Sue Thomason2013-05-26T03:52:57-04:00Sue Thomasonhttp://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/author/index.php?author=sue-thomasonCopyright 2008, HuffingtonPost.com, Inc.HuffingtonPost Blogger Feed for Sue ThomasonGood old fashioned elbow grease.The 12-Year-Old Who Brought Down the Mafiatag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.27643582013-02-26T07:37:40-05:002013-04-28T05:12:01-04:00Sue Thomasonhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/sue-thomason/Nuts magazine, as this guy was last week, but The Prince of Naples isn't just a story for boys, it's a true account of a 12-year-old boy who manages to get one over on the incredibly vicious and powerful Camorra (Naples' local mafia).
'The Prince' has to remain anonymous to this day because of his childhood clashes with the Camorra and it's perhaps a risk for him to be telling his story at all. Organised crime still holds firm control over Naples and arrests are few because to talk usually means death. This week Camorra boss Silvio Sparandeo, who has been on the run for eight months, was arrested but as the Camorra is far more powerful and widespread than the Sicilian Cosa Nostra his capture won't make much of a difference to the level of power held over the city of Naples. It's hard to believe a 12-year-old child could have any affect on such an almighty organisation at all, but 'The Prince' was no ordinary boy!
The Prince of Naples has a fast-moving, gripping plot and an unusual mix of violent revenge and charm and it sweeps you into a world that feels so much like a Hollywood movie that it's sometimes hard to remember it's true and it actually happened. Told in the words of 'The Prince', who is just 12 at the start, it describes lives deeply affected by an earthquake which struck Italy in 1980 and a people prevented from rebuilding their destroyed city because of the control and domination exerted through organised crime.
The Prince, who is a child prodigy with a full awareness of his mental superiority, uses his finely tuned brain as his main weapon to attack the Camorra who have syphoned off most the £40 billion in aid money that was supposed to rebuild the city. When he blows them up, steals from them and blackmails them, he manages to elude capture due to the fact that no one suspects him as the Camorra's mastermind tormentor because he is a child. And, as if his youth isn't enough to waylay suspicion, The Prince also plays dumb, pretending to be just like any other kid - a device that provides the reader with that lovely stomach-squeezing type of excitement and hope that drives classic adventure novels, such as The Scarlet Pimpernel and The Count of Monte Cristo. The constant promise that his true identity will be revealed - that he is a genius and not the ordinary boy he's pretending to be - is a hook that makes this book unputdownable.
Even though at the time of the telling of this story The Prince is in his forties, and obviously recollecting the experience, the author Hugh Gurney skilfully manages the words so they read like they are coming from a 12 year old. The Prince himself is on the surface a complex mixture of childish innocence, arrogance and a disdain for others. He repeatedly asserts his independence and distances himself from his family, his friends and even his mother, denying that he is capable of feeling love for anyone but his dead grandfather. But his moral and caring side - the Robin Hood part of his character - is revealed (and finally worn like a neon overcoat) precisely by his persistent insistence that he loves no one. The Prince, who thinks of himself as grown up and a dark personality, remains unaware throughout the book that he's revealing his light and good side and the reader can plainly see his arrogant judgement of others comes from the fear and vulnerability of a child.
The psychological aspect adds complexity and depth to an otherwise uncomplicated story. On the surface, The Prince of Naples is a simple David and Goliath story of a boy who seeks revenge on a power much greater than he is (which is always exciting in itself) but on a deeper level it's a picture of inside the mind of a child forced by tragedy to grow up too fast.
There is a visual book that reads so much like a movie you can almost see the story unfolding on a screen behind your eyes, and there are many satisfying moments where the underdog comes out on top but also an element of risk that our hero might well and truly fail - in short, The Prince of Naples has all the fuel that any good adventure needs.
The author, Hugh Gurney, is giving away promotional copies free until June at www.princeofnaples.com]]>Channel 4's Dispatches Went Easy on Weight Watchers. Let's Have a Look at What They Could Have Said...tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.25725052013-01-29T07:53:37-05:002013-03-31T05:12:01-04:00Sue Thomasonhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/sue-thomason/Dispatches programme 'Weight Watchers, How They Make Their Millions', presenter Jane Moore raised questions about the diet company giant, worth £5 billion, and the effectiveness of its diets. The programme highlighted that:
Over the last five years the NHS has spent £4 million on sending patients to Weight Watchers.
The majority of the clinical trials resulting in positive outcomes for the diet are funded by Weight Watchers themselves.
While many Weight Watchers dieters lost weight within the first three months, 'some' had put it back on again after five years (while the amount of people who regained the weight was kept vague, when Jane Moore asked a group of around 100 dieters to hold up green cards if they had kept the weight off, only about three people responded).
The cost of the Weight Watchers diet is around £100 per pound in weight lost (expensive when you consider that most of their customers only regain that pound before shelling out another £100 to lose it again - and again).
A truly independent study (and the most comprehensive and rigorous study) on the outcome of diets across the board (including Weight Watchers) is that the majority of people regain all the weight lost plus a few pounds more. On top of the weight gain, dieters get increased levels of cortisol (the stress hormone that encourages an increase in abdominal fat) and reduced levels of leptin (a hormone that inhibits appetite) and increased levels of grehlin (a hormone that stimulates appetite).
The Dispatches programme has prompted Weight Watchers to respond, of course, insisting their research is all above board, 'transparent' and 'credible'. They say: "We work with high quality, world renowned obesity researchers who run independent studies."
Already this wording appears to me to be twisted to meet legal requirements and at the same time cleverly suggesting that it's the Weight Watchers studies being questioned in the Dispatches programme that are 'independent', which they are not.
The obesity researchers funded by Weight Watchers might indeed sometimes conduct independent studies, so Weight Watchers can legally say this, but the studies we're discussing here, the ones that have favourable outcomes for Weight Watchers, are not independent because they are funded by the company itself.
This is just the tip of the iceberg and a tiny example of the tactics used by this company to pull the wool over the eyes of the public. Weight Watchers money is used to influence and manipulate on a truly massive scale and even Government health advisors on obesity receive their cash.
There is a huge amount of evidence that diets don't work and no real independent evidence that Weight Watchers is effective in the long term for any more than a very small percentage of users and let's not forget that Weight Watchers themselves admitted this last year to a Parliamentary Committee (I was there, so I won't forget!). At the House of Commons a Weight Watchers spokesperson said:
"The public have unrealistic expectations about weight loss".
Weight Watchers said to the MPs and around 100 people attending:
"People who buy the Weight Watchers diet can't expect to lose more than 5 to 10 per cent of their excess weight."
Most people who purchase the diet have weight loss goals far exceeding only a 5 to 10 per cent loss. Do Weight Watchers ever tell their customers they are being unrealistic? And, considering Weight Watchers marketing promises that dieters will look good when they've reached their target weight, does the company point out in its advertising that the small amount of weight dieters are likely to lose in the long term is not actually going to make a great deal of difference to their appearance?
There are, of course, people who do lose weight and keep it off on any diet but they are in a very small percentage and, for obvious reasons, they shout much louder than those who regained the weight. This tiny percentage of Weight Watchers successes are pushed and used alongside the excited dieters experiencing the initial temporary loss to create quite a buzz around dieting, but then after a while you never hear from most of them again. Diet success stories are always fresh, new faces.
I can tell you one thing that is going to be coming out in the next few years on programmes like Dispatches - the rise in obesity is in direct parallel to the rise of the diet industry and this is no coincidence. The diets themselves are a major contributing factor to the mass loss of control over food that we call the 'obesity epidemic'. How? See the physical reactions to dieting mentioned above (changes in levels of cortisol, leptin and grehlin that encourage weight gain) and add the psychological effects of food restriction and you get the perfect recipe for uncontrolled eating and easy fat storage. It's a case of the solution being a part of the cause.
While this is recognised as truth in truly independent scientific circles, the rest of the world isn't yet ready for it precisely because of the financial hold that big diet companies have over the Government, the health service, obesity research and the media.
Find out more about Ditching Dieting]]>Now Her Looks Are Fading, She's Got Nothing Lefttag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.21279922012-11-14T19:00:00-05:002013-01-14T05:12:01-05:00Sue Thomasonhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/sue-thomason/
This made me think. I have noticed the way I look is changing. There's a new streak of grey shot through my hair, my face has changed shape, my body is slowly altering and the skin on my hands has become lined. No matter how much it is impressed on me externally, however, I never think my looks are 'fading'. Ageing is, to me, a natural process and it's every bit as beautiful as youth. Like with everything, it all depends on how you look at it.
My friend should have said the acquaintance lived for her looks and now she feels they're fading, she thinks she's got nothing left.
I've been influenced in the past as much as anyone else by the media madness and the spreading of insecurity by demonising everything but a very young, very white and very thin ideal that is pressed on us as the only way to be acceptable and happy. But I'm glad I've got the intelligence to see it for what it is and the ability to think rationally and with reason enough to uncover a personal reality that makes my life so much happier than I would have been if I did allow myself to be convinced my looks are fading away.
I think it was Oscar Wilde who said growing old isn't so bad if you consider the alternative, so I'm actually lucky to be developing lines around my eyes and privileged to be getting the very minute signs of a future struggling to get up out of an armchair (the latter is always fixed with a session of yoga). As ageing is inevitable I can see I have to make one of two choices:
1. I can spend my time worrying that I'm exiting the arena of the media ideal (not that I ever got that far into it) and betray myself by spending thousands on cosmetic surgery and end up with a face that looks a decade younger but also ever so slightly like a rubber doll from a low-budget horror film.
2. I can explore the motives behind the media ideal, uncover the reasons why so many of us allow our peace of mind to be disturbed by the pressure to look a certain way and choose to follow a different, more rational path.
I went for choice 2. I can see that we are all led by the nose to feel terrible about our ageing and any deviation from the manufactured ideal. All so we'll buy stuff that puts us 'right'. But in being led by the nose, we're pulled away from a truth that would instantly make us all happier: ageing has its own graceful beauty that is far, far more appealing (to me anyway) than the rubber-faced cartoon cosmetic surgery look.
I'm embracing and celebrating every change that comes with my getting older because it's fascinating to watch. To say ageing is not as beautiful as youth is like claiming the yellows, reds and golds of autumn aren't as beautiful as the green spring, or that the winter frost, snow and blustery days aren't as beautiful as a balmy summer.
All seasons are beautiful. And if you were forced to state a preference, whichever season is most beautiful to you is surely individual taste? Or maybe we should press on everyone that spring and summer are the only acceptable seasons, eradicate autumn and winter and spray all the leaves with green paint or glue on some plastic leaves when they fall?
I'm sure it would soon come about if someone could make lots of money out of it.
If you're getting old have a proper look at yourself. There's beauty in them there lines.]]>Are These Men Making Us All Fat?tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.15949722012-06-14T19:00:00-04:002012-08-14T05:12:09-04:00Sue Thomasonhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/sue-thomason/The Men Who Made Us Fat on BBC 2 Thursdays. We're all 3st heavier than we were in the 1960s and Peretti explores the reasons in this three-part series. In his Guardianarticle this week, Peretti says:
On average, in the UK, we are all - every man, woman and child - three stone heavier than we were in the mid-60s. We haven't noticed it happening.
This almost made me snort my coffee out of my nose. As if anyone in a million years could seriously think we haven't noticed 'it' with the media firing into our brains a battery of 'you are too fat' bullets so relentlessly that we've all become paranoid about being overweight even if we aren't.
Peretti goes on to ask: Why are we so fat?
We have not become greedier as a race. We are not, contrary to popular wisdom, less active - a 12-year study, which began in 2000 at Plymouth hospital, measured children's physical activity and found it the same as 50 years ago. But something has changed.
He goes on to assert that the reason is 'very simple'. It's the food we eat. More specifically, the amount of sugar and high fructose corn syrup (HFC) in our food. Sugar, he says, we're often unaware of.
Again, the idea of any of us being unaware of the amount of sugar we eat made me laugh, as not only has HFC and hidden sugar in our diets been the subject of thousands upon thousands of health news reports, being alive today with our media's obsession with healthy eating is akin to being strapped to a chair 24 hours a day with our eyelids pinned open Clockwork Orange-style and forced to watch WeightWatchers adverts on a loop while Gillian McKeith rubs herself all over with fat-free yogurt.
I'm not saying the BBC series would be illogical or wrong to point the finger at the food industry and HFC for the rise in obesity because this is a logical assumption if you consider the chain reaction that does cause weight gain. I'm just hoping the programme won't miss out the biggest, most damaging parts of that chain. As well as the question why are we so fat, Peretti should be asking why are we eating more of the things we're constantly told will make us fat while being made to feel ashamed of our bodies? For the series to miss this out would be to leave a gaping hole so big, it would render the programme pointless.
For anyone seriously researching into this subject it would be very difficult to miss the link between the universal pressure to lose weight and to restrict food and the overconsumption of junk foods that might contain HFC. Has this documentary missed this huge part of the story or will the BBC have the courage to delve into the role that dieting plays in obesity?
Promisingly, Paretti mentions Ancel Keys in the Guardian piece, linking to his obituary which says:
An important study Keys completed was in 1944, the Minnesota Starvation Experiment, involving 36 conscientious objector volunteers. They lived for six months on semi-starvation diets during which they dropped a quarter of body weight.
Neither the article nor the obituary, however, mentions that after Keys' study the volunteers, all previously mentally healthy, turned into constantly hungry, food and weight obsessed men and with a drive to binge so strong it drove them all to overeat, one of them consuming as much as 11,500 calories in one day. They all regained their weight plus 10% more than before the experiment. Hopefully, this will be covered in the documentary.
Paretti also writes:
One of the by-products of obesity is that a hormone called leptin ceases to work properly. Normally, leptin is produced by the body to tell you that you are full. However, in obese people, it becomes severely depleted, and it is thought that a high intake of sugar is a key reason. When the leptin doesn't work, your body simply doesn't realise you should stop eating.
And here, we have another glaring omission in the article that I'm hoping will be in the programme: while sugar is involved in this leptin process, studies show that dieting, and particularly yo-yo dieting, are the triggers in leptin depletion. And leptin, which inhibits appetite, has a 'fellow hormone' called grehlin, not mentioned, which increases appetite. Researchers report in the New England Journal of Medicine that after dieting ghrelin was found to be 20 per cent higher than at the start of the diet. Leptin and Grehlin alterations are the body's backlash not against sugar consumption but against dieting.
Are Paretti's claims that we're unaware of what we're eating and haven't noticed that we're overweight a sign that The Men Who Made Us Fat is set to take us down an old, worn path that will lead us to the usual dead end with futher pressure to lose weight and further dieting? It seems a strange thing to say in a world where the global weight loss industry will be worth more than £370 billion by 2014 and newspapers report that the average Brit will be on a diet for 14 years and women spend £150,000 on diet products and services in their lifetime. And where all the new independent research points towards dieting causing weight gain and a government report states clearly that dieting causes binge eating.
While it's obvious that too much sugar and high fructose corn syrup is bad for us, it looks very much like sugar and HFC would be having little effect if we weren't being driven by dieting to eat more of them.
Promisingly, Peretti does mention the food industry's connection to the diet industry...
The industry is tied into a complex matrix of other interests: drugs, chemicals, even dieting products. The panoply of satellite industries that make money from obesity means the food industry's relationship to obesity is an incredibly complex one.
...but it ends there. I'm not sure how a rise in obesity would benefit the food industry (surely from their point of view being fat would appear to encourage people to eat less?), but I can see how global obesity would benefit the diet industry because everyone would be clamoring to them, cash in hand. I know, though, that the food and diet industries are often the same giant corporations. A complex matrix indeed.
The most interesting comment in Peretti's article is this one:
Did they [the food industry] understand the neuroscience? No. But they learned experientially what worked. This is highly controversial. If it could be proved that at that some point the food industry became aware of the long-term, detrimental effects their products were having on the public, and continued to develop and sell them, the scandal would rival that of what happened to the tobacco industry.
A very brave thing to say. And there certainly are parallels between what's happening here and the scandal of the tobacco industry but it's the diet industry that should be subject to lawsuits. Unlike the food industry the diet industry does understand the neuroscience. Maybe if we all watch this programme and replace the words 'food industry' with 'weight loss industry' and 'sugar/HFC' with 'dieting' we'll come a whole lot nearer to the truth.
I'm hoping against all hopes that The Men Who Made Us Fat, which has the chance to be the first TV contribution to break the virtual media blackout on what will soon be a univerally accepted truth, will have the courage to report the whole story. From this Guardian article, though, I'm not sure it will.
www.endangeredbodies.org www.beautifulmagazine.co.uk]]>We'll Look Back and Laugh That We Went On Diets to Try to Lose Weighttag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.15561262012-05-30T12:22:13-04:002012-07-30T05:12:13-04:00Sue Thomasonhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/sue-thomason/report from the Body Image Inquiry. I knew it was released this week but I wasn't expecting much as truth is more often than not bypassed when profits are involved. But Reflections on Body Image, co-authored by MPs and the Central YMCA, is incredibly enlightened and if the recommendations made in the document are taken seriously this will be the biggest step forward in public health since the smoking ban.
The report, published by the All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Body Image after a three-month public inquiry, makes some powerful recommendations and the biggest stride forward lies in the report's acknowledgement that overeating is as much an eating disorder as anorexia and that eating too much and its effects , including obesity, are not a lifestyle choice and overeating can be the result of dieting.
The Body Image report concludes:
According to experts there is no evidence available that diets work in the long term.
Girls who diet are 12 times more likely to binge eat (a direct acknowledgement that dieting is a contributor to obesity not a solution to it).
More than 95% of dieters regain the weight they lost (a result of the binge eating I'd expect).
Getting rid of dieting could wipe out 70% of eating disorders (including the binge eating mentioned above, a side effect of which is often obesity.)
So here they're saying getting rid of dieting could largely reduce obesity. If this is the case, then wouldn't it be rational to conclude also that dieting has been a big contributor towards obesity?
Isn't this amazing? To have this even nodded to in an official report is great news. The damage done by dieting can no longer be totally ignored.
Yes, there will now be an enormous effort from the weight-loss industry to counteract this report (keep your eye out for the coming crowd of news stories on the dangers of obesity and the glamorous after shots of women who have lost half their body weight by sticking to 'not a diet but a lifestyle plan'), but there's no stopping the slow dawning on the public that dieting is likely to give them the opposite to what it promises.
During the inquiry the diet industry (a Weight Watchers representative to be precise) acknowledged the public had "unrealistic expectations" about weight loss. She added that consumers who buy their diet shouldn't expect to lose any more than 5 to 10% of their weight. We all know this is not what consumers go to Weight Watchers for - they set an ideal 'goal' weight and are encouraged to strive for it, leading of course to binge eating and weight gain (see above). But even this promise of a small weight loss is not true because dieting leads to binge eating (see above).
I know the media will put up a fight and attempt to discredit this Inquiry report and they will probably succeed to a great extent because a nation of people with poor body image makes a lot of money. Profit over public health is vividly illustrated by the media's recent treatment of Georgia Davis, dubbed Britain's Fattest Teen, who went into multiple organ failure two weeks ago. Georgia had to be winched from her house by the emergency services because of her inability to stop 'eating herself to death'. According to the Mirror Georgia's eating disorder was caused by bad parenting or cash from Press attention that has been used to 'feed her up'. The Mirror added the suggestion that Georgia is stupid and lazy and unable to keep her face out of the fridge. Blatant victimisation because of her weight in anyone's eyes. (The treatment supposed to 'help' Georgia was a very strict diet and she ended up binge eating (see above) and her organs failed.)
As well as pointing out that dieting leads to binge eating the Inquiry report says that, like Georgia, one in five people have been victimised because of their size and that weight stigma doesn't motivate people to lose weight (using what? Dieting? See above) but does the opposite and causes further overeating. A review of the efficacy and safety of dieting is recommended and so is a comparison between weight neutral programmes (such as HAES) and weight loss/management programmes, measuring their effect on health.
This new report kicks a dent in the weight-loss industry control. Until now we have been trying to scratch a slippery surface to bring the the truth to the public, but this has made a scab that we body image campaigners and few companies with a social conscience will keep on picking at. We've got a long way to go and a lot of picking but this is so obviously just the beginning of the end of the diet industry, eating disorders, airbrushing, the manufactured media ideal, weight stigma, body dissatisfaction and the resulting low self esteem.
Thank you Jo Swinson and the other MPs of the APPG on Body Image, Duncan Stephenson from the Central YMCA, Phillippa Diedrichs and Susie Orbach who advised and gave evidence and all the others who brought this enlightened report to the public with recommendations that have the potential to start a shift that will benefit us all. This will go down in history. In 10 years time we'll look back and laugh with disbelief about how we all went on diets to try to lose weight.
www.beautifulmagazine.co.uk]]>Dieting for Two - Think Twice About the Latest Advice on Dieting While You're Pregnanttag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.15293942012-05-20T19:00:00-04:002012-07-20T05:12:15-04:00Sue Thomasonhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/sue-thomason/reports say, will not harm unborn babies. Added to this advice was the extra push pregnant women need to feel guilty enough to feel forced into dieting: "Following a controlled diet has the potential to reduce the risk of a number of pregnancy complications." Together with the reassurance: "Dieting is safe and that the baby's weight isn't affected."
Released at the same time, however, were results of another study that suggested babies of mothers who diet in early pregnancy may have an increased risk of obesity and type 2 diabetes throughout their lives.
The second study wasn't widely reported but the first study encouraging pregnant women to diet was all over the news, despite advice from the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE), published in 2010, saying: "Dieting during pregnancy is not recommended as it may harm the health of the unborn child." Also despite it being understood that dieting increases levels of the stress hormone cortisol, which causes weight gain, and which also can have an effect on an unborn baby.
If you're thinking about dieting (whether you're pregnant or not), consider this: overeating is a compulsion and it is driven primarily by dieting. Any attempts at trying to eat less will result in you eating more. This is a built-in survival reaction and it's caused by many chemical, psychological and biological processes, including changes in the hormones related to hunger and satiety. Dieting makes you feel hungry all the time.
Dieting takes away your choices about what you eat or don't eat. You are driven to eat on automatic. Many dieters are very familiar with this feeling - you decide to cut down, someone offers you a cake, you try not to eat it and then you go into a 'trance' and then find you've eaten it and you regret it, thinking: "Why did I eat that?"
Learning how to stop dieting switches off this reaction and leaves you free to choose whether to eat the cake or not.
This is the same for pregnant women, of course. Dieting while pregnant will mean you're ultimately up against survival and biological drives that can override conscious decision making. Trying to 'hold off' eating in the long term is a bit like trying to hold your breath. Hold your breath and you can do it for a while but eventually you'll have to take in a massive gulp of air to compensate for the deficit. Breathing, which is essential for your survival, is a reflex and you can't control it for more than a few moments. Like with all survival essentials, it's controlled automatically by your brain. Eating is also a survival essential and while it's not as urgent a need as breathing and so not a reflex, it's still largely controlled by your brain. If you cut down on food, this will mean eventually you'll have to eat more to compensate for the defecit.
There is a complex motivational balance that can override this process (involved in eating disorders such as anorexia), but for most people, trying to diet will result in eating more.
So why are pregnant women being advised to diet?
What I'd like to know is who funded this study? It was the National Institute For Health Research (NIHR), but who funds them? The NIHR website says it's "collaborative and multi-centred research in the public interest in partnership with and for industry." The NIHR has close links with the pharmaceuticals weight-loss industry. Given what we know about conflict between industry profits and public interest, can studies linked to big corporations dependent on profit ever be primarily in the interest of the public? History shows that in this situation the public usually loses out and profits come before public health. Look at the tobacco industry:
Confronted by compelling peer-reviewed scientific evidence of the harms of smoking, the tobacco industry, beginning in the 1950s, used sophisticated public relations approaches to undermine and distort the emerging science.
A number of industries have subsequently followed this approach to disrupting normative science. Claims of scientific uncertainty and lack of proof also lead to the assertion of individual responsibility for industrially produced health risks.
From a study by Allan M. Brandt PhD, Department of the History of Science and the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine, Harvard University
The pharmaceutical side of the weight loss industry is known to be spreading anxiety about weight, as it knows the more weight anxiety there is, the more weight problems there will be and in increasing the problem they increase their consumer base ready for when they produce the 'miracle' weight loss drug they're currently working on.
With the knowledge we now have about the real effects of dieting, we really need our media to start asking questions like: Why did this study hit the headlines but the study advising against pregnant women dieting did not? Will someone profit from advising pregnant woment to diet even though it's well known that dieting will increase a woman's biological drive towards compulsive eating as well as her cortisol levels (meaning she is likely to gain weight and not lose it, affecting the baby and increasing the chance of complications) and when other studies show dieting when pregnant has a chance of producing babies at risk of obesity and diabetes?
Ideally, we need to ask these questions before reporting studies that advise dieting, especially to pregnant women.
The Daily Mirror, however, have written a nasty article which looks like it's designed to further damage Imogen's self image just as she has exposed her vulnerability in an honest way. I'm not surprised at the Mirror though and I'm not all that bothered by them as they're losing their grip - albeit slowly - in their war against women.
Things are changing because a lot of people are fighting for change. These people, and I'm proud and humbled to say this includes me, are now, amazingly, being recognised and the All Party Parliamentary Group on Body Image has announced the UK's first Body Confidence Awards. The ceremony will be held on 19 April 2012 at 7:30 PM at the House of Commons. The Awards will recognise and celebrate the achievements and best practice of those who promote body confidence within various industries. Obviously the Mirror won't be nominated.
A judging panel made up of representatives from B-eat, the Centre for Appearance Research, All Walks Beyond the Catwalk, AnyBody, Stephanie Heart Enterprises, Mumsnet, and the Central YMCA along with Jo Swinson MP sifted through countless nominations to come up with the shortlists.
The nominees were chosen for a number of reasons including aspirational diversity in size, age and skin tone; responsible use of body imagery and the consideration of diverse body sizes, shapes and beauty; promotion of active and healthy lifestyles and less sexualised imagery.
The nominees are:
Broadcast/Print/Publishing
Beautiful Magazine (Wooh hoo!); Caitlin Moran for How to be a Woman; Gok's Teens: The Naked Truth; Guardian Weekend Magazine: Fashion for all ages
Advertising
'The Woman' by Breast Cancer Care 'Growing up' by Dove; '100 Days of Summer' by New Look; 'Fotoshop by Adobé' by Jesse Rosten
Body Gossip's 'Gossip School' education programme; Body Image in the Primary School by Nicky Hutchinson and Chris Calland; Girlguiding UK's Peer education initiative
Fashion
Giles Deacon; Mark Fast; Vivienne Westwood
Mumsnet Award for promoting body confidence in children
Cerrie Burnell from CBeebies; Ellie Simmonds; Pink Stinks; Gok Wan
Retail
ASOS Curve; Debenhams; La Redoute; Vivienne of Holloway
Celebrity Ambassador of the Year Award
To be announced
Commenting on his nomination fashion designer Mark Fast said:
"Over the years I have been privileged to work with some of the most beautiful and shapely women in the world and it is true to say that even the most beautiful (by any standards) have moments of doubt and insecurities. I want to celebrate women and make them feel good in my clothes".
Susie Orbach from AnyBody said:
"It influences us all and affects the well-being of young women and men so it is important to acknowledge examples which promote body confidence and counteract the damage. Advertisers and marketers can be so imaginative. These are examples of the direction to aim in."
Jo Swinson MP for East Dunbartonshire said:
"With these awards we want to publicly recognise positive steps taken by industry groups, businesses and campaigners. In highlight their leading work and body confidence initiatives hopefully they will inspire others to follow in their footsteps."
Caryn Franklin Fashion Commentator and Co-Founder of All Walks Beyond the Catwalk said:
"Fashion design can be a force for good when individuality and diversity are celebrated. We love fashion for all shapes, ages and sizes."
All of these people together, the organisers and the nominees, are part of a shift towards a better future for everyone - one where you, me and Imogen Thomas won't have to suffer self hatred because we've been pressured into it.
Photo: Kirsten McLennan wears Alice Temperley for All Walks Beyond the Catwalk shot by Rankin]]>Real Women Like Reading About Technologytag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.14252842012-04-15T19:00:00-04:002012-06-15T05:12:01-04:00Sue Thomasonhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/sue-thomason/Beautiful magazine. Beautiful is a women's glossy lifestyle magazine and women's magazines generally don't have tech sections because it's seen as a male domain, but millions of women use technology and gadgets every day. We are interested in the subject, enough for it to be one of our general topics of conversation, and we get excited about new gadgets and inventions as much as any man.
It's just as thrilling for us women when we see the dizzying speed of change as each of our new, amazing gadgets, within a matter of weeks, begin to feel as clunky as a house brick compared to the latest upgrade. This buzz is something I certainly feel and I hunger for the latest techie news. Am I a geek? I suppose so, but no more so than all the other women I know.
Advances in technology are surpassing all our imaginations and it's only what seems like a few weeks ago (but which was actually 2006), I was reading about 3D printers, which at the time I thought were pretty astonishing as you could create a functional ball bearing by designing it on a computer and 'printing' it out. The potential of this technology was mind boggling. The concept of being able to 'print' or manufacture a three dimensional object from a digital file was like something out of science fiction.
This was particularly interesting to me as a techno-geek and sci-fi fan (yes and a woman) as years before I'd had my mind boggled by visions of nanomachines - or printers - that would build anything you like by sequencing atoms together to form anything you like - just like a Star Trek replicator. It would mean we can literally create anything we want using these machines, food, medicine, clothing, electronics, body parts and even another replicating machine! The possibilities are endless.
And 3D printing has evolved so far that now we're manufacturing microscopic objects using nanoparticles and advances in bio-printing mean we can even print out body parts, such as ears or synthetic heart valves. According to scientists, replicating human organs using the technique will be mainstream in 20 years.
In a few years time you may be ordering your morning cup of tea from a machine that creates it out of nowhere from atoms. Or if we want some aspirin, you just feed in a code and it prints out the drug in your own home. "Shovel some nanoparticles in the replicator love I've got a headache."
Anyway, I've gone on about technology itself instead of my point that women are interested in technology as much as men are and that women's magazines should include techie news and reviews, but I suppose my digression is a good example of proof! So from now on, Beautiful will include a technology section. Am I going to give the Girl Geek page in Beautful magazine to a staff writer? Am I heck. I love tech so much that these pages are mine all mine!
www.beautifulmagazine.co.uk www.suethomason.com]]>Obesity Rates Cause Hat Sales to Plummettag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.14052832012-04-05T10:35:06-04:002012-06-05T05:12:01-04:00Sue Thomasonhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/sue-thomason/
Thin people have heads - even ones like Samantha Brick - and eyes and faces and words coming out of their mouths. The only people who are dehumanised by this headlessness are fat people (and sometimes provocatively dressed or naked women). Most fat people do have heads - here are some. See their smiley, normal faces?
Journalist with a conscience Charlotte Cooper says it all beautifully in her blog
"We are there but we have no voice, not even a mouth in a head, no brain, no thoughts or opinions. Instead we are reduced and dehumanised as symbols of cultural fear. It's as though we have been punished for existing, our right to speak has been removed by a prurient gaze, our headless images accompany articles that assume a world without people like us would be a better world altogether."
If you're a journalist with a conscience, the Rudd Center for Food Policy at Yale University in the US offers media guidelines and a free image gallery 'to aid journalists, photo editors, bloggers, advertisers and other influencers in the creation and delivery of fair, unbiased coverage of obesity and weight-related topics on television, in print and online'.
"Journalists have an obligation to be fair, balanced, and accurate in their
reporting of obesity. Unfortunately, overweight and obese persons are often portrayed negatively and disparagingly in the media, and reports about the causes and solutions to obesity are often framed in ways that reinforce stigma. These portrayals perpetuate damaging weight-based stereotypes and contribute to the pervasive bias and discrimination that overweight and obese persons experience in everyday life.
"These stigmatizing experiences can impair emotional well-being, leading to depression, anxiety, low self-esteem, and even suicidal behaviors.
"Weight stigma poses significant consequences for both emotional and physical health.
These comprehensive resources can be found at www.yaleruddcenter.org and here. The Canadian Obesity Network has the same. (I can't find a UK gallery and if you Google 'obesity guidelines image gallery' you just get lots of websites about tortoises.)
So, people in the media, can we please see the faces of the people whose emotional and physical health you're damaging? If you're a journalist without a conscience, of course, please ignore this.
I've found myself avoiding adverts, TV series and Hollywood films because I'm tired of the female star always looking the same. Even the new British Cagney and Lacey (Scott and Bailey) stars appear to have been slimmed down and cloned for the show, so I don't watch it.
There are a few movie stars left who aren't total clones and to me, they're all the more attractive. I like wonky teeth, for exmple. Patricia Arquette has got slightly wonky, very English teeth and they are lovely. Kirsten Dunst used to have them but I'm not sure if she has any more and Isabella Rosellini has them.
I also love a big nose (Christopher Ecclestone), ginger man with ginger eyelashes (Eric Stolz). I like fat blokes and think Ray Winstone is sexy. And bigger women are every bit as beautiful as thin ones, such as the stupendously gorgeous Jane Goldman and Queen Latifah. Miranda Hart is truly beautiful, more so because she isn't 'ideal'. And what about older men and women? I mean, look at Judi Dench. No one can say she's not totally beautiful.
It's not the media ideal look itself that's the issue. I'm not saying thin/white/blonde is wrong or unattractive. I don't go to catwalk shows and throw chips at the models. The problem is having an ideal at all.
Appearance is important to us but when we think of beauty - especially our own beauty - it's always focused on physical flaws we're convinced other people can not only see but that they will accept or reject us for. But beauty is not really about teeth or body fat ratio or hair or skin colour, it's about something intangible.
A soft voice, the way someone turns their head, the way a person smiles or the light in their eyes. If you look at someone you know and like, whether they're 'beautiful' or not, it's not their definable looks that you like it's their quirks, their essence, something about them makes you warm to them, want a part of them, want to be with them.
So it's the same for you. People aren't looking at whether you've gained a pound or two or have got a spot on your chin or had a hair dye disaster, they're looking for the intangible air that is you, that which makes you different from other people. They're looking for your quirks, internal energy, the light inside you, your confidence, your focus, your attention, your 'you-ness'.
That's why, when you look at someone who isn't physically ideal and you find them as sexy as hell, you find them as sexy as hell!
And you'll invariably find the people you do think of as sexy and attractive are the ones who don't care what other people think of how they look. The most unattractive people, on the other hand, are those who are obsessed with appearance - even the ones who think they look good have an air of tension and instability. When we feel self-conscious about looks, we seem stilted and devoid of charisma.
We're told right from birth, though, that the definition of beauty is in the detail - the hair must be straight and shiny, the teeth must be straight and white, slimness is essential, skin has to be clear and features have to be regular. So we strive for it and in doing this we lose the light and the uniqueness that really makes us attractive. We start looking for signals that we're doing the appearance thing right and so are never relaxed enough to give anyone else a glimpse of our inner light and confidence. We don't even bother looking outward at who we're with at all and so the world is filling up with empty and shallow and 'perfect' plastic dolls.
Have some courage and make yourself happier by severing the thought control and coming to your senses. There's an episode of Red Dwarf where the crew of the ship get hooked on a virtual reality game called 'Life'. They wear a headset and experience the game as if it's real. Everything in the virtual reality world is exactly how they want it - they have all the money and luxury and admiration they've ever wanted. Meanwhile, their real bodies are wasting away because they stop eating or sleeping or talking to each other.
If you're heavily influenced by media pressure to look a certain way, you live in the same kind of game. Except the world is far from perfect and you are continually promised the money, the luxury and the admiration you crave. The game is fixed so you're forever chasing something you can never really reach. Meanwhile, real life is passing you by and your real self is withering away and so are your genuine connections with other people.
www.foodphilosophy.co.uk
www.beautifulmagazine.co.uk]]>Why Ruth Jones Only Has a 2% Chance of Staying Thintag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.13156722012-03-04T19:00:00-05:002012-05-04T05:12:01-04:00Sue Thomasonhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/sue-thomason/
Their weight is their business, of course, but they are setting themselves up for a fall by talking about how they've done it - or by talking about it at all. Just like the vast majority of the celebrity weight losses before them (Oprah Winfrey, Natalie Cassidy, Kirstie Alley, etc) they only have a two per cent chance of keeping the weight off in the long term.
I'm not trying to p*ss on their parade - far from it. I'm trying to throw some rational thinking into the mix. And because I'm being rational I'm going to change that sentence about chances of success to a more sensible way of putting it, removing the emphasis from a side effect to the real problem:
These women only have a two per cent chance of maintaining in the long term the uncomfortable struggle against the overwhelming compulsion to overeat
If you understand anything about dieting (chances are you don't), you'll know about the balance of motivations. As long as weight loss is causing enough excitement, control over food is possible. And if you're getting loads of media attention (or attention from friends if you're not a celeb) over your weight loss and you're getting a buzz from it, then the excitement will make counting calories (or rejecting food for a dodgy meat flavoured milk shake) relatively easy. The weight loss is more important than the food. But because your brain is designed to require novelty and to slowly dampen down experiences that you have regularly, the buzz from the attention and approval is going to need to be increased for you to get the same hit from it.
This is all part of the survival mechanism. It's how the human race progresses. The woman who invented the wheel was probably very excited about rolling it around the ground. What fun it would have been when she only previously had boring old straight-edged rocks to push. If she hadn't finally got bored with the wheel - if her brain hadn't dampened down the excitement of it - she would never have been motivated enough to invent the cart. We'd all still be rolling rocks around the floor, laughing our heads off.
But your brain does dampen down your thrill at other people's reactions to your weight loss. And the media (and your friends) get bored of it and they stop talking about it. So just at the time when you need more admiration for looking good, you get less. Suddenly, you find yourself feeling a bit down and you can't explain why. You can't get excited about your weight loss any more. Your life has gone back to normal - you're just thinner.
So now you're faced with a cake. You know you shouldn't eat it. You argue with yourself. You then find you've eaten it. You feel guilty. You think: "I'll get back on my diet tomorrow." So you eat for the rest of the day.
The next day you're determined to get back on track. But you just can't get the feeling back. Then your husband says: "Let's get a Chinese." You think: "Oh, well, it's only one more day."
I think you know the rest.
What has happened, although you don't realise it, is after so long living with the weight loss being more exciting than the food, now the food has become more exciting than the weight loss. When food is more exciting than weight loss, which do you think is the winner in a battle against cake?
This is why celebrities, such as Oprah, Kirstie and Natalie, live to regret their public announcements about their weight loss and why they end up feeling a great deal of pressure to fight a battle they're swiftly and cruelly losing.
But this is a process that affects all of us. You don't have to be a celebrity to fall into this trap. But the celebration of temporary celebrity weight loss and the lure of the buzz and approval is exactly what snares us all into dieting.
Dieting doesn't work.
So celebrities, especially yo-yo dieting celebrities should refuse to talk about their weight loss for at least five years. For their own sake and for yours.
www.foodphilosophy.co.uk]]>A Fat Woman and a Thin Woman: Which One Is a Burden on the NHS?tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.12701782012-02-13T09:44:07-05:002012-04-14T05:12:01-04:00Sue Thomasonhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/sue-thomason/
Sandra, who's spent most of her life on and off diets, dreams about being as slim as Pauline and plans another diet. Pauline reads Grazia magazine and, while she knows she's not unhealthily fat, she also wants to lose weight and is a serial dieter. Both women promise each other they'll go on a diet on Monday, but like the other 98 people out of 100 who diet, it's not long before they're both back on a junk food binge.
Meanwhile, at the Houses of Parliament offices, Stephen, a friend of Sandra and Pauline and a uk.gov web page editor, is updating the statistics on the Department of Health web page titled Health risk and costs of obesity. Stephen types:
"Around 58% of type 2 diabetes, 21% of heart disease and between 8% and 42% of certain cancers are attributable to excess body fat."
Stephen feels good about educating the public on the dangers of obesity but he's worried about his fat friend Sandra, so he phones Pauline and they decide to warn her together about her risk of obesity-related disease.
When he goes round to visit Sandra and Pauline for beers and KFC at the weekend, he and Pauline gently persuade Sandra to lose weight. Sandra cries but sees that her friends care about her and says she'll try her best. Pauline isn't fat, so she doesn't consider her health at risk, but as she'd like to be a size smaller she promises Sandra she'll help her by dieting with her.
At this point, we zoom into a CSI-type reconstruction of inside Pauline's body as she persuades her friend to lose weight. The web of fatty tissue stored inside her is at a dangerously high level and it's been spilling into her bloodstream, damaging her organs.
Sandra's fat is stored under her skin and so while her continual eating of junk food means she's moving towards possible disease, the way she stores fat away from her organs, means the threat of illness is less immediate than it is for thin Pauline.
At this stage, however, both women are at risk of disease. Their diets, as usual, fail.
A year later and Sandra has moved out. She got in with a crowd of body image activists, adopting a healthy lifestyle. She finds the more she develops confidence in herself as she is, no longer waiting to lose weight before she lives her life, the less she's drawn to bingeing on junk food. She eats much more intuitively, and swims daily. She lost a bit of weight, but not much.
Every time her new lifestyle causes weight loss she starts getting obsessed with losing more, then she starts counting up how many calories she's had over the week and plans to eat the same again next week, calculating another 3lb loss - and pretty soon she finds herself back into dieting, which always ends up in a binge. Sandra works out that the less focus she puts on losing weight the healthier she behaves. So she's thrown out her bathroom scales. She's found dieting to be the biggest risk to her health and hardest thing to stop!
Pauline, however, continues trying to reach her size 8 goal, as seen in Grazia, even though, like the other 98% of people on the same track, she keeps on failing and her junk food bingeing is worse than ever. She recently fell ill and found she has type 2 diabetes.
Pauline's illness worried Sandra, so she went for a check up. Her doctor is perplexed: even though she's obese, all of her medical tests show she's perfectly healthy and at no risk at all of any of the diseases normally associated with being fat.
Now only one of these women is at risk of 'obesity related disease' and it's not the fat one.
So where is Pauline in the Department of Health Statistics? Is Pauline in the other 42% of type 2 diabetes, 79% of heart disease and between 58% and 92% of certain cancers NOT attributable to excess body fat? And why are the Sandras of the world, the fat and fit, lumped in with the fat and unfit?
Millions of Sandras and Paulines exist. They show that obesity related illnesses are not related to obesity at all but to lifestyle and more specifically to pressure to be thin and dieting! So why is our Government advising us that obesity causes disease and advising weight loss and dieting, the real causes of these diseases?
Next week: Who Funds Government Public Health Advice?
Hear me discussing dieting on BBC Radio 4 Woman's Hour on Tuesday 14 Feb at 10am ]]>Do Magazines Create Body Image Anxiety? UK Parliamentary Inquiry Finds Outtag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.12465152012-02-01T19:00:00-05:002012-04-02T05:12:01-04:00Sue Thomasonhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/sue-thomason/Parliamentary Inquiry into the Causes and Consequences of Body Image Anxiety in the UK. Two weeks ago, the diet industry was on the stand and it was a focused debate where the Weight Watchers representative got so tangled up trying to answer the questions without incriminating herself, she admitted out loud that Weight Watchers customers are being unrealistic if they expect to lose much weight. It was fantastic!
This was ignored by the media, and the week following gave a glimpse of the invasive weight-loss industry fingers coldly gripping our TV stations and the press. The media was filled with almost desperate pro-dieting propaganda. The most insidious on Channel 5's The Wright Stuff (Newsnight for the brainless), in which satanic-faced Matthew Wright asked if dieting is making us all look too thin. You could almost see the diet industry money in pound signs rolling up in his eyeballs like a fruit machine. Kerching!
On Monday the media were on the stand. Hardly anyone from the media would give evidence - mainly because editors and publishers know the causes and consequences of body image anxiety and no one wants to admit their part in it. There were three of us, me as editor of Beautiful, Maria Welch, editor of teen girl's mag Shout, and Matthew Todd, editor of gay men's magazine Attitude.
They were nice guys but they were waffling on, avoiding the point which lulled the room into a kind of 'nodding trance' allowing the real issues to be avoided.
The Attitude editor said he has no control over advertising and it's true, but editorial is carefully monitored by editors so as not to damage the impact of the adverts. I worked on the subs desk at Woman for a few years and a part of the job was to make sure the content didn't clash with the ads. (We once mistakenly put a feature about anorexia next to an ad for Slimfast and were all threatened with the sack). Keeping advertisers happy will also be part of Matthew Todd's job.
He said covers with Stephen Fry and David Cameron don't sell as well as the ones with shirtless muscle guys. I was glad when Stephen Williams MP asked if this is because the media has created the public obsession with appearance and that it's a chicken-and-egg situation. This could have led on to a more effective line of questioning forcing the Attitude ed to admit his magazine is creating insecurity in its readers so that they can sell them solutions to that insecurity. But it went straight back to a weak list of excuses and avoidance of responsibility. His stand was a case of 'blame the readers'.
Maria Welch gave a list of the body confidence articles in Shout, but didn't mention that all the images are of thin, pretty girls. It seemed to be: "We're giving evidence at the Body Image Inquiry, we'd better trawl through the magazine to find body positive features, keep talking about those and not mention the rest." Shout covers are chock full of pictures of skinny girls with headlines like: "You can look like Vanessa." Welch also said the images were never airbrushed. But she'd told me earlier in the queue outside the committee room that airbrushing is obsolete and Shout images were enhanced using more modern digital techniques. So she was only technically telling the truth but misleading everyone at the same time. This Shout cover here shows the young model's outer thighs have been shaved off.
So while all this was polite and nice, it was a lot of hot air. When I spoke I felt like a pair of hobnail boots stamping on a garden of flowers.
I was asked if there should be guidelines forcing the media to publish more diverse body shapes; I said yes because the media ideal is one of the root causes of the deaths from anorexia and the independent research shows it to be one of the main factors in overeating, which means it is also responsible for the deaths that we call 'obesity related' said to be the biggest killer next to smoking. When asked if Government intervention was adequate I said no because every bit of information and advice on the Department of Health website is based on diet industry-funded research.
I felt like an ex-employee of Phillip Morris taking the stand against the tobacco industry in the 1950s.
It was disappointing. But, even though misinformed in some areas, The APPG on Body Image and MPs Jo Swinson MP, Caroline Nokes MP, Mary Glindon MP and Stephen Williams MP are on our side - and that's a sharp hoof to the privates for the weight loss industry.]]>Dieting: Choice of Words Could Seriously Affect Your Successtag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.12061302012-01-14T06:52:48-05:002012-03-15T05:12:01-04:00Sue Thomasonhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/sue-thomason/Slimming World next to an article containing the full truth about dieting. So here is a short course for journalists and editors in how to report dieting and weight-loss research, keep your readers in the dark and either sell your own diet or keep the diet industry sweet:
Technique 1: Twist the meaning.
Directions: Whenever you use the word "dieting", prefix it with the word "crash", "fad", or "extreme". It's OK if you know research has shown all types of dieting to be ineffective, your object is to distort the story in your favour. To add emphasis to your angle, throw in references pointing the finger at skipping meals or using food substitutes. Another way of twisting the meaning is to refer to 'normal' dieting as old-fashioned, sensible, down to earth and dependable. You can even get away with making the whole report about how diets don't work then let your feature trail off with a weak quote from an 'expert' stating what does work, which is always a 'lifestyle change' or a 'whole new way of eating' (which is really no different from dieting).
How it works: Implants the suggestion that crash dieting equals bad, regular dieting equals good. It guides your reader to trust in your advertiser's diet product or service which has been cleverly rebranded as a 'lifestyle change' or a 'sensible meal plan'.
Examples: Read an example of technique 1 here: You can find subtle use of the 'sensible dieting' twist here .
Technique 2: Blame the victim
Directions: Make the dieter the one responsible for the failure of the diet. The most effective way to do this is by publishing diet industry funded research into the effectiveness of diets (funnily enough, this always comes up in favour of the actual company funding the study) which will provide you with endless reasons why dieters' lack of willpower or poor judgement cause them to fail to lose weight. This will really pack a punch if you place it right next to an advert from your sponsor and you can even make the end of the piece into a direct recommendation. This is actually against the law if you're pretending it's an editorial when it's really an advert, but no one notices.
How it works: This leaves your reader feeling guilty and rather than steering away from dieting, it reinforces attachment to diets with the added feeling of 'I must try harder'. This is one of the best to rake it in for your advertisers.
Examples: Good examples of this technique can be found here: and here.
Technique 3: The Blindside (Derren Brown style)
Directions: This takes balls, but it seems to work well. All you have to do is say dieting doesn't work and then blatantly sell them a diet.
How it works: The focus on the first message about dieting's high failure rate seems to distract the reader from the obvious contradiction, or maybe it's because it is so blatant that the reader can't believe it would happen, therefore it doesn't register in the brain. Whatever the cognitive process it leaves the reader thinking along the lines of "I'd better stop dieting and take this advice instead," which, of course, is your advertiser's diet.
There you go. There are many more tricks but use one of these three techniques and jobs a goodun.
For readers, however, stay alert when you read a diet report in the press and don't be fooled. Remember this: the media that reports it is the media that supports it. (I'm really pleased with that quote.)
Next time I'll be revealing tips for writing about the obesity epidemic - another good way to keep your weight-loss industry advertisers sweet.
http://www.beautifulmagazine.co.uk
]]>Do You Have New Year Dieting Amnesia?tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.11723732012-01-01T19:00:00-05:002012-03-02T05:12:01-05:00Sue Thomasonhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/sue-thomason/According to the British Dietetic Association, the average Brit will have eaten 6,000 calories on Christmas Day and will gain 5 lbs (2 kg) by New Year's Day. This leaves us all perfectly plumped and primed, ready to be sucked into the diet adverts belching out of our TV screens throughout January (look into my eyes, not around my eyes, into my eyes).
Jenny Craig, Slimming World, Weight Watchers et al will have us hypnotised by promises of toned abs in summer swimsuits and firm buttocks outlined by clinging red frocks. Weight Watchers' epic offering this year will be a music video that lasts three full minutes.
Our annual dieting amnesia (we promised ourselves we'd lose weight last year and now we're even heavier than we were then), is what the diet industry relies on at this time of year to haul in the biggest portion of their £400 billion in annual profit. But the promises made by the New Year diet adverts will be broken. The excitement we'll feel watching the epic WeightWatchers ad on New Year's Day will fade by the end of January and we'll be off diet by 31 Jan. We don't remember that this year we're fatter than last year and we don't believe that next year we'll be fatter than this year. "This time I'm going to do it," we'll be lured into thinking.
But all of this is only true if you're a dieter. People who have never dieted might eat more than usual at Christmas but they won't have eaten nearly as much as a habitual dieter who will have tried to make the most of their 'free' time off diet. The worst a non-dieter will get is a feeling of slight discomfort from a tight belt while settling to watch Downton Abbey. And they won't have to work to shift any gained weight - they won't even weigh themselves. Most won't really register that they have put on weight and even if they do feel a bit bloated from too many turkey sandwiches, they'll be back to their pre-Christmas weight in a few weeks of normal eating and getting on with their lives. They won't give it a second thought.
Dieters, on the other hand, typically overeat throughout Christmas, regularly eating to the point of painful fullness, weighing ourselves obsessively after the festive season is over, feeling miserable and guilty about our weight gain. We start New Year diets with a sense of determination and excitement which wears off within a fortnight and we then struggle through January and February feeling deprived, hating ourselves for our lack of control and despising every lump and bump on our bodies. Food planning and food restriction will dominate our thoughts, we will suffer more stress and more depression than non-dieters and most will have broken our diet before January is up. And even if we do get back to our pre-Christmas weight, less than 10 per cent of us will keep it off. By the end of 2012, most of us will be heavier than we are now.
Do yourself a favour and make your New Year resolution to finally ditch dieting for good. Stop giving your trust and your money to an industry that is destroying lives. Make New Year a time to speak out against the diet companies that make a profit from your misery.
"Anyone, anywhere can hold a SpeakOut in the name of #DitchingDieting. You can organise friends around your kitchen table or you might fill an auditorium. The point is to create a safe space where the suffering caused by dieting can be expressed and validated. A SpeakOut and the subsequent support group that can emerge from it offers similar support that diet clubs such as Weight Watchers provide; however, instead of focusing on working against your body's natural impulses, a SpeakOut club facilitates strong bonds as you explore collaboratively with other members how to truly take care of yourself."
Consider hosting your own SpeakOut. For more information visit www.ditchingdieting.org and write to info@any-body.org to obtain a SpeakOut package.
A Body Image Inquiry is underway looking into the causes and consequences of body image anxiety. If you're based in London, take the day off work on16 January 2012 and join the UK EB team in speaking out against the diet industry at Parliament. Full event details here.
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The second study wasn't widely reported but the first study encouraging pregnant women to diet was all over the news, despite advice from the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE), published in 2010, saying: "Dieting during pregnancy is not recommended as it may harm the health of the unborn child." Also despite it being understood that dieting increases levels of the stress hormone cortisol, which causes weight gain, and which also can have an effect on an unborn baby.
Beautiful Magazine (Wooh hoo!); Caitlin Moran for How to be a Woman; Gok's Teens: The Naked Truth; Guardian Weekend Magazine: Fashion for all ages 