This is the second part of a three-part thread I started yesterday. I think this one will be fairly short, as I really want to work on part 3, in which I’m going to explore whether wanting to lose weight and supporting fat acceptance are mutually exclusive.

But first, I’m just going to just list a few things I believe about food and fat. As they say, your mileage may vary :).

1. Diets do not work. Well, they may “work” in the short term, but the vast majority of people are unsuccessful with short-term dieting. At this point, I haven’t made up my mind whether changing one’s regular diet may work, a la either an Atkins-like low-carb or a Ornish-like low-fat. One problem: most people cannot do that for a lifetime, and when they go back to the way they were eating before, the weight comes back. At this point, I’m experimenting wiith an approach that focuses on eating healthy foods (my SuperFoods Rx meets Volumetrics meet Rachael Ray). At this point, I have no real problem anticipating this way of eating as something I’ll do after I stop losing weight (whenever that is).
2. Diets makes it worse. If I hadn’t started dieting at age 9, and started doing some pretty horrible diets over the years, I don’t think I would have hit 375. I think diets screwed up my metabolism, messed up my biochemistry, gave me a really disordered way of looking at food, and probably hurt my long-term health in a way that just being overweight wouldn’t. See Oliver’s Fat Politics for a great read on this subject and more.
3. Weight-loss surgery is NOT the answer. First, it’s a horribly risky procedure and there are awful complications. Worse yet, it sounds like the average WLS patient gains back half of their weight over time! I’m sympathetic towards those who feel this is their only answer and respect their choosing this procedure, but I believe there has to be a better way.
4. Too much research suffers from poor study design and/or conflict of interest. Regina Wilshire’s blog is pretty much spot-on. I’m not sure that an ultra-low-carb diet is necessary (I’m not on one), but I think that we will learn (hopefully soon) something about carb metabolism that will cause a paradigm shift in how we look at this subject. For now, I find the New England-like character of food-related research (it changes every 15 minutes) to be very frustrating.
5. Some foods are problematic. If people can have allergies to wheat, fish, milk, is it so much of a stretch to think that some foods can affect the weight (or at least eating) of some people? I believe there is a strong neuro-/bio-chemistry component to overeating and/or weight gain. Unfortunately, we don’t understand it well enough. My current thinking is that psychology may start me overeating, but physiology keeps me overeating.
6. Food should be enjoyed. I don’t think that healthy eating and enjoyable meals are mutually exclusive.
7. It’s not just about personal responsibility. What we eat, and how we feel about it or ourselves, is greatly influenced by external factors (the media, advertising, capitalism, public policy, etc).. This is what I really like about the fat acceptance movement…they focus on these issues in a great way. More on this in part three.
8. There are no “good” or “bad” foods. But some foods are more nutritious than others. I choose to eat more foods that score highly on the nutrition scale, as I find that I feel really good when I do, and I find that I don’t have the same cravings I did when I ate a more traditional (read: refined-carb-filled) diet.
9. There may be “good” or “bad” diets. I suspect that some of the health issues (heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes) attributed to weight may well be a result of long-term eating patterns. This is why I currently believe the way I eat is not about losing weight (that’s just a current benefit), it’s about being healthier. And I think that this kind of eating would be beneficial to people no matter what their weight.

To be continued…