I know I know seasonal blogs…we are all filled to the brim reading about Halloween…and it won’t be long before every other blogger and I will be writing about Thanksgiving and then Christmas and then a nice hiatus before we get to write about “The New Beginnings of Spring Tra La!”  But I really have a few things I want to say about Halloween.  So please indulge me for just a few minutes.

Halloween could have been my favorite holiday.  It had all the makings for The Perfect Good Time.  Running around dressed up as anything or anyone you wanted, collecting and eating massive amounts of candy, not having to sit through some long drawn out ritual or service before being allowed to run around at night collecting and eating massive amounts of candy.  And let’s not forget the lovely after-glow of the candy lingering in the house…sometimes for as long as a week.  THAT made the 8 days of Chanukah pale in comparison.

It was also the perfect inter-generational holiday.  There was no age limit to participate.  You were either the giver or receiver and dressing up was allowed no matter what  age you were…except for those two pesky years of adolescence when you felt it was totally un-cool to dress up.  But even then, no one said you couldn’t.  It was your choice.  I remember during my “twick or tweening” years, feeling a little sorry for the kids who still had to trick or treat with their parents. It wasn’t until decades later, as a mom, that I realized it was the other way around.  It was the parents who were relishing in the few years our kids allowed us to accompany them!   And THAT was a TREAT!  We were all grown up but gallivanting from house to house, anonymously clad in costume, and reliving the hedonistic pleasure of taking over the night and abetting our kids in hauling in massive amounts of FREE candy.  Why do you think we call it Hauloween?

I was born in Queens, New York and then moved to the burbs of Long Island when I was eight.    In contemplating the ultimate Halloween question, “Which is better, city or suburb trick or treating?” The city wins hands down!  If quantity is the barometer for a successful Halloween, then trick or treating in apartment buildings in New York is the indisputable victor!  Imagine floor after floor and door after door…lined up…each handing out candy.  It was a one stop shop candy jack pot…most amount of candy, least amount of effort.

The suburbs, on the other hand, made you work harder for your treats…trudging from house to house, up looong driveways, climbing stairways to giant web-laced doors just to get pennies for UNICEF and apples with razor blades. (Just kidding about the apples; but for some reason, it wasn’t until I moved to the “burbs” that I heard stories of tainted treats).  But there were still massive amounts of free candy.  Granted you had to cover more ground to get the same amount of candy that you got in the city, but the candy was dandy nonetheless, and the neighborhood streets were swarming with kids who had been waiting for dusk since school let out at three.  (Because the unwritten rule was that you couldn’t start trick or treating until it was dark).

Once in a while you’d ring a bell and a wise guy (usually a dad) would open the door dressed as a monster.  We’d squeal with delight and yell in unison, “Trick or treat,” and with a twinkle in his ghoulish eye he’d say, “Trick.”

We would freeze…not knowing really what that meant…or what we were supposed to do…and just as it started to get tense, The Grim Reaper would grin a self satisfied smile, put down his plastic scythe, and dole out handfuls of candy corn and bite sized Snickers™. 

How could this NOT be a great holiday??

And it was, until around fourth grade, when my trick or treating days changed forever.  That was when I found out I was fat.

Food became my enemy and CANDY, the Darth Vader of my universe.  In my household, at any given time, my mother, father, or the kids were on diets. This of course meant no treats in our house or in our mouths.  As I was indoctrinated into the lifestyle of weight cycling diets in the attempt to please those around me with a thin, lithe body; Halloween became the perfect opportunity for bingeing.  Better yet, it was sanctified by all of the Powers That Be.  Passover Shmassover…THIS was the holiday that begged me to question, “Why is this night different from all other nights???”  And the answer, “Because on this night you can collect and eat all of the candy you want.”  The TV showed it, the movies showed it, the magazines wrote about it, let’s face it…it was National Annual Binge on Candy Day!

And it terrified me.

More than any haunted house, more than any midnight showing of Night of the Living Dead, even more than the Kappa Delta Nu “greaser gang” waiting in the shadows to pummel us with eggs; the scariest part of Halloween for me, was the candy.  For years I woke up the morning after like an alcoholic waking from a bar hopping tear…incredulous at the amount of candy wrappers surrounding me and the weight of guilt I had gained by engaging in the simple pleasure of Halloween.  I found it hard to fathom why my friends’ candy would last for weeks and weeks eventually becoming too stale and hard for their braces it would be unceremoniously tossed.  Mine was gone within a week.

The treats were no longer a treat for me.

And then just when I thought it couldn’t get any worse, it did.  In my early teens I became aware of a whole new trend in dressing up.  All of sudden, there were costumes being advertised, that somehow in my pre-pubescent naiveté I hadn’t noticed before…They were the same costumes I had always seen, the black cats, Wonder Woman, Batgirl, belly dancer, nurse, only now they were SEXY…seductive…flesh revealing and titillating.  Next to ads with centerfolds of mini Mounds(tm) bars and candy corn were centerfolds of young girls with mini mounds protruding out of their Xena Warrior Woman costumes, and the Wicked Witch?

Well that had a Whole New Meaning.

New questions were formulating in my brain.  “How could I be expected to gorge on candy and fit into a skimpy costume? When did Halloween become about my body?”  And under my anger was a longing to fit in, and the realization that if I dressed up as a sexy cowgirl, I’d be called a Cow Girl.   I yearned for the days when I could dress up for the fun of it and not worry if I looked good, or pretty, or sexy, in my Costume!

Please don’t get me wrong. I am not a prude about sexuality…but seeing 13 year olds dressed up as cowgirls who look like hookers…just…well…disturbs me.  Now when the Grim Reaper opens the door and responds to the chorus of, “Trick or Treat” with, “Trick!”  It has a whole “nuthuh” meaning!!!

So what’s a “mutha” to do?  Because so many of us regard chocolate and candy in general as FORBIDDEN FOOD, when a holiday like Halloween comes along, it may be difficult to maintain our ghoul…um…cool.  Many parents have rules about what their kids can do with their candy.  Some allow the kids to eat as much as they want for that night and then the rest gets thrown away.  Others dole it out one or two pieces a day for seven days or until it’s gone.  I understand a parent’s intention and need to set limits and help kids establish healthy food habits, but care needs to be taken as to how this is done.  Presenting candy as the enemy (assuming there are no allergies or medical conditions to take into consideration) may lead to sneak eating or bingeing.  Sometimes these eating patterns get generalized to other holidays, events, and meals ultimately developing into more complicated disordered eating behaviors.

It is important to teach kids about mindful eating early on and resist the temptation to introduce restrictive diets that label foods as “good” food “bad” food.  I remember when I was 16 and realized that those mini-candies were available ALL YEAR LONG!  That was the LAST time I binged on them on Halloween.  Knowing I didn’t have to eat them all in one night or the few days that followed (because it would be another YEAR before I could eat them again), de-fused the compulsivity and drove a wooden stake into Count Choculah’s heart.  If candy is not an evil food that shows up once a year like the Jason movies, then the urge to binge is lessened and the fun is in the collecting and the dressing up, not in the consuming.

The part about girls having to dress as hookers…I haven’t figured that one out yet.  Stay tuned.

Do you have a favorite Halloween story or parental candy strategy?  I’d love to know!

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My eyes open.  I languidly stretch my body.  I feel gratitude for my strong legs and murmur words of love to my round belly.  I roll over onto my side and serenely admire how my butt looks like two plump croissants nestled next to each other.  And as my thighs kiss each other good morning, I slip out of bed filled with excitement, self-love, and joy! Today is the first day of my new diet!!!

I walk into the bathroom and step on the scale.  Wow! What an amazing number!  I love that number! I am going to play that number in the lotto today!!  That is how freaking great that number is!  It must be a sign!!  I write the number down in my new Captain’s Log, after all this is a journey I am embarking on!  Sailing on the Good Ship Nutri-Pop!  I grab my robe and march towards the front door.

It’s still dark outside as I pick up the newspaper from the driveway and peel off the plastic wrapper dripping with dew. The crickets are cacophonous…who would think in East Oakland, California we’d have so many rural sounds?  Crickets, jays and that other bird with the beautiful song that I’ve never seen but always hear.  What a wonderful world! The snail slime is glowing, a luminescent magical trail spiraling back to my house, my neighborhood still in slumber. I’ve always been an early riser and have one of those freakish internal alarm clocks making it impossible for me to over sleep.

I walk into the kitchen, euphoric about my life.  Everything is so wonderful and on top of it all, today…I get to go on a diet!!  I start my “cawfee” (I grew up in New York) and open the pantry door.  Well, it’s just a cupboard.  Grandiose of me to call it a pantry, really. I guess that is a throwback to having grown up in a larger house in New York.   The place we kept certain kinds of food like breads and cereals, cans and nuts was called the pantry.

I pull out the box of prescribed breakfast muffins and unwrap this marvel…this miracle…this melt in your mouth,

“If you eat me for breakfast you will be thin and happy forever muffin.”

I am elated.

I am so happy with my body! I am so happy with my life! And this muffin “rawks duuude!” I write this down in my Captain’s Log along with the time I am eating it, how hungry I am before eating it, what I am wearing, who I want to sleep with, and the calories, fat grams, and sugars hiding in the crevasses of this mind blowing muffin.  I take a sip from my cup and then take a bite of the muffin.

Who am I kidding? Has anyone ever started a diet from a place of self-love and self-acceptance?

Take two

The alarm rings. I wake up with a start! I resist the urge to snuggle deeper into my cocoon and as I roll over I feel my stomach jiggle and my legs feel like two over inflated balloons.  I “greet” this day as I do every day with the mantra, “I hate my body.”

Then I remember, today is the first day of my new diet!  With a tremor of hope and anticipation, I roll out of bed and death-walk to the scale. I am filled with disgust as I record the number in my diet log, which I have used a million times before; for a million different diets.  I thumb back to the beginning of the book and my eyes, still crusty with sleep, well up with tears when I see how small the number was the first time I used this log. It is difficult to imagine why and how much I hated myself then! If I weighed now what I weighed then…I begin to spiral down…
“SNAP OUT OF IT!!!” I grab my robe and go outside to get the paper.  It is cold and dewy and I am greeted with the usual East Oakland morning concert of sirens, screeching cars, and the incongruent bucolic chirps of the crickets.

I make my cawfee and open the package that contains my prescribed morning muffin, which costs as much as a meal at French Laundry and is to be my breakfast.  Dutifully, I write down in the food log, what time it is, how hungry I and what I am eating.

The muffin,

which is the size of a ping pong ball, mocks me in its miniscule-ness.  It is not big enough to cut in half and enjoy the way a muffin is meant to be enjoyed…one luscious half at a time. It is dry, it is brittle, it is tasteless, and it taunts me:

“You wouldn’t have to eat me if you weren’t so fat and you weren’t such a failure!  If you had any self control you never would have gotten to this place. So nyah nyah nyah nyah nyah….I am all you deserve and in fact I am too good for you.”

I dunk it in my cawfee, partially to shut it up, but also to hydrate it… and it dissolves…leaving me with one itty bit left on my plate. 

Surely a tiny bit of schmear couldn’t hurt?  I mean really, this can’t be considered a breakfast?

My diet resolve has shifted gears now, and has moved to resentment as I pull the cream cheese from the fridge.  “At least it’s not butter!  If it was butter I’d really be bad! This is just a schmear!”

I put a dollop on the impostor muffin and pop it into my mouth.

“Mmmm, much better,” I purr as I take a sip of from my “You are the best mom ever,” mug.  I feel a twinge deep down in the inner mommy place as I think of my son, off at college now.  He always loved me, no matter what size I was.  How bad could I be if I was such a great mom? A feeling of familiar emptiness punches me in the gut as I look down and see that now I have a clump of cream cheese left over on the knife…it is yearning for a mate…like the back pages of the free newspaper listing singles ads, this schmear is undulating to be spread on something delectable.  Thoughts of my son replaced, like the yenta I truly am, I remember the raisin bread in the fridge…such a match!

I marvel at my self control as I wait for it to toast…if this was a real binge, I’d be eating it cold from the fridge, right?

But by now I have shifted gears again…in fact, I am in overdrive scrambling eggs, cutting up fruit and making myself a real breakfast with real food, schmear and all.  My fuel is anger, my fuel is the quest for self-soothing and yes, my fuel is hunger. Real hunger… why do you think breakfast is called breakfast?  Because you have been fasting for 8-10 hours and you need to break the f#*kin’ fast!

“Write this in your damn log,”…I tell myself after I have finished every crumb.

Too full, I ate more than I wanted…the myriad of emotions triggered by the deprivation and restrictiveness of this diet plan eclipsed my awareness of my body’s hunger/satiation signals.  What began as breakfast morphed into a whole new creature that in the end left me filled, not just with food…but with self-loathing. Another day and I have proven to myself that I am a failure.  Schmear and self-loathing in Las Vegas. East Oakland.

It has been a very long time since I lived in that particular hell, but I can recall every nuance as if it happened this morning because those days are etched in my psyche, part of a painful legacy.  But now that I have found and incorporated the recipe for living my life in concert with food and my body, instead of in conflict with food and my body I know and trust that those days are truly history.  Perhaps because of this past, I find myself becoming increasingly vehement in my anti-dieting stance as I engage with those struggling to find peace with food and their bodies.

What I hate most about diets is the total lack of self love included in any of the programs.  No one starts a diet from a place of loving themselves.  Restrictive diets, even when embarked upon for health related reasons, are accompanied by such an enormous lack of self love and a surplus of desperation that when combined are a certain recipe for failure.

I know someone is thinking, “But Dr. Deah, some people must be on diets for their blood pressure, or diabetes, or food allergies.” True, but that is really not the point I am making here.  Nor am I condoning unbridled unhealthy eating and suggesting that we all start living on M&M’s^® and milkshakes 24/7.  What I am saying is that diets often use a goal weight as the measurement for success. This is problematic because too many people find that when they reach the magic number they are still unhappy.  Then what? They choose a lower number and another, and another. They are living in a state of suspended animation with self-love the ever elusive carrot on a stick.

Should we really be weighting to love ourselves??

In Dr. Deah’s Hollywood, it makes much more sense when loving our bodies/selves is a motivator for change.  Self-love does not mean that we have nothing left to learn about the world or ourselves, or that we don’t want to make changes in how we are living.  It DOES mean that we don’t have to achieve all of our life goals before we can begin to love ourselves.

I know it isn’t easy.   We’ve been trained to NOT love ourselves as we are right now, at this size, in this moment.  But honestly, it is worth the effort.  There are much kinder mantras than, “I hate my body.” And I guarantee you that trying to change from a self-hating to a self-loving mindset  is much more pleasant than eating those blasted turd-muffins for breakfast every morning.

Take 3

My eyes open.  I languidly stretch my body.  I feel gratitude for my strong legs and murmur words of love to my body.  I roll over onto my side and as my thighs kiss each other good morning, I slip out of bed.

No scale.       No diet.

NO WEIGHTING.

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There is a day for everything!!!  I kid you not.  March 14^th is National Potato Chip Day.  November 7^th, Bittersweet Chocolate with Almonds Day, and my personal fave, that happens to fall on my birthday, Dec. 13^th, National Ice Cream Day!  But there are dedicated days and weeks that I take more seriously and they are steadily increasing year after year.  In fact, I need a calendar to keep track of all of the special days, weeks and months that pertain to reversing the cultural trend of convincing people to hate their bodies and adopt destructive behaviors.

Of course I wish we didn’t need any of these days, weeks or months.  Because when you really examine them, it is a sad state of affairs and pathetic reflection of our culture that we need to be reminded to:

• Love your body (Oct 19)
• Reject diets (May 6^th)
• Prevent eating disorders (Feb 20-26)
• Adopt the ideology of healthy weight awareness. (Third week of January)
• And improve yourself (the entire month of September).

But let’s take a look at the one coming up on October 19^th, Love Your Body Day.

Does this day mean I should love your body?  Or, does it mean I should love my body?  As Bugs Bunny would say, “Ain’t language a stinkuh?”  I am in love with language. If I could choose one super power it would be fluency in every language.  In effect, I would have the ultimate Zoo Key that I could use to communicate with people in every culture. 

Remember Zoo Keys? They were plastic keys, usually in the shape of an elephant, that were inserted in “talking boxes” around the zoo. When you turned the key a voice inside the box would tell you all about the animal.  Without the key, if you were not visually impaired, you only had your eyes and perhaps your teacher’s or parent’s limited knowledge about the koala.  But with the key, you knew Kool Hand Koala’s name, his country of origin, and that he had the hots for his cage mate, the lovely and kurvaceous Koolata.  The mystery of the koala was solved thanks to the special plastic key that only some people were fortunate enough to own; and assuming, of course, they knew English. 

But my love of language isn’t confined to the spoken word. It extends to the written word that has its own nuances and delightful mysteries that can be wonderful and pesky!  For years when I was reading the name Hermione in the Harry Potter books, in my head I heard “Her-me-own.”  My own name commands the same response from many people. When a reader sees my name written, Deah, they hear in their heads, “Dee-uh” assuming that it is like Leah with a D.  It is in fact Day-(like the opposite of night) uh. Once someone knows my name, when they see it written, they can hear it in their heads as Day-uh as I now hear “Her-miney.”

These discrepancies inherent in “written pronunciation” are also, unfortunately, the cause of many arguments in the worlds of blogs and email. How many of us have gotten into arguments because what we wrote is not read with the lilt in our voice and twinkle in our eye that was there when we hit the reply key?  Written language as a medium can be painfully two dimensional and it takes a true wordsmith to effectively convey sarcasm, empathy, and gentleness through their writing. Processing disagreements should never be addressed via email for just this reason and writing a blog on controversial topics demands hyper vigilance if one doesn’t want to be misinterpreted and potentially alienate their readers.

But auditory double entendres can also be delightful to play with.  For example:

“I really hope you pull this off.”  Or “You are the last person he wanted to see.”

Depending on the context of these statements they can have totally different meanings ranging from hurtful and rude to sexy and logistical.  “I hope you pull this off,” can be supportive, or brashly seductive.  “The last person he wanted to see,” is fine if a doctor is scheduling an appointment with you, but not so great if the doctor is saying they don’t want to see you ever…at all!  I know there are people out there who insist that words are “just words” and shouldn’t make such an impact.  But are they just words…as in words of justice or fairness? Or just words as in merely or simply?  Either way, thankfully, there are enough people who take words seriously, and understand that the context of words is vital for understanding their intended meanings.

There are those special times when either interpretation can be positive.  If someone writes me a note and tells me, “I just read your blog.”  This could mean that my blog is the ONLY blog they read, or that they just finished reading my latest post.  Both are really good news.  I love when that happens. So let’s take a look at the upcoming Love Your Body Day.  Some read this and believe it is a directive to love their own body.  “I love my body I love my body!”  Today is the day that I, “Love my body!” Others read it and take it to mean that they should love someone else’s body.  “I love your body, I love your body!”  Today is the day to acknowledge that, “I love your body!”

Either interpretation in this case, reminds us to take a day, (which really should be EVERY day) to respect and appreciate each others’ bodies and the diversity of bodies and NOT give in to the prevalent message that is fed to us every day, that unless our bodies conform to a very narrow standard, they do not deserve our love.

So until there is a paradigm change and we mark our calendars that every day is Love Ourselves Day, bodies and all, let’s celebrate on October 19^th. Spend the day appreciating your amazing body for everything it is doing, 24/7 to allow you to live the life you are living.  Say thanks for the wonderful body that allows you to touch the world in your unique fashion that helps make the world a better place…and then when you wake up on Oct. 20^th, try it again and the next day and the next day…

And don’t forget…to join me and other cruciverbalists on April 13^th which just happens to be, International Scrabble Day!

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I would ask you to close your eyes, but then you couldn’t keep reading and that would be awkward.   So, imagine you are closing your eyes and think of a time when you felt completely in sync with your surroundings; comfortable in your skin from the inside, and at ease with where your skin just happened to be in that moment, on the outside.

Maybe it’s one of those rare times getting out of the tub, a pool, lake, or tropical ocean where the air temperature was similar enough to the water temperature so there was no jolt when you got out of the water.

Or waking up the morning after a presidential election and the candidate you voted for had won…and for a few hours your political belief system is one with an outside community of like minded folks.

How about a concert you went to where you knew EVERY word to EVERY song and EVERY person sitting around you did too? You, the band on stage, and everyone around you were joined in a musical simultaneous orgasmic vocal explosion!  For those few moments there was no discord and all was right with the world. MMM…YUM.

These bright moments are exhilarating; sometimes in calm, peaceful ways, other times joyful and energizing. Whatever form they take, these surprises in life, when we feel at home within and without, make living a WONDERFUL adventure.

I had one of these moments when I went to see the film, America the Beautiful 2: The Thin Commandments.  It was a special screening sponsored by several eating disorders organizations:  La Ventana,  Ocenaire, Center for Discovery,  Reasons, and a fundraiser for The Eating Disorders Resource Center (EDRC).

I entered the theater confident that I would be part of an audience that “knew all of the words to the same songs that I knew.”  What I didn’t know was whether the film would strike the familiar chords and cover the play list the audience was hoping for.  After all, making a documentary about the extraordinarily complicated interrelationships among food, weight, health, eating disorders, and dieting, is no easy task.

Meet our protagonist, Darryl Roberts, a man who loves food and hates exercise.  Darryl is visiting a doctor for the first time in ten years and is hit with a cyclone of bad news; his blood pressure is high and his heart has some irregularities.  The doctor, following medical protocols, prescribes two blood pressure medications and sends a deflated Darryl, on his way.  But the storm only worsens and he is hit upside the head with the news that the medications have (im)potential side effects.   Finding this a hard, so to speak, pill to swallow, it dawns on him that he isn’t in Kansas anymore.  And so, we are invited to join our not so little “Darryl Gayle,” as he sets off to find the Wizard of Weight Loss.  This wizard will be great and powerful, will grant his wish to be healthy and bestow upon him a more uplifting way to avoid the stroke that is surely lurking around the next bend.

Darryl’s  journey has all of the required elements of a classic odyssey; a trip tik of funny, tragic, and outrageous run-ins with good and evil witches, fierce flying monkeys, and fellow truth seekers…aka a realistic sampling of well-meaning but sometimes insidious members of the diet, medical, eating disorders, nutritional, and fitness industries.  And because it is Hollywood, Hollywood, (with more connections than Dr. Deah’s Hollywood), there are some riveting cameos including:  Deepak Chopra, Secretary of Health, Kathleen Sebelius, and the Arch Bishop of New York, Timothy Dolan. (Unfortunately there is no Dr. Oz, although the irony of that would NOT have escaped me!) This passionate star studded supporting cast speaks their truths about weight loss, health, and diets and add to the intrigue of Mr. Roberts’ quest.

But perhaps what makes this film so successful is the accessible like-ability of Darryl Roberts.  He is a down to earth man we cannot help but identify with; as he attempts to stick to a 28 day regime of organic raw food and colon cleansing during which time we find out that his heart is NOT the only part of Darryl’s world that is irregular…if you catch my drift.

We are in the kitchen with him as he eats his “last hurrah” meal before the diet.  Standing up, as binge eaters frequently do, we are co-relishing in what is certainly, in that moment, his last piece of chocolate cake, EVER.  We are walking side by side with him as he finally snaps from one too many tofu kebabs and dives into the comfort and greasy satisfying joy and “joyness” of fried chicken.

I do not think I was the only one champing at the bit to run to his defense when a diet doctor shows disdain for fat people by admonishing them for staying fat because they are too lazy to stay on a diet. Dr. Shapiro opines and challenges Darryl to dispute the fact that deep down inside everyone, if honest, wants to be thin.

As his quest continues, he establishes our solidarity with survivors of weight loss surgeries and eating disorders, taps into our empathy for the obsessive exerciser who would rather workout than have a relationship. (She is emphatic that her happiness would inevitably lead to weight gain).  He opens our hearts to the boys who are members of an eating disorders group and a woman struggling with anorexia.

As the movie progresses, he ignites our anger by deftly connecting the dots and illustrating that the reinforcement we give and get for losing weight and working out can backfire; and what begins as a spark of disordered eating billows into the raging fire of a fully fledged eating disorder.

Roberts recruits our activism when his questions about government subsidies for corn and the possible connection to obesity were not responded to by Kathleen Sebelius, Director of Health and Human Services who ends the interview by remarking that she doesn’t know about eating disorders or the diet industry.

As he explores the over inflated importance that the National Institute of Health places on BMI as an indicator of health, he jump-starts our outrage at the questionable connection between certain high profile health professionals and the Weight Watchers® advisory board.

He garners our admiration for Ragen Chastain,  a 250+ pound dancer, and other people who are living happy healthy lives but have to battle stigmatization and dispel the myths about fat and health on a daily basis.

And finally, he conducts the audience in a chorus of sighs of relief after listening to psychiatrists and other health professionals:  Dr. Norman, Jon Robison,  Paul Campos,  Judith Matz, Linda Bacon,  and Evelyn Tribole,  ( a partial list click here for the full cast) explain that according to longitudinal studies, restrictive diets lead to weight cycling NOT long term weight loss nor are they the answer to lowering high blood pressure.  Instead we are offered a saner, alternative that is health focused instead of weight focused.  The Health at Every Size® approach proposes that a balance of fun physical activity, in Darryl’s case bicycling, combined with mindful-eating, results in stabilized health markers and removes the deleterious co-morbid conditions associated with weight fluctuations.

But that is my clinical jargon seeping out and I am wearing my Dr. Deah’s Hollywood Film-stanista hat… and as I watched the film I was purring with contentment. There I was immersed in one of those bright moments when my beliefs and surroundings were congruent.  Still purring, I left the theater feeling curious about how the mainstream audience will react as many will be exposed, perhaps for the first time, to a comparison between the two self-help roads to  self-health ideologies, Health at Every Size® and Dieting. They will watch a well crafted documentary filled with glimpses into some funny, some ludicrous and other truly painful experiences that living in a culture obsessed with thinness has inflicted upon many of us.  They will witness how the desire to live healthy lives often paradoxically results in adopting unhealthy behaviors and attitudes.  And with all of that being said, I predict (and hope) they will breathe a sigh of relief; and experience their own bright moment when they learn there is another way. We all have a choice that doesn’t require going somewhere else and breaking the bank in order to attain self acceptance and a healthy way of life.  Close your eyes and think about that!  MMM…YUM.

I don’t want to give away the ending…but take a minute, click your heels 3 times and say, “There’s no place like home.”

There is no place like home!

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There are many terms for it; I choose to say that I am a reformed dieter. This means I no longer embark on diets or join programs designed for weight loss.  My reasons for this are many and my decision making process may be helpful to some; so from time to time I write about those aspects of my personal journey in my blog, Tasty Morsels.

But today I am writing about something else. 

As I review my futile quest to find the perfect weight loss technique, I see a road littered with detritus from countless attempts at a variety of programs.  Some more renown than others, I have left in my wake a trail of Jenny Craig bar graphs, Weight Watchers Lifetime key rings, and Atkin’s dip sticks; all tangible proof of my countless endeavors to lose weight in order to be happy.

There are many common themes embedded in each pit stop on my way to “diet cessation” but one of the most irritating is how I perceived my successes and failures.  Each time I lost weight, I sang the praises of the diet. “I love the South Beach; Grapefruits are the shot, me and Jenny forever!”  And each time I inevitably gained the weight back, I would wail the dirge of self-hate, “I am a failure.”

All of the credit went to someone else and all of the blame went to me.

It is a double standard I can no longer accept.

Writing about low self-esteem as a component of body dissatisfaction and serial dieting is nothing new. There are few, if any, Weary Weight Warriors who hate their body AND have a healthy self-esteem.  Body dissatisfaction is not created in a vacuum and is usually the result of someone being told that something is wrong with them.  If someone feels they need to lose weight in order to be loved by someone else, they are most likely going to feel unworthy in other arenas as well.

Because the motivation to lose weight is usually extrinsically foisted upon us and then externally reinforced by the diet industry selling the solution, we can understand the ease with which we give credit to the Stillmans and the Jennys. We feel flawed so how can it NOT be our fault if we can’t fix the problem by using these undisputed efficacious diets?  Placing the blame on ourselves instead of on the failure of the diet is part of the cycle of self hate that is inherent in using restrictive dieting as a solution to weight management, eating disorders and fighting the so-called war against obesity.  The proponents of diet programs are counting on the self-hate that they have helped to create, to fuel our appetites for trying the latest fad diet and Jennifer Hudson-esque intervention.

Breaking the self hate cycle is no easy task.  Ask any fellow salmon swimming upstream and the ones that make it will tell you it takes perseverance and motivation.  But the motivation MUST be intrinsic.  The choice to engage in a health based lifestyle instead of a weight based one must start from within and be fueled from within; not to please anyone else, not to live up to someone else’s expectation and NOT to be measured by any scale or tape measure.  And guess what? Because there is no double standard, the credit and kudos for maintaining these lifestyle changes may just be able to swim, with abandon, in a new direction…inward.

So lose the double standard and gain some self esteem.

You’ll love yourself for it!

Those of you that read Dr. Deah’s Tasty Morsels know that I have an enormous amount of rage about the Lap Band(r).  My reasons are both personal and professional.  A close relative of mine had the lap band procedure and it was, by all statistical measurements, unsuccessful. The fall out from the procedure was toxic both physically and emotionally for her and those around her.  In my post, WWJD, I discuss the acne-like proliferation of the 1800GETTHIN billboards and how misleading they are.  The radio and billboard ads give the impression that a person can zip in and zip out of lap band surgery…(what’s next…drive thru lap bands?) and a person’s life with be miraculously transformed from fat, lonely, enslaved, and miserable to skinny, happy, and free.

If this pseudo approach to health and well being offends you at all, you may be interested in two opportunities to voice your dissent that were passed on to me by Marilyn Wann, author of FATSO?

The first is a petition created by Katie Koumatos California Gov. Jerry Brown has until Oct. 9 to sign legislation that includes stricter accreditation requirements for the sort of clinics that do lap band surgery.
While I am eager for total recall of these devices, until then, it seems useful and lifesaving to make it more difficult for clinics that fail one accrediting agency’s standards to skip to another rather than improve.

The second is to send a letter to the billboard company that carries the ad.  Here is the letter that Marilyn sent to:  Heather.McGuire@titanoutdoor.com

Hello, Ms. McGuire:
I am writing to ask that you reconsider the advisability of offering advertising space to 1-800-GET-THIN(TM).
The Los Angeles Times reports deaths and serious complications that people have suffered after these surgeries.
Several lawsuits are now in process, alleging false advertising claims.
For example:
- http://www.1800getthinclassaction.com/lawsuit-update
- http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-get-thin-lawsuit-20110907,0,4090876.story
On Dec. 7, 2010, Los Angeles Public Health Department Director Jonathon Fielding, MD, asked the FDA to investigate the 1-800-GET-THIN(TM) advertising…
“The LAP-BAND(R) weight loss procedure is marketed directly to consumers in Los Angeles County through billboards, bus placards, and direct mail with slogans such as ‘Diets fail! The LAP-BAND(R) works!’ These ads fail to provide the relevant warnings, precautions, side effects, and contraindications related to the procedure…Given the harms of medical complications and unrealistic expectations resulting from the misleading promotion of this product, I strongly recommend that FDA to take the necessary steps to ensure that 1-800-GET-THIN(TM)
Weight Loss Centers’ LAP-BAND(R) promotion does not constitute misbranding of a restricted device.”
- http://zev.lacounty.gov/wp-content/uploads/lapband-letter.pdf

The same concerns would apply to this advertising campaign in San Francisco County and in the Bay Area.
This month, BNET contributor and former Adweek managing editor Jim Edwards posted an opinion piece called, “Lap-Band Deaths Pile Up As Sales Decline,” in which he called Allergan’s lap band device “a product discontinuation waiting to happen.”
- http://www.bnet.com/blog/drug-business/lap-band-deaths-pile-up-as-sales-decline/9600?tag=fd-river14#ixzz1XR44dAWU
Medical research questions the safety and efficacy of lap band surgery.
A European study published in July, 2011, found that 50% of people who get lap band must later have it removed.
- http://archsurg.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/extract/146/7/807
One of the few longterm follow-up studies on lap band outcomes, published in 2006, found that 33% of people had serious complications and 22% had problems requiring further surgery. Researchers wrote that lap band “should no longer be considered as the procedure of choice for obesity.”
- http://www.springerlink.com/content/w563743386t13181/
I understand that MTA advertising policy requires no advertisement be “false, misleading or deceptive.”
I hope you will reconsider whether 1-800-GET-THIN(TM) advertising meets your requirements.
Since 2000, San Francisco has included height and weight in the list of characteristics protected from discrimination here. It would be tragic if people in San Francisco were swayed by false, misleading, or deceptive advertising to undertake medical treatments that risk serious complications and even death, in the hope of escaping weight discrimination.
Thank you,
Marilyn Wann

No matter what you may think about the detrimental health effects of the widely publicized “obesity crisis” I hope we can find some common ground and agree that the quick dubious fix of the Lap Band is not the way to address eating disorders or what may be viewed as an unhealthy weight.

Take some time and Slap the Hand of the people promoting the Lap Band. 

Thank you for considering my request!