5 days ago, I read this little article on the Globe and Mail online. It’s called:

“Australia hopes to disgust citizens into losing weight”

I’m hoping that that particular title was the journalist’s creative license and not actually the defined goal stated by the Australian Medical Association.

The premise is that they’ll do what has been used on cigarette packs—show the “gruesome” images of obesity sicken people into a healthy lifestyle.

I find this distressing. As per the article, “The ads would show damaged organs, people drinking body fat, or eating packets of sugar in an effort to shock people into eating more healthfully.”

WHEN WOULD ANYONE EVER DRINK BODY FAT???

This seems to be about reinforcing (or creating) bad body image. Is that really helpful?

As someone who’s had some shockingly bad body image in the past—based on how I perceived pictures of me, of obese people that I would then liken myself to… well, the result was a lot more self-loathing than action. Self-loathing led to self-damaging, i.e., disordered eating, and then more self-loathing when suffering didn’t get me anywhere… Maybe it’s just me, but I see a real potential pitfall in this!

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Add to that the fact that, a Consumer Reports poll revealed recently that 9 out of 10 Americans think they eat right: healthfully, with the proper servings of fruits and veg. Given that one third of Americans are obese, something obviously doesn’t add up here. There is a gap in perception vs reality, in terms of food consumption—and maybe that same gap exists in body image. Maybe people will see those images and think “oh, that’s not me because I eat well.” Obviously there’s a degree of self-delusion going on, anyway (which this article referred to kindly as “we see ourselves as our best selves”). Mission… failed?

It might be wrong to compare apples and oranges—comparing a strategy being employed in Australia to obesity statistics and diet perception in the United States—but I don’t think so. Australia is 6% behind the US on that same obesity index… and in the top 10 states with highest obesity statistics are also the United Kingdom, Canada and New Zealand. So the Mother Country (Britain) and 4 former colonies, all possessing poor habits? Maybe there’s SOME kind of food cultural connection…

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The thing that worked for me wasn’t being made to feel more shame, disgust, or hatred for myself—I had that covered—but instead knowledge (I knew what was “wrong” and “right”—I read Shape magazine! How many ways can you say “diet and exercise are the only way for lasting change”?), looking at causes and consequences in a postive environment (so, being comfortable enough in a supportive environment to begin asking what it was that was making me turn to these unhealthy habits), and having the tools in front of me to make the changes (I had a gym membership through school, I did a learn to run clinic through the Running Room, and I journalled, with the help of a Registered Dietician). I also got therapy.

That’s totally case-specific (though I’m sure it could work for others, too), but it’s also totally not cheap, *and* I was self-motivated—two things that don’t bode well when it comes to public health initiatives. Is this appalling campaign the best possible option to shock the populace out of complacency?

The World Health Organization published in the Bulletin of the World Health Organization a study entitled “The Impact of Pictures on the Effectiveness of Tobacco Warnings“, in which they listed that the warnings were:

1. more likely to be noticed than warning labels without images;
2. effective (and cost-effective) in teaching smokers about the health risks caused by smoking, and in increasing smokers’ *and* non-smokers’ awareness about the health risks; and
3. were linked to increased motivation to quit smoking.

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This article looking at the Canadian experience with the warning labels seems to suggest that it worked… probably… but it’s hard to say to what degree exactly, since it wasn’t the only “stop smoking” initiative tried.

Hm. So if it works, even a little, maybe I need to lighten up?

Well, I’m still thinking thumbs down: a vice and bad eating habits are really not the same thing. You can quit smoking. If you quit food, it’s also considered really bad.

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I guess I’ll leave it to you, three to five esteemed readers, to weigh in (har har):

What do you think of being “disgusted” into losing weight?

I love Fall. After my personal new year’s at Labour Day, things always fall into place for me. Like “resolutions”… goals. Whatever.

I love a good goal! Nothing gets me out of bed every day like having something to work towards.

And today, I got up, and put on my favourite old jeans. I haven’t worn them in over a year, because they haven’t fit.

And now, that’s ME! (Perhaps slightly less jaundiced, with hair and a waist…).

What I’m loving as much as my jeans is that somewhere on the road to this goal, it stopped being *about* the goal and became all about the journey.

Reduced in mass? Sure. But more importantly, I’ve lived—had my weekly tequila, (almost) daily chocolate, occasional treats, and never really gone without… which is SO new to me. I’ve succeeded in mass reduction campaigns before—and much faster—but I paid for those ones. This one: I feel like *I* have been on the receiving end, not giving. Not “learning to live with hunger”. Not agonising over “unsanctioned” foods.

Sure, my eating habits improved and I’m smaller than 4 months ago… I’ve also slept! Re-learned to meditate! Drastically reduced my coffee intake! Hit the gym because I *wanted* to, not because I thought I should! Run my first race in over a decade!

Maybe it’s time to raise the bar? Or maybe I’ll just spend a few days being happy… which, if you’d told me a year ago could be possible while I was in the Hinterlands, would have made me laugh.

Happy is worth EVEN more than my favourite jeans.

Part of this comes from the blogosphere, I have to say. Being able to keep up with others’ habits, ways, attempts, expertise, and favourites has given me a lot of examples of how many different ways a healthy lifestyle can be lived. So thanks to all of you for blogging, for having goals, for living well, and for sharing it. What a great community to be part of!

I like it when things are good. Hope they’re good for you, too.

I love vintage Simpsons. LOVE! And not just: I regularly work in little pop-culture references to my daily life, and the greatest fun is when someone else knows them, too. It’s why I really love other kids of the late-70s. Bless us and all the cultural references we dwell in.

Back to the Simpsons, though: they make a big deal out of the Hallowe’en episodes, and the one that stands out for me is the “Treehouse of Horrors IV”. Marge got kidnapped by the aliens, who want to impregnate her (image source). I don’t actually remember all the details of the episode, but at one point, when Kang the alien is trying to chat up Marge as he moves towards impregnation, he says “Oh, you look lovely this evening. Have you decreased in mass?”

It makes me laugh. I don’t know what it is, if it’s how the alien pings the woman stereotype right on the head, with awkward delivery and totally atypical language, or what… but it makes me laugh.

I am actually a little bit annoyed with myself to BE in that stereotype, wanting to “decrease in mass”… but I have also never been one who believed in settling. Accepting this version of me would be settling… so I will keep the goal in mind, but I’m painting the bigger target on health.

Luckily (?) for me, my appointment at the dietician’s last week helped me put the two in line in a new way. Kelly Anne pointed out that I had gotten my cholesterol under control once before, and that maybe my current unfortunate state had to do with having exceeded my set-point weight. I’m not even out of the normal range on the BMI scale, but I think that my body is still saying, “me no likey!” (Which would be Emperor Kuzco in The Emperor’s New Groove, if you’re keeping track…)

It’s an interesting connection, increased weight and high cholesterol… and whether it’s absolutely correct or not, I’m happy to pack it away in the arsenal of reasons to keep on keepin’ on. Maybe the physical me I’m most comfortable with on the outside is also the physical me with the very healthiest inside. Sold!

I also wanted to update a little from the day that I calorie-counted. As someone with a history of eating disorders, I find keeping numbers out of it is often the best way not to fixate on things… especially since I’ve seen all sorts of truly insane ranges of “celeb dieting targets”. I’m NOT trying to do anything that crazy (I read here that Amanda Seyfried was eating spinach and seeds and thinking it was food—don’t judge me for remembering it, I was just surfing for 2 minutes of mindless diversion and it stuck!), but I did find it useful to have some numbers to let me know where I was and what I was up to.

I thought my 1500 calories was good, too, but Kelly Anne said that 1800-2200 was a great range for maintenance—and, in fact, if I had had a stonking hard workout that day, I might have needed one last feed of about 300 calories to get me up to that level, and that was OK. The best rule of thumb, apparently, is to be sure that the 3 hours before bedtime aren’t spent grazing.

You learn something new every day… and “it’s great to learn because knowledge is power!” Anyone remember where that one came from?

PS: TODAY IS BAKING DAY!!! Come back later to see the glory!

Happy Father’s Day! I think my Dad is one of the cutest EVER—that’s him, 4 years ago, when he came to visit me while I was a student. Poor thing, he was burnt out and while looking at my “wine wheel” that I had picked up in the Okanagan, he fell asleep!

(Please ignore the leopard print wall paper, purple door and pink carpet: I was a renter!)

For a Father’s Day laugh, check out the origins of “Happy Falker Satherhood” over at Cake Wrecks.

In other business: let’s have a quick recap, shall we?

My workout goals for the week were:

1. I will try 3 new classes at the Y
2. I will do cardio for 45 minutes on the other two days
3. I will stretch for at least 20 minutes on all five of these days

And the round-up:

Monday: 1 hour weights in the morning + 1 hour in the BOSU class that maimed me in the evening

Tuesday: relegated to the bike due to BOSU-sprained-ankle—80 minutes done

Wednesday: Monday’s bad ankle + Tuesday’s epic bike ride (sore undercarriage!) meant: day off!

Thursday: I give myself a .5 for biking to work: it’s all uphill on the way there, gently at first and then decidedly for the last 3K. Sweaty!

Friday: supercircuit for 45 minutes, elliptical for 15 to finish off.

Saturday: A 5.5K run + 2K walk at a good clip, >1 hour cycling around town

Sunday: 30 minutes High-Intensity Interval Training (HIIT)

OK: I didn’t hit #1. After the sprained ankle, I was in a “work with what you’ve got” mode until Saturday, when I was on my game again. I had included this goal because I thought it would be a good way to force me to get into the gym regularly—it’s scheduled and it’s new (so not boring). But even with my light injury, I found that it was more efficient for me to go when I wanted to go. Also, I didn’t get a killer workout out of the class, and felt I did better on my own. I’ll do classes again, but since many are now ending for the summer, it will be a fall goal.

#2 I hit in spades! Maybe it was to make up for #1, but I definitely got my cardio in this week. I biked more, for transportation purposes, too.

#3 was about 75%. And by that I don’t mean, “75% of the time, I stretched 20 minutes”, but more like “15″ was the magic number. I’m OK with that—it still means I didn’t rush.

Have I lost weight? I don’t know. But I think I’ll take my measurements today and have something a little surer than the jeans test to go by. I feel great, and that’s pretty sweet by itself!