TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/070891/0708130.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 8.7 KB | 186 lines

                                                                                HEALTH, Page 50

Forget About Losing Those Last 10 Pounds


The pursuit of sylphlike thinness is not only futile for most
men and women, it can be downright unhealthy

By ANASTASIA TOUFEXIS -- With reporting by Staci Kramer/St. Louis
and Linda Williams/New York


    Like many women, Nancy Cort longed to be the size she was
at age 18 -- size 8, to be precise -- 28 years and dozens of
pounds ago. The Westport, Conn., schoolteacher enrolled in a
weight-loss program, dropped 35 lbs. and then, with just 15 lbs.
more to go, decided to call a halt to her dieting. "I thought
about what I could maintain, what I could be successful at,"
says Cort. "Sure, I'd like to be a size 8, but then I would
have to exercise more." Her conclusion: "I'm content being a
size 10."

    An American woman content to be more than she can be? That
sounds like heresy in a society where self-perfection (i.e.,
thinness) is virtually the state religion. Yet Cort typifies a
new and healthier attitude toward dieting that is gradually
taking hold in the American psyche. More men and women are
trading in wispy dreams for a solid reality. They are picking
up their forks, forsaking the latest diet fads and deciding to
shrink their expectations more than their bodies.

    The new attitude is long overdue. Medical studies and
painful individual experiences have shown dieting is too often
a Sisyphean nightmare. At least two-thirds of people who shed
weight will gain back the lost pounds -- and often more -- in
a few years. Only 10% of dieters who lose 25 lbs. or more will
remain at their desired weight beyond two years, according to
the National Center for Health Statistics.

    But the effort to achieve ideal thinness is not merely
frustrating, new research suggests it is also unhealthy. Dieters
who swing through cycles of weight loss and gain may actually
be cutting their lives short, according to a report in last
week's New England Journal of Medicine. In a study of 3,130 men
and women, ages 30 to 62, participating in the landmark
Framingham Heart Study, researchers found that so-called yo-yo
dieters ran a 70% higher risk of dying from heart disease than
did people whose weight stayed fairly steady, even if they were
overweight.

    One explanation is that fluctuating weight may so stress
the body that blood pressure and cholesterol levels become
elevated. Men appeared to face greater risk of ill effects than
women, possibly because they tend to store excess fat in the
abdomen, while women carry it around the hips and thighs. Fat
from the belly is more easily mobilized and sent into the
bloodstream, where it can clog vital blood vessels. Psychologist
Kelly Brownell of Yale University, who directed the study,
emphasizes that the findings do not condemn dieting. Rather,
they indicate that people need to set realistic goals and be
committed to making long-term changes in their habits.

    Brownell believes yo-yo dieting may eventually prove most
dangerous, not for people who are vastly overweight, but for
people who are continuously battling those last five or 10
excess pounds. "These people are fighting their own biology,"
he says. "Our notion of the ideal body is much leaner than it
needs to be for health reasons."

    Americans, especially women, have become captives of this
damaging aesthetic standard. Just consider Julia Roberts. In an
earlier era she would have been considered a victim of
starvation. "More than 70% of women say they feel fat, but only
23% are truly overweight," says Dr. Arnold Andersen, a
psychiatrist at the University of Iowa who specializes in eating
disorders. Thus about half of female dieters have no medical
reason to lose weight; their efforts are purely cosmetic.

    Even being truly overweight need not be unhealthy. "People
who only look at the numbers on the bathroom scale are missing
things that count," says Dr. MichaelHamilton, director of Duke
University's Diet and Fitness Center. "They need better
guidelines about what counts: bringing blood pressure,
cholesterol or diabetes under control and being able to move
better and be more energetic."

    Moreover, dieters pay an exorbitant price in time, energy
and self-esteem to attain and keep their ultra-slim figures.
"Most people equate dieting with some kind of a masochistic
ritual and cannot feel successful unless they are sacrificing
all pleasure in eating," says Karen Miller-Kovach, director of
nutrition services for the Cleveland Clinic Foundation. Except
for extremely thin or extremely heavy people, Andersen flatly
declares, "the emphasis should be off weight and on health."

    That message is slowly seeping in. Congressional hearings
on the diet industry last year have underscored the futility
and fraudulence of many weight-loss schemes. New scientific
discoveries that genetics are as important as willpower in
determining a person's shape have led people to realize that
they can't all look like Jane Fonda, no matter how hard they
try.

    Trendsetting baby boomers meanwhile are growing older and
confronting more pressing worries, such as holding on to their
jobs and rearing their children. Besides, if they haven't
achieved physical perfection by now, they recognize that they
probably never will. And then there is Oprah Winfrey. Her public
tribulations in the course of losing and then regaining weight
have taught Americans perhaps the most salutary lesson of all.
If Oprah can say "I'm learning not to judge myself because of
weight," why can't they?

    Signs of moderation are surfacing. According to the
Calorie Control Council, a diet-industry trade group, the number
of dieters in the U.S. has leveled off from 65 million in 1986
to about 48 million currently. Many weight-loss clinics across
the nation have closed or are failing. People are also losing
their appetite for diet books. "The past couple of years have
been relatively light on diet best sellers," says Stuart
Applebaum of Bantam Books. Another reflection of the changing
standards: makers of liquid and powder diets are avoiding
bone-thin models and choosing heftier people to hawk their
products. TV host Cristina Ferrare, Dodger manager Tommy Lasorda
and ex-New York City mayor Ed Koch hardly qualify as sylphs.

    More people are abandoning radical diets and instead are
incorporating liquid meals and other dieting aids into their
regular eating plans. A new survey by the Calorie Control
Council shows that 60% of adult Americans who use diet products
say they are not dieting, a reverse from a similar survey in
1986. Formal weight-loss programs now make a point of discussing
improvements in health as well as decreasing girth. There are
also lessons in realism. "We spend a lot of time working on the
concept that managing this weight is going to be difficult,"
says Betsy Taylor of Health Extenders, a diet program in
Norwalk, Conn. "Dieters realize how impossible it would be to
keep those tiny bodies after losing 100 lbs., and they realize
later on that a larger body may not be a model size, but it is
a livable size."

    Even the Federal Government has endorsed the moderating
trend. The latest tables for "healthy'' weights, published last
year, provide much more latitude than earlier charts, allowing
for a range of 30 lbs. or more at each height and up to a
16-lb. gain from age 35 on. Why the extra allowance in middle
age? "Some studies have shown that in older years, heavier
people have better life expectancies," says Dr. C. Wayne
Callaway, a George Washington University professor of medicine
who was a consultant on the tables.

    Sadly, though, there are pockets of resistance to the new
thinking. Social X rays still reign in the upper middle class,
where being thin is a moral imperative. Far more pernicious is
the attitude of youngsters, who seem willing to sacrifice their
health for their looks. About 70% of teenage girls diet, and
surveys show that even fourth-graders are worrying about flabby
thighs. Dr. John Brunzell, a medical professor at the University
of Washington, blames magazines and TV for encouraging teenage
girls to be slender and teenage boys to be muscular. "This
popularized image is out of touch with reality," he says.

    Repeated studies of grade-schoolers have highlighted their
staggering abhorrence of fat. Shown drawings of an obese child
and children with various disabilities, they were asked whom
they would select to be their friend. The obese child always
came in last. Perhaps as their elders become a bit more
forgiving of excess pounds and ampler figures, American
youngsters will pick up the cue.