As the saying goes, “it’s déjà vu all over again.” During my lifetime, most of societal focus has been on losing weight rather than engaging in regulated eating. That is, shedding weight was always the prize and eating was about finding a winning strategy. Then came the intuitive eating movement which focused on improving eating skills and specifically not on losing weight. But here we are back again at everyone talking about the weight they’ve lost on GLP-1 drugs and only secondarily about how good it feels to be eating in more attunement with their bodies. There’s not one client I have on weight-loss drugs who doesn’t spend more time talking about the weight they lost than how they’re now eating from appetite cues and enjoying being a more “normal” eater. Granted, much of their talk is about being able to be more physically active and feeling less self-conscious at a...

I had a fascinating conversation with a client about weighing herself during which we came up with several reasons she and others do so. Fortunately, she’s interacting with her scale less and less and enjoying her disengagement more and more. Here are the reasons we think people weigh themselves, but there may be more. Empowerment/control. My client talked about depending on the scale to help her feel in control of her life. Right now, her family and work life are feeling a bit tumultuous and shaky—in part because she’s becoming more mentally healthy and standing up for herself—and she feels uncertain about her future. So, she heads to the scale when she wants certainty. Because numbers are so neat, while our lives are often so messy, it’s easy to see how we’d be drawn to digits. Progress/Reassurance. My client also recognized that she wants to know how she’s doing with food...

On Is Obesity Really a Disease? - Chasing Life with Dr. Sanjay Gupta, a CNN podcast, world renowned geneticist at the University of Cambridge Professor Giles Yeo answers the question of why some people have really loud chatter in their heads about food and for others it’s only a whisper. He says that “With all the info that has come, it is now clear, crystal clear, unequivocal that it is a brain problem. It is a problem of our brain influencing the hunger. So, hunger is a brain scenario, even though the feeling of hunger comes from your stomach. And we now know that obesity is just your brain influencing what you eat and how you eat.”  Yeo goes on to say that “a lot of our understanding of genes versus environment has come from the study of twins. And actually. If you study twins, then there is a range. But...

Last fall I was interviewed by the National Eating Disorders Association in conjunction with an article I wrote for them about holiday eating. It was a brief interview and there wasn’t time for everything I wanted to say. Hence this blog to add to the many other anti-diet blogs I’ve written.  Diet culture is a cult. It’s a society-approved and encouraged distortion of the purpose of eating primarily for nourishment to survive and secondarily for pleasure. It provides rigid rules to keep people in line and to see food, bodies and themselves as either “good” or “bad.” It exclusively values thin, lean and toned bodies and eating restrictively.  If you follow diet culture rules, it promises good health, happiness, lovability, cultural approval, and self-worth. If you don’t follow the rules, it suggests you’ll end up with poor health, no control over your eating, unworthiness, and being an outcast in society. It...

While visiting a friend, she mentioned being happy about having lost weight and asked how much I weigh. I said I didn’t know, at which point she asked if I wanted to use her scale, perhaps thinking the reason I don’t know is because I don’t own one. I politely declined, saying that I know what I eat so I don’t need to know what I weigh.  On the drive home, I was thinking about our interaction. My first thought, quite frankly, was that what I weigh is none of most people’s business. I grew up at a time when the scale was not an obsession and I don’t recall general discussion of body weight until I was a teenager and had begun dieting and binge-eating.    My second thought about the interaction was curiosity: Why would someone want to know what I weigh? I think my friend was comparing her...

What an interesting discussion I had with a client about why she weighs herself. It turns out the answer is more complicated than either of us expected. It seems like there are two possibilities: one is to see if weight-loss progress is being made and the other is to enjoy a reward for the work put into becoming a “normal” eater. Naturally, it’s important for people to feel they’re moving toward success. In terms of progress, there are many ways to measure advancement. Why we choose the scale rather than other methods is more about culture than anything else. We’ve been told by society over and over that low weight equals beauty and by the medical establishment, that weight equals good health and that we should weigh ourselves often. The scale has long been judge and jury on those subjects, the arbiter of whether you were good or bad, healthy or...

Some of my most difficult moments as a therapist come from discussing weight with high-weight clients who continue to hold fast to yearning to shed pounds. It’s a touchy subject which I wrote about recently in the Gurze-Salucore newsletter in an article entitled “Navigating Weight-loss Discussions with Higher Weight Clients”:   “I confess: Although I’ve been an eating disorders therapist for 30-plus years, have written eight books on eating, weight and body image, posted more than 1,600 blogs, and am recovered from binge-eating disorder for half a lifetime, I still find it daunting to talk about weight-loss with higher weight clients. These discussions rarely seem to go well, no matter that I’ve had hundreds of them.  Here are two examples. When Leann, in her late fifties, called me for help managing her eating, she was in the midst of moving abroad where she’d also be deepening a serious romantic relationship. During...

When clients tell me they’re desperate to lose weight, they usually mean to go on some sort of diet and restrict calories. When I ask them what happened after they dropped pounds in the past, they often think a moment and restate their goal: they don’t want to lose weight; they want to lose it and keep it off. Ah, I tell them, no wonder they’ve had trouble in the past, because the latter is a different skill set than shedding pounds. To lose weight, clients tell me they need to exert self-control, deprive themselves of foods they love, say no to food more often than they say yes to it, constantly monitor their weight, never overeat, consume only healthy foods, obsess about what goes into their mouths, and constantly think about food. This process likely sounds familiar to you.  The problem is that most people (about 95% of us) can...

If you’re a regular reader of my blogs, you know I don’t write about ways to lose weight because a scale focus is bound to sabotage learning to eat “normally.” However, a recent article, Our Food Is Killing Us, presents such compelling facts about how ultra-processed food makes us fatter, that I couldn’t not write about it. It also speaks to how food manufacturers intentionally load up these foods to make them super appealing and habituating and how their production is geared to put weight on anyone who eats them. For more information on processed foods see my previous blogs about its dangers.  Here's how ultra-processed makes us fatter. Fructose, the commonly sweetener in our foods used in high concentrations, “destroys or inactivates several key enzymes needed for the healthy function of mitochondria . . . which causes a backlog of unprocessed glucose to circulate in the bloodstream and store it...

I’m sure I’ve had conversations with clients about falling off the proverbial wagon before, but a recent one really got my dander up. Where does this analogy come from and how come we use it so much? Is it helpful to think of recovery with wagon analogies or might the concept actually be hurtful? Can you guess where I stand on the idea? The phrase came into usage around the end of the 19th century and referred to people who said they preferred to drink from a water wagon than imbibe alcohol. The analogy has been used freely in the field of addictions ever since though it’s actually a dangerous concept implying, as it does, the tight control one needs to remain on a moving wagon and the disaster it would be if one fell off one.  There is no wagon when it comes to recovering from an eating disorder because...

Sadly, because society is not giving up on stigmatizing higher weight people any time soon, if you are higher weight and want to live without feeling its oppressive impact, you’ll need to stop believing that being unable to lose weight or keep it off is a moral failing. There are people fighting to eradicate weight stigma, but change takes time. In the meantime, you can buy into the lie that there’s something dreadfully wrong and defective about you for being higher weight or you can stop internalizing this falsehood.  The results presented in “Living With Obesity: Expressions of Longing” or even reading the abstract describing this study (V. Ueland, PhD, RN, E. Dysvik, PhD, RN, B. Furnes, PhD, RN, 1/22/20, https://doi.org/10.1177/2377960819901193) are enlightening and provocative. They conclude that many higher weight individuals believe that their size is a burden to them and others. They’re “subjected to a cultural understanding that obesity...

There’s been a debate raging for centuries about the role that nature versus nurture play in how we turn out. One aspect of this dispute is whether it’s socialization or biology that turns us into dysregulated eaters and people who carry high weights. Although I can’t settle the debate for you, I can provide scientific information for you to decide yourself. “Obesity is in the genes” by Jeffrey M. Friedman, MD, PhD (Scientific American, 10/31/19, https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/obesity-is-in-the-genes/, accessed 11/8/19,) explains why a weight-loss focus will likely fail. Here’s some of what it says about eating and weight:  “In aggregate, the genes that control food intake and metabolism act to keep weight in a stable range by creating a biological force that resists weight change in either direction. Moreover, the greater the amount of weight that is lost, the greater the sense of hunger that develops. So, when the obese lose large amounts...

Clients who struggle to keep their weight down often ask me how they can burn more calories and boost their metabolism. They’re not asking about exercise. They’re looking for a quick fix—pharmaceutical drugs and illegal methamphetamines to help them lose weight or keep it off. Back in my dieting days, I recall taking some over-the-counter pills myself for that purpose, but all they did was to keep me awake when I wanted to sleep. Devotee of science that I am, it amazes me that people get away with making false or unproven claims that their process or product will boost metabolism. And, let me tell you, these top selling books do better than mine do which are about learning how to eat in tune with appetite. I understand why, but it still makes me angry because desperate people are getting duped into something that doesn’t work. Says Michael Jensen, director of...

Many people with eating problems have other addictions as well, such as spendingmore time on the Internet than they’d like or is beneficial for them. In fact, weight-lossdieting and Internet usage have a great deal in common. To learn how, read on. David T. Courtwright, author of “Caught in the Web” (Newsweek, 6/14/19, pp. 12-13),says that designers format games to hook you in and ensure you’ll come back formore—like how food companies whip up combinations of sugar, fat, and salt to ensureyou can’t eat just one. Gamers get hooked on 1) “goals just beyond the user’s reach; 2)unpredictable but stimulating feedback; 3) a sense of incremental progress and hard-won mastery; 4) tasks or levels that gradually become more challenging; 5) tensionsthat demand resolution; and 6) social connections to like-minded users.” Sound like weight-loss dieting? Many are designed to keep you hooked on them, not tohelp you become happier or healthier. Forget...

I’m disturbed whenever I meet with a client who’s had difficulty with the medical community due to being higher weight. That’s because there’s such rampant fat bias and weight stigma among these professionals. To remedy that situation, Paige O’Mahoney, MD, and I wrote Helping Patients Outsmart Overeating: Psychological Strategies for Doctors and Health Care Providers a review of which can be found at https://www.karenrkoenig.com/blog/my-new-book-is-out-helping-patients-outsmart-overeating. Study after research study provides evidence of doctors, nurses and health providers offering inadequate treatment to higher-weight patients. Some admit to their bias about people they consider to be “fat” or “obese” and some fail to recognize their prejudice while it continues to inform their practice and harm their patients mentally and physically. Common problems include blaming the patient for being high weight and for their health problems; expressing patronizing, condescending, and contemptuous attitudes toward them; and misdiagnosing medical conditions based on the assumption that if patients...

One of my clients made an amazing discovery I want to share with you. Her worries about food began as a child when her mother insisted that the family eat totally clean and she was forbidden to eat sweets and treats. When she wasn’t thinking about food—what she should and shouldn’t eat—she was thinking about weight—how much she’d gained or lost. Eventually, she began to rebel against her mother’s rigid food rules while thoughts about food and weight consumed most of her mental energy. Fast forward to today when she’s evolving into a “normal” eater. One day in therapy she shared an ah-ha moment: She’d spent most of her life obsessed with either eating or weight. During non-diet times, she fantasized constantly about cravings and what foods she wanted to binge on and berated herself after emotional eating. When dieting, she rarely thought about food because she knew exactly what and...

I heard that Weight Watchers has had a makeover. Disclaimer: I’ve never been to a meeting but am blogging about them anyway. What I have to say isn’t based on firsthand knowledge, but on what I’ve read about the new “WW” and heard from numerous clients over the decades. The company started in 1963 and has touted itself as a weight-loss program ever since. Many of you probably are familiar with their philosophy and practices because you’ve gone to meetings, used their online services or know Weight Watchers’ members. The group is known for its eating plan which assigns points to all foods and drinks to help members make “healthier” choices and eat smaller portions—to lose weight. According to “Before and After” (The Economist, 10/20/18, page 61-2), Weight Watchers officially became “WW” as part of rebranding itself after a steady decline in memberships and profit for years. Claiming to encourage “beyond...

I have several friends whose eating style involves “cheat” days. In fact, I’ve heard that there are diets that promote food restriction during the week and cheating on the weekends. As an eating disorders therapist, the idea of cheat-eating has always seemed like an unproductive idea and encouraging it as a way to pull us farther away from, rather than closer to, “normal,” regulated, appetite-cued eating. The main reason is that the word cheating makes us feel as if we’re bad and doing something wrong. That perspective assumes that eating a slice of chocolate cake, enjoying a few potato chips or enjoying a buffet dinner is akin to sinful. What does that tell our poor brains? One thing it does is confuse them. It makes us think that some foods are bad and others are good and that we are bad or good for eating them. Mainly, it makes eating feel...

Here’s a newspaper headline that’s a prime example of why people have difficulty becoming “normal” eaters: “A party menu that won’t ruin your diet!” This makes it sound like a diet is something you’re on temporarily as if you might give up a diet someday, like an escalator on which you step on and off. Instead, lifestyle is a moving sidewalk you stay on to move forward and keep moving forward. The idea is not to think of eating a particular way as temporary, but as permanent. Let’s just get rid of the word diet or dieting, period, and talk about what we’re really looking at: a lifestyle change, a new habit. It’s ongoing, not on and off. It’s forever, not for the moment. This is an example of how diet (versus) lifestyle thinking goes: Say, your friends all order dessert after a restaurant dinner. Diet-think would go something like this:...

Though I’ve treated hundreds of clients who are recovering from chronic dieting, it wasn’t until one remarked on her decades of restrictive eating making her feel as if she had Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), that I recognized their similarities. Recurrent restrictive eating may, indeed, feel traumatic and recovering from dieting—not just from emotional or binge-eating—may have lingering traumatic effects. Decades recovered from restrictive eating, the memories of those awful years are still painfully vivid: the deprivation I felt from saying no to food while others ate whatever they pleased, my obsession with thinness and the intensity of shame and self-hatred I felt after my relentless bingeing, my focus on what and how much I ate above all else that sorely needed my attention, and my low self-esteem because I couldn’t seem to feed myself well no matter how hard I tried. Trauma has varying definitions, but we generally view it as...

For all of us who have dieted and for those of you who frequently or occasionally feel tempted to restart a diet, here’s a simple explanation of why most people cannot keep weight off by weight-loss dieting. It makes perfect sense. Your mind might want to be dieting (although most minds sensibly dislike giving up culinary pleasure), while your body inevitably starts to fight back when you deprive it of calories on a regular basis. It’s time to face facts and recognize that learning to be a “normal” eater is the only way to become healthy and fit, establish a comfortable weight for life, and enjoy a positive relationship with food and your body. Here’s the skinny on why diets don’t keep weight off long-term according to “How Did We Get Here? Explaining the obesity epidemic” by Kevin Hall (Nutrition Action Healthletter, July/August 2018, pp. 3-5). Describing the results of a...

I’ve blogged about psychology professor Dr. Traci Mann’s well-researched book, Secrets from the Eating Lab, and recently came across an article summarizing her findings. Honestly, though, she writes so well and with such laugh-out-loud humor, that I recommend reading her entire book. I read it cover to cover when I was delayed at an airport and couldn’t believe how quickly the time past. Her article is entitled “Why do dieters regain weight? Calorie deprivation alters body and mind, overwhelming willpower” (Psychological Science, May 2018, accessed 5/29/18, http://www.apa.org/science/about/psa/2018/05/calorie-deprivation.aspx). Here are some excerpts from it. I refer you to the article itself for citations. • “…weight regain is the typical long-term response to dieting, rather than the exception.” • “…calorie deprivation leads to changes in hormones, metabolism, and cognitive/attentional functions that make it difficult to enact the behaviors needed to keep weight off.” • “…after sufficient calorie deprivation, weight is lost, and therefore...

Recently I’ve been thinking how curious it is that most of us have such a challenging time going from chronic dieting and overeating to “normal” eating. I include myself as one of those people. Yes, habits die hard, but dieting has its own unique challenges and is—pardon the pun—no picnic, so why do we fight so hard to give it up? Imagine if you were a “normal” eater and forced to restrict your food intake, that is, to eat when and how much someone else wanted you to eat and to forget about your own appetite cues. This person would boss you around and tell you how much and when to eat or not eat. No matter what you felt like eating, Bossy Pants would insist that you override your cravings and partake of what he or she wanted you to eat instead. Want a piece of pie at Thanksgiving? Too bad:...

I had a long discussion with a client about what a comfortable weight for herself would be. Having spent time years before engaged in anorexia, bulimia and binge-eating, it made sense that she didn’t know, now that she was eating more “normally,” what a healthy weight would feel like. I understood. This is an issue for many women I treat. Honestly, it doesn’t seem to be as much of a quandary for my male clients. We looked at this issue from several angles. First, we talked about cultural pressure to look a certain way. For those of you who are young, please know that it wasn’t always this way, and that now there’s almost no escaping it. My grandmother, who was considered a great beauty in her day and who buried two husbands and then had a boyfriend in her eighties, would have been told she had a too high BMI if...

I love to blog because I love to write. However, I find it daunting to talk about weight and weight-loss because I’m concerned about my comments may come across. Aside from being scrupulous about not using weight in a stigmatizing way, I also want to address readers’ concerns on the subject and be careful not to bum them out by what I say. Every time I post a blog or an article describing scientific evidence that weight is strongly genetically based, I get a pang of discomfort. If I write that obesity is highly heritable, I worry that readers will feel pessimistic and lose interest in taking care of their bodies, thinking “What’s the use?” If I write that most people who lose weight regain it or, often, regain more than they originally lost—I fear that I’m blowing someone’s day and that they’ll feel frustrated and helpless to ever find a sustainable...

Sometimes the science of food and eating moves along so fast that it’s hard to keep track of it. However, here are two myths that have been debunked and are worth noting. “Will smaller plates lead to smaller waists? A systematic review and meta-analysis of the effect that experimental manipulation of dishware size has on energy consumption.” It has been suggested that providing consumers with smaller dishware may prove an effective way of helping people eat less and prevent weight gain, but experimental evidence supporting this has been mixed. The objective of the present work was to examine the current evidence base for whether experimentally manipulated differences in dishware size influence food consumption. We systematically reviewed studies that experimentally manipulated the dishware size with which participants served themselves at a meal with and measured subsequent food intake … With all available data included, analysis indicated a marginal effect of dishware size...

First it was the tape measure and the number on the scale. Then came Body Mass Index (BMI)—both measurements that purport to tell you how healthy you are. Surely, if doctors and fitness trainers are using these tools, they must be effective. Right? Wrong! No wonder we’re confused about how much we should weigh to get and stay healthy. “A healthy weight isn’t…a number on a scale, a category in the BMI, a specific shape, [or] fitting into specific size clothes,” says Marsha Hudnall, MS, RDN, CD of Green Mountain at Fox Fun, a non-diet weight-loss retreat. (“Defining healthy weight: what it is and what it isn’t,” http://www.fitwoman.com, 1/18/06) Rather, a healthy weight must be decided through a person-by-person assessment, not by across-the-board measures. But, what about BMI? Don’t those calipers accurately measure body fat? Hudnall says, “The BMI derives from an almost 200-year-old classification system that was initially intended to...

For those of you who are down on yourselves because you can’t lose weight, please realize the complexity of the issue. Forget will power and self-discipline, calories in and energy out. The truth is, many factors affect our eating and size. Out of body experiences by Julie Deardorff (Sarasota Herald Tribune, Health and Fitness, 10/30/12) provides the lowdown on how our weight is affected by environment. I guarantee that on your own you’d never have imagined that some of these factors would impact your weight, so three cheers for scientific studies. Pregnant women who breathe high levels of diesel fuels/hydrocarbons are morelikely to have obese children than those who don’t. These chemicals can be found outdoors, but are also in “cigarette smoke, candles, incense, and home heating fuels.”The intake of antibiotics in infancy may upset the balance of gut bacteria which in turn affect “hormones related to metabolism.”Sleep deprivation “may decrease...

An interesting article in the Sarasota Herald-Tribune (“Marriages can suffer after bariatric procedures,” 9/6/11) tells us that, contrary to what we might think about weight loss strengthening marriage or a romantic partnership, it actually can cause marital tension and discord instead. Here’s the scoop. The article observes that what happens in a relationship post-surgery depends on how healthy and stable it was pre-surgery. According to David Sarwer, associate professor of psychology, University of Pennsylvania: “In general, we know, after bariatric surgery, that people tend to feel much better about themselves…we see less depressive symptoms. We see improvement in self-esteem and increase in quality of life and body image.” His statement makes one think that significant weight loss would only improve a relationship, but that’s not always the case. Anne Eshelman, a clinical health psychologist who runs a support group for bariatric patients, counters this assumption: “When [both] people are morbidly obese...

If you believe you must be thin to be lovable, I’m sorry to burst your bubble. Two interesting things happened during a recent afternoon which prove my point. First, there I was on the supermarket checkout line gawking at trashy magazine headlines and photos of unhappy looking, but thinner than thin, celebrities. Some of these sad souls were being ditched because their spouses or partners had found someone new, while others were being abandoned because their lovers had had enough of their nasty dispositions, bizarre behavior, or running around. Second, later that day, I was thumbing through a Sarasota magazine and saw this positively glowing overweight couple on the wedding announcement page. Although the groom was bit pudgy in his suit and the bride was definitely chunky in her white wedding dress, what stood out was that they were beaming and obviously gaga in love. I was so thrilled to have...

I’m always thrilled when the media catches up to enlightened thinking. Sadly, it’s a rare occurrence, which makes it worth mentioning because, to greater or lesser degree, what we read, hear and see often shapes our thinking. A NYTimes article by Roni Caryn Rabin, “Fat Wasn’t Always a Bad Thing,” jumped off the page at me. It’s one of the few I’ve read for public consumption that views fat from a logical, realistic perspective. The article explains the purpose of fat in evolutionary terms: folks who had the most meat on them survived times of food scarcity and famine (which was most of human history), while those who were lean died. Fat was a good thing! In fact, fat was just about the best thing you could be if you wanted to live long and prosper. The heavy people who survived, of course, passed on their genes to subsequent generations who...

Generally whenever I mention the statistic from Gina Kolata’s Rethinking Thin that 50-70% of our body weight is inherited, I receive such dirty looks that I often add that there have been challenges a plenty to this conclusion. Now, however, The New England Journal of Medicine has weighed in on the subject by publishing the conclusions of a twin-study on eating and weight, and it looks as if Kolata was right on the mark. The NEJM study had male identical twins consuming 1,000 extra calories per day for 84 out of 100 days. Theoretically, each volunteer should have put on 24 pounds but, lo and behold, although each twin in a set gained about the same amount as his brother, there was a striking difference in weight gained between twin sets, within a range of 9.5 and 29 pounds. The researchers’ explanation was that “40% of our weight may be determined...

When you learned your trade or went to college, did you expect to know everything after a few lessons or a few months? Both involve practice and maybe even apprenticeships or internships. Changing your brain or body only happens over time with practice. Why, then, would you expect to begin your journey with “normal” eating and immediately lose weight? Can you say unrealistic expectation? Mind you, I’m not promoting weight-loss here and my fervent wish is that dysregulated eaters put their energy and focus on following the rules of “normal” eating, changing irrational beliefs about food, eating and appearance, learning life skills, and resolving any issues that prevent them from being comfortable with themselves and in their bodies. However, I recognize that many of you would like to lose weight for any number of healthy and unhealthy reasons. Toward that end, for those of you who have healthy reasons for wishing to shed...

A major frustration working with people who say they have a “weight” problem is getting their goal to be improving their health rather than losing weight. For success, research tells us that this is the direction to go in. This study says it all: “The Weight-Inclusive versus Weight-Normative Approach to Health: Evaluating the Evidence for Prioritizing Well-Being over Weight Loss” by Tylka, Annunziato, Burgard, Daníelsdóttir, Shuman, Davis, and Calogero (Journal of Obesity, vol. 2014 (2014), Article ID 983495, 18 pages, http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2014/983495). “This review evaluates two methods of working within patient care and public health: the weight-normative approach (emphasis on weight and weight loss when defining health and well-being) and the weight-inclusive approach (emphasis on viewing health and well-being as multifaceted while directing efforts toward improving health access and reducing weight stigma).” “Data reveal that the weight-normative approach is not effective for most people because of high rates of weight regain and...

I read recently that the New York City Board of Health will adopt a regulation on March 31 to make restaurant chains post calorie counts for the food on their menus. I’m unsure of the ins and outs of the regulation, and confess to having mixed feelings about its usefulness for both personal and professional reasons. While the regulation is intended to enable diners to make more appropriate food choices, I’m not certain that’s how things will play out based on my—albeit narrow—eating experiences at a spa that offered extensive nutritional information on its menus. One of the first things I noticed sitting down to eat was that the calorie and fat gram counts on the menus instantly grabbed diners’ attention and became the focus of endless discussion. I could almost see the calculators clicking away in their brains as I tried to ignore the not-so-tiny numbers listed next to each...

For years overweight people have been scolded for lack of will power. If they had more, thinking went, they’d eat less and not grow fat. The term has always made me think of a product, as if out we could go and buy a box of Will Power somewhere (you know, sitting there on the shelf next to the Elbow Grease). At the least, it seemed as if we should be able to scrounge up more of it if we tried hard enough. Now a study at the State University of New York at Buffalo (Allure, May 2008, “Body News”) has discovered where will power comes from and the reason some of us have it and others don’t. Big surprise—it’s in our genes! What researchers discovered is actually an anti-will power gene variant, rather than a gene for it. They found that overeating was linked to a gene involved in chemical...

According to Amy Alkon, Sarasota Herald-Tribune “Advice Goddess,” men are hard-wired to assess women’s looks. From an evolutionary standpoint, they’ve used body weight to select mates to ensure survival of the species, hoping that someone who looked healthy was healthy. Alkon adds that “…research suggests that the body size men look for in a woman is inverse to the availability of food. Where eats are scarce, like in the Sahara, Lane Bryant ladies are in. Where there’s food-a-plenty, men go for slimmer women.” (When I emailed her, Alkon quoted the source as Shackleforth and Buss and I will try to track down their work and get more information on the theory). An interesting and unsettling observation. What the quote is saying is that at least one explanation for the fat phobia epidemic in the U.S. (and elsewhere) and males rejecting females for being overweight is due to a lethal combo of...

A client of mine lost about 30 pounds by stopping dieting and bingeing and learning to eat more “normally.” Like many of the people I treat, she’d previously been hyper-focused on her weight rather than on her eating. This mindset must shift for intuitive eating to start taking hold: losing weight needs to take a back seat to gaining skills in eating and emotional management. I knew the shift had occurred for this client when she said she wasn’t sure if she could lose more weight or if she even wanted to, but that she’d decided, for now, to continue trying to eat “normally” and see where her weight stabilized. How many of you agonize over losing under 10 pounds: or 7 or 3 or 1? In your head the amount is huge—the difference between night and day. But in reality, what would change if you lost it? Go through every...

A while ago a question came up on my Food and Feelings Workbook message board about whether counting calories and fat grams makes a person a dieter. Do “normal” eaters never count calories? Do they ever think about the amount of fat contained in food in making choices? Merely because a person considers caloric or fat content, does that automatically make them a dieter rather than a “normal” eater? Does eating intuitively preclude eating intelligently? This subject is complex and requires letting go of black-and-white thinking. Attending to nutritional information is not a question of always focusing on calories and fat or never noting them. The difference between dieters and “normal” eaters is how the information is used to make satisfying, healthy eating decisions. In a nutshell, dieters and restrictive eaters base food decisions exclusively on whether a food is high or low in calories or fat. If it’s high, they...

I’ve been doing research for a new book I’m writing for therapists on how to treat eating and weight issues, and am continually amazed at how much of our capacity to eat “normally” and remain at a comfortable weight is rooted in our biology. Some 50-70% (different sources give different percentages) of our weight is predetermined genetically, giving us an inherited predisposition toward fat or thin. Although we can influence biology through stress management, changing unhealthy environments, practicing healthy habits, and getting regular exercise, we all have to work with what we’ve got. Here are some theories you need to know if you’re working on eating and weight issues. As you read them, remember that these are all possible explanations for your struggles and that you still have to do whatever is in your power to achieve eating success. Be careful not to use this information to allow yourself to give...

Science tells us that when we restrict calories too severely, we automatically rebound by obsessing about food and feeling driven to overeat. This is the body/brain’s way of righting itself and staying in balance. Engage in this process often enough and you’ve got an eating disorder in the making. But there is another way that you can create an eating disorder—by using it to mask the more difficult problems and dilemmas in life. It’s all too easy when you’re in the grip of fanatically seeking that “perfect” weight to make it the focus of your existence. Problems with family, in school, on the job, or within relationships fall by the wayside as you convince yourself that achieving thinness will make all your other troubles disappear. The truth is that if you get to that thin weight, you will still have all the other messes in your life; they won’t drop away...

Most of you have a general idea of what you would like to weigh and some of you may have a specific number in mind. Your view develops from health information, the media, fashion ideals, looking at other people, and considering what you used to weigh. The messages we receive about weight imply that we should simply pick a number and diet to get there. However, the more I read about metabolism and eating, the more I understand that we have a genetically programmed weight we are meant to be, that is, a range below and above which it is hard to go. The best indicator of what your range might be is to look at your family, because the latest research tells us that 50-70% of weight is genetically determined. I can already hear the sighs of dismay and the shouts (maybe some curses too) of denial—50-70% is a huge...

For years Americans have been scolded for being fat because “evidence” has proven that being overweight increases the chance of developing serious illnesses and dying. However, we know that many Americans have not taken the message to heart because surveys report that about two-thirds of adults are considered overweight or obese. Part of the problem is the way the media and health community have approached the subject—mostly through trying to change behavior rather than thinking—and part is due to the don’t-tell-me-what-to-do-ness of the human spirit. Lately we’ve been hearing “news” that really isn’t new to people who struggle with overweight and those of us who treat them: that the subject of health and weight is far more complicated than previously thought. There have been a recent spate of books and headline articles that tell us that being fat does not automatically up the chance of developing life-threatening illness. Take a recent...

In a recent workshop, members had a lively discussion about what to do when people comment—positively or negatively—on their weight. There’s no one-size-fits-all answer, but there are a number of winning responses, depending on the situation. The first step is to identify what bothers you about the comment: Is it a throwback to how some relative in your childhood used to chide you for being too fat or thin? Does it make you feel uncomfortable because it’s tinged with sexuality or a come on? Does it feel fake, competitive, downright hostile, or as if the person envies how you look? Has it been said thoughtlessly, with love, or with obvious mal intent? Is it from a stranger or an intimate? Your response needs to grow from what you’re feeling—angry, embarrassed, sort of pleased and sort of not, violated, scared, devalued, sexualized, self-conscious—and from the context of the situation. For many people...

It’s okay to have stress in your life. In fact, it’s difficult to imagine life with a modicum of stress. The idea is to keep it to a minimum and know how to handle it. Obviously, mindless eating is one way, but not an effective one. I often wonder how many of you don’t recognize the stressors in your life which affect your eating. Here are some.Many of you focus on weight loss so fiercely that you stress yourself out by wanting to look at certain way or weigh a certain amount. What you likely don’t realize is that you are stressing yourself out by pursuing this goal and that this stress may be ruining the quality of your life—even if you do manage to lose weight or keep it off. I understand that you’re trying to feel better by finding a more comfortable weight, but my point is that the...

If you’re like some of my clients who feel vulnerable at a smaller size, you might be confusing “physical” with “emotional” vulnerability and find it difficult to shed pounds or remain at a healthy weight because of it. Do vulnerability and thinness necessarily go together? Do all thin individuals feel emotionally at risk? Does being overweight ensure that someone won’t feel vulnerable? People who’ve been physically abused, molested, raped, or who otherwise have been on the receiving end of unwanted sexual advances, often feel threatened bodily when they’re thinner. This pairing makes sense because they may not have had the might and muscle to fend off a perpetrator in the past. They might even have been chosen as prey because of their physical vulnerability. Additionally, when people are thinner, they really may receive more unwanted sexual attention, and more weight can keep them from having to handle it. They also may...

I don’t know if you’ll find it good news or bad that weight discrimination is not all in your head. To be sure, many overweight people are needlessly self-conscious about their size, and many thin or normal weight folks fear facing prejudice if they grow fat. Whatever people imagine, the truth is that experts tell us that weight discrimination is alive and well and living—no, make that thriving—in our culture. An article entitled “Battle Workplace Weight Bias” (Sarasota Herald-Tribune, 6/13/10) reports on research from Yale University’s Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity that says “Weight discrimination increased 66% from the mid-1990s to the mid-2000s” and is “now more prevalent than bias based on ethnicity, sexual orientation and physical disability.” The article goes on to say that, “In an era when nearly every imaginable form of prejudice is no longer socially tolerated, the rise of anti-fat sentiment is a curious—and, confounding—phenomenon,”...

If you’re a plus-size woman, this blog could be a downer—but only if you let it be one. An article in ScienceDaily (6/23/09), “Heavy Women Have Lower Quality Relationships, But Same Is Not True for Men, Study Finds,” is far from heartening, but, remember, research is about statistics and doesn’t dictate your romantic choices or situation. The research, coming out of the University of Hawaii at Manoa, focused on body image, weight, romantic relationships, and the perceptions between males and females in 57 New Zealand couples who were studied to see if there was an association among their body mass index (BMI), the quality of their relationships, and perceptions about their partners. The finding was that “heavier women had lower quality relationships, which they predicted were more likely to end. They partnered with less desirable men and thought their partners would rate them as less warm/trustworthy.” Not surprisingly, “male partners of...

I want to tell you about a fabulous new website I discovered for overweight women—The Fat Girl’s Guide to Living at http://www.fatgirlsguidetoliving.com/. Here’s what the women who run the site say about it: “The Fat Girl’s Guide to Living is a lifestyle blog for and by overweight women who are tired of missing out on really living because of internal and external pressures and perceptions of themselves.“ They also describe the site as “a life hacker for the full-figured set.” Good stuff, huh? What I love about this site is that it makes no apologies for fat women. It proudly proclaims that you can be fat and still have a life, which many of you—fat or thin—don’t believe. Too many of you insist that being fat prevents you from being lovable, dating, going on vacation, saying what’s in your heart or mind, asking for what you need, being attractive or successful,...

There is so much amazing scientific information out in the world about weight these days. As an evidence-based person, I’m a big fan of science and love to understand the workings of the mind/body. Another scientific bonus is that it helps keep our heads on straight by disproving myths about fat and thin, and gives us a fact-based reality from which to set our goals. So, heads out of the clouds and feet on the ground. A May 24, 2008 Science News article entitled “Fat Cells Gain Weight” is a case in point. It’s short, so I’ll share it here: “Even when people lose weight, they don’t lose fat cells. The cells just shrink. Kirsty Spalding of the Karo-Linkska Institute in Stockholm and her colleagues figured out the birth dates of fat cells in adults. The team reported online May 4 in Nature that, in adults, as fat cells die, the...