Researchers have been busy little bees this week, discovering all kinds of interesting things. Did you know that raw eggs have twice the antioxidants as an apple? (When I pointed out on Twitter that I’d rather eat two apples than a raw egg, LoLovesPi replied, ” but that can be extrapolated to mean that raw cookie dough is good for u. WIN!” Amen to that!) But that’s where the good news stops. A recent study reported in USA Today found that 50% of women in the U.S. have tried 5 or more diets in their lifetime. 2/3 of women have tried at least 3 times to lose weight in their lifetime. So by this math, I should count for at least 3 women with all the diets and other weight-loss crap I’ve tried. Sigh.
Discovering I’m as nuts as a squirrel in Snickers factory wasn’t a surprise. What shocked me was how normal I am. Of course I knew that lots of women diet but when you make an infographic where the majority of women are trying to lessen themselves, it makes it seem more real. I love me a good infographic. Even when it makes me sad.
This culture of dieting is exactly what makes people vulnerable to those stupid “1 tip to a flat belly” ads. The Washington Post reports today that millions of people got suckered for billions of dollars by these weight-loss schemes. The FTC is suing some of the companies involved for – duh – false advertising but consumers are unlikely to ever get their money back.
So, because I’m curious and I love data I’ve created two (TWO! I know!) polls to ask you guys how many diets you’ve tried and if you ever clicked on one of those ubiquitous ads. Come on, it’s Friday! Friday! Gotta get down on Friday! (Rebecca Black totally endorses my polls. Because every celebrity endorsement you read on the Internet is true.)
And if you’d like more body image stuff or just want to feel better about yourself as a parent by reading how I suck, check out my other articles this week:
My reaction to the Casey Anthony trial verdict: To feel less safe. Because everything is about me. (Shine)
Top 10 grossest things kids do. Just in case the eating-raw-eggs thing wasn’t enough for you. (Redbook)
The Supreme Court ruled that violent video games are more likely fairy tales than porn. Wha…??? (Shine)
Will the new food laws increase weight discrimination? Survey says… (iVillage)
Lingerie cafes brew controversy along with coffee. Who wouldn’t want their double latte with some double D’s? (iVillage)
Vogue Italia features 3 plus size models on its cover. They’re still naked though so don’t get too excited. (iVillage)
It seems to me that the majority of women are ALWAYS on one diet or another. When I was a kid we’d talk about going on diets (and how fat we were) partly, I think, because it made us feel more grown up. I also remember seeing an ad for a weight loss supplement that featured 2 young girls playing in one of the girls’ mother’s room, where they found her stash of diet pills. The conversation (oddly enough, in French, with English subtitles) then turned to how BEAUTIFUL the mom was, and how she stayed so thin by taking the pills! Way to get girls hooked at a young age, diet industry!
I grew up through my mother trying SlimFast, the cabbage soup diet, Weight watchers x3 Jenny Craig plus more. I’ve limited my diets to WW (which worked for me), Slimfast (for 2 days before I realised I was being stupid) and Lite n Easy (similar to Jenny Craig) – that’s more to support The Boy who’s trying it.
It’s funny though – I always thought it was only women who fell prey to these fads. The Boy has shown me that fad diets affect men and women equally I think.
About 10 years ago I’ve tried a few diets, but it’s not for me. After that I became completely allergic to the word “Diet”, maybe because it starts with the same letter as “Death” LOL.
I love your new picture, so stylish!
Wow you’ve been doing a lot of writing lately! Good stuff, as per usual. Before I started bodybuilding, I definitely wanted desperately for the ‘magic diet’ to work. Not that I was ever very strict about adhering to any of these things, but you know, that’s life.
I’ve been tempted to try fad diets as a week long experiment, but not like atkins or anything. I might go veggie for a week or raw for a week. I think in my case the only difference between those two would be uncooked broccoli though. Or perhaps paleo for a week. You know, all those fun ones. I won’t likely keep any of them though… it would just be for S’s & G’s. I like the way I eat too much!
I have been on weight watchers several times, I tried south beach, clean eating, jackie warner’s clean eating, several diets I invented, and I am now on the 17 day diet, which is not too bad.
Glad to know I am normal.
I can’t wait to read the rest of your articles.
I didn’t know you were writing in so many other places! Great articles. I’ve tried 5+ for sure but do I get redeeming points for not clicking on the flat belly ads? 🙂
I wouldn’t say I’ve ever been on an actual “diet”. I have definitely tried to eat healthier, tried to cut out certain things, etc. Are those diets? I don’t know, but Ive never done weight watchers or anything like that.
I have tried so many diets — but many of them I only lasted 1-2 days (hello Master Cleanse!). I don’t know why I put myself through that.
Even when younger , I would just eat less and be active. I never went on any prescribed diet plan. I do remember seeing my mom eat Melba toast and hard boiled eggs. Perhaps that explains everything 🙂
I’ve never tried an particular “official” diet (like Atkins or Weight Watchers) but I have developed my own “diets” a few times– once as a manifestation of a mild eating disorder. I say “mild” because it only lasted for a couple of years and I’m pretty sure it was induced as a side effect of some medication I was on at the time, but we’re talking about eating rules that had active teenaged me living on about 800 calories a day at one point.
I do still struggle with my weight, but at least now it’s because I’m actually clinically overweight, not because of some kind of body dismorphic issues. The thing that works best? Just counting calories, trying to eat a wide variety of as-unprocessed-as-possible foods, and exercising a little every day. That is, it works when I make the effort to actually DO all that. And right there’s the problem: self-control.
Oh geez, it’s depressing to think how many different diets I’ve been on since high school. There’s a reason why we’ve all been on so many- none of them work!
I got my first diet book free from Grape Nuts when I was 12 years old. That diet book said to eat mostly carbs–that figures since it was free from a high carb cereal. That was the 70’s. Then in the 80’s, soda and everything else went sugar-free. Dexatrim was quite popular then. Then Atkins with low carbs was introduced. The 6 small meals came at the same time as all-you-can-eat buffets popped up everywhere. The 6 small meals were supposed to replace the 3 regular meals but I think they just got squished together somehow, which is how I think the Fourth Meal was introduced. No wonder people in this country are so confused! You can’t follow all of this crazy advice at once!
So I’m just back to watching portions and having time in the day where I don’t eat for a while so that I actually am hungry sometimes. Of course, more fruits and vegetables.
🙂 Marion
I’m in with the 5++ group. I’ve tried Metabolife (oh, how I miss thee!), SlimQuick, TrimSpa, Herbalife protein shakes, Herbalife cleanse, Jackie Warner’s plan, SlimFast, and Weight Watchers. There might be more in there that I’ve forgotten about.
I’m now back at Weight Watchers, but using it more as a way to stay accountable to myself while moving toward Intuitive Eating.
My most serious attempts have been Weight Watchers, calorie counting and nutrition coaching from Lindsay (leanbodieshf). I had brief flirtations with South Beach and The Hormone Diet but was able to tell right off that they were not plans I could live with. Intuitive eating makes the most sense to me, but I’m still working on that.
I have a friend who did Herbal Magic and lost a bunch of weight really fast. Then gradually started putting weight back on when she went off the plan. Now she is starting a new diet that involves meal replacement shakes from a MLM company rep. In her words, she wants to ‘get skinny’. And she wants it to happen fast.
On the one hand, I shake my head at the quick fixes that don’t always work, and if they do are generally not good long term solutions. On the other hand, I understand the ‘I want to get skinny NOW’ feeling. Doing it the ‘right way’ is often a long and painful process, and even then there is no guarantee that you will get skinny and stay skinny.
I don’t know what my point is here, other than saying it’s all very confusing and frustrating!
25+ for the win!! Woo-HOOOO!!!
Oh, wait. Is that not a good thing? 😉
Also, FYI, I’m TOTALLY stealing this line:
as nuts as a squirrel in Snickers factory
And about the raw eggs . . . have you ever made homemade Hollandaise sauce? Or homemade mayo? You can make them in the food processor or blender and it’s all raw eggs and the oil of your choice (well, if you make Hollandaise, it’s butter – but you can use pastured butter!). I wouldn’t recommend eating enough to get the equivalent of a whole raw egg, though: you’d have to eat almost 2 cups of mayo . . .
When I was in high school I used to go on a very-low carb, low-calorie diet (bad breath and feeling dizzy is what I remember as the results), lose lots of weight, then my body would rebel and I’d binge until I gained it all back, then some. Several years and thirty extra pounds later, I gave up on dieting, despairing that I was meant to be heavy (ish), and ended up losing weight! You’d think I’d have come to my senses after that, but losing weight made me want to lose more weight, so I tried the Rice Diet combined with severe calorie restriction, thus entering what I call the “Calista Flockhart-looking years.” When I quick smoking, I couldn’t keep my calories so low (hello, appetite) and went back up to my normal weight. I haven’t dieted in years. I’m always tempted, though. It’s like it just doesn’t sink in that diets really don’t work….
I’m not sure how to answer! I grew up on a constant diet of eat as little as possible. And then a vegan diet, which helped with the eat as little as possible. YET, I thought the grapefruit diet, atkins, the zone etc, were all crap.
Raw eggs? Ew. If they aren’t being consumed in raw dough, they shouldn’t be consumed at all.
I had tried at least 3 diets before I finished elementary school. I was honestly surprised the stats were this low. People have been eating for thousands of years. Isn’t it ironic that now we have so much available to us that it is so difficult to know how to eat?
I was initially upset by the verdict in the Anthony trial. Then I read an interview by the juror that said she was sick about it, but couldn’t find someone guilty unless the prosecution proved it beyond reasonable doubt. Then I understood and found the jurors courageous.
I don’t buy Anthony’s defense. I think she did it. I don’t fear for my children’s safety because Casey Anthony is not their mother. And Anthony admitted to making up the kidnapping story. So either Casey Anthony did it, or Caylee did accidentally drowned, Casey didn’t bother to call 911, but stuck her daughter in the trunk of the car and dumped her on the side of the road. Either way, I don’t feel my children are any less safe. I did read that in one of Anthony’s letters to a fellow inmate, she was considering adoption after being released from prison, and that does scare me, even if her version of the story is true.
This is an odd one for me as I never really did participate in a diet — not exactly at least. I didn’t view it as a diet as much as a necessity or visual representation of worth — diet truly never crossed my mind – except when thinking about my mother who probably has been on every diet in the book.
Occasionally I would buy diet aid products in an attempt to “fix my mistakes” but even then it wasn’t as a result of a diet mindset… I know that must sound contradictory, but it really wasn’t like that with me – nor is it now.
The dieting industry to me is a self-loathing industry and it breaks my heart 🙁
(p.s. I love data too!)
I thought for sure there’d be someone in the comments who’d tried more diets than I, but NO!! I’m amazed. Here you go, Charlotte, for your entertainment:
(beginning at age 10)
Calorie Counting, the “Yeast-Free” diet, the Bikini Diet, The 3-day Diet, The Teen Diet, The Rotation Diet, The Cabbage Soup Diet, Slim-Fast, Jenny Craig, The California Diet, Weight Watchers, Fat-free Diet, The Hawaii Diet, High-Protein/Low-Carb, Phen-Fen, Vegetarianism, Veganism, Body-For-Life, The Zone, South Beach, Master Cleanse, Fasting, Raw Foods, Juice Only, Atkins, and probably 10 more I can’t even remember!! Hahaha, it’s absolutely ridiculous.Needless to say, “Intuitive Eating” has been a major challenge for me–I am tempted to diet on a daily basis. But I KNOW it is the only way to sanity for me, so I keep at it.
I know I’m going to sound like a conspiracy theorist by saying this, but it’s been stuck in my head this week that maybe the prevalence of eating disorders in the United States has been directly caused by the government’s support of low-fat diets. Think about it: low fat diets are difficult to adhere to because they don’t achieve satiety. Of course you’re going to go food crazy if everything you’ve been told to do is incredibly difficult to do, and doesn’t give you the results you want. After rebounding a couple times, I can see where disordered eating plus media/social pressure plus any propensity an individual might have for getting an eating disorder could result in the full-blown clinical diagnosis.
That’s not even touching on increasing dietary fat to improve good cholesterol levels (which you recently blogged about) — or the fact that trans fats and polyunsaturated fats (margarine!) have been linked to cancer.
That said, I’ve tried the following, mostly for weight loss purposes (even if I was lying to myself and everyone else by saying it was for “health” or “the environment”): calorie restriction, vegetarian, vegan, raw (which lasted, like, two days), and calorie cycling. And I sort of wanted to do The Zone and glycemic indexing, but I never really went for it. So, I guess that’s five. My current diet is “I don’t give a damn, please pass the cake.” Though I do keep more whole wheat products around nowadays.