talk that I attended at the Multi-Service Eating Disorders Association (MEDA) national conference helped me to understand that my thin privilege includes elements I had never before considered. Caitlin Martin-Wagar, an eating disorder clinician and doctoral student in counseling psychology, gave a presentation in which she listed several examples of thin privilege, some of which you may not have previously considered either:

  • Chairs and airplane seats fit thin bodies.
  • Thin bodies are represented in all forms of media.
  • Thin people are never the punchline in sitcoms because of their body size.
  • When thin people go to the doctor, their health concerns are generally taken more seriously.
  • Thin people can buy dolls of similar build for their children.
  • Thinness connotes good morals and positive characteristics.
  • Thin people have an easier time shopping for clothing.
  • Thin people do not have to represent all people of their size.
  • In comparison to larger individuals, thin people receive less unsolicited health/dietary advice or veiled concerns about their health.
  • Employers pay thin people more.
  • Thin people face less scrutiny while eating in public.
  • As a thin person myself, I can write this blog without receiving accusations of being self-serving.

In order to escape weight stigma and in hopes of enjoying the same privileges as thin individuals, some people embark on weight loss endeavors that are most likely to make them heavier in the long run and worsen their health. If we are serious about wanting to help people improve their health, then we have to change our society so that people of all sizes enjoy the same privileges.

Ms. Martin-Wagar offered us professionals some tips regarding how we can combat weight bias within healthcare, but she also shared some ideas for how all of us can challenge thin privilege:

  • Read and learn about the relationship – and lack of relationship – between weight and health (which you can do on our Weight Loss FAQ page).
  • Consider the barriers and challenges of living with a larger body size.
  • Learn from larger-bodied friends about their experiences.
  • Do not make comments about people’s body sizes, shapes, or weight.
  • Be aware of weight bias veiled as concern.
  • Call out injustices as you witness them.

We do not live in a zero-sum game in which treating larger people better means treating thinner people worse. Rather, we can and must work to establish a society in which thin privilege is no privilege at all, just the same rights and respect enjoyed equally by people of all sizes.

 

She Said

This year’s MEDA conference had a number of interesting and informative talks given by experts in the field of eating disorders (ED). Throughout the day, I was heartened to see that the ED treatment community is starting to embrace the principles of Health at Every Size® (HAES) and Size Acceptance. But despite this positive movement, unfortunately what stood out to me this year was that we still have a long way to go in the ED treatment community when it comes to helping those in larger bodies who are suffering from an ED.  

Ragen Chastain, the author of the blog “Dances With Fat” and renowned speaker and advocate for HAES and Size Acceptance, was the keynote speaker on the second day of the conference. Her talk centered on the idea that given the culture that we live in (i.e., one that is fatphobic, diet-minded, and generally not welcoming to people in larger bodies), those who are living in larger bodies and struggling with ED can find it nearly impossible to fully recover as everything in our society tells them that being thin is the most important thing. Ragen’s talk hit the nail on the head, and it was interesting to see many of my colleagues in the audience nodding their heads in agreement with her points. At the end, Ragen received a well-earned standing ovation, and it seemed like everyone in the room was on the same page.

Well, not everyone, it seems. During the Q&A session after her talk, Ragen received a question from one of the ED practitioners in the room. This woman started out by saying that she agreed with everything Ragen had just spoken about, but she had an anecdotal experience that made her question some of Ragen’s points. She went on to explain that her “morbidly obese” brother had struggled with his weight for years, and it had gotten to such a dire point that a number of years ago he had gastric bypass surgery. As a result of this surgery, she contended, her brother’s weight went down and all of his troubling health conditions cleared up almost instantly. She went on to say that while she knows that some gastric bypass patients regain the weight due to “cheating” on their prescribed diets, there are those who maintain their losses and “good health.”

This woman’s sentiments went over like a lead balloon, and there were audible gasps from the audience. Ever the consummate professional, Ragen adeptly navigated this uncomfortable situation. She explained that while there are always some outliers who do well with stomach amputation, there are many more who suffer from complications from the surgery, such as lifelong issues with malabsorption, deficiencies, future surgeries to correct structural problems resulting from the original surgery, and even death. In fact, Ragen went on to say that fatphobia is at the root of the weight loss surgery industry because the medical professionals who advocate for these surgeries view fat people as less valuable; that it is better to risk a fat person’s life by having them get the surgery than letting them stay fat. In other words, the weight loss surgery industry is essentially telling fat people that their lives are not as valuable as those of thin individuals and that it is better to be thin and sick or even dead rather than fat.

While I would hope that this woman was the only one at the conference who held positive beliefs around weight loss surgery, I am not foolish enough to think so. Yes, the ED treatment community is getting better about not pathologizing certain body sizes and understanding that EDs can occur in people of all body sizes. But the fact still remains that we all live in this toxic diet culture that constantly tells us that fat is undesirable and unhealthy, that the pursuit of weight loss by any means is admirable, and that thin bodies are superior to fat bodies.  When you have been marinating in this culture for your whole life, it can be hard to realize your own bias around fat people. My hope is that Ragen’s talk changed some minds that day at the MEDA conference and made people think more about how their own fatphobia contributes to diet culture and undermines recovery for patients with ED.

Crime and Punishment

Posted on by
Reply

Michael Felger, a sports radio host in Boston, received national attention last week for his extended rant in reaction to the death of Roy Halladay, the former pitcher who was killed when the plane he was piloting crashed into the Gulf of Mexico.

“It just sort of angers me,” Felger said. “You care that little about your life? About the life of your family? Your little joyride is that important to you that you’re going to risk just dying. You’re a multimillionaire with a loving family, and to you, you have to go get that thing where you can dive-bomb from 100 feet to five above the water with your single-engine plane with your hand out the window. ‘Wheee! Wheee! Yeah, man, look at the G-force on this! I’m Maverick! Pew pew pew! Yeah, man, look at this, this is so cool.’ And you die! Splat! If I die helicopter skiing, you have the right to do the exact same thing I’m doing to Roy Halladay. He got what he deserved.’’

Felger took it too far and he knows it. “In a nutshell, I would say that I feel bad about what happened on a lot of levels,” he said the next day in his on-air apology. “I feel bad about what I said and how I conducted myself. To say it was over the top and insensitive is really stating the obvious.”

However, Felger limited his contrition to the poor timing and distasteful nature in which he communicated his points, but he held firm to his core arguments. “I believe what I believe,” he noted, a sentiment to which he returned over the course of the four-hour show to emphasize that he was not apologizing for his feelings, but only for how he conveyed them.

That is unfortunate, for as much credit as I give Felger for taking responsibility for his tone and tactlessness, going out of his way to double down on his stated beliefs suggests a failure to understand the inherent dangers of condemning someone else for making a choice or engaging in an activity that subjectively feels too risky to the person passing judgment.

Stunt flying, as Halladay was reportedly doing at the time of his crash, is inherently dangerous, but all choices exist on a risk continuum that never quite reaches zero. Every single one of us makes decisions on a daily basis that someone else might deem too risky, but we weigh the pros and cons and ultimately take the risks that in balance feel worth it. Some of us cross busy streets, gather in crowds, work stressful jobs, play contact sports, get behind the wheel, mount bicycles, undergo elective medical procedures, attend protests, testify against violent defendants, and yes, some of us stunt fly. We all draw a line somewhere regarding what we, personally, feel is too risky, but who is to say that our placement is any more right or wrong than where someone else draws their own?

For another example of a choice that could be considered too risky, Felger need not look any farther than the chair next to him. His co-host, Tony Massarotti, elected to pursue a weight-loss treatment plan at a local diet center and pitches the program via radio spots every afternoon. Hopefully he knew going into it that he is unlikely to sustain his lower weight and that weight cycling, regardless of one’s baseline weight, is associated with a higher overall death rate and twice the normal risk of dying from heart disease.

Hopefully, nobody will claim, “He got what he deserved,” if Massarotti dies of a heart attack, yet some do just that. A fervent raw vegan that I used to run against once suggested that we should treat omnivores who die of myocardial infarctions as suicide victims because, in his eyes, their deaths were self-induced by years of consuming cooked foods and animal products. They are shooting themselves, he explained metaphorically, they are just pulling the trigger really, really slowly.

To suggest that people who follow a diet other than his own are killing themselves is to pass quite a judgment, one that is particularly curious since other restrictive diets have their own staunch followers who similarly believe that raw vegans are bringing about their own demise. Ours is the path to salvation, extremists believe, while others are deservedly damned for worshiping another dietary God.

Across the street from the radio station, a related story of crime and punishment is apparently unfolding at New Balance, where, according to someone I know who works there, the company has started measuring employee body mass index (BMI) annually and now charges fat workers more for health insurance than their leaner colleagues.

Perhaps New Balance’s intent is to encourage employee engagement in behaviors subjectively considered healthy and/or to financially demand more of the individuals who are seen as the greatest burden on the healthcare system. In either case, the company is erroneously conflating behaviors, health, and anthropometrics. To charge heavier people more for health insurance is to issue a stiff sentence after an unjust conviction.

The policy is a clear case of discrimination that exacerbates weight stigma and risks worsening the health of fat people, in part by encouraging them to pursue weight loss, sometimes by very dangerous means, in order to be treated, both financially and otherwise, like everyone else. Such a policy also negatively impacts thinner people. One of my patients, the child of a New Balance employee, is working to recover from a restrictive eating disorder and exercise bulimia that were triggered by – get this – a fear of becoming fat. Given how heavier people are treated, including by New Balance, who can blame this kid for wanting to avoid such torment?

The accumulation of insurance payouts for this patient to attend regular and ongoing appointments with me and the rest of the treatment team is certainly expensive. With this child representing just one small twig on the tree that survives on the light that is New Balance’s insurance coverage, perhaps this reprehensible policy will increase, not decrease, the totality of the company’s financial healthcare burden. If that possibility comes to fruition, I will borrow a line from Felger and decree:

They got what they deserved.