Unhealthy Thoughts about Food and Body Image

     I submitted a guest post on losing weight healthfully at College Candy today, and it got me thinking about the mindset that encourages a person to diet. If someone thinks that life will be better when he or she has lost weight, that signals an unhealthy attitude about food and body image. But when you're the one having the thoughts, sometimes it's hard to perceive when they've become unhealthy. 

     I've discussed the thin line separating dieting from an eating disorder before. The process doesn't occur overnight. For me, it happened step by step. Negative thoughts about my appearance led to dieting. Dieting led to constant restricting. Constant restricting led to perceptions of "good" and "bad" foods. 

     By the time I realized my diet was controlling my life, the thoughts that influenced me were so instilled in my mind and accepted as fact, I couldn't recognize how illogical they really were. I didn't realize how irrational they were until actually spoken aloud to someone else. Have you ever found yourself thinking any of the following statements?

     Everyone is this room is looking at me thinking that I'm fat.

     He would like me better if I lost weight.

     They're thinking that I shouldn't be eating this.

     He's looking at my (face, stomach, whatever body part) because he thinks it's fat. 

     No one else cares about what they eat as much as me.

     I don't want to go do something fun because I feel fat.

     If I lose weight, some part of my personality will change as well.

     If you've believed any of these ideas to be true, take a moment and imagine your best friend saying them to you. What is the likelihood of these thoughts being plausible? Is it really possible that everyone in the room is thinking that? Is it really true that no one else cares about food? Is your social life suffering because you don't want to be seen? 

     If your mindset mirrors this list, dieting won't make you feel better. Dieting is your effort to better yourself, and if the perceived excess weight is gone, poor self-esteem will still be there. Learn to love yourself, and it will be a natural progression to treat your body well.

It's Not Your Job to Tell A Loved One to Lose Weight

     KCBY of North Bend, Oregon published an irresponsible story on Jan. 2 about how to tell a loved one that he or she is "fat." Charles Stuart Platkin, a nutrition and public health advocate, bases his advice on a study by the University of Colorado that indicated a majority of successful weight-loss maintainers had experienced a "trigger event or critical incident." He says that this event could be "a comment from a loved one that acts as a wake-up call."

     In the study referred to, about 32% of the participants pointed to either a medical trigger or an emotional trigger as motivation. One participant's motivation was "husband left me and my lawyer told me it was because I was too fat." 

     Doesn't that sound like a horrible way to begin what should be a positive life change? Successful weight-loss maintainers should be able to look back at the beginning of their weight loss as the start of their path to a healthier way of life, not the end of a relationship. Even if a talk about weight doesn't lead to a break-up, and it won't necessarily, the start of a weight-loss plan shouldn't be triggered by worry about how a loved one feels about you.

     People who need to lose weight should not be doing it for anyone but themselves. The motivation needs to come from the right place. And they should never be told that they will somehow be a better person because of the weight loss.

     It's likely that an overweight person already realizes they are overweight, especially if female. In fact, it's more likely that a female will consider herself to be overweight when she's not.

     An article in the International Journal of Obesity compared adults' actual weight-status according to BMI and their perception of their status as underweight, normal weight, overweight or obese. Researchers found that 59.00% of male subjects were either overweight or obese, but 44.22% said they were overweight. 

     But for female subjects, they found an opposite trend. For women, 50.49% were either overweight or obese, while 60.09% said they are overweight. 34.83% of healthy weight/underweight female college graduates even believed they were overweight.

     Platkin warns against being judgmental. But how can negative comments about weight be considered anything but judgemental? Telling a loved one that you want them to change means that you view some part of them in a negative light. In other words, you're being judgmental. For someone who already suffers from poor body image, or even disordered eating, these comments can be especially damaging.

     We already know that girls whose families criticize their weight or diet may develop future body image problems. One study found that of 455 college women with poor body image, more than 80 percent said their parents or siblings had made negative comments about their bodies during childhood. The opinions of significant others also play a critical role in one's self-esteem. For some people, the opinions of significant others may be even more important to them than those of their families.

     The article makes valid points about how social support is needed to maintain a healthy lifestyle, and how couples can resolve to be healthy together. But Platkin completely neglects to mention eating disorders in his story. Someone suffering from binge eating disorder or bulimia knows they when they are overweight. Being criticized about it by a significant other is not going to help. A better approach for significant others would be to simply be there to listen and provide support when their loved one is ready to make changes.... and not one second before.

     Families should of course speak up if they recognize an eating disorder in a member. But comments should focus on concern for well-being. They should never focus on appearances, whether the object of concern is underweight or overweight.

Does Exercise Really Lead to Weight Loss?

     It's standard advice: to lose weight, exercise. But there are some who disagree, because physical activity makes you hungry. Or course, exercise has numerous benefits, but what is its real effect on hunger and weight?  

     The American College of Sports Medicine and the American Heart Association even said in a statement that “It is reasonable to assume that persons with relatively high daily energy expenditures would be less likely to gain weight over time, compared with those who have low energy expenditures. So far, data to support this hypothesis are not particularly compelling.”          Research has found that those who lose weight and keep it off tend to exercise. One recent study suggested 55 minutes, 5 days a week (or about 40 minutes every day.) But these studies don't isolate exercise as the sole factor contributing to the weight loss maintenance. In the study I mentioned, for instance, the women who lost weight exercised, but they ate less too.

     So does exercise contribute to weight loss, or do people who have healthy habits tend to exercise? 

     In New York Magazine, Gary Taubes points to Jean Mayer, influential nutritionist and former president of Tufts University,  as the person who pushed the "fitness revolution." Mayer is credited with defeating the current societal belief that exercise was bad for you. He noticed that thinner people exercised more, and concluded that exercise did not necessarily equal increased hunger. But Taubes claims the 2 studies that he used to prove this have never been replicated.

     Recent studies don't suggest that there is no connection between appetite and exercise. But one especially interesting study does suggest that appetite is related to the intensity of the exercise. Researchers studied the effect of high-intensity and low-intensity exercise on appetite in college women. (Low-intensity exercisers took an hour to burn 350 calories, equal to walking, high-intensity exercisers took about half an hour.) They found that high-intensity exercisers ate more after their work-out than low-intensity exercisers and a control group. 

     The study really got interesting when the researchers calculated "relative energy intake," or the calories each group consumed not included the calories they burnt off through exercise. The researchers concluded that there were "no significant differences" between the groups. However, it is worth noting that low-intensity exercises had the lowest food intake when the calories burnt from exercising were subtracted. Low-intensity exercisers consumed an average of 2397 calories a day, but 2100 a day after subtracting calories burnt from exercise. High-intensity exercisers consumed 2580, 2266 for relative energy intake. The control group had 2285. In other words, this study suggest that for those watching their weight, low-intensity exercise is best. 

     Jean Mayer suggested that exercise doesn't have to lead to increased hunger. This study helped show us where the line is. And if you want to engage in vigorous exercise, like I do, at least you'll now be a little bit more informed.

Less Than an Hour a Day Needed to Maintain Weight Loss

     Several weight-loss blogs have covered a recent study about exercise and weight loss. The subject has been researched at length, but there was still debate about the amount of exercise required to maintain weight loss.

     The study followed the weight loss efforts of 201 overweight and obese women for over three years and found that the women who were able to maintain the most weight loss (10% of their body weight) exercised more than the women who didn't.

     Have you seen the study? I've noticed that Diet-Blog claims the study found an hour a day was needed. LA Times and BBC News both covered the story as well, with headlines announcing the need for an hour of exercise a day. Although they both clarified an hour a day was only needed five days a week in their stories, I just wanted to point out that this is not the only solution. The study actually found that the women exercised about 275 minutes a week, equal to 39 minutes a day. Even assuming the women formally exercised 5 days a week, we shouldn't assume they got no exercise at all over the weekend. 

     For college students' lifestyles,  it may be preferable to exercise 40 minutes every day than an hour 5 days a week. Since each day's schedule can be so different, it might even be more convenient to work out only 20 minutes one day and an hour the next.  An hour a day isn't our only choice.

     Keep in mind that "exercise" can be short walks during the day as well. Walking to class has been the best weight-maintenance trick of my college career. 

     The news stories also haven't been publicizing the fact that the "biggest losers'' in the study also ate less than the less successful dieters.

     Basically, this study confirmed what we knew all along. Exercise and eat less to lose weight. But still, 39 minutes a day doesn't sound so bad, does it?

Photo by mikebaird