Tracy wrote, “One of my favorite parts of both the intuitive eating approach and the the demand feeding approach to food is that they both tell us to “legalize” all foods. Carrot sticks are as legal as carrot cake, neither better nor worse than the other. I can already hear the rumblings in the comments. “But carrot sticks are better for you than carrot cake!” I can even hear those who would jump in against carrot sticks because they have a higher sugar content than celery sticks.”
That’s part of my worry about the rush to get rid of sugar. First, it’s sugar, then dried fruit, then high sugar fruit such as grapes, bananas, mangoes, sweet cherries, apples, pineapples, pears and kiwi fruit, then fruit juice, the next thing you know you’re with Tim Ferris on the “fruit only on cheat days” diet plan. (Tracy blogged about that too. See Will I Still Have My 4–Hour Body 4 Years from Now?.)
I was reading about getting rid of sugar as part of my looking about for defenses of sugar. One person advocating a sugar ban said, “But keep eating fruit. Fresh fruit’s okay.” But then this, “But not grapes. Grapes are just little bags of sugar. They’re basically the skittles of the fruit world.”
ARGH!
Really?
WebMD says, “One cup of grapes, with about 100 calories, provides more than a quarter of the daily recommended values of vitamins K and C. Grape seeds, which are edible, are chock-full of antioxidants.”
Medical Knowledge Today says, “One cup of red or green grapes contains 104 calories, 1.09 grams of protein, 0.24 grams of fat, 1.4 grams of fiber, 4.8 milligrams of vitamin C, 10 micrograms of vitamin A, 288 milligrams of potassium, 0.54 milligrams of iron and 3 micrograms of folate.3 Grapes are high in water content and good for hydration. High water-content fruits and vegetables are nutrient dense, meaning they provide a large amount of essential nutrients while containing few calories. Grapes contain 70 milliliters of fluid per cup.2 Grapes are high in antioxidants important for eye health such as lutein and zeaxanthin, and red grapes contain the phytochemical resveratrol in their skins, the antioxidant synonymous with wine known to lend protection from several chronic diseases and conditions. Grapes also boast the power of the flavonoids myricetin and quercetin which help the body to counter-act harmful free radical formation.”
The nutritional facts about Skittles can be found here. A Google search for “health benefits of skittles” turned up no results. Surprise. Chill out people. Grapes are not Skittles. (And even the odd Skittle can have a place in a healthy diet.)
I read with great relief earlier this week that nutrient timing just doesn’t matter all that much. Nutrient timing is that approach that says you should eat certain things at certain times. For example, the whole carb-loading thing before a marathon. Or the thing about having that protein smoothie within 30 minutes after the end of your workout. That’s nutrient timing.
Chronic dieters have heard different, perhaps milder versions of it with all sorts of diet imperatives: Don’t eat after 7 p.m.! Never skip breakfast! Don’t eat between meals! Eat something every two hours! (hey, I never said the message was always consistent).
My main approach to food is what’s called “intuitive eating.” I pay attention to my hunger signals and do my best to respond to them when I’m hungry. I eat what I like. I stop when I feel satisfied (lately, following the latest habit in the Lean Eating Program, I’m aiming for 80% full as my limit). That’s not compatible with the idea of carefully timing when and what you eat. That’s why I was relieved to read that most of us can live without nutrient timing.
Brian St. Pierre posted “Is Nutrient Timing Dead?” on the Precision Nutrition website. It’s an indepth look at the various trends and claims surrounding nutrient timing. He defines it like this: “Nutrient timing simply means eating specific nutrients (such as protein or carbs)… in specific amounts… at specific times (such as before, during, or after exercise).”
And the bottom line is that he’s found that, despite the early studies that supported some basic claims about nutrient timing (e.g. that post workout meals should be higher in fast-digesting carbs like starchy foods and fruit and that other meals should be lower in these things), further research hasn’t corroborated those results. So his current position on nutrient timing is:
Based on the current body of research, and PN’s experience with over 20,000 clients, I’ve come to realize that nutrient timing isn’t particularly important for most people trying to look and feel better.
Let me be clear: no, I don’t think nutrient timing is dead, worthless, whatever. In certain situations it’s probably really important. (We’ll explore them below.)
However, lots of really smart and hard working people are getting lost in the finer points of nutrient timing, while consistently missing out on sleep, or vegetables, or other — more important — health and lifestyle factors. And that’s a shame.
I understand that we want to maximize our workouts and that timing our nutrient intake might seem like a sensible way to do that if the research shows it works. But for me, nutrient timing in a strict sense has always been yet another way to obsess about food and whether I’m “getting it right.”
St. Pierre’s article is a good read. He talks about the “anabolic window of opportunity” that prompts so many gym rats to rush to the locker room for that protein drink. He considers too the idea of meal-scheduling and meal frequency. He takes on that fundamental piece of dietary advice: breakfast is the most important meal of the day, so don’t skip it!
It turns out that breakfast works for some of us, but for others, it’s no benefit at all:
For example:
Folks with Type 2 diabetes did better when they skipped breakfast altogether and ate a larger lunch.
Other folks who were told to skip breakfast ended up eating less overall compared to breakfast eaters.
And skipping breakfast was found to be just as effective as eating breakfast for weight loss.
So, will skipping breakfast be better for you?
Maybe yes. Maybe no.
Preliminary evidence suggests that skipping breakfast can:
increase fat breakdown;
increase the release of growth hormone (which has anti-aging and fat loss benefits);
improve blood glucose control;
improve cardiovascular function; and/or
decrease food intake.
However, the truth is, most of this research has been done in animals, with only a few conclusive human studies.
The main message behind the post is that there’s no one way that works for everyone.
He concludes that nutrient timing might matter for some people. If you’re an elite or professional athlete, or a weight-class athlete, you may need to think about it. If you workout more than once a day, you might want to time your eating so that you’re not depleted for that second workout. But saving that, it’s not all that important.
It matters much more to focus on “your nutritional hierarchy of importance”:
How much are you eating?
(Recommendation: Eat until satisfied, instead of stuffed, follow PN’s Calorie Control Guide .)
How you are eating?
(Recommendation: Eat slowly and mindfully, without distraction.)
Why are you eating?
(Hungry, bored, stressed, following peer pressure, social cues, triggered by hyper-rewarding foods?)
What are you eating?
(Recommendation: Minimally processed proteins, veggies, fruits, healthy starches, and healthy fats.)
Are you doing #1 to #4 properly, consistently?
(Recommendation: Shoot for 80% consistency with these items before moving on.)
And only then consider…
When are you eating?
(Now you can consider breakfast, late-night, during your workout, etc.)
For more on nutrient timing, check out the whole article. Me? I’m starting to feel hungry now. I think I’ll go eat something.
Example of thinspo “pro-ana” inspiration: “Stop stuffing your fat face. eat. feel guitly.”
A long while back, after I’d just stumbled into the pro-Ana and pro-Mia communities (not as a member), which I had no clue about before I started blogging about fitness and health, I wrote “Why the Thigh Gap Makes Me Sad.” When I re-visited that article later, “Revisiting the Thigh Gap: Thin Body Shaming Isn’t Okay Either,” I remarked that it contained some thin-body shaming. Based on what I’ve learned over the year and a half or so of blogging on these things, I said a lot of thing I wouldn’t say (or would say quite differently) now.
The author opens with a bit about a woman named Jade,
Jade calls herself an “ana veteran.” Her aim is to provide “tips, tricks and information” for others who, like her, are in the grip of an eating disorder. Her readers, she says, are “girls who are desperate in their anorexia and willing to do anything to lose weight. They are sick, but they don’t see it as an illness. I’ve been anorexic for 10 years and I know this is the way I want to live.”
Instead of urging her readers to stop starving themselves, Jade helps – often encourages – them to embrace their eating disorder. “I eat three meals a day but make sure I never take in more than 50 calories,” she writes in one post. Another boasts: “I’ve reached a point where I can go without food for three or four days. You can do it too, but it will take discipline and hard work.”
Moving into commentary now, the author says:
Her attitude is chilling but far from unique. Jade is part of a growing international group of “pro-ana” (pro-anorexia) and “pro-mia” (pro-bulimia) bloggers, who perceive their illness as a “lifestyle.” Though sites like this have been around for years, hers is one of a worrying new generation of online communities that have turned anorexia and bulimia into an aspirational state.
The attitude is a bit chilling, I agree. But as an onlooker, my thoughts about this issue have evolved quite a bit over time. One thing that comes up regularly on this blog is a rejection of the idea that health is an imperative. There is no requirement to be healthy, to choose healthy options, to pursue healthy goals.
If there were such an imperative, that would support all sorts of interventions that most of us think cross the line by violating people’s autonomy and right to make their own choices. Is forcing someone with anorexia to eat any different from forcing someone who is extremely obese to diet or mandating a committed smoker to quit or even forcing a thin couch potato living on junk food to make healthier choices?
It’s not clear to me that it is. This is not to say that health is not a good. I think, in fact, that good health is an objectively valuable thing to have and to aim for. It’s an important part of a good life and contributes something fundamental and basic to human flourishing (I’ve been teaching Aristotle lately!).
And still, it’s not something to be forced on people.
I get, too, that anorexia and bulimia, both of which are promoted in these on-line communities, are considered to be illnesses. Considering them as illnesses, the people who have them are actually ill and in need of help. But we allow other people with illnesses get to make their own choices. If I’m diagnosed with cancer, it’s up to me whether to pursue treatment, not up to anyone else. And if I chose not to, surely there would be support for my decision and people would respect it.
But with eating disorders it’s quite the opposite. Few anorexics or bulimics will find support from family or friends. From the article:
Dr. Helen Sharpe, a professor at the Institute of Psychiatry, King’s College London, has conducted research into pro-ana and pro-mia websites. They are, she says, “incredibly common,” and though they don’t cause eating disorders, they can perpetuate them. “What do they give people that they can’t get elsewhere?” she asks. “Eating disorders can be extremely isolating conditions, and so finding a community of other people who think like you can be a powerful draw.”
This idea of community, of anorexics and bulimics wanting to “belong” to a virtual family, is played out across the websites. On the world’s largest pro-ana forum, which has 65,000 users and 1.5 million posts, many topics are available exclusively to members, with layers of access granted the longer they stay with the site.
A couple of comments. As Sharpe says, these communities do not cause eating disorders even if they promote the idea. I’ve lurked on some of the message boards a bit and seen that when someone comes on looking for advice about how to “become anorexic” she (usually she) is certain to get flamed. She is urged to get out and to get a grip. Members explain to her that it’s an illness.
So even within the idea of anorexia as a lifestyle, there’s an implicit often unstated assumption at work: that it’s only a “lifestyle” for those who are already afflicted with an illness. There is a further assumption that it’s a difficult and painful lifestyle. No wonder they are seeking mutual support.
The shocking element for an onlooker is the type of support–it’s a lot of support to maintain and sustain the condition in a stealth way, so as to minimize interventions and comments from friends and family members.
But perhaps, like addicts or alcoholics whose chances of successful recovery are low if they’re forced, much better if they choose it, pro-ana and pro-mia support communities can nudge people into the direction of choosing something different and seeking help and healing:
Not all online discussion of eating disorders is negative, either. There are a host of websites that are more constructive than destructive. These ones, suggests Susan Ringwood from Beat, may hold the key to encouraging sufferers to have more positive discourse.
Ruby, a 32-year-old from the West Country, runs one such blog. She has lived the “half-life” of anorexia since she was 16. With her doctors’ permission, she writes to me from inside a psychiatric unit, where she is seeking treatment after decades of concealing her illness. “It’s a daily battle,” she explains. “There is a tug-of-war going on in my head. Recovery or eating disorder. Life or death. Fight or give up.”
Though she shares some characteristics with other sufferers who write online, Ruby’s blog is different from a pro-ana website. There is no claim that anorexia is a lifestyle, no “10 thin commandments,” no telling others off for eating.
Instead, there are sections entitled “myths”, “the facts” and “treatment”. Her writing is stark and honest; her acceptance that she has a mental illness clear. Most importantly, she urges her followers to seek help. “I don’t think pro-ana girls realise how dangerous their behaviour is,” she says.
There are signs, too, that writing has spurred Ruby on towards real-life recovery – a result that, experts say, might encourage others. “It’s a sad truth that my virtual life is more active than my real life,” she writes in a recent post.
I guess what I’m saying is that the issue is much more complicated than I thought it was when I first encountered it. The article in the National Post would have had me nodding along a year ago. But today, I’m more cautious. I still feel as if there is a reason to feel sad when people choose to pursue a life that restricts their range of choices and, by all accounts, promotes an excessive focus on one thing (much as an addict or alcoholic is focused on one thing).
But I don’t think that people can be forced to pursue healthy options even if they’re ill. And that’s because health is a value, not an imperative. And yes, watching people make choices that we perceive to be harmful, to support their illnesses, is a difficult thing to do. But the bottom line is, no one has to eat for their health.
What you might not know is that for many people, going to the vet can take on rather the same flavour as a visit to your favourite weekly weight loss program. A visit to the vet, a diagnosis of canine/feline obesity and the next thing you know it’s a prescription for diet food, prescribed portions, a ban on treats, daily exercise orders, and weekly weigh ins. You can also go the medication route if lifestyle changes are ineffective. In 2007 the first drug to treat canine obesity was released.
According to the Association for Pet Obesity Prevention, 53 percent of adult dogs and 55 percent of cats in the U.S. are obese or overweight. And it’s not just dogs and cats. twenty per cent of horses and bunnies are obese too.
There’s a lot of hand wringing about pets looking like their owners and about bad habits spreading and that our inactive, snack happy lifestyles are KILLING THE CUTE CATS AND DOGS! See Are you killing your pet with love? according to which doggie ill health and obesity is due to their fat, lazy owners.
(Now can you see why you might feel judged putting your pooch on the scale at the vets and finding out they’ve gained?)
This piece in the Atlantic What Are They Feeding You? 50% of U.S. Cats and Dogs Are Overweight gives you some of the flavour of the discussion if it’s new to you. It features photos of fat rabbits, before and after photos (of course!), and talks about exercise programs and personal trainers for Fifi and Fido. Sound familiar?
Lack of companion animal activity and too much snacking mirrors the “move more/eat less” messaging that human animals hear. But what if it’s much more complicated than that?
It’s not just pets that are getting fatter. Lab animals are too. And that’s a puzzle.
Most intriguingly, perhaps, the laboratory animals showed more pronounced gains than those living outside a lab. This is strange because the sorts of lab animals the researchers looked at tend to be given lots of food and left to nibble at leisure. This practice has not changed for decades. That the animals put on weight nonetheless suggests the phenomenon cannot be caused solely by pet owners appeasing their Garfields, or feral rats rummaging through refuse composed of ever larger quantities of calorie-rich processed food. Dr Klimentidis is unable to pinpoint any single mechanism that could account for his results. But this does not stop his data from lending exculpatory explanations for fat tummies more credence.
Recently researchers have been looking at increases in animal size to help shed light on human weight gain. David Allison, a biostatistician at the University of Alabama at Birmingham was looking for a relationship between body weight and longevity in a population of marmosets but what he found made him wonder about the standard story about the causes of weight gain across all species.
The surge in human obesity is generally attributed to an increasing consumption of calories and a decrease in physical activity. “But maybe there are other things that are important — because those things can’t be acting on the marmosets, or the rats and mice in the National Toxicology Program,” he says.
But while pets are on some level a reflection of the lives of their owners—they eat our food scraps and also, well, if you’re too lazy to go out and take your dog for a vigorous walk you’re not the only thing that’s going to get fat—zoo animals, whose lives are highly regimented and designed to promote health, are also growing around the middle. Chimpanzees get about the same food and the same level of exercise that they always have. And yet:
Among colonized chimpanzees, males and females, respectively, experienced a 33.2 and 37.2 per cent weight gain per decade, and a nearly 18-fold and 11-fold increase in the odds of obesity. In vervets, for females and males, respectively, there were 9.4 and 2.9 per cent increases in body weight per decade associated with 83 and 834 per cent increases in the odds of obesity. Among marmosets, females experienced a 9.7 per cent increase in body weight per decade, and a 1.73-fold increase in the odds of obesity. Among males, there was a 9.2 per cent increase in body weight per decade, and a 64 per cent increase in the odds of obesity.
Okay, so lab animals, pets, and zoo animals are often eating food that humans have produced. So maybe we could be to blame in these cases, even if we don’t exactly what we’re doing, we’re still doing something wrong. But what about wild animals? Some of them are getting bigger too.
Not too long ago I wrote about men who body shame women. One of the people at the centre of the latest controversy when I wrote that was an influential Venezuelan beauty pageant host named Osmel Sousa. His name has come up again in an interview with a Venezuelan “beauty queen” who has, at Sousa’s advice, had a boob job and surgery to get rid of a slight “hook” in the shape or her nose.
But breast augmentation and nose jobs don’t really shock me much anymore. I still wish women weren’t so fixated on their looks that they would go under the knife to look different, and I do think that it would be bad for women if the culture of cosmetic surgery (for purely aesthetic reasons) really took hold so that it was expected. At the same time, I have known women who did indeed feel better about themselves after surgeries.
And body transformation is so rampant in our world, through means that range from extreme dieting to heavy weight training with all sorts of stops in between. But the interview made me aware of a new method for losing weight that seems like some sort of medieval torture. It’s a mesh patch that is literally stitched to the tongue.
How does it aid weight loss? By making it too painful to eat solid food! If we have to draw the line somewhere on the continuum between taking good care of ourselves and abusing our bodies and ourselves so we can lose a few pounds, I’m going to say we should draw it on THIS side of mesh tongue patches that make it too painful to eat solid food.
One thing is for sure. The mesh tongue patch is a short term solution. The patch is temporary, and so is the weight loss. Why? Because it doesn’t work on habits. Just like any weight loss diet, the real test is not whether the weight comes off, but whether it stays off.
If you put a patch on your tongue so you can’t eat solid food for a few weeks, how likely is it that you’re going to start eating regular food as soon as the patch comes off? If it were me, I’d be grabbing for whatever solid food was in my grasp–from fruit to chocolate cake, from hummus to veggie burgers, I wouldn’t care–as soon as my tongue healed enough for me to tolerate eating solids.
A doctor who spent 14 seasons on the Biggest Loser thinks it’s “barbaric.” According to this article:
Studies show most extreme dieters who lose weight rapidly eventually gain it all back — and more, he said.
“There’s not one scintilla of hope or evidence that putting a patch on your tongue and not being able to eat for a month is going to have any effect on you at one year, or two years or three years,” he said.
That sounds about right.
Here’s more about the tongue patch fad in Venezuela:
Recent reports on the extremely low levels of physical activity in the Canadian population tell us that few Canadians (7% of kids and 15% of adults) are meeting recommended levels of physical activity.
Does this explain increases in percent of the population counting as overweight or obese? Not so fast. In Inactivity Does Not Explain Canada’s Obesity Epidemic Dr Arya Sharma notes that the real take-home message is that physical activity levels are low in all groups, not just among those who are overweight and obese.
From Dr Sharma:
…if we convert the rather modest differences in MVPA levels taking into account the increased effort required to move higher body weights, we would find almost no difference in actual calories spent in activities to account for any difference in body weights. Thus, to me at least, these data pretty much blow to pieces the widely held bias that overweight and obesity can be largely explained by lack of activity or that overweight and obese individuals are less physically active (read “lazy”) than “normal” weight individuals.
He concludes,
Continuing to link the necessary discussion about inactivity to the problem of obesity is not only scientifically unfounded but, by dangerously and unfairly reinforcing stereotypes (not reflected in the actual data), may well do more harm than good when it comes to tackling both the epidemic of obesity and the epidemic of sedentariness.
We’ve blogged about habits before (Sam’s post here and another here and here), and about doing less (my post here). I’ve known about small changes leading to big things for quite a long while now. But since starting the Precision Nutrition Lean Eating Program last month, I’ve really made the link between habits and doing less.
It’s the tiny habit that wins the day. Why? Because it’s more likely to stick. That’s why the Pomodoro Technique has always worked so well for me when it comes to tackling projects that I procrastinate on. I can get into the habit of spending just 25 minutes on an important project. I am so grateful to Daphne Gray-Grant, the Publication Coach, for pointing me in the direction of that technique and for her wise emphasis on small, do-able changes.
The PN Lean Eating program, as Sam described so well in her review post, focuses on healthy habits, one at a time. Last month, for the first two weeks of the program, we were encouraged to come up with our own “5 minute action.” This is any positive change that would take no more than five minutes. If it only takes five minutes, it’s easy to accomplish because, face it, who doesn’t have five minutes?
My five minute action that first two weeks was to meditate for at least five minutes after I arrived at work each day, before I started working. When I get to the office, I plug in the kettle for my tea, turn off the overhead light, set my Insight Timer for 5-10 minutes, and meditate. Going into silence before I get down to my daily tasks has created a buffer between my commute and my workday that grounds me.
Now, we are working on the habit of slow eating. I have never been a slow eater. In fact, if I eat with people, I’m almost always one of the first to finish. Even though I’ve had the slow eating advice zillions of times through my various diets and eating plans, I’ve never done it for a sustained period of time. I think the reason is that it always came along with a suite of other changes, not on its own.
But this time, it’s literally the ONLY habit that I need to work on for this two week period. And you know what? Since I started practicing this habit last week, I’ve been the last one to finish every single time I’ve had a meal with people. And when I eat by myself, I’ve added at least 5-10 minutes to each meal. What felt odd and unnatural at first is now, after just 9 days, becoming my default way of eating. Scarfing down my food is no longer appealing to me.
It’s a small change, and right now it’s the only change. I can handle it because I can focus on it without the distraction of having to juggle a raft of other changes at the same time.
Leo Babauta has a wonderful website called Zen Habits. He has an excellent post about “The Four Habits that Form Habits.” Number one on the list is to “start exceedingly small.” As he puts it, “make it so easy that you can’t say no.” Instead of starting a whole new workout program, commit to doing three push-ups. Instead of overhauling your entire diet, practice eating slowly.
Whether you want to follow Sark in calling these small steps “micro-movements”(download overview available here) or PN in calling them “5 minute actions,” whether they seem like changes that are too small to make a difference, the fact is, this approach to change works.
Doing less than you think you should and working on establishing just one habit at a time is a winning combo. It’s taken me from fast eater to slow eater in less than two weeks.
If you have any stories or experience with teeny tiny habits, one at a time, please share them in the comments. Now—time for my five minute meditation!
On Monday, after long discussions with Sam about her experience with Precision Nutrition’s Lean Eating Program, I started my one-year commitment to the program. If you’re not familiar with it, see Sam’s detailed review here.
I’ve been doing and enjoying Intuitive Eating for a year. When I started the Intuitive Eating approach, I was obsessed with food and weight, weighing myself daily, gaining instead of losing, and generally feeling crappy about myself after years and years of the diet roller coaster. I didn’t think I could handle one more climb to the top of that hill even if the “wheeeeee!” of going down felt great.
The Intuitive Eating solution was to stop focusing on weight–no more weigh-ins (read about that here). It felt very nurturing to me, and much more in line with my feminist principles than the obsessive focus on seeing a certain number on the scale. The central principles of honoring my hunger and respecting my body really altered my attitude and refocused my attention. Self-awareness increased.
And yet, over the course of that same year, I’ve become more interested in triathlon. I’m training harder to prep for the summer season, with regular swimming workouts, three-times a week running, and on-going resistance training in addition to my yoga practice. And that’s not even fitting cycling into the equation (it’ll be back in the spring). And though I have gone on record saying that to me, sports nutrition counseling is like dieting in disguise, I feel as if it’s time for me to make some changes.
One of the principles of Intuitive Eating–the last principle, in fact, because it is so loaded for so many chronic dieters–is “Honor your health with gentle nutrition.” I don’t want to exaggerate. It’s not as if I’m living on junk food and soda pop or anything like that. But I do feel as if I’ve not quite mastered nutrition since I became vegan just over three years ago. And while I’ve been focusing on a more intuitive approach to eating, nutrition hasn’t been the main guiding principle in my choices.
And truth be told, I’m ready for a change. From what Sam has told me about the Lean Eating program and from everything I’ve read, it’s not a diet and it can be compatible with an intuitive eating approach to food. So let’s just say that this year, I’m honoring my health with the re-introduction of gentle nutrition. Nothing extreme will work for me.
One of the things I like most about the Precision Nutrition approach is the focus on healthy habits. In week one, we’re not even changing anything about eating. We’re just committing to a schedule of working out and active recovery, and adding one “five-minute action” to our day. It can be anything. Mine is at least five minutes of meditation before I sit down to work each day.
Sam has blogged about habits. Habits work well because they’re things you can do without having to think too much. At first you need to be hyper-conscious, but after a time, they become a part of life. This kind of approach strikes me as entirely compatible and consistent with Intuitive Eating.
I like the sense of community, support, and camaraderie I’m experiencing already on the PN Lean Eating forums. So far, I’m liking my coach (Janet) a lot too, as well as the mentors in my group, who are helping to orient us newbies.
What am I most worried about? Though we haven’t started yet, I know that tracking progress is an important element of the program. They want weekly weight. body fat, and body measurements, and I think it’s monthly photos.
After a year of staying away from this kind of tracking, I’m going in with a new attitude: that it’s just information. If I can maintain a neutral attitude to that information, I’ll be happy about that.
Of course, I could skip that part. But I have made a commitment to do the program “as directed” for at least the first three months. If I’m struggling with any aspect of it, I’ll approach the coach, the mentors, or the group through the forums. There are quite a few women (over a hundred) in my group, so I’m sure I’ll be able to find some like-minded people along the way.
I’m also kind of excited this time about learning to eat in a way that supports my activities better, and also, to be perfectly honest, about the prospect of getting leaner and stronger as I go into the home stretch of the fittest by fifty challenge and prep for a summer of triathlons and 10K races.
The latest on Jennifer Lawrence, whose praises I and others have sung as a positive role model for a healthier body image, is this: her refusal to diet, her openness about loving to eat, and her insistence that her Hunger Games character, Katniss Everdeen, not be skinny as a rake–it is all a thin cloak over the body shaming reality.
This blog post on Jenny Trout/Abigail Barnette’s blog Sweaters for Days quotes Jennifer Lawrence as saying, “I’d rather look chubby on screen and like a person in real life.” And then Trout says:
Let’s concede the point here that she is, perhaps, a size or two above the Hollywood accepted norm. Let’s also concede the point that it’s admirable, being the star of a movie franchise aimed at teens, that she is concerned about the effect a too-svelte appearance might have on her audience, who are already bombarded with negative body messages every day. I’m not making this post to attack Jennifer Lawrence. I’m making this post to attack the rabid fandom that has grown around her.
I’m not going to cover the fact that it’s fucked up that a girl like Jennifer Lawrence has to justify her perfectly gorgeous body to every single media consumer in the world. We all know that’s fucked up. Let’s focus instead on the fact that in order to appease our own self-doubt about our weight, we, the internet, have decided to ignore how body-shaming the entire image of JLaw, “Spirit Animal” to fat girls everywhere, really is.
She added the bold type because people were pouncing on her in the (rather nasty) comments.
The post gets really interesting when she brings in a comparison with Melissa McCarthy, who does not express, and arguably would not so easily get away with expressing, a love of food and eating and a refusal to diet. There is no question that thin privilege allows Jennifer Lawrence, who may not be as thin as they come in Hollywood but who still fits into a cultural norm of relative slenderness, to promote the “radical idea” that women and girls should not have to lose weight to have acceptable bodies.
But I do think it’s unfair to call her out for body shaming. The comments on that blog post make it clear that people still assume that Jennifer Lawrence can eat as she does because she works out, and that Melissa McCarthy must not work out at all (in fact, one of the comments says exactly that–the comments are astonishingly mean-spirited). Genetics have a lot to do with it. Some people are just going to be larger than others even if you hold activity and food intake constant. It’s not a simple formula that determines size, shape, and body fat percentage. Melissa McCarthy saying that she doesn’t understand why she’s not thinner than she is is a very good demonstration of the frustrating facts.
After I posted a link to the body-shaming blog post on my Facebook page, a friend commented that women just can’t win. And she’s right. What would we rather Jennifer Lawrence do? Here’s a young woman who recognizes that she has influence with girls and young women because she plays a popular character, and makes a conscious choice to use that influence in a positive way. Should she just stay silent?
And while it’s perceptive to note that it’s easier for her body-positive message to be heard by the mainstream because she has the appearance of someone who we perceive to be fit and strong, it’s still important that women hear what she has to say. Jenny Trout has clarified that she is not attacking Jennifer Lawrence, but rather the media for lauding Lawrence as a role model.
But the fact is, she is a role model. Girls care what she has to say. If the staggering statistics about girls and dieting are true, then even average-sized girls feel pressure to lose weight and to diet. If Jennifer Lawrence can successfully nudge them away from the idea that they should cave into the pressure to diet, then that’s a good thing. She has been widely quoted as saying, “If anybody even tries to whisper the word ‘diet,’ I’m like, ‘You can go f– yourself.”
That’s a great quote. It would be something special to hear teenaged girls all over the place saying that instead of being in a perpetual state of body hatred and attempting to drop a few pounds. As for the quote about looking chubby on the screen and like a person in real life, I’m not sure what to make of it other than that I’ve heard her interviewed and read a lot of other things she’s said, and the overall gist sounds body positive. If she consistently said things that gave us a reason to think she is secretly trying to body shame people who are larger than she is, that would be a different matter.
So despite that I think Jenny Trout provides an interesting perspective in pointing out that thin privilege is at work here, I’m not ready to agree that the media should stop reporting on Jennifer Lawrence’s anti-dieting and body-accepting attitude. And while I don’t deny that Melissa McCarthy can’t offer quite the same narrative, there are other positive body image role models. Adele, for example, has said that she isn’t preoccupied with her body. Her body, she says, isn’t stopping her from doing anything she wants to do. She recommends: “The first thing to do is be happy with yourself and appreciate your body– only then should you try to change things about yourself.”
The more celebrity women who can influence girls and women to be more accepting of themselves, the better. Average-sized women like Jennifer Lawrence can contribute constructively to this conversation as much as larger women like Melissa McCarthy and Adele. Why? Because it’s not only women who are larger than the average who struggle with body image and who feel pressured from a very young age to diet.
For years, magazines and movie screens have idolized women with perfect, impossible bodies. We know them well—tall, lean women with a soft six-pack, no hips, and full, flowing hair. I remember listening to women idolize tiny waists and toned calves, and for as long as I’ve been aware, my mom has never not been on a diet.
I grew up hating my body because it wasn’t Victoria’s Secret perfect—my thighs were thick, my nose was big, and no matter what I did to my hair it was never full or flowing. I started dieting at the ripe old age of 10, and spent every glance in the mirror wishing something (anything) would change. I can recall countless evenings spent eavesdropping on my mom and my grandma, who would sit in the kitchen and gossip late into the evening about everything and nothing. Inevitably, the issue of weight would come up, and they would discuss how much they wanted to lose and which family member had gained the most. I would take mental notes, and promise myself that I’d never be the one that they talked about with such distaste.
I battled and abused my body for years. I wanted to be that perfect combination of fit and tiny (I would have killed for the thigh-gap)—and it was a hard (impossible) battle. I didn’t feel like I could talk to anybody about my struggles because I felt it was expected that I should suffer for my body. Most of what I had read in magazines or seen on TV allowed starlets to detail how hard their diet/exercise routine was—why should I be the exception?
During a particularly rough battle with myself (my nasal anxieties rise again!) I experienced a single, awe-inspiring moment. I was talking to my best friend about my laundry list of flaws when she looked at me and said, “You’re beautiful. Why would you ever want to be somebody else when nobody in the world can be you?” From this single moment I derived two of the most important life lessons of my life.
1) I think that it is our duty as women to support each other in a new way. When my friends used to share their insecurities (I hate my feet/stomach/arms) I would counter with more negativity (Oh your arms are perfect—but my teeth are terrible!). Instead of doing this, we should offer support and open communication. If somebody is self-hating, consider asking them why they feel that way, lend an ear (and then truly listen!). Don’t add fuel the self-hate by being negative about yourself; instead, offer to be an outlet of support and positivity. Women so often put themselves under a microscope, straining to be somebody else’s definition of perfect. We need to take pride in ourselves and our individual traits that make us who we are.
2) In light of being an individual, we need to encourage ourselves to be our best. We need to be healthy—not harmful. Look at Venus and Serena Williams—their bodies are killer! They have tailored their bodies to be instruments that facilitate the success of their careers—and they are not aspiring to be anything other than their best. Or consider Jennifer Lawrence, who blatantly refuses to conform to Hollywood’s definition of “skinny” and instead embraces and defends her body. She surfs, shoots archery, and loves to eat—her body is at its best for her.
The pressure that we put on ourselves to be somebody else can be suffocating. Instead, we should embrace ourselves and support each other. We should focus on letting our bodies be healthy in whatever capacity that is—whether you can run an ultra-marathon or run around the yard chasing your kids. If we can be confident enough to take care of ourselves, we will have the “perfect” body because it will be ours, and it will be the best it can be.
Julia Randall is obsessed with fantasy football, any good Merlot, and the most recent season of American Horror Story. When she’s not singing (really well) you can find her writing for DraftStreet.
Photos were removed in 2025 but they can be found at the links below:
