The other day I saw an article entitled, “Dr. Christian Jessen: Clean eating websites like Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop ‘indistinguishable from pro-anorexia websites.’” Dr. Christian Jessen is a British TV doctor, much like our Dr. Oz (I’m guessing). He presented a popular UK show called Embarrassing Bodies, which is apparently a show where people with “embarrassing bodies” (with ailments usually thought to be taboo) can get help:

Throughout its numerous series, Embarrassing Bodies has set out to aid people who have a variety of medical issues. These issues tend to be taboo or misunderstood. With the help of its patients and the diagnoses of its doctors, the show tries to make common medical issues, especially those that are “embarrassing” or sexual, understood and to debunk myths surrounding them. The programme’s method of tackling these issues has caused great success and has attracted large numbers of people to its website.

I can’t vouch for the show and I can think of a zillion ways in which it could go horribly wrong and involve all sorts of body shaming (just the name for example suggests an uncritical view of what counts as an “embarrassing” body). So don’t come away thinking I’m all for Dr. Jessen either.

But, I’m less concerned about Dr. Jessen or even about whether what he says about Goop is true, close to true, exaggerated, or false (I doubt it’s totally false since the site does promote “clean eating,” about which I have expressed a great deal of skepticism). What I’m mostly concerned about, actually, is “why does someone like Gwyneth Paltrow have so much influence when it comes to health and wellness?”

In a word: celebrity. Gwyneth Paltrow is a beautiful and even likeable celebrity. She’s a thin, glamorous, academy-award winning actor and style icon. This we know to be true. And for all that, she has gained a great deal of unearned credibility and influence over people’s health choices.

Jessen says of sites like Goop,

“When you look at the actual medical side, the health side, they so rarely are promoting anything that is even vaguely healthy.

“Look at Gwyneth: You know, the crap that she writes, it’s just overwhelmingly mind boggling for a doctor to see that – the number of people following it and going along (with it) is just terrifying.”

The “extreme diets” hailed by celebrities, which often exclude entire food groups such as wheat and gluten, are are being falsely presented as healthy, he added, and can become a guise for teenage addiction and eating disorders.

Jessen is critical, as am I, of “fitspiration” or “fitspo.” A lot of it is thinly-cloaked “thinspo,” which is itself thinly veiled pro-ana or pro-mia (pro anorexia and pro bulimia) in its messaging.

Okay, so let’s get back to the point about celebrity. In philosophy there is a fallacy called “the appeal to authority.” way back in the early days of the blog, I wrote about this in relation to Dr. Oz. You appeal to authority when you accept something as true because “so and so said it.” Now at least Oz and Jessen are doctors.

In Gwyneth’s case, her “authority” rests on even thinner ice, namely, her fame. So whatever the status of anything that appears on Gwyneth’s Goop, it doesn’t get a speck of actual credibility from the fact of Gwyneth saying it.

Now I understand that it’s a celebrity game. Oprah plays it well and has used it to her advantage as a major shareholder in Weight Watchers. Celebrity diets are big money. And they don’t work (see here for my thoughts on celebrity diets not working). And that’s why Sam wants to hug Oprah.

So appealing to authority is a fallacy. And appealing to celebrity? Well fallacies don’t really come in degrees, but if they did I would venture to say it’s even more of a fallacy.

I asked this before and I’ll ask it again: does a celebrity endorsement make you more or less likely to take a health claim seriously?

 

I’m on holidays in Madrid. And today, in the way one does in large European cities, I walked a lot. Really a lot. Like 21,855 steps. The only day I’ve achieved a higher step count from walking alone was last year at this time in Edinburgh. Those were also very hilly steps. But today’s steps were also warm. It was so warm in Madrid that they’ve cancelled the afternoon bike tours of the city that we’d planned on doing.  So I am tired. My feet hurt. I’m drinking lots of water and feeling a sense of achievement.

I am looking forward to logging my daily steps. You see I’m doing this workplace health and fitness step counting challenge. I blogged about it here and Tracy wrote about decision to try it again after hating it last year here.

I’m on a team that is composed of multi sport athletes. We’re not just walking and counting steps. We’re also swimming, running, and biking. Me, I’m mostly just biking. (My biggest step count day was the day I rode over a 100 km.) It’s a team of over achievers. Given that a few of us are training for Ironman distance events our numbers are high. My very big day in Madrid is still below the team daily average step count of 23,500.

It’s funny being the weak link. But in a bunch of ways it suits me. What do I mean exactly by being the weak link?

I’m not doing that badly. My average daily step count is about 15,000 (that includes a conversion they do for cycling.) My biggest day yet was over 40,000. Not too shabby right?

There was one challenge day we were supposed to mark as a team by picking a day and aiming for 150,000 total steps on that day. We didn’t need to pick a day. This team does that everyday.

So do I feel guilty dragging down the team average? No. I feel motivated. I probably wouldn’t feel motivated if I were the high achieving member of a team. I might even get annoyed at people on my team who weren’t trying.

I like riding people who are faster than me, lifting with people who are stronger than me, and so on. So in this I’m motivated by step counting with the big dogs.

How about you? Are you motivated by riding with people who are faster, having workout buddies who are fitter? Or does that just depress and demoralize you? I know it works different ways for different people? What’s your way?

 

I’m no fan of bucket lists, see Bucket lists bug me, but there are some rides I’d really like to do. One of them is the Vatterrundan, THE WORLD’S LARGEST RECREATIONAL BIKE EVENT. I found out about last year when I was at a conference in Sweden (Children’s Rights – origins, normativity, transformations, prospects, Linköping University, June 7 – 9, 2016) and asked the conference organizer Bengdt Sandin  about the sign pictured above. He enthusiastically told me all about the event as he’d done it several times in the past.

It’s 300 km and is held at a time of the year when there’s lots of daylight in Sweden. My usual worries about running out of light were somewhat allayed.

Vätternrundan (pronounced vet-turn-rund-an) is the largest recreational bicycle ride in the world. The 300 km course follows the shoreline of the beautiful Lake Vättern and early starters can see the sun set and rise over the lake during the ride.

Vätternrundan starts and finishes in Motala, Sweden, whose population swells to three times its size during the cycling events. The cyclists, their friends and relatives and the thousands of bicycles create a festival atmosphere, making the bike ride that extra special. Many cyclists return year after year to be a part of this large and welcoming cycling community.

The course appeals to all sorts of bicycle enthusiasts and the level of service along the course is very high. Word of this well-organised event has spread far beyond the borders of Sweden. More than 50 different nations is represented.

Because Vätternrundan is a recreational ride, no winners are listed. Instead cyclists wear a timing chip that registers their individual times. These times can be seen under Results. Everyone can check what time they started, when they passed the check points and what time they arrived at the finish in Motala.

There’s more about the history of the event on its Wikipedia page.

Here’s a shot of the lake around which the cyclists ride:

What appeals to me? It’s not a race but it is a challenging distance. I’d have to train up to it. It’s a beautiful, friendly part of the world. And also I love breakfast and coffee in Sweden.

I’ve even blogged before about my dream of doing this ride!

What’s your big, dream event? What attracts you to it? Why?

I know people think that going vegan means you’re going to lose weight. I mean, how could a person possibly gain weight when there’s hardly anything they can eat? Lately, I’ve read something even more alarming than the (false) assumption that going vegan will make you thin.

The more alarming thing is that there are “vegan” bloggers who recommend the vegan diet for minimizing or getting rid of menstruation. Why? Because they think there’s something not right or natural about menstruation. It’s a sign of a “toxic” diet they say.

Freelee the Bananagirl is a vlogger on YouTube who follows a 100% raw vegan diet and touts as one of its benefits that she lost her period within one month of starting it. If a painful or heavy period is the sign of a toxic diet, then raw vegan is…you guessed it…clean! Raw vegan blogger Miliany claims that women and girls have been “brainwashed” to believe that losing their periods is a bad thing when, she says, a “non-menstruating body indicates the body is clean.” I’ve already blogged at length about why the whole idea of “clean” eating is a crock.

If you couple clean eating with this idea that menstruation, one of the most natural things in the life of many women, is somehow bad for you, then you can get some idea of how removed from reality the proponents of this type of veganism for this type of reason really are.

Loss of periods, also known as amenorrhea, is a symptom commonly used to diagnose the eating disorder anorexia nervosa. It’s just not medically sound to claim that periods are a sign of ill health.

Dr Jackie Maybin, a clinical lecturer in obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Edinburgh, warns against changing your diet in an attempt to alter your menstrual cycle.

“It’s difficult to recommend a strict vegan diet without investigating hormone levels and endometrial health in these women,” she says of bloggers like Freelee and Milliany. “It’s likely that the complete absence of periods—amenorrhea—indicates that ovulation is not occurring and could have a significant negative impact on reproductive health.”

According to this post, Freelees post about using raw vegan eating to eliminate your period is extremely popular even though it was posted over 8 years ago. A more recent clip she posted about heavy periods being bad for you has had over 250,000 views.

I’m vegan. I didn’t lose weight when I became vegan nor did I do it to lose weight. I stopped eating animal products for ethical considerations having to do with the unnecessary suffering and cruelty towards animals that is a systemic issue in industrial animal agriculture. I didn’t lose my period when I become vegan and that’s a good thing.

Vegan is not necessarily about “clean eating.” And clean eating is not necessarily a healthy approach to eating. Indeed, it can lead to orthorexia, which is an eating disorder characterized by an obsession with “healthy” foods.

Medical opinion is that it’s not a great strategy to try to control or lose your periods by eating an excessively restricted diet.

Maybin warns that a very restrictive diet or excessive exercise can also lead to a condition called hypothalamic hypogonadism. “In menstruating women, the brain sends signals to the ovaries to produce hormones to regulate the endometrium. This results in ovulation and, if pregnancy does not occur, menstruation.

“In hypothalamic hypogonadism, the body assumes a state of stress and shuts off the signal from the brain to the ovaries. This reverts the body to a pre-pubescent like state, where pregnancy is not possible as the ovaries temporarily shut down and menstruation does not occur.

“If this state is maintained long term, women can have problems due to low estrogen levels, e.g. risk of loss of bone mineral density and osteoporosis.”

While she says that not enough research has been done to know exactly what effects diet can have on menstruation, it makes sense that a “healthy balanced diet”—i.e. one that does not excessively restrict certain food groups—is good for all women and their periods.

So while I’m not one to recommend against going vegan, I do recommend against adopting fanatical restrictions for the purposes of ceasing menstruation if you’re a menstruating woman.

Have you, like me, noticed an increasing tendency to co-opt the label “vegan” and use it as code for disordered eating?

 

Hilarious Moms Explain Why Bathing Suits Are Bullsh*t.  You’ve seen it, right?

I like saying “bathing suits are bullsh*t.”It’s new to me this swearing thing.

Lots of friends shared this video about women trying on and complaining about bathing suits. I wanted to like it. “You know what’s sexy? Joy.” Yes. I liked that bit. But I could do without the jokes about the guys with hairy backs and the claim that men can wear whatever they want at the beach. They can’t.  See Men it isn’t junk  and Men, meet normative thinness .

It’s true things are easier for men but fat guys can’t wear whatever they want at the beach without mockery. And then there’s all the poking fun at fashion trends for men this year, whether it’s rompers or lace shorts. You know what. Wear what you want, or wear nothing at all, and be happy.

And I could really do without the joke that women who do wear the skimpy cut out suits are responsible for their kids acting out at school. They’re not.

So yeah. I like the bonding over bathing suit season but let’s not throw others under the bus while we’re doing it.