Lifestyle Choices

Going on and off fad diets is an ineffective way to lose weight. It can also be dangerous, for you risk creating subclinical vitamin and mineral deficiencies that will not only affect your physical well-being and your emotional stability, but in the long run can also make your weight problem even worse. Fad diets upset your health in another way as well— because of the inevitable weight gain that follows each. When your weight seesaws up and down your skin ages more rapidly and serum cholesterol builds up in the cardiovascular system, making you more susceptible to heart disease.

According to statistics, the average fad diet lasts from one to three months and the woman following it is off the diet for about half the time. She goes on one and a quarter of these diets a year, usually seasonally. Sales of diet products climb in January and February when the post Christmas guilt arrives and again in May and June when thoughts of bikinis begin to raise their ugly heads. Then sales sag in October each year, reaching their nadir over the Christmas period. It is all part of the elaborate and amazing game of so-called weight control, in which the poor overweight woman more often than not is the pawn.

Believing that the loss of that ten to twenty-five pounds with which she has been struggling will transform her life, she goes on one diet after another, suffering guilt, loathing, and nutritional deficiencies when she fails and experiencing a kind of hollow victory if the weight does come off, because it usually brings with it a sense of disappointment, fatigue, and more nutritional deficiencies. For a while she may find that getting thinner makes her look better in a pair of slacks, but it will do nothing to change her attitude toward herself or to make her, fundamentally, any happier.

If you are someone who has long struggled with excess weight and is still struggling, stop for a moment and do something: take a look at yourself and decide if you truly want to lose weight or not. Many women find that, although they may not even know it consciously, they really don’t want to be thinner and the so-called struggle has been nothing more than a way of defeating themselves. Extra pounds may offer them a feeling of security and protection, which they fear slimming down might take away. For other women, this battle with the scales represents a way of rebelling against a set of conventional values about sexiness. It is a way of saying, “I will be accepted for myself, fat as I am, or not at all.” Examine your feelings about thinness and ask yourself what reasons you might have for being fat.

You may be surprised to find there can be advantages to it. For instance, some women feel they could not cope with the sexual advances that their thinner body might engender. Still others simply feel better when they are slightly overweight. The fatty tissues act as a buffer and their own biochemical makeup provides them with energy stimulants that help them lead extraordinarily productive lives. All of these things are important to consider. Being aware of your feelings about them and facing any that may apply to you is far more important than starting another crash diet to lose fifteen pounds, only to mess it all up again by going on an eating binge. Not everybody should be thin.

Lean may be beautiful. But lean is not enough. For real beauty your muscles need to be elastic, your skin smooth, your circulation good so every cell of your body gets all the nutrients it needs to function well, and your gait must be free and graceful. While some of these things may be helped by losing excess pounds, none of them is dependent on your looking like a bean pole, no matter how much advertisers in glossy magazines would have us believe otherwise. Beware of that universal dictum that you have to be thin to be beautiful. You do? Who says so?

If, after taking everything into account, you decide you do want to lose weight, take heart. It is not as difficult as everyone believes. Lasting weight loss depends on two things: first, the true wish to be thinner. And second, a genuinely adequate low calorie diet that provides you with all the essential minerals, vitamins, and trace elements as well as enough protein, unrefined carboyhdrates, and the essential fatty acids that you need to ensure you have no hidden nutritional hungers.

First Let’s Explore Some Myths

A lot of nonsense is talked about weight control. Many false statements are made that do little more than worry would-be dieters and lend support to a multimillion-dollar industry in diet foods, books, devices, and drugs—the existence of which is entirely dependent on failure. If they all worked, then overweight women would use them, get thin, and never need them again. But no. Slimming is made to seem a great struggle in which every woman needs a lot of paraphernalia for support. Here are a few commonly accepted false notions about slenderizing: “Diet pills make you lose weight.” “Specially designed diet foods and breads provide all the nutrients you need to keep you healthy and make you lose weight fast.” “You should not get too much exercise if you are trying to lose weight or it will increase your appetite.” Not one of them is true.

Diet pills do not make you lose weight. For a time amphetamines may decrease your appetite but this effect is lessened with each passing day you take them. There is also considerable risk of becoming psychologically and physically dependent on appetite suppressants. As far back as thirty years ago, amphetamines and placebos were tested on two different groups of children and the placebo groups showed the greater weight loss of the two. But old myths die hard. So do amphetamines, even though addiction to them can lead to psychosis-like states. The cellulose tablets designed to create bulk in the stomach and therefore to make you want to eat less are not dangerous, but they are not very useful either. The best way to find out for yourself is to try them and see.

Most specially made diet foods fit into the category of overprocessed, overrefined foodstuffs that are best avoided. For, in spite of their being enriched with some of the vitamins and minerals that were removed in their manufacture, valuable nutrients have been destroyed in their making. A dieter needs all the benefit of truly wholesome foods, not twentieth-century “plastic” copies. Artificial sweeteners such as saccharin, the cyclamates, and others are safe if you use them in small quantities, say to sweeten a couple of cups of tea a day. But if you take them in larger doses in the form of diet foods, dietetic sweets and cookies, and no- calorie colas while on a nutrient restricted diet, the long-term effect on your health is not predictable. They are artificial chemicals and are best used only sparingly, if at all.

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