Who knew a moment of breakthrough would come while on the internet!?!
I think I have found my new favorite site. Adios Barbie looks at body image and it's impact on society. There is an article posted there about the effect dieting has on self-esteem. The article looks at how the diet industry makes their money by telling you that you are only healthy if you are slim. Interestingly, the methods the diet industry use do not focus on actually making people healthy, just allowing them to lose a small amount of weight for a short period of time. Often this weight is gained back causing the term "yo-yo" dieting. Gaining and losing weight consistently is not healthy and puts stress on the body. However, since "skinny" is considered to equate with healthy, the diet industry has us convinced to buy into weight loss at any cost.
With this in mind, I encourage everyone to visit Health at Every Size (HAES). You can take their pledge to live in a healthy way and search their resources. I encourage this for a few reasons, but the biggest is to remind yourself that beauty is on the inside and that health is a life long goal, not just to lose those last 10 lbs.
Consider this next time you are beating yourself up for what you don't look like: How many industries rely on you wanting to change to keep them in business? The diet industry not only WANTS you to fail, but NEEDS you to fail to keep it afloat. They also need you to continually feel bad about yourself so you buy into whatever it is they are selling. So really, the entire diet empire needs you to not succeed and they have set it up to ensure that. Think about how many ads you see in a day for the weight loss industry. How many have testimonials from people who it "worked" for... now think about how many have tiny little disclaimers at the bottom saying "results not typical" and "result will vary". The fitness would is no better saying that you will look like this by using our product. Unfortunately, not every body is created the same and thus, once again "results may vary".
I think that what I want to remind you as well and constantly remind myself, is to look at everything with a critical eye. Why am I not happy with my body? Is it because I am told I shouldn't? Because I want to look like everyone else? Because media tells me it's "easy"? Or is it because of health reasons? Is there something I am prevented from doing?
Perhaps this will have to be a breakthrough that I have to keep coming to, asking myself "why". Looking at: each purchase, thing I read, ads I see with a critical eye to ensure that I am not putting myself down because "they" need me to. I need to be looking out for number 1... and that sure as hell isn't some CEO who is rubbing his hands with glee.
XOXO
Sarah
lol. Did you also know that by "Yo-Yo" dieting your body learns to start to absorb things faster so it can deal with the periods of famine? People who yo-yo diet tend to be very unhappy with them selves as they never seem to stick to their diets, which tend to be very extreme and impossible to maintain over a long period of time. Many diets tend to deprive people of a food source that is required for everyday life. The Atkins diet removes carbohydrate: but a large portion of a persons diets is supposed to come from carbs found in breads, fruits and veggies. The grapefruit diet mainly works by the fruit being a diuretic: mainly you are loosing water and not getting the full spectrum of nutrients and mineral a person needs to be healthy.
ReplyDeleteAlso, if you want to have kids, being too skinny can prevent you from conceiving. You're body won't have enough stores of energy and nutrients to sustain a second person. So either you wont conceive or you may mis-carrige. Overly small people also have a lower sex drive, although the same is seen in overly large people. ... Really a middle ground is where you want to be.
Sorry this ended up being a blurb about dieting and nutrition... but I'm so happy that you are looking at these commercials critically. Blindly accepting that "this will work for you!" just because its in a magazine or on TV isn't the way to go. We need to look into the disclaimers and do research about each diet and what they are supposed to do to us.
C-