Hugging and Chalking

This blog is about obesity and the inanity/insanity it spawns, the encroaching lawsuits and growing diet industry. Obesity is a matter of genes and personal responsibility. You can have an endocrine problem, or you can have a balance problem (too many calories and too little exercise). It’s not where you eat, but how much you eat; it’s not McDonald’s fault, or Mama’s fault, or Washington’s fault if your body is too fat or too thin. Rosabelle.

Tuesday, November 30, 2004

Food Porn and Chick Lit

Why do the heroines of chick lit have such a battle with food?

Read the interesting article by Susan Wise Bauer. She analyzes the weight issues in the following books:

Jennifer Crusie, Bet Me (St. Martin's Press, 2004).

Jane Green, Jemima J. (Broadway Books, 2000).

Kelly James-Enger, Did You Get the Vibe? (Kensington, 2003).

Marian Keyes, Sushi For Beginners (William Morrow, 2003).

Anna Maxted, Running in Heels (HarperCollins, 2001).

Jennifer Weiner, Good In Bed (Washington Square Press, 2001).

Lauren Weisberger, The Devil Wears Prada (Doubleday, 2003).

Saturday, November 27, 2004

CDC overestimates deaths from obesity

"The Wall Street Journal reported this week that the CDC plans to revise its obesity death toll downward, reportedly by about 80,000 fatalities — a good start, but an estimate that, in my opinion, remains way too high. CDC chief Gerberding acknowledged to the Journal that “there had been human errors in the [CDC’s] calculations.” "Full story here.

Friday, November 26, 2004

High-Fat Diets and Cognitive Impairment

"High-fat diets may be associated with an increased risk of heart disease, hypertension, and diabetes. New evidence presented at the 2004 Neuroscience conference now shows that cognitive impairment, with loss of learning ability and memory, may be 1 more substantial drawback to this dietary strategy." Highlights of the Society for Neuroscience 34th Annual Meeting at Medscape.com

Thursday, November 25, 2004

The Economic consequences of weight loss for business

“A regional health plan calculated that it saved nearly $850 overall in per-person medical costs the year after an overweight member lost 5% or more body weight in a voluntary program.” Read the whole story about what happened at Kaiser Permanente Northwest Center for Health Research in Portland, Oregon, and how they arrived at this figure.

Thursday, November 04, 2004

I could have made a fortune

In the spring of 1960, I discovered I weighed more than my boyfriend. On a shopping trip to downtown Champaign around the same time, I learned I would need to go up a dress size, to a 15. So I did what any sensible college girl in love would do--I went on a diet.

Although dieting wasn’t as common then (I didn’t see any anorexics until about 1963), I had dabbled in dieting--usually giving up candy, donuts and desserts. This time I was serious. No second helpings (we ate family style in the dorm), no snacks, no desserts, no ice cream, no bread, no potatoes, no milk as a drink.

We had two sets of twins in the dorm--in both cases, one was heavier than the other by 10 pounds or so. I watched them. The heavier twin always ate faster and left the table early. So I slowed down my eating and played with my food like the thin twins. I don’t think I’d ever seen a calorie counter then, but I estimate now that I cut my daily calories by half.

How had I put on 25 pounds in three years when we didn’t have fast food companies to blame and I never watched TV advertising (the dorms didn‘t have a TV and neither did my parents)? Pizza was growing in popularity, but I‘d tried it once and didn‘t like it. I didn’t drink pop and had never had a beer, the drink of choice for most college kids. Although there were pop machines (bottles) in the dorms, there were no snack machines in the library, the dorm, or the classroom buildings to make eating on the run as convenient as today.

However, I drank milk like kids today drink pop. It is nutritious, but added to a full plate (or two), it added about 200 calories to each meal. Our dorm had a great cook--and seconds were always available. Because I had worked the lunch counter at two different drug stores, I was an avid consumer of ice cream. One sandwich usually wasn’t enough for a lunch. I would buy a candy bar--usually with nuts--each time I passed a drug store. Anyway, to make a fat story thin, by September 1960 I had lost 25 pounds using my plan and was back to a size 9.

Therefore, when I read about the money being made with low-carb or low-fat diets, I sometimes think I should have marketed my “no-no” diet--i.e., just say no to those foods, quantities and eating habits making you fat. For each person it is different, and in each stage of life it is different. I have no problem with ice cream or candy today, but will willingly fight you for the last cracker with cheddar cheese. So I was interested to read a recent evaluation of low-carb diets.

At a recent conference on obesity (February 2004), the session "Special Diets in Weight Management: Do They Work?" examined key concepts of the Atkins diet, South Beach diet, and Mediterranean diet. According to Lisa Sanders, MD, Yale University, an estimated 40 million Americans have tried a low-carbohydrate diet, and 10-20 million are currently on a low-carb diet. Medscape Public Health and Prevention, Vol. 2 (1), 2004.

“Rigorous, long-term studies of low-carb diets have been published only recently, noted Dr. Sanders. . . [She] summarized the findings with respect to claims of the Atkins diet. In the 6-month studies, the low-carb dieters lost more weight than the low-fat dieters; however, at 1 year, weight lost was the same because the low-carb dieters had regained the weight they lost in the early part of the diet. In the 6-month studies, the low-carb dieters were able to limit their caloric intake to the same level as those on a low-calorie diet. The dropout rates were the same for participants in the low-carb and low-fat diet groups.”

Another speaker at this conference said, “Obesity is the plight of a species that lives in a world for which it is poorly adapted, not the fault of the individual.” According to him, our bodies are pre-programmed to conserve fat in preparation for famine, but we live in a country that raises 3800 calories a day for every man, woman and child.

Don’t you hate to see Americans being set up to have the government take charge of our eating habits, either through regulating the restaurant industry or taxing our calories? But that‘s what I read in obesity warnings. I’m no smarter, strong-willed, or more clever than the next person, and unless a person has an endocrine system not working or an affliction that prevents exercising, there is no reason to be eating those 3800 calories just because someone is producing and selling them.

Wednesday, November 03, 2004

Why are people growing larger?

WHY ARE PEOPLE EATING MORE AND GROWING LARGER?
• Americans eat 200 more calories/day today than in the 1970s.
• U.S. Department of Agriculture blames noshing and nibbling.
• Food is cheaper than 80 years ago; restaurant prices are lower; incomes are higher.
• Nature of the workplace – more sedentary jobs today than 50 years ago.
BURGER, FRIES AND LAWYERS: by Todd G. Buchholz 2003

Monday, November 01, 2004

Miss Digital World

Apparently real women will never be thin enough, so someone has to design them. Get a load of the height and weight of the “models” in Miss Digital World.

Kaya 5’5” 121 lbs.
Ilana 5’11” 120 lbs.
Mamegal 5’4” 102 lbs.
Webbie 5’9” 110 lbs.
Sophie 5’8” 115 lbs.

Except for Kaya, a real person at these weights would look like a refugee from a prison camp. But you can be sure what little weight they have all seems to be located on the chest.