[Search for users] [Overall Top Noters] [List of all Conferences] [Download this site]

Conference rocks::weight_control

Title: Weight Loss and Maintenance
Notice:**PLEASE** enter notes in mixed case (CAPS ARE SHOUTING)!
Moderator:ASICS::LESLIE
Created:Tue Jul 10 1990
Last Modified:Tue Jun 03 1997
Last Successful Update:Fri Jun 06 1997
Number of topics:933
Total number of notes:9931

618.0. "The "Just Say Yes" approach" by ACESMK::CHELSEA (Mostly harmless.) Tue Oct 23 1990 02:09

    At my weekly seminar we discussed a radical approach to weight loss for
    compulsive eaters:  don't say no.  Instead of denying yourself all the
    things you crave, only to succumb to them later, go out and
    deliberately stock up on them.  Surround yourself with all those
    dangerous and threatening foods.  If you want something, don't argue
    with yourself.  Just eat it.
    
    Sounds like you'd just balloon right up, doesn't it?  But it turns out
    to have helped a number of people.  Many have stabilized their weight;
    even if they haven't _lost_ weight, they're more relaxed.  And many
    people have lost weight.
    
    It turns out that people who try this approach don't find themselves
    getting "out of control" or "taken over by food."  They don't eat an
    entire cake in one sitting any more.
    
    I think there are a number of reasons why this approach can work:
    
    1.  You remove the allure of the forbidden.  You want it, you got it.
    
    2.  You have to confront your fears to defeat them.  If certain foods
    cause stress in your life, confronting the source of your stress can
    help.  Instead of buying foods from a compulsion or weakness, you're
    buying them deliberately.  It's a way of asserting yourself.
    
    3.  You don't have anything to rebel against.  This is what I've found
    most interesting.  There are no rules.  If I had a rule, I would break
    it.  If I wanted something and a rule said I couldn't have it, I'd say
    (essentially), "I get to decide what I'm going to eat; I don't care
    about any rules."  And so, when I wanted Ben & Jerry's Heath Bar Crunch
    Light (which is light only in comparison to their regular line), I'd
    eat an entire pint just to prove that I could.  Now that I don't have a
    rule, I don't eat the whole thing.  In fact, I haven't eaten it in
    weeks where before it seemed I couldn't get through a week without it.
    
    The particularly useful thing is that this approach eliminates a lot of
    stress.  Before, when I ate something "bad," I was in a fairly
    emotional and/or stressed-out state, what with guilt and rebellion
    jostling back and forth.  I was eating, but I wasn't paying a lot of 
    attention.  By removing the stress, the act of eating comes more to 
    the forefront and can be enjoyed for itself.  Eating is more
    satisfying, so it takes less to satisfy.
    
    An underlying premise to this approach is that compulsive eaters have
    lost touch with their hunger signals.  They don't eat because they're
    physically hungry, they eat to satisfy some other need.  (In my case,
    the need to assert control over my life.)  By removing the emotional
    cloud, the dieter can get back in touch with those hunger signals. 
    Now, instead of suddenly finding myself stuffed to the gills, I notice
    less extreme states of fullness and can register satisfaction without
    discomfort.  It's harder to notice when I'm really hungry or just 
    bored/stressed/whatever.
    
    The therapists who develop the plan contend that the body's hunger
    signals are reliable guides.  The body knows what it needs and it tells
    you.  By eating only what you're hungry for, they say, you'll arrive at
    your natural weight.  To lose weight, you would increase your activity
    level.  Some people on the plan haven't lost weight, but they are
    happier with themselves, which is a worthwhile goal in itself.
                                                                     
T.RTitleUserPersonal
Name
DateLines
618.1SWAM3::THOMAS_TAall brave with his conquestTue Oct 23 1990 18:547
    I recently read a book about Compusive Overeating that
    suggested this approach... I can't remember the name
    or the author though... I will look tonight when I
    go home.
    
    blessed be,
    cheyenne
618.2AH HA!SWAM3::THOMAS_TAall brave with his conquestTue Oct 23 1990 18:585
    I just remembered the title :-).... it's "Breaking Free of
    Compulsive Eating" by Geneen Roth.
    
    blessed be,
    cheyenne
618.3Thin from Within is another say yes bookJANUS::MAZEAUSuzanne, 830-3854Wed Oct 24 1990 14:2816
I read a little of this book but put is down because it was interactive
at times that I was not.  i.e. late at night   A really good book for the
ideas that you just eat what you want, never never weigh in on a scale.
It promoted looking at yourself in the mirror to 'check' your weight.

Basically they said that being thin has nothing to do with dieting because
thin is an image and not a measureable quantity.  It was so long ago that i
don't remember much more than that except that I liked the idea of it.

The one principle that I latched onto is the not weighing in. I decided on 
a clothing size that I want to be and worked towards that.  It allows for 
much more flexibility and far less guilt than other approaches that I tried.
I also look at myself in the mirror to guage how I"m doing.  Twenty five 
pounds less (well the doctors make you jump on a scale once a year) and I
feel a whole lot better.
618.4LESLIE::LESLIEAndy LeslieFri Oct 26 1990 19:114
    It wouldn't work too well for me....
    
    
    /andy/
618.5Not for Me!FDCV14::WHALENTue Nov 27 1990 17:013
    It wouldn't work for me either!!  If it's there, I'll eat it!
    
    Linda
618.6Overcoming OvereatingCSC32::K_BELLKerry Bell, Colorado Springs, COWed Dec 12 1990 03:3729
                      <<< Note 618.5 by FDCV14::WHALEN >>>
                                -< Not for Me! >-

    It wouldn't work for me either!!  If it's there, I'll eat it!
    
    Linda

===============================================================================

In the beginning, you probably *will* eat it just cuz it's there...  But after
you adjust to the fact that the food will always be there if (and when) you
want it, you'll mellow out.  

You'll need to work things out with other members of your family tho.  Let them
know that they are not to eat the special food you've stocked up on.  If they
want some, they need to get their own.  That way you won't be eating just becuz
you think that if you don't eat it, someone else will eat it first.  You need
to be able to count on the food being there.  It's a security/trust issue...  

There's another good book called "Overcoming Overeating" that goes into this
concept more.  It really sounds strange when someone says, well, just don't
diet and eat anything you want and you'll loose weight (or at least maintain
your weight and be happy about it), but you can't make a snap judgment about
it unless you really research the concept of compulsive eating and understand
fully why diets fail and *why* you overeat!  Understanding hunger is a key
factor -- Ask yourself if you are *really* hungry.  If you have any doubt about
it, then you are not hungry.  And if you're not hungry, why eat??

Kerry
618.7same bookTRNPRC::WERBERwe ARE amusedWed Dec 12 1990 17:418
    Kerry - I too have that book "Overcoming Overeating".  Took me a while
    to open it because the thought of not dieting and having the food
    available didn't really go along with what I've always been taught at
    first.  But that's just it, the book helps you retrain your thinking
    regarding the trust/security issues.  It's a very informative and
    eye-opening book.
    
    ~peggy
618.8ACESMK::CHELSEAMostly harmless.Fri Dec 14 1990 08:0020
    This is from Geneen Roth's "Feeding the Hungry Heart:  The Experience
    of Compulsive Eating" (p. 68-69):
    
    So many women I see only know how to diet or to binge.  When I tell
    them to eat what they want, to forget about dieting, they look at me as
    if I were crazy.  "You've got to be kidding, Geneen -- if I do that
    I'll blow up like a blimp.  I'll eat everything in sigh.  I'll eat
    twenty-four hours a day."  They think because I tell them to eat what
    they want that I am telling them to binge.  They are so used to
    depriving themselves that eating what they want sounds alien,
    frightening.
    
    Think of the distortion of that.  Think how much mistrust and fear it
    must take for you to say, "No, I can't give myself what I want.  I
    *must* deprive myself.  Deprivation is the only way.  I am so wild that
    if I let myself loose, I will trample everything."  What a tenuous way
    to live, feeling that you have a monster inside.  That you must cage
    it, that it might escape at any moment.  Diets give you the message
    that at your core you are untrustworthy, wild.  At your core you are
    bad.
618.9I have an outline of OVERCOMING OVEREATINGDPDMAI::POGARIf outlook is poor, try uplook.Wed Jan 02 1991 09:0511
    I have a fairly detailed outline of OVERCOMING OVEREATING, if anyone's
    interested.  Or if someone can tell me how to pull it from my VMS file
    into NOTES, I'll be happy to post it here.  I'm not too familiar with
    EVE and other VMS editors, since I usually use ALL-IN-1, so
    non-technical instructions would help.
    
    I agree, it's an excellent book on the subject.
    
    Catherine
    
    
618.10LESLIE::LESLIEAndy LeslieWed Jan 02 1991 15:141
    Just give the command WRITE filename.ext at the NOTES prompt.
618.11OVERCOMING OVEREATING OUTLINEDPDMAI::POGARIf outlook is poor, try uplook.Wed Jan 02 1991 16:11348
    Wow, Andy -- thanks a bunch!  Here's the outline; I wrote it shortly
    after the book came out and, if I remember correctly, it's the Table
    of Contents, then outlined each chapter, and added my own comments.
    
    Catherine
    
    
    
                               OVERCOMING OVEREATING
                                         by
                               Jane R. Hirschmann and
                                  Carol H. Munter
         
         
             Foreword
             Introduction
         
            1.	Curing Compulsive Eating
            2.	The Diet/Binge Cycle
            3.	Signing Up for a New Life
            4.	Rethinking the Problem
         
                                 THE PLAN:  PHASE 1
                                  Freeing Yourself
         
            5.	I Am What I Am
            6.	Living in the Present
            7.	Dumping the Diet
            8.	Living Free in a World of Food
         
                                 THE PLAN:  PHASE 2
                                  Feeding Yourself
         
            9.	Food on Demand
           10.	When to Eat
           11.	What to Eat
           12.	How Much to Eat
           13.	Everyday Life as a Demand Feeder
         
                                 THE PLAN:  PHASE 3
                                  Finding Yourself
         
           14.	The Compulsive Reach for Food
           15.	The Obsession
           16.	When You Try to Break the Circuit
           17.	Fat, Skinny, and In-Between
         

         FOREWORD by Janet Polivy, Ph.D. and C. Peter Herman, Ph.D., 
         authors of Breaking the Diet Habit.
         
         INTRODUCTION - gives an overview of the book.  Some of the things 
         mentioned are:							   
         
         The authors' approach to cure compulsive eating will enable you 
         to:
         
             o	give up dieting forever and discover that you eat much less 
                without the restraints of a diet.
             o	learn to eat from physiological hunger and, perhaps for the 
                first time, enjoy the enormous satisfaction of meeting that 
                hunger with the foods you most desire.
             o	stop overeating and lose the weight that has been its 
                by-product.
             o	move beyond your negative preoccupation with eating and 
                weight into a fuller life.
         
         
         CHAPTER 1:  CURING COMPULSIVE EATING
         
             The Compulsive Eater Identified
             	Physical Appearance
             	Self-Portrait
             The Compulsive Eater - A New Perspective
             	The Problem of Control
             	Self-Help
             The Cure - The Hunger/Food Connection
             The Plan
         
         
         CHAPTER 2:  THE DIET/BINGE CYCLE
         
             The Fight-Back Response
             The Urge to Diet
             	The Yucks
             The Diet
             The Binge
         
         CHAPTER 3:  SIGNING UP FOR A NEW LIFE
         
             One More Time
             Change Your Shape and Change Your Life
             	The Motivation to Play
             	The Players
             	The Rules
             	    Rule No. 1 - Fat is Bad
             	    Rule No. 2 - Fat People Eat Too Much
             	    Rule No. 3 - Thin is Beautiful
             	    Rule No. 4 - Eating Requires Control
             	    Rule No. 5 - Criticism Leads to Change
         

         CHAPTER 4:  RETHINKING THE PROBLEM
         
             The Rebellion of Eating
             Beyond Rebellion
             The Linguistics of Eating
             Food Feels Good and That Ain't Bad
             Eating Your Way Out of an Eating Problem
         
         
         THE PLAN:  PHASE 1
         Freeing Yourself
         
         CHAPTER 5:  I AM WHAT I AM
         
             The If-Only Syndrome
             A Fantasy
             "How Can I Accept Myself When I Really Hate Myself?"
             Moving Toward Acceptance
             The Mechanics of Acceptance
             	Stopping the Thought
             	The Words of Acceptance
         
         CHAPTER 6:  LIVING IN THE PRESENT
         
             Purchasing a Mirror
             	Facing Up to More Than Your Face
             	Know Thyself
             	Looking at the Looking Glass
             Tossing a Scale
             Cleaning a Closet
         
         CHAPTER 7:  DUMPING THE DIET
         
             Remember:
             	1.  98% of dieters regain their weight plus some.
             	2.  Diets make you fat.
             	3.  Deprivation ensures a fight-back response - the binge.
             Giddiness
             Terror
             Sadness
             Relief
         
         CHAPTER 8:  LIVING FREE IN A WORLD OF FOOD
         
             Carrot Sticks versus Carrot Cake
             Legalizing Food
             To Market, To Market
             	The List
             	Enough Is Not Enough
             	On the Aisle
             Home Again, Home Again
             The Cupboards
             Legal Costs
         

         THE PLAN:  PHASE 2
         Feeding Yourself
         
         CHAPTER 9:  FOOD ON DEMAND
         
             The Urge to Eat
             	Stomach Hunger
             	Mouth Hunger
             The Ledger
             The Hunger Connection
             Demand Feeding - for Adults
             Recognizing Stomach Hunger
             	When the Signal Is Dim
             	When the Signal is Gone
             Responding to Stomach Hunger
             The Binge - I've got to quote from this one:
                 ...If you fight it [the binge] with angry, abusive 
                 words, you only prolong it.  If, on the other hand, 
                 you go with the binge, it will come to its own end.  
                 What does "going with the binge" involve?
                 
                 o  No more abusive remarks.  If you find yourself 
                    yelling, remind yourself that negative thoughts 
                    make you feel bad, and feeling bad makes you want 
                    to binge.
                 o  Replace your yelling with a reminder that your 
                    binge is a symptom of anxiety.  Something is 
                    making you uncomfortable and you need soothing.  
                    You need compassion, not rebuke.
                 o  Tell yourself that you don't have to know why 
                    you're upset before you can be sympathetic to 
                    yourself.
                 o  Be as tender and nurturing to yourself during your 
                    binge as you possibly can.  Give yourself the 
                    foods you really want.
                 o  Go back to the beginning of this new approach to 
                    eating and make sure to have food available in 
                    large quantities, to wear comfortable clothing 
                    that you like, and to stay off the scale.
                 
         
         CHAPTER 10:  WHEN TO EAT
         
             When Do I Eat?
             The Meaningless of Meals
             An Eating Exercise
             The Food Bag
             	What to Pack
             	The Feelings You Carry with the Bag
             	Making Peace with the Food Bag
             Humans, the Grazing Animals
         

         CHAPTER 11:  WHAT TO EAT
         
             The Nutrition Question
             Matchmaking in Theory (matching food to hunger)
             Is There Life After Chocolate?
             A Weighty Issue
             Matchmaking in Action
             Some Complications
             Remember [listen to your stomach signals]
         
         CHAPTER 12:  HOW MUCH TO EAT
         
             How Much is Enough?
             Becoming the Boss of Your Own Eating
             	What Constitutes a Serving
             	Technique
             It's so Hard to Say Good-bye
             Feeling Satisfied with Less
             Sweet Farewells
             Fine-Tuning When, What, and How Much
         
         CHAPTER 13:  EVERYDAY LIFE AS A DEMAND FEEDER
         
             (A question-and-answer chapter)
             	Eating normally
             	Restaurant eating
             	Eating in others' homes
             	Eating at parties
             	Feeding a family, too
             	Turning your family on to demand feeding
             	Demand feeding and pregnancy
             	Exercising
             	Special problems - diabetes, high blood pressure, allergies
             	Watching calories vs. watching hunger
             	Eating from mouth hunger - is that like going "off" a diet?
         
         THE PLAN:  PHASE 3
         Finding Yourself
         
         CHAPTER 14:  THE COMPULSIVE REACH FOR FOOD
         
             Fat Thoughts
             Reaching Out for Food
             	Less Than Ideal
             	Forbidden Feelings
             	Strong Feelings
             Making Food into Magic
             	Teddy Bears ("security blankets")
             	Whiteout ("Compulsive eaters use food the way a typist uses 
                   whiteout")
             The Implications of Making Food into Magic
         

         CHAPTER 15:  THE OBSESSION
         
             What Is All the Yelling About?
             I'm Bad . . .
             	Because I Shouldn't Need Help
             	Because I Have Bad Thoughts and Feelings
             Breaking the Circuit - again I have to quote:
                 When you eat from mouth hunger, you eat because you 
                 must.  When your mind starts moving in the direction 
                 of self-condemnation, however, you have an 
                 opportunity to intervene.  You can break the 
                 addictive circuit in two ways:
                 
                    1.	Remind yourself each time you eat from mouth 
                        hunger that you will not scold yourself after 
                        you eat.
                 
                    2.	Never take a fat thought at face value.  Each 
                        time you find yourself shouting at yourself 
                        for eating or being fat, remind yourself that 
                        you are referring to something else and, if 
                        you can, make an effort to find out what that 
                        something else is.
                 
             	Why The Yelling is Compelling
             	The Emergence of a Complex Self
         
         CHAPTER 16:  WHEN YOU TRY TO BREAK THE CIRCUIT
         
             More questions and answers
         
         CHAPTER 17:  FAT, SKINNY, AND IN-BETWEEN
         
             The Reality of Weight Loss
             	Dealing with Doctors
             When the Weight Begins to Go - Theme and Variations
             	Leveling Off
             	Pushing Yourself
             	Holding On to Yourself
             The Food/Fat Connection
             Friendly Fat Fantasies
             	Doing versus Sitting
             	The Triumph of Fat versus the Submission of Thin
             	Fat Visibility
             The Fear of Thinness
             	Invisibility
             	On Display
             The Function of the Fantasy
         

         And then, there's this great "Supplementary Reading" section:
         
         Bennett, William, M.D. and Gurin, Joel.  The Dieter's Dilemma.  
             New York:  Basic Books, 1982.
         Bilich, Marion.  Weight Loss from the Inside Out:  Help for the 
             Compulsive Eater.  New York:  Harper & Row, 1983.
         Chernin, Kim.  The Obsessions:  Reflections on the Tyranny of 
             Slenderness.  New York:  Harper & Row, 1981.
         Hirschmann, Jane R., and Zaphiropoulos, Lela.  Are Your Hungry?  A 
             Completely New Approach to Raising Children Free of Food and 
             Weight Problems.  New York:  New American Library, 1987.
         Kaplan, Louise.  Oneness and Separateness:  From Infant to 
             Individual.  New York:  Simon and Schuster, 1978.
         Orbach, Susie.  Fat is a Feminist Issue.  New York:  Berkley, 
             1982.
         ------, Fat is a Feminist Issue II.  New York:  Berkley, 1982.
         ------, Hunger Strike.  New York:  Norton, 1987.
         Polivy, Janet,a nd Herman, C. Peter.  Breaking the Diet Habit.  
             New York:  Basic Books, 1983.
         Roberts, Nancy.  Breaking All the Rules.  New York:  Viking, 1986.
         Roth, Geneen.  Feeding the Hungry Heart.  New York:  Signet, 1983.
         ------, Breaking Free from Compulsive Eating.  New York:  Signet, 
             1986.
         Siegel, Michele, Brisman, Judith, Weinshel, Margot.  Surviving and 
             Eating Disorder:  New Perspectives and Strategies for Family 
             and Friends.  New York:  Harper & Row, 1988.
         

         One other thing that I would like to add - throughout the book, 
         the authors seem to understand that it is NOT EASY for the 
         compulsive overeater to lose weight, or even to attempt a diet 
         that they may or may not stick with.
         
         
         
618.12Down with Dieting!VMSDEV::LAMMThu Feb 27 1992 07:03144

    re: -.1 
    Well, this note is over a year old but...

    This book, _Overcoming_Overeating_ is wonderful.  I went right out and
    bought it after reading the outline.  Lots of the things the authors
    say in this book make sense.   I had started to figure out some of
    this stuff myself, as I observed my reactions to diets, or indeed, any 
    type of control that I attempt to impose on myself.  This book pulled
    it all together and clearly articulated the half-formed ideas I had.

    In just a few days, it's made such a great deal of difference in my
    life.  It's like a great weight has been lifted (pun intended).

    Seriously, I have never been able to diet successfully for very long.
    While I don't really binge, I do eat sometimes when I'm not physically
    hungry, or I'll start off satisfying a physical need to eat, but eat
    more than is required to fuel my body.  I would try to diet, but I just
    felt deprived, cranky and rebellious.  I hated the control imposed by
    diets: you can't eat this, you can only eat at these times, and so on. 
    The more I berated myself for my lack of control, willpower, etc., the 
    worse I felt about myself, and the more I wanted to eat.  I realized how 
    much of my mental energy was being expended in an internal war over food, 
    with the "parent" me badgering the "child" me not to eat and castigating 
    "bad child" me when I rebelled and ate.  I realized how this continuing
    "failure" was making me feel bad about myself all the time, which made 
    eat to make myself feel better: a vicious cycle.  Also, by trying not to 
    eat, I just caused myself to think about food all the time.  As the book 
    says, diets make you fat!

    By resolving never to diet again, and to accept myself 
    _just_as_I_am_right_now_, I have freed myself.  Now I can think about 
    many things besides food.  This feeling of accepting myself has made
    me feel much calmer and happier, more alive.  
    Instead of waiting to get thin before I <fill in the blank>, I'm just
    doing it NOW.  By letting myself eat whatever I want, whenever I want,
    in whatever quantity I want, I find that I just want to eat what my
    body needs.  I don't need a "parent" anymore to tell me not to eat; I'm
    an integrated adult doing what seems reasonable to me.

    If I find myself wanting food when I'm not really hungry, I start asking
    myself questions like, "What is making feel like I want to eat?"  Usually,
    it's because there is some uncomfortable emotion I'm trying to bury.  
    Once I figure out what the feeling is that I'm about to use food to keep
    from feeling, I start probing to find out why I have that feeling.  Then
    I try to figure out what I can do to solve the problem that caused the
    uncomfortable feeling.  If I do choose to eat something, I just say,
    "Well, I need to eat now to feel better, and that's ok."  Since this is
    soothing, compassionate treatment of myself, I haven't created more stress,
    so even when I do eat, I don't eat as much.

    I've also noticed that the compassion and acceptance I now give to myself,
    I am giving to other people.  When I see an overweight person now, if I
    have automatic, critical reactions, I quickly counter those with thoughts
    accepting that person as they are right now.  I am trying to get rid of
    such thoughts as, he's too fat, or if she'd only lose weight, she'd be 
    so attractive.  This is very important to me, to completely reject our
    culture's notions that there is a "right" body size that everyone should
    strive for.

    The ideas in this book have helped me in other areas besides dealing with
    food.  The whole larger notion of the control aspect of diets is something
    I can apply to other situations when I find I am trying to force myself
    to do or not to do something.  I have much better success when I can
    silence the critical, negative, controlling thoughts.  The more I try to
    make myself do something, the more I rebel and sabotage myself.  It's
    like trying to control myself, or dumping on myself when I fail to control
    myself, is the "action", and the rebellion or sabotage is the "reaction".
    No action, no reaction.

    Then I started thinking about the concept of diets and food obsession as
    mind-control devices in the context of our society.  I think the book is
    right:  we live in a culture that is obsessed with control.  We, as
    part of this culture, internalize and reflect this obsession.  Either we
    become part of the "establishment" and buy into the control, and impose
    it on ourselves and others, or we act as rebels against control by others
    and ourselves.  The diet/binge dichotomy is an instance of this played
    out over food.  It is hard to let it all go by you, and just be.

    <warning: following is mostly my humble opinion, not much from the book>

    Women have been concerned about their weight and appearance for eons, 
    I suppose, but I think it's very interesting that the rise of the 
    current ideal body size for women, an ideal that's impossible to attain 
    for most of us, was concurrent  with the rise of the women's movement.  
    I started to see this preoccupation with body size and food and dieting 
    as a devious backlash mechanism for preserving the status quo of our 
    society.  The obsession with thinness is a way of keeping women's 
    attention off women's REAL problems in our lives.  Think of the change 
    we could effect with all of that mental energy, strength,
    and resolve, if we weren't expending it obsessing about our bodies and
    food, and dumping on ourselves.  What would happen if women stopped telling 
    themselves, "I'll wait until I'm thin" before they ask for that promotion, 
    get that job, leave that man, go back to school, etc.?  This "I'll wait
    until I'm thin" trick is magical thinking and a way of avoiding living.
    I think it's the modern day version of "some day my prince will come" -
    it makes you passive, instead of putting you in charge of making your
    life the way you want it to be.

    Not only does the cultural status quo profit by controlling women by
    keeping them preoccupied with their appearance, but whole 
    industries have risen to exploit women-as-consumers' insecurities 
    about the acceptability of their bodies: the diet industry, the 
    cosmetic surgery industry, the fashion and cosmetics industries.  
    
    What would happen if women everywhere decided that they 
    would never diet again, that they accept their bodies just as they are?
    I think that as long as we continue to take our feelings of worth from a 
    society that sets women's value primarily according to how closely we meet 
    a narrow and unattainable standard of female beauty, we can never be free.
    
    Mostly, I thought about these issues with respect to their impact on
    women's lives.  But it occurred to me that increasingly, during the '80s,
    men began to be vulnerable to the same concerns about weight and ideal
    body shape that women traditionally have been.  I wondered what the causes
    of this new trend could be.  Could it be that the superficial '80s, with
    their emphasis on style over substance, image over reality, have pressured
    men into this preoccupation with size, too?  Could it be that in our
    increasingly complex world, where everything seems to be out of control
    and deteriorating, and people feel unable to do anything about it, that
    focusing on your own body is a way of retreating to a space where you
    feel you can exercise some control?  Traditionally, women have not had
    as much autonomy over their lives as men; if some men are beginning to 
    feel less powerful, could they be adopting some of the coping mechanisms 
    women have used?
    
    <end of soap-boxing and philosophizing, back to the book>

    But what about weight control for health reasons?  Isn't that a legitimate
    concern, and a good reason to diet?  As the book discusses: yes, health
    concerns of severe overweight are real.  But even with this good reason, and
    armed with all kinds of nutritional and behavioral factoids, most people
    either can't lose or can't keep the weight off using diets.  Recently, I
    read that researchers now believe that repeated dieting and gaining is
    more harmful than staying steady at some greater-than-normal weight. To me,
    the high rate of failure to lose weight and keep it off for this most 
    compelling reason, survival, is the most damning evidence that 
                         >>diets don't work<<.
    The book's authors claim to have had a 75% success rate (lose weight and 
    keep it off) with about 400 clients.
    If the book is correct that dieting as a method of weight control is such
    a failure (claims 98% of dieters eventually regain the weight, I think),
    why not try NOT dieting?  What have you got to lose :-)?
618.13hear hear!TLE::DBANG::carrolla woman full of fireThu Feb 27 1992 20:5816
Thanks for entering that.  It sounds like the premise of the book is very
similar to Geneen Roth's "Feeding the Hungry Heart" and her Breaking Free
program.

Your analysis of feminism with respect to women's body images is very
interesting. I've thought a lot about it, and talked about it some in
=wn=...I guess I would say that body-image-focus is not backlash 
because we haven't come far enough in that regard to *have* a backlash.
I think there has always been an ideal for women, and women's worths
have always been judged on their looks.  (Remember, Helen's face was
beautiful enough to launch a thousand ships.)  The ideal itself changes
with time; I don't think today's is anymore unattainable than yesterday's.
As always, there are some women who fit, and most women don't, and those
who don't are deemed less worthy.

Diana