weight loss

The End of Overeating: Taking Control of the Insatiable American Appetite

admin — Sat, 14 Aug 2010 08:00:00 +0000

Obesity and the health issues that accompany it have long been a subject of intense discussion in the Western world, where the abundance of super-cheap and highly processed foods has been linked to many health disorders. David Kessler’s The End of Overeating is an important addition to the books written on the subject. Kessler has the background to take on this complex subject, having served as commissioner at the US Food and Drug Administration. He is also a man who has grappled with weight issues, giving him a more personal interest in the topic.

One of the biggest strengths of The End of Overeating (and the reason I called it an important book) is that Kessler articulates convincingly a position on obesity that moves it away from the issue of individual control and choices ("if you’re fat, you have no willpower, and you really ought to control yourself"). While for a large part of America calorie intake is outpacing calorie absorption, he acknowledges that it’s not as simple as "having the willpower to say no." Kessler also acknowledges that a small percentage of obese people are obese due to other medical reasons and that "hypereating" is not restricted to obese people.

Kessler advances his position by taking a close look at the food and restaurant business, and how it gets consumers to eat larger portions, eat more often, eat at any place, eat at more locations, eat more indulging foods, and eat mind-blowing combinations of fat-sugar-salt that make us want to, well, eat some more. He also goes to some length to explain how overeating can become a habit by conditioning and by altering the stimulus-reward circuits in the brain. By indulging in high calorie foods, which offer a temporary but pleasurable sensation, we are primed to remember those sensations the next time we come across the same stimulus.

If all this sounds esoteric, think of a food experience that you particularly crave—perhaps a burger at a particular fast food joint or a particular brand of chocolate—and think about how hard it is to turn away from the treat it promises. That is what Kessler is talking about, and The End of Overeating helps us to understand why we don’t just ’say no’. The first three sections—"Sugar, Fat, Salt," "The Food Industry," and "Conditioned Hypereating Emerges"—are all about dissecting the problem, and are the strongest parts of the book.

One quibble is that Kessler sometimes stops short of covering an individual’s story in sufficient detail, preferring to move on to the next of numerous chapters. One also suspects Kessler would have done well to stop with his thorough analysis of the problem rather than extend the book to offering solutions as well. The sections "The Theory of Treatment," "Food Rehab," and "The End of Overeating" are somewhat disappointing in their generality when compared with the rigorousness of the first half of the book. While there are a few useful suggestions, they don’t go beyond what common sense suggests, nor are they buttressed with any studies or other information on their efficacy. They also veer dangerously close to the "you can stop eating if only you try" approach that Kessler disses in the first half.

Despite these drawbacks, The End of Overeating is an interesting read for anyone who has struggled with weight or with the expectations of desirability in an increasingly appearance-conscious world. Those of us living in India can already see the wholesale import of Western brands and lifestyles into what was a slower and more wholesome way of eating. For us, it may be the "Beginning of Overeating," but that is no reason we shouldn’t be better prepared.

A longer review can be found at Apu's World

Written by: Aparna V. Singh, August 14th 2010

Precision Pro Kitchen Scale

admin — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0000

By EatSmart

I hesitate to endorse a ‘nutrition’ oriented product on a feminist website due to the ongoing tyranny of the emaciated female form in marketing, eating disorders, and fear of accusations of insensitivity, insecurity, close-mindedness, and size-ism. However, here are the facts of my situation: an undiagnosed medical condition made me overweight, and now I want to lose that weight. Half of the pounds evaporated as the result of successful (non-bariatric) surgery, but I would like to lose the entire quantity and return to my healthy size. A recovering bulimic roommate hid my body scale in the mid ‘90s, and I have not owned a scale since but prefer to go by clothes size.

I have always objected to strict dieting as a step on the slippery slope to anorexia. It also feeds an oppressive ideology (see Susan Bordo) and is ultimately ineffective because the metabolism lowers at a rate corresponding to the decrease in calories unless the dieter exercises. (And here is the inevitable) BUT now I seek helpful tools to assist in weight loss and maintenance. While aesthetic and emotional motivations may be suspect, concern regarding heart disease, the number one killer of women in the United States, is entirely legitimate. The National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute provides a site to help create an individualized heart-healthy diet. The EatSmart Precision Pro Digital Kitchen Scale is another useful device.

Here’s why I like it: reasonably priced, it is also small, discreet, and multifunctional, as well as simple and thoughtfully including a tare feature (subtracting the weight of a dish or storage container). It works on any continent, or with your recipe of choice, offering four measurement modes: grams, ounces, kilograms, and pounds. In addition to the cross-trainer, free-weights, walking, bicycling, medical supervision, and the uninhibited enjoyment of the food that I do consume, I appreciate the use of this scale on the road to regained health.

Written by: Erika Mikkalo, March 21st 2010

You'd Be So Pretty If...: Teaching Our Daughters to Love Their Bodies—Even When We Don't Love Our Own

admin — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 17:04:00 +0000

By Dara Chadwick

Lifelong Books

In presenting the best ways to work with our daughters regarding self-image, author Dara Chadwick offers relatively comprehensive ideas pertaining to the aspects of maturing for girls into women. By surmising her year writing the "2007 Weight-Loss Diary" column for Shape, Chadwick builds her column into a no-nonsense-this-is-how-it-is book for mothers, daughters, and all of us who interact with young women from early ages.

Looking at her own relationship with her body, the author realizes potential effects on her own daughter who may find her somewhat overly concerned with her body; this could translate into her daughter grappling with similar issues. Basically, Chadwick restates the importance of loving who you are as being the most important trait of being a good person.

While writing her column and undergoing her own transformation, her awareness of her daughter comes through. Realizing the importance of her daughter's keen image of her mother, she looks at her life and interviews others who deal with their own weight issues. The underlying premise remains her own relationship with her daughter, now in the teen years. At the end of each pertinent chapter, the author reiterates some talking points regarding the topic, pulling out the right words fitting the sentiment and deeming them necessary for mothers to talk, a completely understandable point, to their daughters.

Written after her column was completed, You'd Be So Pretty If... gives parents a chance to check in with themselves and arms them with tools to encourage healthy growing up. Not getting messy or too extreme in her interviews, Chadwick's book feels like a good exploration for women to talk to their kids. Covering many topics, she does not go too far into each one, and this leaves us to develop our own research about mothers, media, and school bullying. A compendium spoken from the heart, You'd Be So Pretty If... gives a lighthearted reflective look, but serious read to all of us.

Written by: Carolyn Espe, August 25th 2009

I Will Have an Army of Clones. We Will Be So Charming.

admin — Sun, 18 Feb 2007 18:17:00 +0000

By Tina Seamonster

Tina Seamonster’s new book, I Will Have an Army of Clones. We Will Be So Charming., a collection of blog entries from her website, is an exploration of change. It maps with sweet intensity the shifts between weight gain and loss, pregnancy and childbirth. This is not, however, an online journal that is interesting only to the immediate family and friends of the blogger. Tina takes us through her struggles with tinted, punk rock, DIY glasses, determined to be seen (both through her blog site, as well as through the parading rainbow shades of her hair) while cherishing those who are not (by adopting a local panhandling woman as a surrogate grandmother).

Many books, magazines, television shows and the like deal with the trials of weight loss from a comfortable distance, recording the after-effects of a successful weight management plan through the eyes of a person happily transformed, or strategizing from the viewpoint of a nutritionist or a personal trainer, who are blissfully unaware of the real effort behind what Seamonster terms “The Great Smallening.” Seamonster’s entries take the reader into the struggle of the everyday, through a narrative vision that is anything but typical. However thrilled she is at unearthing the bones hidden underneath her previous weight, she is equally as fearful of losing it. “I worry that I won’t be pretty if I lose too much weight,” she says. “I will always be a big girl and I love that.”

Her biggest transformation manifests itself in the creation of new life. Catapulted into the world of duplicate motherhood, she champions her double pregnancy with cheerful determination. Rallying against a sometimes ambivalent doctor and the typical money trials of the majority of new young parents, Tina catalogues her experiences with a youthful confidence. Shape shifting Tina does not only alter her physical self, but also her imaginative self – transforming from archaeologist to sea captain, panda bear to geographer with ease between blog entries. Although the reader of Seamonster’s journey book form may feel immediate pangs of loss when faced with the end of its pages, Tina Seamonster’s personas (both physical and imaginative) continue playfully online; her punk rock stroll through motherhood still evolving with each entry.

Written by: Emily Dunster, February 18th 2007