to think the diet industry is utterly evil?

[ICBINEG]

been watching 'The men that made us thin' and am simply overwhelmed.

So diets don't work....most people end up heavier than if they had not dieted at all...one guy was like "well duh! if they worked we would lose our customers"....another wrote a book aimed at teenage girls including the advice to " buy scales and keep them secret from your parents"

The constant stream of adverts aimed at middle aged women are seen by children who by age 6-7 have self-esteem issues and can quote the number of calories in most foods...

My evil-ometer is broken.

But not only is it portion size but also what is eaten.

"tidy I agree with what you said...but if you get the motivation for long term change then why do you need weight watchers?"

Because I needed to retrain myself as to how to eat. I needed the control of an upper limit (which the points system did for me). I needed a system to follow.

The simple fact is, you don't get to 19 stone (like I was) and not have an eating disorder of some kind (yes, eating disorders apply to people who are overweight as well). When you reach that level of obesity, you need to find a structure so you can teach yourself what is correct. Now I know how to do it myself.

Hope that answers your question, though I rather suspect it won't!

DontmindifIdo that's kind of what I'm saying.

I don't see cutting back and going on a diet as being the same thing at all. As you say, you're starting from the base of having quite a healthy diet.

If someone finds themselves eating too much and treating themselves too often...cutting back is the sensible thing to do.

Before they find themselves with possibly copious amounts of weight to lose.

I would like to point out that I don't know if my diet worked yet...it is a year since I started it and I am 3 stone lighter...but you will have to see me in 4 years time to know if it worked!

I like the 5 quid thing....but how do you do it on a maintenance basis? Person closest to goal weight wins?

I had been fat most of my life until last year, I lost about two and a half stone and since then I've now lost another half a stone without really trying. I bought a bike and discovered I love cycling. I ride that everywhere now, and the difference in my once flabby, chunky legs is astounding. I go to the gym twice a week. I also look at the calorie contents in food and pick the sensible options.

There is absolutely no miracle diet/tablet/shake/powder/surgery that will make you lose weight instantly and keep it off. Even lap bands and gastric bypasses can fail.

Also regarding the 'evil', there are four factors of the diet industries behaviour that I find evil.

1. taking peoples money when following their diet / using their product will on average leave you fatter in 5 years than if you don't.

1. advertising in a manner that exacerbates the problem..."oh look at the thin happy people LOOK LOOK!!!!"

1. The message they put out along the lines of if it works it was because of us...if it didn't it's the customers fault. Already several people on here have been sucked in by that one....

1. Low fat high sugar diet foods....they can fuck off with that one.

Of course diets work. It is the behaviour after a successful diet that is the challenge.

You lose weight, and if you then maintain a heathy diet and get reasonable exercise, using up what you put into your body without too much leftovers of calories, you will not put the weight back on.

if you just think that because you have lost weight you can go back to eating more than you need, or your old way of life, then you will put it back on.

It is very very simple.

Pretty much everything marketed as low fat / high sugar diet food is not good for you.

I felt much freer and bettef after ditching all those horrible low fat mayonnaise, yoghurt and be good to yourself whatever type stuff.

What I would do to fix things a bit.

1. Ban adverts from diet companies / products and replace every advert slot used by them with a 'HEALTH (not weight) focused informercial advocating healthy lifestyle advice. You know something with size 12 people getting out and about, playing with kids, feeling good - NOT size 6/8 people getting sexed up and looking good.

1. Remove the moral baggage from NHS / government info. You aren't a bad person if you are fat! You aren't as healthy as you could be if you weren't but that is it!

1. ban low fat high sugar 'diet' products. We have the wheel of info and the cals per pack we don't need to know you think it is a health / diet product. The fact shoul dbe left to speak for themselves...

squeaky I think if the diet doesn't change your long term behaviour then it didn't work!

But it did work if it shifted your weight right down.

That is the diet working.

After that, it's no longer the diet but the person that needs to work/change to maintain the weight loss.

It really is that simple.

IIRC the low fat thing was brought in by Rosemary Conley, in her Hip and Thigh Diet.

The basic premise was that she had found that women tended to be pear-shaped and wanted to lose weight but when they did, they lost it from areas like their boobs (where they didn't want to lose it from), but not from where they wanted to lose it the most - their thighs and bums.

She developed the low fat diet because - she claimed - it did help people lose from those areas.

I have read that "you can't spot reduce" re weight loss and I daresay that's right.

However, the low fat thing really took off, and oddly enough you rarely see women carrying lots of fat on their bum and hips these days. Well not like you used to . . . I really think that this was much more common in the past, the classic "British Pear" they used to call it. People seem to me to tend to be more apple-shaped nowadays if they are carrying extra weight.

Could that be due to the low fat/high sugar foods?

To some degree it is the customer's fault. We talk about 'going on a diet' - i.e. already speaking of it as something that has an end point. And when (or if) the end point is reached, you come off your diet and ... ?

If you've learnt anything from whatever diet you've been following, you ought to continue with this. But, of course, people don't. Because - usually - a diet is deprivation of some kind. Tiny portions, no puddings, no chocolate/sweets, no alcohol. So generally what happens is that people revert back (perhaps not straight away) to how they were eating before the diet - with the inevitable consequences.

However, where it absolutely isn't the customer's fault is because of the metabolic effect of eating a lower calorie diet. It wasn't terribly well explained in the programme, but the reference to the Minnesota experiment was what this was all about. The men involved in the experiment reduced their calories to 1500 per day. This had the effect of slowing down their metabolism - the body tries to hang on to all the food it can get - but when calorie levels were returned to normal, the metabolic rate remained suppressed. Therefore, they were eating normally but their bodies were not metabolising this food as it was before, so even with normal levels of calories, they would be putting more weight on than if they hadn't reduced their calories in the first place.

Icbineg ( autocorrect wanted to chane that to I binge!) I agree with that last one and think that so called diet foods should be subject to the same regulations as any other food supplements which make health claims.

Being a teen in the eighties, I grew up being told that foods containing cholesterol were going to kill us slowly. There was a real paranoia about foods as innocuous as eggs. I have finally managed to retrain my thought processes and, not only is food so much tastier with a bit more fat in it, I no longer find myself steadily gaining weight, unless I have a phase of too much baked stuff.

I'm thinking of trying a weight loss group as I lack the motivation to lose weight without weekly weigh ins and other people knowing how I'm doing. I did a local NHS sponsored one last year and lost a few pounds but it only ran for a few weeks and then stopped due to budget cuts. I know myself that the answer is more exercise and less junk food but I found being in the support of a group helpful before so I'm going to try it again.

making money out of the ill-informed is not a crime, although maybe it should be. It's not just the diet people - look at the weight loss pills you can buy in the chemists and health food shops, all covered in babble talking about' helps lose weight'. It is nonsense.

losing weight is not a quick fix (looks at slightly rounder than it should be stomach) . It needs the gumption to put down the fork and get off the couch.

perhaps the campaign should be to improve the basic common sense and scientific knowledge that is so lacking in many people. That way they would not believe that there is a magic pill that will help you lose weight, or that certain foods have negative calories, or that a diet that they have to repeat has worked.

dream on, I fear.

OP - the NHS 'moral' side is because unfortunately, the downside of a national health service (rather than something based on insurance or individuals/companies paying) is that poor lifestyle/health decisions are a public not a private problem - if someone is very overweight, it's not just their own health they are risking, but also risking increased costs to the NHS, and therefore costs to everyone else via taxation. Smoking and drinking are also therefore a public problem, not just private, personal ones.

I would make it complusory for everyone who joins a slimming/dieting group to sign a disclaimer that they are aware they will have to follow a restricted diet forever in order to keep off the weight they will lose.

BIWI is right, "going on a diet" suggests you can end the diet. To be fair to WWs and others, they tend to be clear that you are supposed to stick to the rules for the rest of your life. We need a culture change were we listen to that bit - read the last chapter of the book, not just go "yeah, that's great, but will I be in my bikini for the beach, then once I'm on holiday I can go back to eating 'normally' if I follow this?"

I think that if people were more educated about the bodily processes which control our appetite and food choices, then fewer people would fall for the simplistic 'if you eat this and not that then you will be thin' type of diets. I believe that we should be teaching kids about insulin, leptin, grhelin, about glycogen, triglycerides, how and when fat is stored etc.etc. - stuff that (despite having a biology A level), I've only found out about in the past 10 years or so (I'm 54). specialsubject is right - people, in general, are ill-informed, and therefore not able to make educated decisions when it comes to food. I think that needs to change.

I've never "dieted" I have maintained a healthy weight and occaisonally had to modify my diet when a few pounds have sneaked on. I lost a surplus 1 1/2 st after DS1 by being more mindful about food choices, and upping my exercise. By the time he was 18mths I was nearly half a stone lighter than pre-preg and considerably fitter, and I'm doing the same again to counter the DS2 weight. As someone said upthread, it was from a reasonably healthy starting point. Most people gain weight from eating a subtle amount more than they need, and will sustainably lose by eating a subtle amount less- not draconian quick fixes and slashing down to 1200 calories.

The plans like Weightwatchers/ Slimming World offer more sustainable diets that are more likely to be sucessful (although I disagree with the low fat/ high sugar sideline products), where as high deprivation, very low calorie diets will fail as they can't be followed long term, and do little to retrain the person in a long term healthy diet.

Whatever the means of losing weight, it's moving more, eating healthier choices and sensible portion size that will do it. It is a long term lifestyle, and too many diets don't address that.

(And I despise the quick tip weightloss adverts that festoon the internet. It scares me to think there is enough response to fund it.)

toomuchtoask quote "diets do work" .

The programme pointed out early on that they don't work in the long term because the body reacts to going into 'starvation mode' and tries everything it can to ensure you put weight back on. I have just watched the programme on catch up and was shocked to find this out.

sirzy quote "The only way to do it is to change my thinking about food, do more excerise and take control of it myself not expect someone else to control it for me"

You have hit the nail on the head, sirzy. This is what I am doing too. I don't use scales any more either because they mess with my head.

sirzy quote "I think they are too focused on making money rather than actual results"

Dead right sirzy. They know it won't work long term, it is all money in the bank for them :(

slightlysoupstained quote "I think the absolute fucking best thing my parents ever did for me and my siblings is to keep us away from that shit. I have never dieted. I eat an amount that other women seem to consider shockingly large. I have always been slim"

You are lucky, and that is indeed why your weight is still normal and you can eat large amounts. Dieting certainly f**d me up, and I have ensured that my daughter never followed my route.

toomuchtoask quote "Diets do work for the majority of people "

Well, I have done many, many diets over thirty years losing hundreds of pounds so yes, I successfully dieted off excess weight (and then put it all back on again plus more like in the experiment featured on the programme). However, they don't work in the long term because of what I mention in the first paragraph above. Sorry. I truly wish they did :(

don'tmindifido quote "The sort of people who are very overweight are not the sort of people who have healthy eating habits in the first place"

Hmmm, I started dieting when a young teen, not even overweight (I saw pics recently and was amazed at my normal size). This put me on the dieting treadmill because my first diet was non sustainable and I put all weight back on plus more. A while later I did another diet, and the same thing happened, then again and again and again. So before I started dieting my diet/weight was normal, but after countless diets over the years is became anything but.

itsjustafleshwound quote "Personally, I blame the fact that we are so far removed from the process of eating and food production"

I agree. Processed food does not help at all. Keeping it simple and cooking from scratch ensures that you know what is in your meal.

don'tmindifido quote "There's another thread running about portion sizes, people saying that they can't imagine a quarter of a pizza being an adult portion, the amounts of pasta and cereal for a portion size being too small, but that's why some people are fat"

That's right, and if you go out for a meal, the portion size is really large and yet we feel obligated to finish up. If you watch "The Men who made us Fat" which was featured last year, it will show you just how much portion sizes have been increased over the years. Shocking.

ICBENEG quote "I like the 5 quid thing....but how do you do it on a maintenance basis? Person closest to goal weight wins"

One of my colleagues does something like this with relatives and people who put on pay a fine into the kitty.

ICBENEG quote "Low fat high sugar diet foods....they can fuck off with that one"

Yup.

squeakytoy quote "Of course diets work. It is the behaviour after a successful diet that is the challenge"

Sigh, see my first paragraph...

ouryve quote "I agree with that last one and think that so called diet foods should be subject to the same regulations as any other food supplements which make health claims"

I'd go further an ban all adverts promoting processed foods including so called 'diet' foods. Just have adverts for veg and fruit. It'll never happen!

specialsubject quote "perhaps the campaign should be to improve the basic common sense and scientific knowledge that is so lacking in many people"

I think you are right. If we can gain scientific knowledge about the truth about dieting and how it affects us physiologically, then we can be in a stronger position to make informed choices.

I think the tobacco industry is far far worse. They are making a product that kills people. And if anybody is to blame for overweight it's the companies manufacturing all the sugary and very high fat foods. And companies manufacturing diet foods which are highly processed.

Balloonslayer, yes, absolutely fat round the middle (rather than on the bum and thighs) is connected to the recent low fat/high carb diet obsession.

We are told this kind of eating is healthy, encouraged to eat fake food products with fat removed and sugar/carb added.

This damages our insulin response, and gaining weight round the middle is a result of that - it means you are have metabolic syndrome (the precursor of diabetes, heart disease, gout, gallbladder problem and many more).

Fat round the middle is incredibly unhealthy, a sign that things are really going wrong, out of control, and yet people in this situation are often desperately guilty and unhappy that they can't control appetite despite basing their diet around lots of "healthy" reduced and fat free products and "healthy" wholes rains.

Btw the above describes me perfectly, before I ditched the grains and the processed low fat foods. I NEVER eat the low fat version of anything now, I eat cream, butter and meats with lots of unprocessed natural veg and salad. I have l lost 6.5 stones, still have a few pounds to go but have a very hour glass figure (no metabolic syndrome anymore).

I eat natural unprocessed foods containing natural unprocessed fats - like nature intended. My diet is pretty much the opposite of what the diet industry wants me to eat (and what I did eat for many years while getting fatter and sicker!).

I think "evil" is a fairly apt word, because they know what they are doing IMO.

Rosemary Conley's Hip and Thigh diet came with a book of exercises you were supposed to do every day that targeted the area. My friend used to go to Rosemary Conley classes, then moved to an area where they didn't have them. She went to Slimming World instead and was appalled to find that despite the expense of the class, there wasn't a group exercise session.