weigh-2-go.org

I’m not talking about the Beatles’ song, but “The Biggest Loser.”

I started watching the show online as a matter of research for this blog. I mean really, how can I blog about weight control issues without knowing what this show is about?

Host Alison Sweeney introduces the fitness challenge with high drama.

It didn’t take long for me to form strong opinions about the advice and role models Americans are getting from this show.

Yet, I keep watching episode after episode.

Oh, I shed a tear when Sherry got voted off. And then I really sobbed when O’Neal and Sunshine had that heartfelt father-daughter talk. Then O’Neal walked up the steps to the scale, finally light enough to take pressure off the knee injury that has crippled him for years! Michael is showing real character, still shedding major pounds even while his Grandmother is dying. And wow, Sam is looking hot!

Oh yeah, I’m a loser all right. Reality TV has got me.

Here’s the stuff that makes my eyeballs roll back in my head. Bob, the trainer, takes aside one player in each episode for some serious health advice coupled with an awkward embedded product advertisement. As each player is voted off, it is foreshadowed with some melodrama that I suspect is incited by the producers of the show.

What I fear “The Biggest Loser” is teaching Americans is that it’s healthy and normal to lose 5-10 pounds per week (after all, Dr. H is on campus supervising everything, right?); that these intense workouts (“Last Chance Workout!”) are good for everybody, even the most obese; and that what makes good TV makes good practice for weight loss. I have serious doubts.

Yet, I keep watching. I’m a loser all right.

When I am hungry, I feel nervous. I’m like a squirrel, darting around to find a nut. In the kitchen, when I am impatient to eat what I’m cooking, I get butterflies in my stomach. (There’s an old Joan Rivers joke from back in the day when Elizabeth Taylor was fat and microwave ovens were novel: “She stands in front of the microwave and yells, ‘Hurry up!’”)

I’ve noticed lately that I have conditioned myself, conversely, to eat when I am nervous. Aha! I’m in the habit of responding to nervousness with food–whether or not the nervousness is about hunger. I bet a lot of people do something like this.

So I was interested to read a passage in “Change Your Brain, Change Your Body” by Daniel G. Amen, MD, discussing the brain’s responses to food.

MIT researchers demonstrated that simple carbohydrates, such as cookies or candy, boost seratonin levels. [Seratonin relieves anxiety, depression, and obsessive thinking.]

[Researchers Matthew Gailliot and Roy Baumeister] write that self-control failures are more likely to occur when blood sugar is low. Low blood sugar levels can make you feel hungry, irritable, or anxious–all of which make you likely to make poor choices. Many everyday behaviors can cause dips in blood sugar levels, including … consuming sugary snacks or beverages, which causes an initial spike in blood sugar then a crash about thirty minutes later.

Therefore, anxiety and eating is a vicious cycle. I eat to relieve anxiety. If I happen to eat something sweet, then my blood sugar level crashes. When it does, not only do I crave more sugar (especially if I am still anxious), but I lack the mental self-control to make a healthier choice.

I wonder if this cycle leads to all-or-nothing thinking in dieting: if I eat one cookie, then the diet is blown and I might as well have another, and another.

Being aware of this vicious cycle, and the physiological goings-on that cause it, are helping me see it when it happens and say “Stop already.”

My weakness: the drawer full of Zone Bars (evil disguised as health food) at an office where I work. Stop already.

Here’s a blog post on the Huffington Post that I wholeheartedly agree with:

Do We Need a Fattitude Adjustment?
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Here’s the comment I wrote:

Amazing, the diversity of viewpoints here. Some questions not yet considered:

– I agree that parents’ behavior is at issue for childhood obesity. But “lack of willpower” doesn’t explain the phenomenon, either. Millions of adults genuinely try, but fail, to lose weight. Why?

– Yes, parents “should” control their kids’ eating, but we don’t live in a society where parents have that control. Kids feed themselves now, candy machines are everywhere, school lunches are filled with junk, and parents are too busy to cook nutritious meals with real ingredients. Fast food fits the lifestyle of parents *and* their children. How do we fix *that*?

– Sugar in its many forms is hard to escape in our food supply, and it’s an addictive substance that causes the brain to want more. (If you don’t believe this, try living without any processed/packaged food for 2 days.)

Dr. Katz, thank you for articulating an intelligent response to the “rock and a hard place” we find ourselves trapped in, as we work to fight obesity, not the people who are obese.

By the way, if the official definition of obesity is the 95th percentile, what happens when 20% of kids are obese? Do we need a definition based on symptoms instead of statistics?

A quick add-on to today’s post.

As the nation starts to address obesity as an epidemic and a social issue, here’s a revealing blog post from the fat side.

Does the Obesity Task Force [of Tennessee] Even Have Any Obese People On It?
http://blogs.nashvillescene.com/pitw/2010/03/does_the_obesity_task_force_ev.php

A Page from NAAFA.org.

And here’s an obesity defense group:

NAAFA.org | We Come In All Sizes | The National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance
http://www.naafa.org

This morning on NPR’s Morning Edition, I was half-listening to a report that Air France has decided to allow large people to occupy two seats on a plane for free. This is a reversal of a policy to charge for the extra seat, which had earned the company “the ire of obesity defense groups,” said the reporter on my radio.

“Obesity defense groups” tugged at my ear. Research!

But first, a statement of values is on order. Where do I stand in defense of obesity? What bias do I have? (And I do have one, as I will demonstrate.)

I put being overweight in the same category as the following:

• parenthood
• using mind-altering drugs
• collecting guns
• attending crafts festivals
• reading porn magazines
• working in food service
• swimming laps
• watching Bill O’Reilly

I know people  who practice these things, and I defend their right to do so. But experience and instinct tell me they are not right for me.

What Book Are We Reading?

Brief tangent: I was at a book club meeting to discuss “The Awakening” by Kate Chopin. Spoiler Alert: The main character, an affluent mother with a working husband in New Orleans in the late 1800s, quietly rebels against convention, but becomes isolated from love and society, and commits suicide. At our meeting, Jennifer was very upset. “She could have started a salon to discuss great ideas! She could have become a painter or a musician! She had children to raise! She didn’t have to kill herself!” To which Sally answered calmly, “Jennifer, that’s not the book we’re reading.”

Being thin? As a society, that’s not the book we’re reading. Oh sure, we have options, but we take the options we take, because we live in this world, here, now.

And it’s a weird world where statistically “normal” weights are rising, but being large is alternately normalized, then marginalized by our culture in a bipolar way. The message of diet books, Jamie Oliver, and The Biggest Loser is: everyone would be better off thin. Sponsored by TGI Friday’s, Burger King, and Comcast with 250 channels. Those shows don’t really have those sponsors, but we all see those ads–they’re in our culture and our heads–and they resonate with our familiar lifestyles.

What would happen to the economy if 80% of Americans cooked–really cooked–18 meals per week, and replaced 5 hours per week of TV/video/gaming time with exercise? That’s what it would take for American’s to be fit. That’s not the book we’re reading.

And, as a former borderline-obese person, who has: been rudely blown off by the rail-thin retail girl at Victoria’s Secret; sat in theater seats obviously not designed for the width of her butt; and huffed and puffed like the Big Bad Wolf after climbing office stairs behind thin coworkers; I remember being marginalized.

I do believe that obese people require defense.

But I admit my bias in the “everyone would be better off thin” camp. Here’s how I demonstrate my bias: I really enjoyed Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution (watch entire episodes and video shorts online). But here’s a scathing review on the Shakesville Blog that I can’t entirely argue with, either. Wow–as in politics, we hear and see the same things, and come away with totally different opinions. Based on whatever book we’re reading.