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Wednesday, January 02, 2008

New Year's is Christmas for purveyors of diet products
Posted by Jill | 6:39 AM

Ce n'est pas mon petit dejeuner


On Saturday I went to Harmon to pick up one of those temporary "cover the gray" sticks to use till I get to the hairdresser this weekend. Those of you who have Harmon stores in your neighborhood understand why I put this particular chain in the pantheon of other emporia without which one simply cannot live a civilized existence: Trader Joe's, World Market, and Tuesday Morning. Harmon always puts those bins of travel size packages of every toiletry product you can imagine near the front door, but once you've successfully navigated that particular gauntlet, you get to the seasonal merchandise.

Most of the year, this stuff is pretty innocuous -- cheap gift sets, Whitman's Samplers in heart packaging, plastic hollow Easter Eggs, sunscreen and flip-flops. But once Christmas is over and New Year's is in the offing, the seaonal merchandise becomes diet products.

Given that January 1 occurs every year, and given that every year there's a spike in the purchase of diet products and gym memberships after the year turns, you'd think people would wonder why every year the market for diet products is so huge, and you'd think they'd put it together that maybe all these appetite suppressants and Slim-fast bars and overpriced, pharmaceutical-named snake oil, and whatever piece of plastic-and-metal crap Tony Little is pushing this year just don't work. I've seen a lot of New Years, and every year there are millions of people going through this drill yet again.

I know people who swear by Weight Watchers, and if that works for you and you want to spend your life counting points and denying yourself for the next three days if you happen to dare to eat a point-heavy meal (such as the bounteous repast of which we availed ourselves New Year's Eve, one which featured hummus, falafel, babaganoush, zucchini pancakes, lamb kebab, and baklava), well, more power to you. For me, the last thing I need is something where I have to obsess even more about food than I already do, not to mention a "lifestyle" that ultimately will require me to live on the morning dew and a lettuce leaf after my Russian peasant body keeps adjusting to an ever-lower calorie count.

As far as I'm concerned, Kate Harding is my go-to gal for those times when I find myself succumbing to the mandatory self-loathing that's part of being a "person of girth" (girth being anything over a size 0) in this country. And she's been on a tear about Weight Watchers lately:

The only thing you really get from WW, or any of its competitors, is a specific structure for your efforts. If that’s what you want, go nuts. It’s your money. And it’s certainly true that some people respond well to the WW structure and do lose weight steadily on it. I myself lost 40 lbs. on Weight Watchers pretty easily, as diets go. Found it all again within a few years, but hey, that’s just me and my lazy, non-committed, hopelessly gluttonous ass, right?


Uh huh. Except, do me a favor. Go click on the “Success Stories” section on their website. I won’t link, but go ahead, I’ll wait.


Do you see that asterisk underneath the “after photos”? The one next to the words “RESULTS NOT TYPICAL.”


Yeah.


Weight Watchers, according to their website, is “unique.” It’s different from all those other diet plans — in fact, it’s not one! And one of the main reasons it’s different is that they will give you “the knowledge and info you need to help you keep it off for good.” But for some strange, inexplicable reason, they still have to include the same disclaimer as every other diet program that touts its success with pictures of former fatties. The disclaimer that says, in slightly fewer words, We cannot legally claim that someone who lost weight and kept it off represents the typical consumer of our product, even though the entire purpose of our product is to help people lose weight and keep it off. Or, in still other words, In a majority of cases, our product does not do what it is meant to do.


Oddly enough, they still include that same disclaimer, even though this is not like all those other programs that include it. Even though this is the one that will teach you how to lose weight and keep it off for good! Somehow, despite having discovered the magic secret to permanent weight loss, they are still not willing and/or legally permitted to claim unreservedly that it works for most people.


Weird, huh?


Weight Watchers: A time-tested approach informed by analyzing years of scientific studies.


Diets: “Proof” often based on one scientific study designed to support the diet’s claims.


Okay, first, how “time-tested” can their approach be, when only thirty years ago, their approach was fucking Mackerelly? And when the Weight Watchers program I did in 2003 was a different program from what’s offered now (though what I did was very similar to the current “Flex” plan)? One of the slogans in the new campaign is, “If diets work, why do we need a new one every 5 minutes?” To which I respond, if Weight Watchers works, why does the whole program get revamped every five minutes?


And… *snicker* and… *BWAH* and… *wipes away tear*… I’m sorry, did Weight Watchers just slag off other diet programs for basing their claims on studies designed to support them? I need to go lie down.


Weight Watchers: Flexible food plans that can adapt to any lifestyle or unique needs.


Diets: Little consideration for you as an individual, with just one approach to suit everyone’s needs.


That’s right. Weight Watchers doesn’t offer “just one approach.” They’ve got TWO! The “Count our fancy POINTS instead of the calories and fat they represent!” plan, OR the “If you’re already a vegan who doesn’t eat sugar, you’ll never have to count anything again!” plan. SOMETHING FOR EVERYONE.


That’s it. That’s their whole list of ways Weight Watchers is different from “diets.” On the other hand, here are a few things the program involves that bear some small similarity to “diets”:



  • Restricting fat and calories

  • Exercising for the express purpose of being permitted to consume more fat and calories without breaking the rules

  • Focusing on weight loss as the primary goal

  • Weekly weigh-ins

  • Rewards and encouragement for losing weight

  • Zero guarantee that the program will help any given individual lose weight at all, let alone permanently

  • Warnings that people who do lose weight and keep it off are not “typical”of those who use the program

  • Warnings that “only permanent lifestyle changes - such as making healthful food choices and increasing physical activity - promote long-term weight loss.
” Promote long-term weight loss, you’ll note. Not guarantee it. Not even cause it. Merely promote it.
  • Blame placed entirely on the individual, not the program (much less the myth of long-term weight loss being possible for most people) — if permanent weight loss does not follow from adherence to the program



    • In this post, she addresses the "You must be lying about what you ate" factor at the mandatory weigh-in.

    I don't know about anyone else, but I just don't think it serves my mental health to pay good money to go someplace where if I haven't lost any weight between meetings they'll blame it on the Hall's Ice Blue Peppermint cough drops. I mean, think about it: COUGH DROPS? Are these the depths to which we must descend? I don't know about you, but I don't even LIKE cheesecake; but if you tell me that if I eat cheesecake it means I'm a lazy-ass slob, you can bet your life that I am going to respond by heading over to Mara's Bakery and buying the biggest-ass piece of cheesecake I can find.

    Accusing overweight women of lying about cough drops. This is a healthy lifestyle? But I really don't have time to rant about this any more. I'm taking my fat, lazy downstairs to do my morning yoga, after which I'll have a gluttonous breakfast consisting of a 100% whole wheat English muffin spread with a tablespoon of Smart Balance of Omega 3 peanut butter, a glass of milk, and a clementine. If I'm really feeling gluttonous, I might even have TWO clementines. Now if I were really committed to weight loss to start off the new year, I'd go outside and suck the frost off a grass leaf in the front yard.

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    9 Comments:
    Anonymous Anonymous said...
    Here are two links that both showed up on my screen over the past 24 hours that you might find interesting, related to this:

    1. The Judgment of Paris, a site devoted to "the timeless beauty of plus-sized women." A bit on the male-fantasy-oriented side, but it does a fair job of blowing away the myth that models and standards of beauty are limited to size-0.

    2. Discovery Health Channel's National Body Challenge "is a FREE comprehensive fitness and weight-loss challenge that provides the tools and inspiration — online, on television and beyond — to get in shape, shed extra pounds and adopt a healthier lifestyle." It comes with all sorts of fancy downloads, including an eight-week free membership to Bally's Total Fitness, and is a pretty good program overall. But the timing of its launch thoroughly supports what you're saying.

    Of course, those eight weeks also include N/a/t/i/o/n/a/l/ C/h/o/c/o/l/a/t/e/ D/a/y/ Hallmark's Mating Day, on February 14th. We'll see how they handle that. (Maybe they'll just advocate having more sex as being good exercise. That would be a nice change, in the mass media.)
    1/2/08, 8:51 AM  
    Anonymous Anonymous said...
    I agree with you Jill on many points. I feel that there is really no secret to living a healthier lifestyle, and these weight loss programs are just a waste of money (although it could be said that the money may provide some motivation to sticking to a diet or fitness program). i.e. "I just spent $300 on a gym membreship, I better fucking go or I'll lose that money".
    Anyway, I too suffer the guilt of being a bit chunky. Although, the past two years I made a new bargain with myself. I'll eat what I want, I'll just try to eat less. Plus I began running...which really helps. The truth is we should not feel pressure from anyone else, only I can make changes, and only I can live with the choices I make. Whether that's choosing to run, or choosing not to, its my decision.
    P.S. Is that smart balance peanut butter any good? I just eat my PB the way god intended, peanuts and salt....
    1/2/08, 10:19 AM  
    Anonymous Anonymous said...
    This is a "must-listen" interview about weight & diet:

    From Peoples' Pharmacy.
    1/2/08, 10:21 AM  
    Blogger Jill said...
    Rocky: If you are used to sweeter peanut butters like Skippy, the SB takes some getting used to, because it tastes pretty much of peanuts. There's a little molasses in it, but that's it. No hydrogenated oils, no corn syrup. And the chunky has HUGE peanut chunks. If you like it a bit sweeter, you can mix in a small squeeze of honey or some Trader Joe's blueberry no-sugar-added fruit spread.

    Whaleshaman: I'm familiar with Gary Taubes' work. Like Gina Kolata, he rocks.
    1/2/08, 10:31 AM  
    Blogger Kate Harding said...
    Given that January 1 occurs every year, and given that every year there's a spike in the purchase of diet products and gym memberships after the year turns, you'd think people would wonder why every year the market for diet products is so huge, and you'd think they'd put it together that maybe all these appetite suppressants and Slim-fast bars and overpriced, pharmaceutical-named snake oil, and whatever piece of plastic-and-metal crap Tony Little is pushing this year just don't work.

    Yeah, you'd think, wouldn't you?

    Sigh. :)
    1/2/08, 12:26 PM  
    Blogger Bob said...
    This comment has been removed by the author.
    1/2/08, 2:06 PM  
    Blogger Bob said...
    I knew a woman who was quite overweight, married also to a faithless husband (girls, cheaters have a character flaw, it isn't you). Like a lot of people, she had an all or nothing attitude. Once, as she was griping, I opened up the fridge door, pointed out the whole milk, real butter, bottled salad dressings. I mentioned the Entenmann's cookies & the crap cereal she bought for her son & ate herself. Get rid of those, I said, you probably lose 15-20 pounds over a few months. Do the easy stuff first. She never would. Because her weight wasn't really the most serious issue.It was just the one she saw in the mirror.
    1/2/08, 2:17 PM  
    Blogger Melina said...
    My experiences with weight watchers throughout my adult life have been largely positive. But, like with anything, Ive had to search out the sane people and try to reason with the illogical body dysmorphic part of myself that would have me starve until there is no me left.
    I have found that the WW plan has followed the prevailing science, and changed appropriately.
    The problem is that people want a quick fix without having to take the responsibility for the necessary portion size measurement that you have to do in order to get used to what a portion is, and the need to be aware of what you're putting in your mouth until you get used to how it feels to eat the amount that the body that you are projecting towards needs.
    The new plans and the prepackaged foods that they offer are good for when time is short and/or you're bored...I like having new science available...
    But the marketing suffers from having to get people into the place and needing to offer a quickstart thing, because thats when the most people drop out. I think that there is also a liability in that people might actually sue if they don't like like that person on TV.
    Of the manipulative weightloss crap out there, I think that WW does that model thin thing the least.
    My feeling has been that its better to lose weight slowly and not to look at the weekly loss, but to look at the trend over months. And to try to find a way to eat a healthy amount of what your body needs to live and make it part of your lifestyle without any of the system or program checks and balances.
    Im lucky in that I was raised by a health food mom who got me into brown rice and veggies early, so I love that stuff. I'm unlucky in that Im from a show biz family and my father's sucessful commercial business during my formative years and the resulting models in the 70's hanging round, really screwed me up about how I was supposed to look.
    Personally, I find that as I grow older and figure out more and more how I feel in my body, I feel lousy if I eat too much, and if I eat too much crap. I love candy and I can gain 20 lbs just from the gummies at night...and I find that it is painful to be heavy, in that my knees are bad, and I feel just uncomfortable moving around. Im still round at times depending on what has been going on, but there is a cutoff place at which I realize that I am trending upwards and need to adjust.
    I know that recognizing portion sizes early via WW and then throughout my life returning now and again, I have given myself control and a feeling that I am the one running this. Nothing is magic or fast, and its not all or nothing.
    A very good meeting leader that I had a year ago realized that I wasn't losing because I wasn't eating enough!! When I balanced the content of the points better I lost. Not losing for one or 5 weeks means nothing in a lifetime...but, at the same time, its just unhealthy to regularly drink full fat milk and slather butter on everything.If you're an adult and you want to live to a decent age, you don't do anything to excess.
    A friend of mine almost died a couple of years ago and he had to get a stomach band in order to get thin enough for a very important operation. Its been a total life change because the very enjoyment of eating has had to be whittled down to a few tablespoons of balanced foods...but then with that sacrifice comes his ability to play music again, play gigs, dance, work at a gym part time and know all sorts of more people....its opened other outlets in life. and that is the ultimate portion control. The mind adjusts eventually.

    I don't have anything against anyone who just wants to eat until they are full, and balance things, and just be with their body type, not trying to fight it.
    The OCD eating that goes on alot in America is a real problem. It is some sort of shutting down of emotion or repetitive soothing action that results in this unhealthy lifestyle and feeling out of control. Its worth looking into that medically, psychologically, and especially looking at brain chemicals, because the hole that is sometimes there and if filled by one compulsion or another, can be due to a imbalance in something as simple as seratonin...which also is produced during exercise, and might be increased just through increasing that!
    Most of the women I have known through WW have pretty normal goal weights. I don't notice anyone trying to be a sz 0. Maybe thats because Im in the suburbs rather than in the fashionable part of the city or something.

    Like anything else, there are good meetings and bad meetings. Ive had a lot of trouble finding leaders who really know nutrition...and Ive done less of the actual meetings and more of the weigh in and leave, or the online thing, than to get overly involved anymore unless I find someone great. If you have a bad leader or youre getting nitpicked, you need to switch who youre dealing with.
    When I hear people talking about not having lost enough or how fast they are losing to fit some piece of clothing or impossible goal, I try to talk to them and set them straight. Its about the long run, and even maintaining is good enough for some people, for the time being.
    I find it doable, realistic, and maintainable in real life. Any weight loss depends on lifestyle change and thats not easy. It really depends on exercise and having to be aware of what goes in your mouth, probably forever. But it doesn't mean that you can never have a cough drop again...or some huge special meal ...it just means that you cant do it on a regular basis...and you have to learn to balance things.
    It should only be about feeling good in your body, and being able to move around now and when you're old. All the rest falls away.

    To say that the program is bad or not worth looking at because the advertising has promised something, or shown something that is not usual, and to reject it because of some bad experiences in particular meetings, is throwing out the baby with the bathwater.
    The thing works. Its not a starvation diet. It is realistic.
    and unfortunately they have advertising agencies doing what most American companies feel that they have to do. But if you write this program off because of some perception of it being just too hard or misrepresented by Fergie (who never got stick thin herself) you're only throwing away a tool that you may be able to use one day.
    1/4/08, 9:52 PM  
    Blogger Jill said...
    Melina, I adore you like a sister, but we're going to have to agree to disagree about this. Maybe YOUR WW affiliate works like this, but go read the kinds of things that OTHER chapters of WW have told people in this post at Kate Harding's place.

    As for eating the amount that the body you're aiming for needs, that doesn't work either. For many of us who tend to store fat, the body responds to being deprived by interpreting that deprivation as famine -- and slowing down accordingly. This is why when I was 26 I was losing less than a pound a week on a 300 calorie a day diet while going to the gym five nights a week, doing circuits for 1/2 hour and then an hour of aerobics. And I lost a grand total of thirteen pounds in sixteen weeks before plateauing at 105. I did get down to 100 once when I had an intestinal flu for three days, and then I ate a piece of toast and a cup of tea with honey and my weight was immediately 105 again. The minute I started to eat again, the pounds started to pile on, even faster now because my body knew that I could starve it again at any minute.

    Contrary to popular belief, most fat women who have access to fresh foods don't gorge on fast foods and junk all the time. There is an argument to be made about "eating only till you're satiated" but I don't think most of us need to pay Weight Watchers to know that.

    From where I'm sitting, with an obese mother who's still alive at 80 and still smoking after having had lung cancer 20 years ago and an obese father whose heart is still fine and dandy at 82, I'm thinking that moderate food consumption combined with moderate exercise is just fine and dandy. The stress of self-loathing is, IMHO, far more dangerous than weight.
    1/5/08, 7:40 PM  
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