Romancing the Diet

Quitting smoking was not easy, but in retrospect, it was far easier than losing a measly 15 pounds and keeping it off. To stop smoking (seven years ago), I had to change my thinking and my desires.

It turns out, though, that I had help I wasn't aware of. And I now believe that made all the difference, a difference that doesn't exist for the process of weight loss.

From two different perspectives, the article "Beating Obesity" by Marc Ambinder in the May 2010 issue of The Atlantic, and the book Savor, by Thich Nhat Hanh and Dr. Lillian Leung discuss the issue. Both discuss the interconnectedness of everything. Because of this interconnectedness, we are fat. Only together with everything, can we become healthy and less fat.

First, the bad news -  according to Ambinder, the forces of society, technology, industry, government policy, culture, genes, and demographics work in concert to make and keep us fat.

Technology changes work, changes behaviour, changes patterns and amount of movement; Industry constructs food - food molecules actually - that some suspect create virtual "neurochemical addiction...change our brain chemistry in ways that make us overeat;" non-food industries expose us to chemicals that correlate with obesity.

Society's demands create stress which leads to obesity; society's expectations affect sleep patterns which can help make us fat; society's planning and design of towns and cities affect our level of exercise; business production and distribution models make fast food not only the most calorically dense, but the cheapest and most widely available.

"Agricultural production and subsidies"  - corn fed beef, high fructose corn syrup, for example - increase our waistlines. Advertising with its images of food and the normalization of food as entertainment and acceptance help make us fat. Cultural norms regarding portion sizes have increased dramatically.

It's a wonder that anyone can lose weight and keep it off with all of this, and more, ranged against the individual. According to Ambinder, "America has erected two lines of defense: name-calling, and hectoring about diet and exercise."

Both of these defenses put the entire responsibility for health and weight loss on the individual - rather silly when you think about it. Even with Olympic-class will power, the individual fights a losing battle.

This is the point at which the Thich Nhat Hanh/Leung book Savor enters the picture. Drawing on Buddhist practices of mindfulness and meditation, the authors stress how we are not alone, how weight loss, like anything else, is together with everything. We cannot lose weight in isolation; people have to work together to create an environment that is healthful for all. We have to be mindful of eating - and of living.

That unseen help I had to stop smoking came from society - policy, regulation, advertising, education, technology, culture - many of the things ranged against the individual when it comes to weight loss. Society is against cigarettes in ways that it is not against cheap food, fast food, hypertasty food, large portions of food, junk food, processed food.

Right now we expect each single, tiny will to stand up to the whole of society. Many will say that the game isn't rigged, that each person can make a rational decision about what's beneficial. It doesn't work.

Only collective will power can get this done. And it's so easy to discuss it over a nice bowl of something and a supersized drink!

Gambia and a Few Good Pounds

Gained a pound or two over the season? Worried about looking too heavy? Fear not! There truly is a solution that not only involves no effort whatsoever, but also actually allows for even more eating and the accumulation of even more pounds.

The solution is to move to Gambia.

In Gambia, "women do not battle the bulge, they celebrate it. A body is not something to be tamed and moulded."

Writer Catherine Pigott found this out during an extended trip to Gambia to teach English. She wrote about her experience in The Globe and Mail (March 20,1991). The Gambian women thought Pigott was far too thin and called her "Chicken-hips."

Pigott "marvelled at this accolade, for [she] had never been called thin in [her]life." She found it difficult to explain that in her North American culture, women with too hearty an appetite were thought unattractive and that they denied themselves food to achieve "perfect slenderness."

Dieting is unnatural in Gambia where there is "no place for thinness. It made people sad. It reminded them of things they wanted to forget, such as poverty, drought, and starvation." Pigott changed her weight and her attitude towards weight during her Gambian stay, coming to believe that their views of body size and female beauty were much more natural than those in the North American culture of denial and disapproval.

Despite wishing to retain her new attitude towards her body image and weight, when Pigott came home, she was bombarded with the familiar cultural messages. They "don't use words such as 'cheating,' 'naughty,' or 'guilty' when they talk about eating" in Gambia, but they do in Canada. "Family members kindly suggested that [she] might look and feel better if [she] slimmed down a little."

Pigott joined a gym, dieted, and felt her freedom about weight slip away. The fear of fat had returned, as had the "time to exert control over [her] body."

Pigott's article underscores North American attitudes towards female beauty and body image and towards an ideal of thinness. Yet there can be too much of a good thing. In Mauritania, fat women are so desirable that until only the last few years girls have been force-fed to make them more attractive to prospective husbands. Fortunately, the practice is very much on the decline, and attitudes towards it are changing.

As Pigott writes, it is not good to "romanticize...rock-hard lives" of Gambian women; the value placed on a heavier body may indeed be restrictive for some women in that culture (although not, I think, nearly to the degree it is in Mauritania!).

So there you have it. Worry no longer about those extra pounds! Move to Gambia! The only other sane solution is to change our attitudes about control, thinness, and female beauty. (Why do I think that planning and moving to Gambia might be easier?)

(The Catherine Pigott article originally in The Globe and Mail is anthologized in The Act of Writing: Canadian Essays for Composition. Ed. Ronald Conrad. 8th ed.Toronto: McGraw-Hill, 2009. 197-199. The quotes are from the anthology.)