Article Rec: Watching Our Weight Could Be Killing Us

[shy_magpie]

Wired Magazine posted: Watching Our Weight Could Be Killing Us

Then there are the dangers of dieting. According to studies in the American Journal of Physiology–­Endocrinology and Metabolism (2014) and Evolution, Medicine, and Public Health (2016), food restriction of almost any form—famine, elimination diets, wellness diets—routinely upsets hormonal regulation, potentially setting off serious mental and physical health problems and, paradoxically, weight gain.

I neither want to sound like Dennis Miller nor go off on a rant here but: Diet culture is more dangerous than being overweight. Stressing people out to the point of getting an eating disorder is not how you help them be healthy. So many people get all their health concerns dismissed because people want to blame everything on their weight. Diet culture is bound inextricably with fat shaming and fat shaming kills. Its 2019 why is this news?
Eating a variety of foods so you get nutrients is good; me not eating gluten because I have Celiac disease and it would make me sick in the short term and kill me in the long term* is good; watching every calorie is bad; checking your weight everyday is usually bad; trying to divide food into "good healthy food" & "evil fast food" is tempting but results in a lot of bad things; Please don't food shame people; Quit fucking fat shaming people.

*Don't make me write the Celiac disease is real rant: its long and only really needs to be read by two kinds of people: those with Celiac disease who are being gaslit and people who make fun of them/slip things in peoples food they specifically asked about. We might have a sense of humor about gluten free water jokes if people didn't literally poison us because they think its funny or lie to us because letting us skip eating something they didn't check/won't let us check makes them feel bad (but lying about allergens because we won't collapse at the table doesn't, wtf?)

Comments

[norsellie]

*applauds wildly*

[roadmagician]

Yoyo dieting makes more money for the diet industry on the long-run by putting people on a behavioural treadmill without creating any lasting changes? You don't say!

Calorie-counting is also wasted time - a number is just a number, it says nothing about the makeup or value of said calorie to the body's functions. So, so glad I never got into diet culture.

People who think it's funny or somehow 'teaching a lesson' to slip stuff into people's food are awful. I hope that never happened to you. That's literally poisoning someone, what the fuck.

[indridgrey]

+100!!

I went for a haircut the other day and my hairdresser was a chatty one and she was trying to tell me about keto diet woes/how much she misses cheese and I was like "I'm pretty sure research is showing that diets don't work and are actually pretty bad for you" and she was like "so more just lifestyle changes and exercise?" and I was like "moderation, I guess" and she went right back to keto diet/how much cheese she would eat if it weren't for dieting and I was like o_o. Like I know people don't do 180s very easily but it's still frustrating

Plus not super great that that's what she decided to chat about with a fat person =_=