I wrote an explanation of a Health At Every Size® (HAES(sm)) approach today that was beyond the grasp of the youthful audience for which it was intended. Although they will not hear these words, I decided to share them with you:
Prior to Andrea’s death, I was what is called a yo-yo dieter, meaning I spent a tremendous amount of time and energy going on nearly every diet known, yo-yoing between losing 20 pounds and regaining 20 pounds again and again. Before Andrea died I had, at long last, come to the realization, based on my own personal experience, that dieting didn’t work, but I did not know with what it could be replaced.
After Andrea’s death I started to research for myself the claims of the diet industry and was shocked to find that if I followed the money…searched for who paid for the studies…I often found that they were funded by pharmaceutical companies or the diet industry--entities that stood to gain a lot if people continued to hate their bodies and to use their products.
I discovered a small, dedicated group of researchers and advocates who espoused a shift to a “weight-neutral” paradigm, where the numbers on a scale did not measure health but instead viewed fitness through a metabolic lens, (blood pressures, glucose tolerance, and blood lipid profiles).
“Health at Every Size” is a radical “peace movement” which includes eating intuitively and moving our bodies regularly. It espouses health-sustaining lifestyles for all body sizes: thin AND fat, recognizing that the only sensible thing to do is to learn to love and accept the body as it is today because hating it does not promote self-care.
While we love what our genetics have given us, we relearn how to nourish it well and how to move it often…which may result in weight change, either a loss or gain or no change at all—a consequence that is irrelevant since the goal is not focused on weight. Weight is neutral. The goal is a life of internal peace and as sustainable a well-being as possible, given whatever limits may be inherent in our lives.
John Phillips, the founder of Phillips Exeter, wisely noted back in the 1700s that, “Goodness without knowledge is weak and feeble, but knowledge without goodness is dangerous.” Many in the current health-care environment, who are embedded in the dieting mentality, believe they have knowledge. Given the research I’ve done over the past 12 years, I question that knowledge…but I am also deeply concerned with what appears to be a lack of goodness: bullying fat people into dieting or hating their bodies, removing fat children from loving families, or commenting on others’ food choices under the thinly veiled guise of "concern." These are not actions based in goodness.
Recently, articles about fat children have been spreading around the blogosphere. It is heartbreaking how the "obesity fear-mongering" has not only taken a turn toward downright mean-spiritedness, but is no longer satisfied with offering up fat adults for humiliation. In France, higher marks were suggested for thin children; and a childhood obesity campaign in Georgia has inspired a petition against its disturbing policies.
In a recent email exchange on the ASDAH listserve, Deb Burgard, PhD, talked about the transitional stages one might go through in accepting the HAES paradigm. She proclaimed the final stage to be where the individual might eventually realize that it is “cool that we come in a vast diversity of sizes and that we affirmatively treasure the differences and talents of all our different bodies.”
Cool indeed...
With blessings until next time,
Doris
Thank you, Doris. This is written with knowledge and goodness. Phillips would be proud.
~Kathleen
Posted by: Kathleen | January 15, 2012 at 09:52 AM