The Oprah Factor
Before I went on the Mike and Juliet Show, La Wade sent me some rebuttals to arguments that might be made on the show—and she told me I could repost them here. The last sentence of this one seems downright prescient:
Why don’t you lose weight if you’re not happy with how you’re treated?
Unfortunately, it is not easy to lose large amounts of weight and keep it off. A study from the National Weight Control Registry looked at the habits of people who lost significant amounts of weight and found that on average, they ate less than 1400 calories a day and exercised for an average of 90 minutes each day. It is a rare person who is able to maintain that sort of lifestyle indefinitely. Look at someone like Oprah Winfrey…she is a successful, intelligent, ambitious woman with every conceivable resource at her disposal, yet she continues to struggle with her weight.
I thought that Oprah was a great example, and now the very same point has come up on Feed Me and The-F-Word. A story in the Orlando Sentinel says:
Oprah has become synonymous with dieting. When the diet drug Alli came on the market last year, one wag commented: “Hello, there is no magic pill. If there were, Oprah would have found it and told us all about it.”…
“Some people will look at Oprah and say, ‘Wow, if she’s struggling, and she has all those resources, that makes me feel better’ ,” says Sandee Nebel, a Winter Park licensed mental-health counselor who specializes in eating behavior. “Other people will see her and say, ‘If she can’t do it with all those resources, then I could never do it.’ ”
Indeed, Oprah, by her own admission, has tried everything. She tried the Atkins diet, she tried diet pills. She tried the Scarsdale diet, the banana, hot dog and egg diet. She tried a 1,000 calorie a day diet. She tried Weight Watchers, Diet Work Shop and Diet Center. She tried Nutri-System. Everything worked for a while.
And Rachel talks about Oprah’s latest gimmick, clearing your clutter to lose weight. She says:
It wasn’t that long ago Oprah went on a liquid diet, inspiring thousands of viewers to embark on their own liquid weight-loss diets. She’s the poster child for unproven, untested, unsuccessful and medically unsound weight-loss plans galore – plans that despite their proven ineffectiveness, continues to motivate viewers to try similar methods because Oprah did it and look at her! And yet Oprah, who I’m sure has a maid to scrub her toilets and clean her immaculate mansion, continues to gain weight. Obviously, there is something far greater to body weight than having a messy house.
Now I’m thinking we need to get a segment on the Oprah show, so we can talk about getting off the dangerous yo-yo dieting bandwagon and actually focusing on the right things—like exercise and nutrition. Fatosphere powers, activate!
Posted by mo pie
Filed under: Celebrities, Oprah, TV, Weight Loss
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It’s no big secret that diets don’t work. As you say, no one can sustain that kind of craziness. The only thing that works in the long run is to permanently change your eating habits and your relationship with food, and that is very, very, very difficult to do. There are no quick fixes and no magic pills.
I’ve been doing a cognitive therapy program for several months now. It really helps me. My goal is to be healthy. I will never diet again!
Totally off topic, but last night I was reading your blog, and my husband leaned over and said, “Wow, if I could find mudflaps with that girl on them, I’d buy them in a second!” (referring, of course, to your header).
This cracked me up, as he drives a Hyundai.
If only Oprah could become an advocate of HAES and accept that her body isn’t meant to be skinny… She’d have the power to get that message across the general population like none of us can. *sigh*
Hi Mo —
I’ve been wondering for a couple of months now why Oprah hasn’t happened upon the Fatosphere and I really think it’s only a matter of time. She does tend to take up causes that are self-empowering, and the fat acceptance movement actually fits perfectly into her tendency to continually be on a personal journey that she shares with the public. I just filled out the form suggesting they do a show on this. So we’ll see what happens.
:)
Oh man, I’ve been home wretchedly sick with the flu for almost a week now and Oprah has been pissing me off! Monday was teen weight loss surgery and everyone was so happy and no one talked about side effects other than just a passing mention of throwing up if you ate too much (like more than three bites of anything). So I’m at home not being able to keep anything down and wondering why the hell someone would intentionally do to themselves what the flu was doing to me. (I mean, I know why they’re doing it–but my fever-raddled, dehydrated brain couldn’t fathom feeling like this intentionally.)
Then Tuesday I wanted to reach through the screen and slap Dr. Oz…and then today…with the clutter crap…really, I must get better so I don’t subject myself to this drivel any longer!
Maybe a lot of us should do that, fill out that form suggesting shows on HAES and accepting ourselves as we are, thin, fat, and in-between.
You guys have to go read this response, it’s great.
This is what I wrote to the Orprah show:
I think an excellent topic for Oprah’s show would be health at any size; true body acceptance and love of Self. Millions of women love and watch Oprah and everything she does; if she were to do a show on how to love your body just the way it is now, instead of when you drop 3 sizes or 25-30lbs, it would impact those lives in an ultimately powerful and positive way. The obesity epidemic is a joke. Diets don’t work. The fantasy of being thin is exactly that, a fantasy for millions of women. It’s time to let it go and Oprah can show America how.
I wonder if Oprah knows that continual yo-yo dieting can damage her metabolism.
Karrigan,
But don’t you know, that one perfect fix is just around the corner and she won’t have to worry about that!
/sarcasm
‘Why don’t you lose weight if you’re not happy with how you’re treated?”
How about: I shouldn’t have to fit somebody else’s aesthetic standard in order to be treated with basic human decency?
If I had the media power that Oprah does, I would do so many things to change the world, starting with promoting FA and HAES.
I can’t even imagine how screwed up her metabolism is at this point in her life. It seems like she’s done everything short of WLS.
“The banana, hot dog and egg diet”
???wtf? Is that the diet where you eat things that are associated with male genitalia? Cause it sounds DELICIOUS. Can we add some Italian sausage and zuccini in there?
I have mixed feelings on this. I think everyone has a right to like themselves no matter what their size. But as someone who’s lost about 200 pounds and kept it off for 3 years now, I do believe long-term weight-loss is possible in a healthy and sane manner. Everyone has a right to do what they want with their body and they deserve respect no matter what their size, but no one should be discouraged from leading a healthy lifestyle that might result in weight loss simply because it’s hard or other people think it’s impossible. I do my own thing. Oprah’s history of success or failure has no impact on my own relationship with my body or how it functions.
As for the effects of yo-yo dieting, there is evidence that it isn’t true: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19621031
PQ, that’s a very interesting article, and it’s nice to see you! Thanks for the reminder—fad diets are one thing, but we definitely shouldn’t say “people who lose weight are delusional and doomed to failure” either. Not that anyone said that. Hi! I’ve had some cosmos.
I thought Oprah had finally moved beyond the quick fix thing. I kept seeing these episodes right around the time she turned 50 about healthy lifestyle changes and not eating refined sugars and carbs and exercising and that’s what works, that’s what finally changed her life, not some gimmick or fad diet. I totally thought she’d finally FIGURED IT OUT! Guess she’s back on the wagon. Or off the wagon, whichever it is.
She said the same thing when she was 40, Arlene. FWIW.
‘Why don’t you lose weight if you’re not happy with how you’re treated?”
I really like the response you listed, but maybe there’s something that could be added about why people feel the need to even ask that question. I’m not quite sure how to articulate it, but something about how “why not just try to blend in” is really offensive. I’d never ask a drag queen, “Hey, why don’t you try to look a little more butch if you don’t like homophobes” or ask a person of color, “Hey, maybe if you look a little more white, racists wouldn’t treat you so badly?”
re: Oprah. I don’t think I’ve ever watched a full episode of Oprah, but her PR machine is amazing. It would be really cool if she picked up HAES and got more and more people to examine it.
PastaQueen is absolutely right. The evidence suggesting that yoyo dieting damages your metabolism comes primarily from a handful of animal studies where they would do things like completely starve rats for a week and then overfeed them for a week…not a very good model for true dieting, in my opinion. Dozens of studies have also been done looking for this phenomenon in humans, and I am aware of only one that saw any effect of repeated dieting on metabolic rate, and that was in teenaged male wrestlers, who are, again, not representative of your average dieter. Also, other studies looking at male wrestlers didn’t see the effect.
That being said, there is evidence that yoyo dieting can contribute to gallstones.
I have heard Oprah specifically mention that reason she “can’t keep weight off” is because of her “yo-yo dieting”, Karrigan. And there is apparently just as little scientific basis for her to make that statement as there is for everyone else.
This was back when Oprah was running all the time and Bob Greene was her best friend.
By the way, I totally agree that the question of “why don’t you just lose weight?” is unwarranted, but I wrote the rebuttals with MeMe Roth and her ilk in mind. Since MeMe seems to fundamentally believe that fat people don’t deserve equality because they have made a choice to be unhealthy, I think you could sit there all day and tell her that you deserve respect and I doubt it would ever get through to her. In this case, I thought that challenging her underlying assumptions (which happen to be faulty) would be more effective.
On February 8th, 2008, Sherie Sanders said:
As far as the clutter show goes, I see this as nothing but a marketing gimmick. Anything that features weight loss sells, so this jerk wants to jump on the bandwagon. Americans have been overconsuming for decades. They are also incredibly overworked. Lack of time and the insuing stress can contribute to both weight gain and messy homes. Sadly, successful marketing always has emotional appeal. U.S. sheeple will relate to feeling frustrated about the lack of perfection in both their homes and bodies. They will never fasten their critical thinking caps to see it is much more complex than sound bites on an “Oprahmercial.” (I borrowed KarenElhyam brilliant point!)
Despite all, I can’t manage to hate Oprah. It is not her fault she keenly realizes there is NO limit to the gullibility of the U.S. public. My one consolation is at least some of that $ she makes does some good in the world.
Pasta Queen, just because YOU have kept weight off does not mean dieting isn’t dangerous and counterproductive for most people. There is overwhelming evidence that yo-yo dieting makes our bodies more efficient at storing fat. If there was a study on MSNBC, it was probably sponsored by the diet industry themselves to confuse people. Also, the real bench mark is 10 years, not 3 years. When I was in my thin-is-better brainwash, I kept it off for 5 years and really thought I had beaten the odds. Finally, you could just be one of the 10%. There are many, many reasons why people are fat. Maybe in your case it was just lifestyle. That doesn’t mean it is for the vast majority of people. Every body is biologically different. I haven’t gotten the flu in the past 7 years. That doesn’t mean I can make a statement that avoiding the flu is possible for everyone just because I have an extrodinary immune system.
Actually, if you read more about the NWCR and how much folks eat . . . it’s more like 1800+ calories a day. People are notoriously bad at estimating caloric intake, and tend to under-estimate by about a third.
I’m a NWCR member, and eat 2300 – 2400 calories a day, on average, to maintain my ~80 lb weight loss. Some days I eat around 1800, and other days, especially when I’m active, I’ll eat 2500 or more.
Just so’s you know. :-) You don’t have to eat bird rations to maintain a healthy weight.
My doctor suggested if I wanted to lose weight that I should do it slowly and told me not to try to lose more than two pounds a month. I think it’s easier on the metabolism to adjust to smaller changes. I also think that slower weight loss would give someone a better chance of making changes permanent. Life isn’t a race.
The metabolism changes every ten years, whether one diets or not. Some people, however, may be only 20 years of age, yet have the metabolism of someone 40 years of age — or even older.
The way to tell whether you’re one of these people is to do a two-day average of your calorie intake. If your daily average intake is less than 1200 calories, you can’t possibly lose weight on 1200 calories/day.