Golda Poretsky, HHC
www.bodylovewellness.com

I’m posting an oldie but goodie again this week, but it may be new to you!

And, by the way, there’s still time to join me for my teleclass, which was rescheduled to Tuesday due to technical difficulties — How To Feel Good In Your Skin — Free 60 Minute Teleclass And Group Meditation. Just click here to register!

Listen to the podcast here:

I know you’re in shock that I’m actually a proponent of a diet, so I’ll give you a moment to recover. Okay. Are you ready?

Introducing . . .

The Media Diet.

It’s the only diet that I would ever encourage my clients to go on.

With the Media Diet you will:

• Lose your self doubt about your appearance
• Reach your goal of liking yourself and the way you look
• Melt away your resistance to feeling good about yourself right now
• Maintain your belief in your own attractiveness

GUARANTEED!

Here’s how you do it:

For the next week, as much as possible, limit your exposure to images of:

1) Ultra thin women and men
2) Advertising of diets and diet foods

Both components of the media diet are important. In a study published in 2002, scientists reported that the introduction of television in Fiji completely changed women’s views of their bodies. Prior to the introduction of television, most Fijian women were satisfied with the way they looked no matter what their sizes. Less than a year after television became available, at least 77% of women reported dissatisfaction with their bodies and a desire to lose weight. In fact, there were no reported cases of anorexia or bulimia in Fiji until television was introduced! Other studies have shown that at least 24% of women on television are actually underweight by BMI standards – which means that many are starving themselves to fit the required norm. Television sets us up for body hatred and a desire to achieve body weights that even mainstream doctors deem too thin. Avoid it!

Additionally, Americans spend approximately $60 billion a year on diets and diet products. This is an incredible statistic considering all of the problems with diets including the fact that at least 90% of dieters gain all of the weight they lose back – plus a few extra pounds – within 3-5 years.

So let’s send a message to television producers and advertisers that we’re not interested in seeing ultra thin actors and ads for diet products. And, more importantly, let’s change what we look at every day so that our eyes are not deceived into thinking that underweight is an ideal.

While on the Media Diet, use your “willpower” to avoid the following:

1) Typical fashion magazines (it’s tempting to peek in the line at the grocery store but distract your attention with something else)
2) Internet fashion sites (except as described below)
3) Soap operas
4) Other daytime television (this is the time when diet ads are most prevalent)
5) Primetime sitcoms
6) Newspaper ads

Now, there is no need to starve for media on the Media Diet. Take this time on the Media Diet to replenish your system with healthy alternatives:

1) Check out some really fun online plus size magazines, like Plus Model Magazine, Venus Diva Magazine and BBW Magazine.
2) Check out plus size fashion groups, like Fatshionista and the livejournal Fatshionista community. Enjoy all the pictures of fabulous fat women of all shapes and sizes dressing up in their favorite clothes. Post your own too. And for more gorgeous photographs, check out Adipositivity.
3) Read great Fat Acceptance blogs.
4) Check out this  youtube video showing the process of putting a model’s image on a billboard. You won’t believe all of the airbrushing!
5) Watch shows starring fabulous plus sized women and men, like Huge on ABC Family.
6) Take a little field trip to Brooklyn (if you’re in the area) and check out stores like Re/Dress NYC 109 Boerum Place, Brooklyn, NY 11201 and Lee Lee’s Valise, 368 Court St Brooklyn, NY 11231. Seek out size positive stores in your area.
7) Spend some time perusing all the great articles and blogs on More Of Me To Love including mine!

I guarantee that after a week spent on the Media Diet, you will look and feel better about yourself! Let us know how it goes!

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Golda Poretsky, H.H.C. is a certified holistic health counselor who specializes in transforming your relationship with food and your body. Go to http://www.bodylovewellness.com/stay-in-touch/ to sign up for her newsletter and get your free download — Golda’s Top Ten Tips For Divine Dining!

Have you picked up Golda’s book yet? Get your copy of Stop Dieting Now: 25 Reasons To Stop, 25 Ways To Heal today!  Get it for your kindle too!

© 2010 Golda Poretsky. All rights reserved.

This week in fatabulousness . . .

• Fat Bride Flickr Pool – A bevvy of fat and fabulous brides!  A great antidote to the must lose ___ pounds in order to get married b.s.
• Ding Dong Change4Life Is Dead — Britain’s anti-illiteracy anti-obesity campaign is being tossed.
• Losing Some Weight! – Tabayag shares the power of losing some weight (from your closet).
• Facebook Allows Hate Speech Against Fat People — HuffPo reports on this glaring reality.

And, I know I said I was going to pick only one commenter to this post, but I couldn’t.  So I picked 3.  Congrats to Chibi Jeebs, Kate D, And Amy T!  You each won a free Body Love Breakthrough Session with me!   Look for an email from me with scheduling info!

Thanks to everyone who commented.  If you’d still like a free session, click here to sign up for my newsletter, and you’ll get info on how to get your own Body Love Breakthrough Session.

by Golda Poretsky, H.H.C.
www.bodylovewellness.com

Listen to the podcast of this post here:

The other night, I finally sat down to watch VH1′s Behind The Music about Courtney Love. Watching the Courtney Love interviews felt like visiting with an old friend.  She’s still the same — endearing and maddening at the same time.

At some point late in my sophomore year of high school, I decided on a little side project.  I was on a mission to hear and find out about as many women-fronted rock bands as possible.  This led me to nearly lose my mind over PJ Harvey, Babes In Toyland, The Breeders, Belly, L7, Concrete Blonde, a tape that I magically had of a band called the Slits, and of course, Hole.  I still loved The Smiths, and U2 and the Pixies, and Pearl Jam’s first album, but the women rock stars were the real deal.  They spoke to me in a language that my sad, teenage heart could understand.  They spoke to me because I spoke their language.

In the days before the Internet, before DVR, when VCR timers were still a bit wonky, I would stay up late on Sunday nights, often until 2 AM, watching MTV’s 120 Minutes in the hopes that they would play one of my favorites. I’d read Spin, and maybe NME if I could find it, and I’d buy the Village Voice every Wednesday in the hopes of reading about them.  PJ Harvey was my favorite, her songs were so full of angst and pain and sexual disquiet that she was almost embarrassing to listen to.  The press would show up at her lonely little studio in Dorset, and she’d confess to journalists that she never dated anyone until she was 20.  In those days, she would get on stage wearing all black, her hair pulled back, a tiny person with a huge voice and huger talent.

Courtney Love was different.  She was tall, larger-than-life, fond of arguments, brash, mercurial.  She wore baby doll dresses and tons of red lipstick and played her guitar from between her legs.  Her voice was scratchy, with none of the usual singer niceties, but she screamed a lot, which gave her audiences the license to scream along with her.

And yet for all her brashness and screw-you attitude, the thing that I kept noticing as I watched her on t.v. last week was her face.  Over the years, she’s had a multitude of nose jobs, limp implants, and probably botox and other things.  Courtney’s interview revealed a person who had never been okay with her appearance.  Even in her early 20′s, while playing a pregnant woman in a movie, she was so concerned about looking fat that, every day, she took a little stuffing out of the pillow she was using to look pregnant.

So what, right?  She’s a rockstar who’s in the public eye, lives in Hollywood, etc. etc. etc.  But with Courtney Love, it’s a particular kind of bummer.  She’s written song after song about how much it sucks to be objectified and how much women are just seen for their relative attractiveness and bodies.  She sees all of it, but still internalizes it.  In other words, she writes songs about how much b.s. women in go through in terms of their bodies and body image, but she’s still in a place where she feels the need to drastically alter her face and body.

In essence, she’s in a spot that a lot of you reading this are in the right now.  Perhaps you’ve been reading about HAES and body acceptance and you think, intellectually, that people should accept and love their bodies, but you’re not there yet.  Or, you’re able to get to a place of acceptance and then something — a friend’s comment, something on t.v. — throws you out of it and you’re back where you were, feeling crappy about your body and thinking body acceptance is not for you.

If this is the spot you’re in, I want to hear from you.  Comment below (and make sure to leave your email address) and tell me a little about your struggle with loving your body.  One commenter (chosen at random from commenters who comment by midnight Eastern on July 8th) will receive a FREE 60 Minute Body Love Breakthrough Session with me.

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Golda Poretsky, H.H.C. is a certified holistic health counselor who specializes in transforming your relationship with food and your body. Go to http://www.bodylovewellness.com/stay-in-touch/ to sign up for her newsletter and get your free download — Golda’s Top Ten Tips For Divine Dining!

© 2010 Golda Poretsky All rights reserved.

by Golda Poretsky, H.H.C.
www.bodylovewellness.com

Recently, this blog has gotten a lot of new readers who may be new to Fat Acceptance & Health At Every Size.

As a consequence, I’ve been fielding lots of comments of the “how can you be promoting fat?!” and “haven’t you heard of type II diabetes?!” variety.  So, rather than trying to respond to these commenters individually (and as a way to provide support to people who want to respond to these comments in their own lives and blogs), I’ve decided to write this post.  I’ve outlined 9 typical statements by commenters, together with an explanation of why each statement is wrong, wrong, wrong.

1) Fat is unhealthy. Fat is not inherently unhealthy.  In fact, being underweight, in many ways, is more dangerous than being overweight, obese, or morbidly obese.  Furthermore, a great deal of evidence suggests that health problems linked to fat are actually a result of dieting, and the incredible strain that dieting puts on the body.  A recent study found that people who lost 15% or more of their body weight had an increased risk of death compared to people of the same size who didn’t lose weight. In addition, fat people live longer than thin people and are more likely to survive cardiac events and not suffer as much blood loss due to treatments such as angioplasty.  Fat has even been shown to protect against a variety of problems, including “infections, cancer, lung disease, heart disease, osteoporosis, anemia, high blood pressure, rheumatoid arthritis and type 2 diabetes.” Fat people also have lower rates of emphysema, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, hip fracture, tuberculosis, anemia, peptic ulcer and chronic bronchitis.

If you’re wondering why you’ve never heard any of this before, that’s because this information doesn’t make anyone money.  It doesn’t support the $60 billion a year diet industry nor the multi-billion dollar weight loss surgery industry nor the multi-bajillion dollar pharmaceutical industry.

2) Fat people all have eating disorders, eat poorly, and don’t exercise. No study has ever supported this conclusion.  And let’s just get clear on something.  You cannot tell anything about a person’s eating habits or fitness level or relative health from their size.  I have clients who are 300-pound clients who eat all organic, whole foods and train for triathalons, and I have 120-pound clients who are generally sedentary and have binge eating disorder.  People of all different sizes have all different habits, and a quick survey of your friends and relatives will show just that.

3) If fat people would eat properly and exercise, they wouldn’t be fat. Contrary to popular opinion, people come in all shapes and sizes.  Just like people are short and tall and in between, people are fat and thin and in between. It’s called diversity.  It’s called genetics. It’s called, in some instances, the result of constant dieting.

4) Weight loss is a healthy goal, deserving of promotion. Not true at all.  First of all, diets don’t work.  They really don’t.  The one or two people that you know that lost weight on a diet and kept it off for more than 5 years are statistical freaks.  Dieting wreaks havoc on the body, affecting everything from your immune system, to your cardiovascular system, to your stamina and mental health, to your body image.  Oh, and don’t get me started on the incredible dangerousness of weight loss surgeries.  If anyone tells you that their plan promises long term weight loss, they are lying to you.  If they promise weight loss and fail to mention whether it will be long term or not, they are deceiving you.

5) Promoting fat acceptance makes people fat. I haven’t seen a study that shows that approving and loving your body causes one to gain weight.  In fact, Health At Every Size practices, which include body acceptance, actually make people healthier.  When you can show me that shaming people about their bodies improves health, then we can talk.  And by the way, the way we shame fat people has led to an exponential rise in discrimination against people in the workplace, healthcare and education.

6) There’s an obesity crisis going on and obesity is on the rise. Actually, it’s not.  Also, see item 1, above.

7) Childhood obesity is a serious problem. Actually, it’s not. Childhood life expectancy continues to rise.  And every attempt to make kids thinner have failed.  And, you might want to follow the money behind Michelle Obama’s obesity initiative to see how corporations are benefiting from the b.s.  The real danger for fat children is the threat of bullying, and the toll that that takes.  Finally, access to healthy, organic food and safe places to play are important for all children, not just fat ones.

8) BMI is an appropriate and scientific way of determining health. If you consider the way BMI works for more than a minute, you realize that it so flawed as to be completely useless.

9) But all of this goes against the conventional wisdom that fat is bad and deadly! Your “conventional wisdom” has been paid for by the diet industry and pharmaceutical companies for decades and decades.  It’s time to get over it and start thinking critically.  I encourage you to read this blog and other fantastic fat acceptance blogs and begin the process of unraveling your internalized and externalized hatred.

Additional Recommended Reading:

• The Diet Myth: Why America’s Obsession With Weight Is Hazardous To Your Health, by Paul Campos
• Losing It: False Hopes & Fat Profits In The Diet Industry, by Laura Fraser
• Fat!So?: Because You Don’t Have To Apologize For Your Size, by Marilyn Wann
• Lessons From The Fat-O-Sphere:  Quit Dieting And Declare A Truce With Your Body, by Kate Harding & Marianne Kirby
• Health At Every Size: The Surprising Truth About Your Weight, by Linda Bacon, PhD
• Stop Dieting Now: 25 Reasons To Stop, 25 Ways To Heal, by Golda Poretsky, H.H.C.
  

P.S.  This post was inspired by Kate Harding‘s excellent post “But Don’t You Realize Fat Is Unhealthy?”

Want more size positive info?  Stay up to date with the Body Love Wellness blog by joining our newsletter.

© 2010 Golda Poretsky.  All rights reserved.

by Golda Poretsky, H.H.C.
www.bodylovewellness.com

A few months ago, I wrote yet another post on why The Biggest Loser is so bad for its contestants, the millions who watch the show, and the culture in general.  I expected to see the usual comments from my usual readership.

What I didn’t expect to see was a comment from Season 3 Biggest Loser finalist, Kai Hibbard, saying how much she enjoyed my post and asking if we might speak.

Shortly thereafter, Kai and I spoke on the phone about her experiences on the Biggest Loser.  From seeing her fellow contestants forced to workout with injuries against doctor’s orders, to the extreme dehydration prior to weigh-ins, to the resultant eating disorder that Kai still is working to heal, the story she told was nothing like the fantasy that the Biggest Loser seeks to promote.

Because Kai’s story is so powerful in her own words, and because she has so much to share on the reality of this reality TV series, I’ve decided to break the interview into 3 parts, and give you the actual audio to listen to if you so desire.

So here goes with Part 3 of My Interview With Kai Hibbard.  Click here to read or listen to Part 1. Click here to read or listen to Part 2.

On how the contestants dehydrated themselves before weigh-ins:

“I didn’t learn how to dehydrate until I got on the ranch. It was every week.  Every single week, this is what a weigh-in would look like: the real weigh-ins were at 10 o’clock in the morning and they were on a cattle scale at the ranch and they weren’t filmed. . . . Now, mind you, it was shot in Simi Valley, so it’s a desert, so it’s hot.  And on the morning of the weigh-in you would get up and you’d put on your underwear, your spandex shorts, and you’d put on sweatpants and then you’d put on a sports bra, a tank top, a long sleeve shirt, and your sweatshirt, a ball cap, and then you’d zip up your sweatshirt, you’d put your hood on and you’d go down to the gym.  [The gym] wasn’t a real gym, it was a temporary structure just for shooting and it didn’t have any air conditioning and you’d shut all the doors and all the windows in the gym.  Then you would work out for two, two and half hours (as long as you could stand it) without any water. (The boys would take water, rinse their mouth out, and spit it.  I couldn’t even do that — if I was going to put water in my mouth, I was going to drink it.)  Most, if not everybody, had cut their water about 24 hours beforehand, if not 24 hours then at least by 5 o’clock the afternoon before.  And then, you would drink coffee if you had anything the night before, because (a) it would clean your system out and (b) it would dehydrate you.

“So after you did the 2 hours of working out in full sweat, sweating off as much as you can, you would go back to the house, shower, blow dry your hair, and strip down to the lightest clothing you could find, which was usually spandex shorts and a sports bra.  Then you’d go downstairs and you’d weigh yourself in and the second you got off that scale you would chug water because you were so dehydrated. ”

On her most painful weigh-in:

“The worst one I can remember is the very last one, before the final weigh-in, and it was down to five contestants left.  I remember being on the elliptical and being so exhausted and so ready to go home and so dehydrated that I burst into tears and I’m crying . . . and I’m still working out and it set off a chain reaction and every single person in the gym, all of the five contestants that were left, were crying.  And we were so brainwashed at that point that I remember saying out loud, ‘Well, at least we’re losing more water-weight by crying.’”

On how the contestants learned to dehydrate themselves:

“The trainers tell you.  And it was [trainer] Kim [Lyons]‘s first season, and I remember Kim having a conversation with [trainer] Bob [Harper] where she said, and she said it to her team, ‘You know, look, let’s do this the right way this season — no dehydrating, let’s just do it the healthy way.’  And Bob completely agreed to it.  Then, right before our very first weigh in, Kim came over to us and she said, ‘Guys, I’m really, really, really sorry.  I know that Bob and I agreed not to dehydrate our teams, but I’m watching Bob, and if you look right now, he’s dehydrating his team.  And if you guys don’t dehydrate, you don’t stand a chance.  You’re going to get picked off one by one and have to leave.  And that’s when it started.”

On how the show is edited to make contestants look bad for refusing to work out with injuries:

“You really get brainwashed into thinking everything’s your fault, [that] you’re just not strong enough, you’re just not good enough. . . . For example, Heather, on my season, was told by the medical trainer, not one of the personal trainers, . . . ‘Here’s the deal, both your knees are messed up, and I believe you ripped your calf muscle.’  So he told the trainer that too but when you watch the show, Heather’s arguing with our trainer and saying, ‘Look, I can’t do it.’  And they made it look like it’s because she’s lazy and refuses to work out, when actually she’s been told by the doctors, ‘Do not run, do not do this, you cannot do this.’ And production and her personal trainer wanted her to do it anyway, just for the cameras.  And when she refused to do it for the cameras because it would have damaged her body even more (she ended up needing steroid shots in both knees while we were still there by the way) it was edited to make her look like she was lazy and disobedient, basically.  So then you’ve got the 22 million Americans that watch it thinking that you’re this horrible, lazy, ungrateful person.  And she literally got death threats on the NBC web site.  I just have people that tell me stuff like, I’m ugly when I cry, or I’m lazy.  She got death threats.”

On people’s reaction to Kai telling her story:

“I get hostility now, now that I tell the truth about what happened on the show.  I get told I’m ungrateful or I must be lying because everyone else says it was so positive.  . . . I actually had one person friend me just to send me a hate letter. . . . The worst ones are the rabid fans of the show who desperately want a magic cure-all, and when you tell them that it’s not they get upset.  I tend not to get my feelings hurt so much by those. . . . But the ones that kind of get me the most are the contestants that also have been on the show and either have something financially invested or emotionally invested in keeping the myth going that will say something to me about it. But at the same time, I get really bolstered by the [contestants] that were like, ‘Thank you for saying something.  We can’t speak out because we’re still under contract and we’re afraid what it’ll do to our family.’  Those make it all worth it. . . . It’s just too bad that I get all of those e-mails in private because they’re afraid and I get all the hate comments from the other contestants out in public.

“I have to say that there are some people that probably had a very positive experience there.  I don’t know, I’ve only lived my experience.  If you’ve been overweight you’re whole life and conditioned to believe that you’re not worthwhile until you’re thin, and they bring you someplace that, no matter how bad they beat you, it makes you thin, and that’s all you ever wanted, then I guess that’s a positive experience. . . . Being thin is not the end-all-be-all for me.”

On the fantasy of being thin:

“They said that they were very surprised by me as a contestant because, if you watch from the beginning of the season to the end, my personality doesn’t change at all.  And my comment was, ‘Why would it?’  But I guess that 95% of the contestants start off one person and end up a different one at the end.  And it’s because they believe that being thin will make all my dreams come true. [But] your mortgage is the same if you weigh 144 or if you weigh 268.  You’re either happy with your life or you’re not.”

On a member of the Biggest Loser staff who intervened on behalf of the contestants:

“There was one person, that I think really tried to stand up for us.  His name was John (sic) and I believe he’s the sports trainer for University of South Carolina now.  I’m not certain.  But they brought him in on our season, because, I guess, the previous two seasons, if the contestant turned their ankle or had blisters, they were wrapping their own feet and they were taping their own wounds up and they brought “Doc” John on to help with our injuries and treat us.  And he was very compassionate.  And when we went down to his pool house to get treatment once in a while, when we could (eventually, the crew tried to stop us from even going there), it was kind of a safe place.  You could go in and talk about what was going on and a camera wouldn’t be in your face.  But by the end of filming, it stopped being a safe place too, because they thought too much drama and too much good, juicy stuff winds up being said in his little treatment place.  And they didn’t bring him back again after [the third season].

“He desperately tried to intervene a couple/few times and the crew would shut him down a lot, or our trainers would.  For example, when he tried, on the doctor’s orders, to give us the electrolyte solution, or when he tried to tell our trainer that Heather’s calf muscle was probably ripped and she couldn’t work out and the crew intervened and Heather looks like she’s a whiner.

On her message about the Biggest Loser going forward:

“Kill your scale.  It’s ridiculous to measure your worth based on a number in a little box that you get on in the morning.  It’s absolutely ridiculous.  It has nothing to do with your worthiness.  Nobody needs a reality TV show to be a healthy human being.  And love yourself no matter what you weigh.  If somebody comes up to you and tells you you’re fat or if somebody comes up to you and tells you your beautiful — that has absolutely nothing to do with who you are and everything to do with who you are.  And remember that.”

To keep up with what Kai’s up to, check out her blog and friend her on Facebook.

Click here to listen to this third and final portion of my interview with Kai:

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Golda Poretsky, H.H.C. is a certified holistic health counselor who specializes in transforming your relationship with food and your body. Go to http://www.bodylovewellness.com/stay-in-touch/ to sign up for her newsletter and get your free download — Golda’s Top Ten Tips For Divine Dining!

© 2010 Golda Poretsky.  All rights reserved.