Category: News
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Susie Orbach in the New York Times Magazine
6 comments on Susie Orbach in the New York Times MagazineSusie Orbach, author of Fat is a Feminist Issue, was interviewed in the New York Times Sunday Magazine this week. In part: Fifi, which is what I call my book “Fat Is a Feminist Issue,” was in part a plea to give up dieting and learn to recognize hunger and appetite and respond to them. Dieting, I argued, caused compulsive eating and destabilizes our relationship to…
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Bad Marriages Tied to Metabolic Syndrome, or Depression?
You may have seen this article about depression and “metabolic syndrome” being tied to unhappy marriages. Or to be more precise: While both men and women in “strained” unions, those marked by arguing and being angry, were more likely to feel depressed than happier partners, the women in the contentious relationships were more likely to develop high blood pressure, high cholesterol, high blood sugar and other markers of what’s known…
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Big and Healthy
As the media frequently points out, people are bigger now. What is often not pointed out is that we’re also taller and longer lived. The Rotund’s post on the definition of health and yesterday’s discussion on redefining illnesses reminded me of this 2006 New York Times article from Gina Kolata. Scientists used to say that the reason people are living so long these days is that medicine is…
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Another voice on incontinence
From Dana Jennings, writing about the incontinence he dealt with after prostate surgery: At age 51, I wouldn’t choose to be incontinent, to wear “male guards,” but in the end it’s just a biomechanical flaw. Same with impotence. Don’t get me wrong, I like the physical life. It’s important to me. I regularly walk five miles a day, and I’ve started running and lifting light weights again.…
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Not Just “Obese” Was Redefined…
As Fillyjonk reminded me, this chart shows how the diagnosis criteria for diabetes, hypertension, and high cholesterol were also changed in 1997 and 1998. In the case of high cholesterol, this nearly doubled (86% increase) the number of people who officially have “high cholesterol”. I don’t know the science behind these changes. I’d like to think they made a lot more sense than lowering the overweight…
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The most significant “lifestyle” cause of death and disease
We focus so much on weight, especially women. Magazines, TV shows, news, advertising, government programs. We focus on diet and exercise to “improve” our weight, but really we’re trying to improve ourselves. Yet we don’t focus on getting richer or better educated.
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Practicalities
Yes, it is nice that this writer spent 3 pages on how “nanny state” requirements to lose weight violates civil liberties and that ABC picked it up. It would’ve been nice, though, to drop in the fact that diets don’t cause permanent, sustainable weight loss for most people or that the health benefits of dieting tend to be transient. Sure, if losing 5 or 10lbs will move you from…
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Nifty and/or Useful Links
I found these useful & thought that you might too. Charlotte Cooper compared psychics with weight-loss sellers Weight loss industries rely as much on showbiz bravado as psychics, including the use of simple, vivid images that draw people in, such as the Before/After transformation archetype. That psychics, and weight loss companies and advocates, are types of industries that are unregulated and know they are peddling junk. Brown…
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Acne, Height and Headaches Contagious Too!
Remember the “study” showing that having a fat friend made you more likely to be fat? Some researchers decided to apply the same methodology to pimples, height, and headaches. I missed this over the holidays but Sandy at JunkFoodScience didn’t. She summarized their results (published in the British Medical Journal) as follows: They found increased relative risks of 58% for height, 62% for pimples, and…
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Google Health News Surprise
“Dieting now makes you gain weight.” This San Francisco Chronicle article isn’t news for the fatosphere. But it is news, indeed, a pleasant surprise, for Google News. “Dieting is the worst thing people can do if they’re interested in weight control,” said Linda Bacon, a nutrition professor and clinical psychotherapist in the East Bay whose book, “Health at Every Size,” was published in November (BenBella Books). “Dieting seems the fastest…
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Correlations vs Causation
You may have read that getting less sleep is associated with heart disease. This one included a well-written description of how correlations are not causation. Senior author Diane S. Lauderdale cautioned that the new report does not prove a cause-and-effect relationship between a lack of sleep and heart disease. “It’s important to say that this is the first report and this does not yet prove the association…
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Soda Tax =/= Obesity Tax
But there is a way to institute a tax that could, perhaps, be analogous to the tobacco taxes: Recognize that fat runs in families. Put a tax on fat people who have babies! We could even pay thin parents to have more babies, so’s to increase their proportion of the gene pool.
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January O: Diet As Usual
The January O Magazine arrived in the mail today. It seemed to have a few more diet-and-weight focused articles than usual: A “Let’s Eat Right” article on eating healthy, aka “good foods instead of bad”; A “Numbers to Worry About” article that included that women should have a 32.5-inch waist; Oprah’s “Got heart palpitations due to hyperthyroid then hypothyroid then depressed and oh yeah I got fat…
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HAES in O Magazine?
…so you’ve probably seen that Oprah has announced that she’s not going to try to be thin, she’s going to work on being healthy. Meanwhile, Linda Bacon sent an email to her mailing list Monday that began: First, I’m happy to report that my book, Health at Every Size: The Surprising Truth About Your Weight, has been very well received. You can check out the reviews link…
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Paid to Lose Weight?
Headline: Weight loss easier when you get paid for it. Granted, that is a new spin; usually you just pay to lose. Dr. Kevin Volpp, of the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, who was concerned that dieting requires deferred gratification and decided to create a a reward system which gave dieters “rewards in the present”. Note the assumption that “the obese” are not capable of deferred…
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De-stressing
Work was stressful today. I came home feeling out of sorts. Mentally I was punchy; I knew my thinking was a bit slower than usual, but I was still obsessing about work. Physically I was wired – not only was I was busy enough at work that I ‘d forgotten my afternoon walk, but after dinner I’d sampled the candy my coworkers brought in. I wasn’t…
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This week’s Cathy
The comic strip Cathy debuted in 1976. I was 10 years old and just starting to read newspapers on my own. It was often the only image of a professional, self-reliant young woman I saw, and not just on the comics page. Sometimes she was unsure about how to proceed, but she never moved back with her parents or relied on them to pay the bills. …
Living ~400lbs 