Conversations About Weight

Consider the conversations you have heard regarding weight, fatness or thinness during the last week? What have you read about these issues lately? Here is a sampling from my archive:

• A client of mine who is a handsome, bright, and kind college male told me that he fears becoming fat because he believes no one will like him. (I reminded him that Santa is quite popular.)
• Ashton Kutcher was quoted as saying"If the fat people gave the skinny people more food we could just eat ... we could solve obesity and hunger at the same time". Brilliant!?! God help Demi Moore if she ever gains weight!
• I read a quote from Susan Wooley, PhD, Past President, American Academy for Eating Disorders stating "If shame could cure obesity there wouldn't be a fat women in the world" How true. I thought of my client who has dieted to a weight of over 300 pounds. She cried tears of shame as she recounted her past diet failures. I assured her that it is the diet industry that should be ashamed.
• Several sources report that young girls in our country are more afraid of becoming fat than they are of nuclear war, cancer or losing their parents
• Many magazines have taken polls that show most women would rather lose IQ points or one of their limbs than become fat.

Let's be a part of changing these conversations.

On the other hand ... what positive conversations, articles, quotes, etc. have you been privy to lately. Please share! We can encourage each other!

Fighting Obesity without Causing Eating Disorders

There was a great letter to the editor published in the Tennessean recently. Pat Ballard quoted from many of the recent articles warning of the obesity epidemic American children are facing. She mentioned that several articles identified listing calorie counts on menus as a very proactive effort to shrink the growing waistlines of our children. I appreciated her candor as she went on to describe how exposure to height/weight charts, calorie counting information and diet articles in women's magazines at age 11 began her descent into a 22 year battle with eating disorders. What might have seemed like benign information distribution nearly ended this women's life. How many others have similar stories? Will more conversations about calories, fat grams and BMI measurements enhance the health and well being of our children or ourselves? I feel very certain that we need to change the conversation. Let's talk about the need for kids to limit screen time, move their bodies more and have fewer menus in front of their faces in the first place. None of us need more things to obsess about in relation to food, eating and weight. Calories on menus will not cure obesity and may contribute to disordered eating.
What do you think?