Food isn't just fuel. As a species we celebrate and comfort with food, and when we undertake efforts that deny food those roles in our lives, well those are called diets, and generally in the long run they fail. Human nature simply isn't built to suffer unnecessarily in perpetuity, and while thoughtfulness regarding dietary choice is certainly a requisite for a healthy life, being overly strict surely isn't thoughtful.
I've been highly critical of the inclusion of teens on this year's The Biggest Loser. My two main concerns can be boiled down to:
1) The teens are going to be taught that success requires a lifetime of sacrifice and suffering.
2) Being portrayed as lazy gluttons on prime time television, and being taught that if you just try hard and sacrifice enough you'll succeed, when coupled with the almost statistical certainty of regain in at least one, if not all the teens, puts them at huge risk of both increased future bullying, and tremendous damage to their own personal self worth and esteem.
Now the Biggest Loser has made it very clear - the kids are going to be treated more gently than the adult contestants, but of course the kids will be watching the show and are in fact being managed by the same team that the adults are - are they going to absorb the show's ultimate messaging - that weight is the only determinant of health and that there's no amount of suffering too great to get to some artificial number on a scale?
Sure looks that way.
One of the contestants, 16 year old Sunny, recently blogged about her seventeenth birthday in Seventeen magazine. Did she have cake? Well of course not, the show has taught her that she doesn't deserve cake if she wants to be "healthy". Instead her trainer, after an "exhausting workout", gave her, "a tiny, sweet mandarin orange with a birthday candle stuck into it" which according to Sunny, "was, hands-down, the best birthday cake I’ve ever tasted".
Honestly I wish Sunny and the other teens on the show all the luck and kindness in the world. I hope they prove my concerns to be entirely unfounded, me a blowhard idiot, and that their weight losses are permanent and their lives only blessed by their involvement with the show.
But I can't help but worry about the 17 year old girl who's been taught to think that birthday cakes are tangerines with candles in them.
Posts
I thought the exact same thing when we had a show in Denmark about tweens trying to lose weight. I think it's such a shame that we teach the kids that they're just being gluttonous and that they should "just stop being overweight because it's so obvious that they eat too much and exercise too little".
ReplyDeletePoor kids.
Good grief! My birthday was Friday and even I grazed all weekend with friends in celebration. I had cake and drank Pepsi. I've maintained my weight loss for going on eight years so at this point I break from my usual routine pretty rarely. But I realized that attitude of self-punishment was non-productive long ago. It perpetuates the paradigm that fat people have to do penance for their gluttonous sins.
ReplyDeletePeople's bodies are screaming out for nutrients. We should be seeing the contestants eating huge salads with a reasonable amount of nuts, seeds, avocado, etc. Instead, even fruits and vegetables are restricted - I once saw a weight-loss show serve up a meal that consisted of the obligatory "card deck size" of "lean protein" served with - I kid you not - FIVE whole spears of asparagus! How they think that's going to fill up or satisfy anyone is beyond my comprehension. In my experience, the only thing that satisfies my cravings for junk food is, counterintuitively, large amounts of nutrient-rich vegetables, mainly leafy greens. See Dr. Joel Fuhrman's book, "Eat to Live."
ReplyDeleteI'm not a fan of the show because it is not sensitive to recovery from food addiction. However, I think some of us need to learn to celebrate with tangerines instead of cake. "Some of the top scientists who are very knowledgeable about addiction in the country are very convinced that for some people, the most highly sugared, high fat foods are every bit as addictive as some narcotics.
ReplyDeleteTheir advice to these people is don't try to eat just a couple Oreo cookies, because you are not going to be able to stop."
I'm glad there's more awareness about this issue but we still have far to go. Would you admonish an adult who chooses to celebrate their birthday without alcohol because of an addiction?
http://www.cnn.com/2013/03/01/health/salt-sugar-fat-moss-time/index.html?hpt=hp_bn13
Sorry Casey. I don't think a CNN report constitutes an evidence based objection, and the alcohol question is a straw man argument.
DeleteYou and I definitely agree on much, but perhaps here we'll have to agree to disagree.
Is this better? http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-789X.2012.01031.x/abstract
DeleteWhy is celebrating a birthday without alcohol that much different than celebrating one without cake? I hope we don't have to agree to disagree because it is important for your patients that you understand food addiction.
I find it fascinating that you're suggesting I don't understand food addiction.
DeleteSorry, hit return too soon. And as far as a reference highlighting similarities between food addiction and addiction in general - no that doesn't strengthen your argument in any real formative way as theory and clinical practice aren't one in the same, and more importantly, ignores the reams of evidence, actual clinical evidence, that fingers overly restrictive diets at triggering binge eating.
DeleteI'm glad you understand food addiction because so many people do not. It seems like the question is whether this is an overly restrictive diet that triggers binge eating or someone in recovery from food addiction avoiding a trigger food. Since she's on the Biggest Loser, the odds are that you are correct and it's an overly restrictive diet. My point is that some people who choose to eat fruit instead of cake to celebrate a birthday are trying to avoid a relapse into food addiction. When it's used as an example of overly restrictive dieting, there's a tendency to "prove" ourselves to society by eating the cake. I want there to be more acceptance for people to be able to pass on the cake and the cookies and so much else that comes our way on a regular basis without it being automatically labelled as an overly restrictive diet.
DeleteI want there to be more acceptance for people to be able to CHOOSE to pass on the cake. The tone of the girl's blog entry, however, suggests that she equates birthday cake eating with not respecting her body. And I think I a lot of people feel that way. And it makes me sad that it has had to come to that point.
DeleteMay I add that at 300 lbs, I felt addicted to foods, I felt I suffered from emotional problems relating to food and that was one of the reasons I was fat. Funny thing is, the very moment I removed all but a very few carbohydrates from my diet, my addictions, my emotional problems, my overeating all vanished... did I suddenly become mentally healthy? did I suddenly recover from addiction? no... it's the carbs!!! Before you head to the therapist's office, try getting all the carbs you don't need out of your life and see how you feel. I am now within 17 lbs of my goal weight and have been low carb paleo for several years and love it.
DeleteI maintain my weight, and I eat a chocolate chip cookie most days, if I remember. I don't have a problem with it. These days, it's more likely to be a thin mint cookie. I got fat eating too much on a consistent basis, not a daily cookie. I have problems with addictions, but not to carbs.
DeleteWhatever happened to "all things in moderation"?
ReplyDeleteThe diet industry loves to make everything black and white: "just stop eating X, and all your problems will go away."
Moderation isn't an answer. It is highly subjective, personal and simplisticl. Additionally, moderation or your ability to moderate consumption is a function not of sheer will power which it implies, but of overall health, metabolic condition, and nutritional requirements. If these aspects are in good condition, then moderation is largely unconscious, meaning, you are truly satiated and very rarely require additional food. However, if you are eating the SAD diet then it becomes increasingly difficult to moderate when your body is not meeting its nutrtional requirements.
DeleteYou have to teach people moderation. It is very difficult for some.
DeleteAnd for others, it's very easy and exactly what we need. I find, personally, the people who can't do moderation, unless they have ironclad willpower, will not win this battle, or at least that's been my experience with the people I've met.
DeleteAlthough I essentially agree with your points 1) and 2), and that food is an integral part of celebration, I marvel at how different people look at and value certain kinds of food. Contrary to the perception of many, not everyone would value access to an over-sweetened, under-nutriented combination of sugar, white flour and artificial colors that hurts your teeth just to think about as a seemingly necessary reward for having a birthday. I would like to think we would respect our bodies more than that, and if this teen is starting get that by celebrating with a natural piece of food for a change, to reconnect to the kinds of foods her body was built to eat, then I think that is great.
ReplyDeleteIf your point is really about the amount of food, that is a different argument. But if she looks at herself as going through a process like going through an illness, where she has to limit certain things for a while until she gets to the end of the tunnel, then I do not think she is being taught that she has to endure a lifetime of sacrifice and disconnection from friends and family with respect to celebrating with healthy food, instead of "food-like substances" as Michael Pollan likes to call them.
Is it really so hard to understand that people are going to enjoy a slice of cake or pizza more than a tangerine or a celery stick?
DeleteThere's always personal taste but the truth of the matter is humans are driven to high calorie, high salt foods and they make us feel good. Someone who swears off every treat because it happens to be "over-sweetened" or "under-nutriented" is going to feel deprived. We can say it's just one day of cake so it's not a sacrifice, but that's not true if you abide by this notion that there's never a good enough reason to celebrate with highly enjoyable food.
I think it would be wonderful if society would undergo a cultural change and everyone celebrate birthdays with fruit bowls instead of cakes.
ReplyDeleteI celebrate my birthday with cake -- a flourless chocolate cake make with coconut milk, eggs, chocolate and enough sweetener to be bittersweet but not sweet. It rocks both in terms of healthy food and is a celebratory cake.
ReplyDeleteI lost weight kept it off not by 'going on a diet', which I had done in the past and of course that implies going off at some point, and then you regain it all.
I changed my diet.
As a result I can eat cake, bars and brownies without gaining anything back. The cake is mentioned above, the bars are sweet potato and almond flour and the brownies are almond butter, honey, eggs and cocoa. I mean, really, the question here is can you have the classic American junk food cake with frosting made with soy oil (even though they call it 'buttercream', ha!) and not gain weight. No. you cannot.
But you can eat a diet of delicious food, including treats, if you pick the right eating principals.
The teens on biggest loser are not learning how to eat a healthy diet they can continue to eat the rest of their lives (which, based on all the success stories around primal/paleo/SANE eating, also causes weight loss).
I am a long-time fan of your blog, but I think you've gone too far with your biggest loser vendetta with this post. It is one thing to criticize the show itself for including kids and showing weight loss strategies that you disagree with, but it is entirely different to actually point to this individual girl's activities and denounce them. If you read the entire post, the girl says that she celebrated her birthday that night by dancing at a concert. Did it occur to you that perhaps she truly enjoyed her workout and her tangerine, and truly felt better than she ever had, physically and emotionally? Who are you to tell this individual girl that by working out and choosing fruit instead of cake, she's kidding herself about long term weight maintenance? You are treating her from afar, just as you have criticized other docs for doing on your own blog. And how can you write blog posts just in the past few weeks about how terrible it is for kids to learn to celebrate every event with food, and then say that wikipedia tells us we should celebrate birthdays with cake? I hope this teen never sees your discouraging post, and I hope she always looks back on this birthday as one where she discovered that a healthy life is fun and fulfilling.
ReplyDeletePretty sure this paragraph by Yoni, "Honestly I wish Sunny and the other teens on the show all the luck and kindness in the world. I hope they prove my concerns to be entirely unfounded, me a blowhard idiot, and that their weight losses are permanent and their lives only blessed by their involvement with the show.", covers the possibility that Sunny has simply found a way of life that she enjoys. But the fact that Yoni worries that a tangerine serves as a birthday cake for a 17 year old seems like a reasonable concern given the context to me.
DeleteI don't agree. Most of the blog post doubts her actions and directly contradicts prior blog posts by suggesting that she should simply learn to "celebrate" with high sugar high fat foods like people have for centuries. Ending it with a paragraph wishing her all the luck in the world comes off as disingenuous and condescending. But again, my main issue is participating in the public examination of this girl's specific choices, which I thought was a practice that Dr. Freedhoff condemned. Apparently once the Biggest Loser and Seventeen magazine give this girl a forum, we are all allowed to evaluate and judge her, even when we've claimed in the past to find such judgment abhorrent and inappropriate.
DeleteActually none of the blog post doubts her actions or contradicts prior blog posts. Instead it expresses a concern that she's choosing a tangerine as a cake because she's been taught she's not allowed to celebrate with food, rather than because she's decided that she'd rather celebrate with a tangerine and goes so far as to say that he hopes his concern's are unwarranted, that he's wrong, and that he's a blowhard idiot. Maybe it's not Yoni that's the blowhard idiot here.
DeleteAnd there it starts - you imply that I am a blowhard idiot because I question the appropriateness of publicly debating the eating habits of a minor child. I stand by my comments and disagree that everything is permissible as long as the poster says at the end that he or she might be an idiot. Either we should all discuss this girl's food choices or we shouldn't. You can ridicule me all you want but it doesn't change my opinion. In fact, it seems like the only defense or explanation being offered here is that caveat at the end "didn't you see where he says he's an idiot?" So why post any of this in the first place?
DeleteI have to agree with M Clark on this one. Yoni is always pointing out how "parent's just can't say no" to treats at whatever that is offered to their kids. An now he is saying that because she didn't eat a cake today it's wrong.
DeleteI'm guessing Yoni hasn't responded here because clearly you people are too dumb to recognize that his concern is that Sunny is choosing to celebrate with a tangerine not because she's been taught she shouldn't do otherwise by a show that teaches food shouldn't ever be consumed for pleasure. And that he hopes he's wrong.
DeleteLoved the last line of your blog, it was hilarious. I completely agree and with my personal experience can say that you need not suffer and subscribe to those strict diet programs, in order to lose weight.
ReplyDeleteOnly minor modifications can give us good results, like avoid late night snack and between meals craving. Otherwise eat your normal food during main meals.
Right on, Yoni. I'm with you all the way on this.
ReplyDeleteWhat? Birthday cake on your birthday once a year? Outrageous! I endorse great tasting cakes throughput the week--not just once a year! Yup, in the context of a balanced intake, eaten when hungry (not bored, or just because, or because it's your last chance before you start to diet) a healthy weight and being can be achieved.
ReplyDeletePS: Just placed my order for my b-day cake exactly the way I like it--buttercream frosting on chocolate cake with fruit filling. Yum!
Lori Lieberman,RD, MPH,CDE, LDN
food-2-eat.com
I have been critical of some things in the past, but I am 100% with on you on biggest loser teens, and biggest loser in general. You go, Yoni!
ReplyDeleteFood addiction- one can't generalize one person's experience with food addiction/emotional eating and obesity to all obese people, obesity is far more complex than that, and the solutions, treatments are far more complex than a low carb or paleo or any other diet.