For the past two weeks, I’ve been teaching fallacies in my critical thinking class. You know, those bad argument forms with latin names like post hoc ergo propter hoc and tu quoque. Philosophers ’round the world teach them so students can see more clearly how much bad reasoning is swirling around them, why it’s bad, and how not to fall prey to it. Not bad work if you can get it.
On Tuesday, while discussing the appeal to authority fallacy, I pulled up a slide with examples of cases where someone endorses a claim who is portrayed as an authority, but who, in reality, isn’t one. Enter Oprah.
Oprah giving a speech about WW, the rebranded name of Weight Watchers, in which she was financially invested.
As I tell my students, Oprah isn’t a nutrition authority– she’s not a nutritionist or dietician. That’s sufficient to illustrate the fallacy. But what I don’t say (because I’m teaching logic, not feminism or socio-cultural analysis) is that Oprah kind of IS an authority on weight loss (and weight gain), inasmuch as she’s done it dozens of times, all in public view. We’ve written about her a few times on the blog. You might check them out.
And there’s my post from 2017 featuring fallacies, Oprah and the risks of celebrity meal plans and cookbooks. Take a look below and let us know what you think. Is WW on your radar screen? Is Oprah? What are you seeing and thinking? Let us know.
I shared the info Bixi shared with me after biking around the city recently and complained about the calorie counting.
Why on earth do they share calorie information?
Friends chimed in and we had an interesting conversation. Why do I care about calorie info? Can’t I just ignore it? What’s my objection?
Nicole wondered if it motivates some people to bike maybe it’s not such a bad thing, as long as they don’t obsess about it. While they are thinking about calories, they are still getting the bigger benefit of movement, after all.
I’m still not a fan. Why? I think this covers the main points.
First, I hate calorie counts because they’re part of the association of exercise with weight loss which I really hate. I’ve had a go at this topic many times here on the blog but probably the best version is here.
Second, there’s no way it’s accurate. Thanks Miles for that point.
Third, some people find it triggering. If there are people that the calorie info attracts, there will also be people with a history of disordered eating who avoid Bixi for its calorie counting talk. Thanks Audra for this reminder.
Also, it might just completely miss the mark. As my friend Daniel, the only Montrealer in on the conversation pointed out, people use Bixi because it’s convenient.
“For the most part, Bixi has just become a vital part of Montreal’s public transport infrastructure. There are tons of trips for which Bixi just is the most efficient choice…I think a lot of people have adopted them just to have that extra degree of flex in their public transport palette.”
I think it might be cool to share info on the effect of your bike ride on your carbon footprint. How much less carbon did you use biking instead of driving? Yes, it’s not always doing to be accurate but likely not less so than calorie counts. It might not be motivational for everyone but at least it won’t put anyone off.
“Some podcasts only talk the talk, but in today’s episode David and Ellie walk the walk (or talk the walk?) by diving into the philosophy of walking. Walking is a complex sociocultural practice that raises fascinating questions about history, power, and freedom. Why did our ancestors transition from walking on all fours to walking on two legs, and how did this shape our evolution as a species? Why have so many philosophers throughout history (from Aristotle to Rousseau) insisted on incorporating walks into their daily routines? And how do systems of oppression—such as classism, racism, sexism, transphobia, and ableism—mold our experience of walking, determining where and even how we can walk?”
“After analyzing government services through a process known as “gender-balanced budgeting,” many Swedish cities, including Stockholm, prioritize snow clearance very differently. They now clear walkways and bike paths first, especially those near bus stops and primary schools. Next, they clear local roads, and then, finally, highways.”
Who’s that Bond villain stroking a cat and yelling at beloved public figures? It’s Karl Lagerfeld! This week, Mike and Aubrey go in on fashion’s favorite turbo troll and his fancy, joyless diet. This episode serves four.”
The cover of a book called “The Karl Lagerfeld Diet” by Dr. Jean-Claude Houdret features a full-body photo of a very thin Karl Lagerfeld wearing tight jeans, boots, a black blazer, black sunglasses, and a bright white ponytail.
“New Year’s resolutions. We’ve all had one at some point, and we’ve all probably given up on at least one, if not more. In fact, the next couple weeks are the time when most people will give up on their resolutions, from being nicer to their mom to going to the gym. If your resolution is to get along better with your mother, maybe you should try to stick that one out. But if your resolution has anything to do with weight loss or dieting, it’s actually OK to let it go. You should base your New Year’s resolutions — or any self-improvement goal, really — on health and fitness rather than dieting or losing weight. “
“In this episode of Eat the Rules, I’m continuing the body image series and talking all about body neutrality – what it is and isn’t, and what it looks like in real life.”
CW: Talk of weight gain, negative body image, and the potential for intentional weight loss
I’ve put on some additional body fat this year. I’m not totally ok with it. I mean, I’m OK in the sense that my world isn’t coming to an end, but I was more comfortable in my body when it was smaller. And the habits I had that kept me at that smaller size were absolutely healthy, sustainable habits for me. Until they weren’t for a while.
I’m going to say some things that I know aren’t in alignment with everyone in this community, starting with the fact that I’m ok if you have decided you’re more comfortable in a smaller body. I don’t think that feeling is always problematic. However, I do think we need to examine the reasons why we are more comfortable and make sure we’re being honest about what we have control over and that our reasons for wanting to be smaller that are based upon our own values, not someone else’s.
After all, what if you do some soul-searching and realize you have a belief that being a bigger size makes you less successful? What if you feel less attractive or less worthy in a bigger body? Most likely, these are not beliefs that stem from your own values but rather a reflection of internalized fat-phobia. So, when you notice this bias, approach it with curiosity, and then decide how you want to live your life and what kind of world you want to live in. If it’s important to you to address this internalized fat-phobia, then there are things you can do to counteract it. One of them isn’t being mean to yourself for realizing you have work to do. I think unlearning fat-phobia and misogyny are lifelong processes, just as unlearning and dismantling our complicity with White supremacy will require a lifetime of attention and learning. I’m ok with that. These are complicated challenges, and we are co-creating new societies and cultures. That work will take time, and it is appropriate that it does.
So, I’m not gonna get down on you, or myself, for noticing some shame about the changes in our bodies. I’m also not going to say that the only solution is learning to accept our bodies larger. We can choose that solution. It’s on the table to do absolutely nothing to intentionally change size and to instead focus on feelings. In fact, if you or I decide we aren’t ok with this larger size, we will still need to deal with these feelings in order to find a healthy, balanced approach to changing things. The lifestyle and habit changes that come from a place of shame or self-judgement are not going to be changes anyone would want to sustain. Who wants to live in perpetual self-punishment?
Doing the work of learning to accept ourselves without judgement, even when we’re currently uncomfortable in our bodies, will likely take some time and reeducation. We must notice our feelings. Question the beliefs that they stem from. Learn to reframe our thoughts. It will take time and patience for this process.
I am bigger that I was a year ago and for a long time, it was really uncomfortable for me–physically and psychologically uncomfortable. I found myself feeling like I’d failed, like I was less valid.
However, I’ve been working on building up my healthy habits again and finding new mindsets that help me see the work I’m doing, not just a measurement against some false finish line. One of the biggest lies of diet culture is that the only changes that matter are big changes and the only changes in our bodies that matter are dramatic transformations. I’ve been working on noticing my internalized fat-phobia–how often I’m so much harder on myself than I would be to anyone else, expecting myself to make big, dramatic changes, and I’m working on counteracting this narrative in my head. As a result, I’m feeling pretty good right now. I’m a tetch smaller than I was a few months ago, but that doesn’t compare to how it feels to being able to move again without pain in my joints. It doesn’t compare to how it feels to be eating in ways that gives me more consistent energy–not bouncing between loaded down and overfed, and hungry and undernourished. I’ve made this progress because I’ve given myself credit for the work along the way, even when it seemed small or “insignificant.”
For me, this work is about how I feel in my body every day and having the freedom to pursue the life that I want to live in this world. Feeling good IN my body is helping me feel better ABOUT my body. It’s helping me counteract my internalized fat-phobia, showing me the strengths of my body rather than focusing on perceived weaknesses.
It’s ok to notice that you’ve internalized fat-phobia. In fact, the only way we can address it is by acknowledging it. Shaming yourself, or someone else, for participating in the dominant culture isn’t going to lead to lasting, healthy solutions. Do the work to learn to accept yourself, your body, and your thinking as you are right now, as a work in progress, and then find solutions that work for you from that place of love.
Marjorie Hundtoft is a middle school science and health teacher. She can be found questioning her beliefs, picking up heavy things and putting them down again in Portland, Oregon. Youcan now read her at Progressive-Strength.com .
Feature photo credit: Girl with Red Hat via Unsplash.
Any good food can be abused into the shame spiral of diet culture. I have no problem with protein shakes, egg white omelettes, or cabbage soup. Well, maybe I have a problem with cabbage soup. Although borscht is good. Anyway, B365 teaches it’s not the things we’re eating that makes something a diet but the mindset we approach it with, so I thought I’d play a game. I have some old cookbooks, many of which are steeped in diet culture, and let’s see if we can take that diet food and make it a balanced, satisfying meal, yes?
Ok.
Book: Food, by Susan Powter, (c) 1995
Weird diet advice: Thicken soups with dried mashed potato flakes
Photo description: Recipe for broccoli soup, which includes 1 onion, 14 cloves of garlic, oil, water, 2 potatoes, 2 lbs of broccoli, some dill, nutmeg, salt and pepper.
Recipe: Broccoli Soup, p 373
I’m starting easy on myself. There are actually recipes in this cookbook that I still use, decades after I stopped worrying about keeping my dietary fat below 15%. But this soup seems, well, basically like sauteed broccoli in soup form. Broccoli, garlic, some spices, and a couple potatoes.
So, to make this a balanced, satisfying meal I would add some chicken or tofu. Maybe some cheddar cheese, too? Adds some satisfying fat and some umami flavor. Oh, speaking of umami, some mushrooms with the onions and garlic would be good and add a nice chew!
Book: The Good Goodies, Stan and Floss Dworkin, (c) 1974
Weird diet advice: Wax your cookie sheets and cake pans instead of greasing them to avoid added fat
Photo description: Liver and Onion Crisps recipe, in which they assure us that it isn’t a joke and it won’t taste like liver. Ingredients are 1 cup cooked brown rice, 1 oz. of fresh liver, and 2 tsp dried onion.
Recipe: Liver and Onion Crisps (p75)
Ok, I’ve got my work cut out for me on this one. I don’t even eat liver! But, let’s say a person does and they’ve decided to eat it in rice crackers. Seems like we could make it a more balanced meal with a hefty side of fruits and vegetables to make it more filling. And maybe some cheese? Or maybe that’s just so I can hide the taste and texture of the crackers.
Weird diet advice: Substitute mineral oil for vegetable oil when sauteeing.
Photo description: Recipe for Fish Mold, including 2 cans of tuna or salmon, 1 cup cottage cheese, water, mayonnaise, lemon juice, galatine (sic), Worcestershire Sauce, salt substitute and onion juice, whatever that is.
Recipe: Fish Mold
Yuck. What was it about the middle of last century and savory gelatin things?! Well, it’s high protein, so that’s nice. Now it needs some fruits and veggies and some starchy carbs. Maybe a big green salad? And a pile of rice. I learned living abroad that I could eat just about anything if I heaped enough rice on top of it before I chewed.
And there you go! Three satisfying, balanced meals made from diet offerings. Good foods and bad foods are about what you enjoy and what helps you live your best life, not mineral oil and gelatin.
Do you have a favorite food that others might see as “diet” food, but you eat just because you enjoy it? I’d love to hear about it in the comments. Unless it’s fish mold. In which case, no. Just no.
MarjorieHundtoft is a middle school science and health teacher. She can be found perusing old cookbooks, picking up heavy things and putting them down again in Portland, Oregon. You can now read her at Progressive-Strength.com .
CW: discussion of weight, weight gain, and fat shaming
Dear folks,
No doubt it has come to your attention that some of your peeps are heavier than they were in March 2020. This likely comes as no surprise to you. We’ve all been barraged with news stories, tweets and memes about pandemic weight gain. Tracy, ever the acute prognosticator, blogged early and accurately about the issue here.
Even when we manage to avoid the mocking-toned, lowest-common-denominator posts, the battery of medical news gets to us. Their brand of fat-shaming and weight-blaming, veiled though it may be in professional concern trolling, targets people by making it the fault and responsibility of individuals to do many things now to reverse this calamitous-to-medicine course of increased poundage acquisition. On this medical site they use the word “YOU” quite clearly (and repeatedly):
YOU are snacking while working;
YOU aren’t moving enough;
YOU are miscalculating calories;
YOU aren’t sleeping enough.
Hey, medical website—few of us are moving enough, most of us have to snack while working (as we work all the time while taking care of family, home, and self), and no one except dieticians in nursing homes successfully calculates calories. As for sleep? Don’t even go there.
After one year of pandemic scrambling, hunkering down, worrying, grieving, working and not sleeping, some of us have gained weight, some have lost weight, and some are about the same weight. That’s life. I happen to be one of those in the gained-weight group. That’s my life right now.
Now, here’s my message: if you’re worried about the weight gain (or loss) of your peeps and are wondering if you should say something, DON’T. JUST DON’T. Really—do not do this.
Why not? To make it brief, here’s a list:
Changes in weight are not new information for anyone who’s experiencing it; we all know our bodies better than anyone else does.
It’s almost certainly going to make us feel bad— pointing out some change in that clearly you think is negative is going to be just that: negative.
It won’t help at all; we won’t a) feel better; or b) be more likely to enact what you think is a positive body change; or c) be more successful in bringing about what you (and some of us, but not others) think is a positive body change just because of something you said.
If you’re concerned about our health (mental, physical, emotional, etc.), that’s really nice. I mean it. You can help by being supportive and caring and involved in ways that promote your relationships and shared goals. Be a good friend. Be a good neighbor. Be a good boss. Be a good sister. None of these roles involve talking about people’s weight or changes thereto.
Friends, we who have gained (or lost) weight during the last year love you. We are in charge of our bodies and the care and maintenance thereof. Not to put too fine a point on it, but:
IDGAF about your diet, Susan.
Feel free to forward this along to your friends, family, neighbors, coworkers, and whoever else you think will benefit…
CW and Note: This is part of an ongoing, occasional series based on the work I’m doing as a participant in Balance 365. You can read about my decision to join the group here. Discussion of nutrition habits and diets. Feature photo credit: Mick Haupt via Unsplash
Are you struggling to make changes to your nutrition without swinging between extremes–first you’re on a roll, aiming for optimal and then you’ve got a big case of the eff-its and eating ALL THE FOODS? In order to make healthy, consistent changes to our nutrition habits, we need to have healthy, consistent thinking about them and find a way to reduce these swings in behavior. If you were raised in a “Western” society, your thoughts have been influenced by diet culture, even if you’ve never been on a diet. Diet culture and it’s equally problematic sister, dieting mindset, make it harder for us to make the consistent habit changes we aim to make.
Diets limit when you can eat, how much you can eat, and/or what you can eat. Each one of these limitations creates patterns of thought that we might need to address in order to successfully make healthy changes to our nutrition habits. Today, I’m going to address only the first one, how limiting when we can eat influences our mindset. Diets might say you can’t eat before or after a certain time each day, or when it’s ok to eat your next meal. Even if you’ve never been on a diet, you’ve probably been told everyone should eat breakfast or avoid late night eating. The coaches at Balance 365 teach that these kinds of rules create habits of thought, and therefore behaviors, that can contribute to diet mindset, and we must address our mindset, if we want to make long-lasting, sustainable changes to our behaviors.
Returning to my area of expertise, my own experiences, I can see that I sometimes have thoughts about limiting when I can or should eat. I wrote this summer that I’d noticed that I was experiencing hunger between breakfast and lunch and was preventing myself from eating more because it seemed like I “shouldn’t” be hungry. If I didn’t want to add a snack between breakfast and lunch, there were other options besides just going hungry. I could change what I ate for breakfast to something more satisfying. Or, I could increase the size of the portions of some or all of what I was eating at breakfast. Notice that in order to consider these options, I had to first be ok with the reality that I was hungry between meals and accept that it was problematic for me. The dieting mindset showed up as invalidating the information my body was giving me, and telling me to ignore my hunger. My solution this summer was to increase how much protein I got at breakfast–making sure I have eggs AND Greek yogurt most mornings. Recently, I’ve also started adding kale or some frozen veggies to my eggs, and I’m finding that it is helping me feel even more satisfied and to have stable energy levels before lunch.
Another example of time-based restriction I’ve observed in myself is that I adhere to strict meal times. I don’t ever remember deciding that breakfast is at 8:00am, lunch is at noon, snack at 3:00, and dinner at 6:30, but every day this is my routine. I look at the clock, and use that cue to inform when I am eating. 3:00pm snack can be especially powerful, and I sometimes find myself anxious if I’m doing something that interferes with this schedule. Diet mindset kicks in, I become worried I’m going to go hungry (another consequence of dieting mindset, fear of hunger and treating it like an emergency, worthy of a post all its own), and I begin to figure out how I can make that snack happen. A downside for my health is that I often make less nutritious and less satisfying food choices when I eat in order to assuage my anxiety. For now, my solution is to preplan some healthy afternoon snacks so I know I have options that will keep me satisfied without ruining my dinner, and I’m working on tuning into my internal hunger and satiety cues to determine when I eat, at least to the degree that I can within the confines of my job. This is a bigger task, and I imagine it will require some time for me to become consistent with this skill.
Diet culture tells us to use external factors like time to determine when we eat. Unlearning this element of dieting mindset requires noticing when we are limiting ourselves temporally, and finding solutions that work for us that address the underlying challenges. How this shows up will be different for each of us. For me, I’m noticing that I have strong feelings about when it’s ok to be hungry and when I expect to eat. I look forward to a time when I have fully let go of some of these restrictions and anxieties and have found patterns that support my health and help me feel my best in a sustainable way.
Have you ever noticed yourself using external, time-based restrictions on when you eat? Does it feel problematic for you? Is it a mindset that you’ve considered changing?
Marjorie Hundtoft is a middle school science and health teacher. She can be found noticing how she feels before and after meals, picking up heavy things and putting them down again in Portland, Oregon.You can now read her at Progressive-Strength.com .
Image description: Red neon sign in front of a dark, brick background. It reads “EAT.” Photo credit: Tim Mossholder, via Unsplash
Image description: bathroom scale showing “0” with an apple on it with a tape measure around the apple. Photo from The Times of India.
Diet culture. It’s not something I’ve thought about much lately. Indeed, it’s not something most of us think about much unless and until someone draws our attention to it (and even then, that drawing attention isn’t always welcome). It’s like that story about fish and water, memorably told by the brilliant, now deceased, writer David Foster Wallace in a 2005 commencement address entitled “This is water”:
“There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says “Morning, boys. How’s the water?” And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes “What the hell is water?”
What’s the moral of this little story? When you are immersed in something, when it’s all around you, you might not even be aware of it. But that’s the only respect in which water is to fish as diet culture is to us. Because unlike water, which is life-sustaining to fish, diet culture is harmful to us.
When I first saw the article in Good Housekeeping, “The Unbearable Weight of Diet Culture,” I was set to rant. I wanted to rant about diet culture itself. How normalized and oppressive it is. How it individualizes our weight loss failures when in fact “98% of diets fail.” Think on that: 98%! How it promotes the idea that there is something wrong with a body that is not thin or lean. How it demonizes certain foods and moralizes ways of eating (like, desserts are “sinful” and we give into temptation when we eat them). How it stigmatizes people on the basis of body size.
There is space for ranting about all these things and more. I even wanted to rant about how Good Housekeeping, a mainstream women’s magazine, gives us this informative and insightful article about diet culture, while also having a whole section of their website, called “Diet and Nutrition,” devoted to endorsing diet culture with articles like: “The Best Diets of 2021,” “How to Find the Best Diet for You,” “Why Can’t I Lose Weight?” and “What J-Lo Eats in a Day to Look So Good.” [I’m not linking to that content but it’s easy enough to find}
Instead of faulting them for the contradiction, I actually want to applaud them for including any sort of counternarrative at all. The editors are well aware that they are walking tightrope. The diet culture article starts with the following qualifying statement:
“Throughout 2021, Good Housekeeping will be exploring how we think about weight, the way we eat, and how we try to control or change our bodies in our quest to be happier and healthier. While GH also publishes weight loss content and endeavors to do so in a responsible, science-backed way, we think it’s important to present a broad perspective that allows for a fuller understanding of the complex thinking about health and body weight. Our goal here is not to tell you how to think, eat, or live — nor is to to pass judgment on how you choose to nourish your body — but rather to start a conversation about diet culture, its impact, and how we might challenge the messages we are given about what makes us attractive, successful, and healthy.“
Where better to start a conversation about diet culture than in the very magazines that women flock to when they are seeking “solutions” to their “struggles” with weight? And the first question someone might ask, like the fish swimming in water, is “what is diet culture?” The article opens with rough account: “it’s a set of beliefs that worships thinness and equates it with health and moral virtue, according to anti-diet dietitian, Christy Harrison, M.P.H., R.D., C.D.N., author of Anti-Dietand host of the Food Psych podcast.” It is, says the article, “the lens through which most of us in this country view beauty, health, and our own bodies.” As such, it colours our judgments about ourselves and others, moralizing some food choices as more virtuous than others, causing people to praise others’ weight loss or adherence to restrictive diet regimes, and giving credence to such scientifically vacuous notions as “detoxing” and “clean eating.”
It’s also generated a billions of dollars industry where people seek a miracle. Why is it a miracle? Because, back to that alarming statistic: 98% of diets fail over time.
Here on the blog we have been critical of diet culture since the very start, while also being aware that we are immersed in it. We are critical of it because it is harmful, built on fat-phobia and self-loathing. From the GH article, here are some of the ways that it’s harmful (some already mentioned above):
It promotes discrimination by normalizing fat phobia and promoting as normal the attitude that being overweight (or weight gain at all) is a sign of failure.
It fuels a business designed to take your money.
It’s a set-up for feeling like a failure.
It distracts from larger social issues like walkable cities, wide availability of good quality foods, and other social inequities.
It normalizes disordered eating.
It’s self-perpetuating.
I would add a few of my own here:
It makes way for people to use restrictive food plans to “virtue signal” by posting about their strict adherence to the latest food fad (e.g. no carbs, no sugar, keto, paleo, “cleanses” and “detoxes,” blood type diet, mediterranean diet and all the diets from the 80s and 90s named after doctors — Scarsdale, Atkins — or fruits — banana, grapefruit — and then of course the diets promoted by celebrities like Suzanne Sommers, Oprah, Adele…). It is amazing how much applause is dished out when someone posts a photo of their brown rice and steamed kale bowl.
It infantalizes adults by encouraging the view that, left to our own devices, we will always make poor choices.
It saps the joy out of health and fitness activities because if those are your only goals, and if the healthy choices don’t lead to weight loss, they’re not worth doing. But they are worth doing. We can get fitter and healthier without getting thinner and lighter.
It creates obsession around food. Ever since the Minnesota starvation studies after World War II we have known that food deprivation generates food obsession.
It also makes it almost impossible to have a pure, mindful eating experience that is unmediated by thoughts of “is this a ‘good’ choice?” “Should I be eating this?” “Is this on my plan?”
The article offers a couple of ways to work your way out of diet culture. One of their suggestions is to consider intuitive eating, which is an approach designed to combat diet culture, challenge the food police, and let your hunger be your guide. I like that approach myself, but it doesn’t work for everyone. We have had some discussions of it over the years on the blog, as champions and detractors.
It also suggests becoming informed about Health at Every Size (HAES), “a movement that recognizes “that health outcomes are primarily driven by social, economic, and environmental factors,” not weight, to encourage the pursuit of health without a focus on weight loss.”
I’ll add to this my own suggestion, which is not to applaud people for their diets and weight loss, and not to talk to people about their weight or weight loss efforts. I know that a lot of people are very public about their desire to lose weight (that’s diet culture for you! Making it normal to talk about something that really is no one’s business and, if you think about it, most people don’t care much what you’re up to in that department unless they’re judging you). I’ve often heard people say that they only compliment or comment when they know that’s what their friend is actively attempting. That’s endorsing diet culture, and diet culture is harmful. So I don’t do it even if my friend would like me to notice and compliment their weight loss. I like and love my friends regardless of their size or their food choices.
That said, I also try my best not to “get into it” with people who don’t want to hear it. I don’t always succeed in this. I have friends lately who are all in the “sugar is evil” trend. I have been through that one myself, and it caused an uproar that resulted in talking me off that particular ledge (not in the most pleasant way, but I still feel grateful as I look back), so I know how easy it is to rationalize this or that plan to dump sugar. All this to say that I dipped my toe in the water of asking questions, which I thought were gentle questions, about a friend’s quest to stop eating sugar, and it turns out that I had to learn the “it’s none of my business” lesson again. I’m public about being an anti-diet feminist fitness blogger. Friends know where to find me if they want that perspective. I need to learn to leave it at that and put my thoughts into a blog post once in awhile. Hence this!
Even if Good Housekeeping is sending contradictory messages when they write articles about diet culture and its harms, on the one hand, and provide ample information to those who wish to partake in it, on the other hand, I like their 2021 commitment to raising awareness. If no one points it out, we’ll never know we’re swimming in it.
CW: discussion of different popular US diet plans and trends in starting and stopping them, as evidenced by recent research.
Just this week, while watching actual live TV (waiting to see the ball drop in Times Square– hey, it’s a tradition), I saw an actual commercial. Remember those? And this one was by Weight Watchers (now trying to get people to call them WW; yeah, right…) Yes, ’tis the season for the major diet program sellers; January 1 must be their Black Friday, as the diet plan marketing is fast and furious right now.
Instead of images of diet marketing campaigns, I opted to show you a flowering meadow. Aren’t you glad?
Of course, all that flurry of activity around marketing and adopting diet plans in early January dies down soon, with most people stepping away from those plans and eating the ways they did before the above-mentioned flurry. That’s right, isn’t it?
Hmmm. Has anyone checked to make sure this is true? Has science checked this out?
Why yes, it has. In this mid-December article, called “How long do people stick to a diet resolution? A digital epidemiological estimation of weight loss diet persistence”, researchers looked at trends in US internet searches for diet-specific recipes (e.g. Weight Watchers, South Beach, Paleo). For the tl:dr version, read below:
We found that the most popular diets associated with recipe searches since 2004 were the Keto, Low Carb, Weight Watchers, Paleo, South Beach, Atkins and Low Fat diets. For all diets, the temporal trends evidenced distinct annual patterns, with a sharp increase in January, followed by a decline to the summer months and a further abrupt decline in November and December.
How did they find this out? The group analyzed trends found in years of Google searches in the US for diet-specific recipes. That, plus the obligatory fancy math, produced some groovy graphs. They show, for a bunch of different diets, the January spikes in diet-specific recipe online searches.
Graphs showing numbers of diet-specific recipe online searches, where the spikes are the months of January for each year investigated.
Turns out that the Paleo diet searches lasted the longest (about 5.3 weeks +-), and the older South Beach diet searches dropped off most quickly (about 3.1 weeks +-).
Then they analyzed the trends in diet-specific recipe searches through the course of the year. Here’s another set of cool graphs:
Graphs showing, for different diet-specific recipe searches, drop-offs in February, and then drop-offs in November.
If you’re looking for more details about these graphs, here’s what the researchers said:
A significant proportion of American dieters appeared to stop dieting during the US holiday season in November and December. For all diets studied, 5–25 % of dieters appear to drop out in November, and 15–30 % of dieters appear to drop out in December. The lowest holiday season dropout rates were seen for the Paleo diet (with December dropout rate 14 ± 3 %), and the highest were seen for the South Beach diet (with December dropout rate 33 ± 7 %).
What do the researchers think these results show? Well, after issuing loads of caveats (which is appropriate), they think it’s interesting to see some evidence of greater uptake of newer fad diets like Paleo (their words here) and lower uptake of older fad diets (like South Beach).
What do I think these results show? That this study provides even more evidence that diet marketing plans cost money and aren’t sustained over time. Which we already knew. But it’s always nice to have more science on our side.
Readers, did these results surprise you? Reinforce what you already knew? I’d love to hear any thoughts.
Over a month of isolation, and there’s still no flour at the grocery store. There’s been a shortage of pasta, beans and whole grains like barley, quinoa, and rice, too.
Shortages of staple, high-carbohydrate foods would suggest that most of us are actually not ready to give up on this very satiating macronutrient in times of crisis, and it has me wondering, could Covid-19 be the end of Keto?
Consider the overwhelming evidence brought forth on social media–photos abound of the beautiful pandemic baking occuring in households the world over. Suddenly, we are all attempting peasant loaves, coffeecakes, scones, and sticky buns. Sourdough starters are being fed and tended like emotional support colonies in our refrigerators. In this trying time when we need comfort, these gluten-laden delicacies are reassuringly there.
Perhaps a silver lining to the dark storm clouds of potential pestilence and social distancing will be a rational redefining of priorities towards common sense balance in our diets. Maybe the #firstworldproblems of odd dietary restrictions, their pseudoscientific rationales, and the tribalism that feeds upon it will be pushed back a few degrees, back to the edges and away from the mainstream. After all, instead of sorting people into silos defined upon which sources and what quantities of carbohydrate we consume, social identities are now being formed around how frequently we go grocery shopping and our choice of face covering.
One could hope that during this worldwide crisis, when scarcity has new and pressing meaning, we can contemplate the real challenges of hunger in our world. Those who live amongst us without enough are the hardest hit right now, as they ever are in challenging times. With our attention on the needs of the many, perhaps we are moving away from concern about the needs of the few–and their pursuit of beach bodies?
Maybe now, with our social circles condensed to those we most love, we are moving away from judging one’s diet from a moralistic point of view towards a more caring, compassionate and practical one? What is good food and bad food in such times? In a moment when one of the few joys we can share with others is pictures of our beautifully baked bounty, we can ask ourselves if what we are eating is nourishing us and providing for us in all the ways. Food is not only fuel. It is how we show we love one another. It is how we build and maintain community. It is comfort and nostalgia and an offering to the divine.
All of these needs are real and present today. And in this time of need, we are baking.
I choose to be hopeful about this preponderance of home-prepared patisserie. I choose to believe that in a time when we are reaching for any sign of control, instead of cutting ourselves off from this resource, we are embracing it. Instead of giving into food cult identity, we are coming together. I have optimism about the essential goodness of humanity, and we are eating bread again.
Marjorie Hundtoft is a middle school science and health teacher. She is baking while missing picking up heavy things and putting them down again in Portland, Oregon. You can now read her at Progressive-Strength.com .
Photo description: a lump of bread dough on a peel in a ray of sunshine.
