DietHobby is my digital Scrapbook. It contains my own articles, videos, and pictures, mixed with copies of other interesting or entertaining articles, videos and pictures, all of which are presented here in a manner that I find personally pleasing. 

The thoughts, opinions, and emotions reflected here are based on my own personal views.  As a consequence of having an open mind, my opinion today might not be the same as my opinion tomorrow.

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  Below is a copy of an outstanding article which I very much enjoyed.

I've spent years trying to get skinny.
Oprah's Weight Watchers ads convinced me to stop.
                                 by Caissie St. Onge

Oprah's Weight Watchers commercials are everywhere. Last October Oprah bought a 10 percent stake in the company and joined its board. Now she's appearing in ads where she tells us that "inside every overweight woman is the woman she knows she can be."

If this were true, it would totally explain why overweight women are overweight; we have a whole extra woman inside of us! But I don't think it is true, because I believe that inside me is just more me. And I have my doubts that there's a better, happier, more acceptable woman inside of Oprah either.

I love Oprah. Longtime Oprah lover over here. Since my tweens, I've admired how she's made celebrities seem like regular people and turned regular people into celebrities. I read the books her Book Club boosted. Hell, I'm wearing a bra she recommended on her "Favorite Things" episode in 2003. I think she has earned every ounce of success she enjoys, so I am glad for her that she made $70 million on the first day of her deal with Weight Watchers. That amount of money will be heavy, and if she binds it together, she can use it to weigh down stacks of her other money so none of it blows away when she opens a window in one of her many beautiful homes.



But by the ninth or 10th time I heard Oprah talk about how we're gonna go on this weight loss journey together, I had an epiphany. I have put on my sneakers and jogged down this road with Oprah before! I cried with joy for her back in 1988 when she dragged a wagon of fat onstage, to represent the 67 pounds she'd lost on a liquid diet. Lord knows I have considered dragging a wagon of fat around to celebrate the three or four times I have lost 60 pounds. Then when it crept back on, just like it did with Oprah, I was glad I never did that. And Oprah has said she regrets that moment, which is probably why she never did it again either, even though we've watched her drop, then regain, a few more wagonloads over the years.

My epiphany was this: Oprah is one of the most accomplished, admired, able people in the world. She has an Oscar to keep all her Emmy Awards company. She creates magic for other people and herself on the regular. So if Oprah can't do permanent lifelong weight loss, maybe it can't be done. Oprah is also crazy rich. If Oprah can't buy permanent lifelong weight loss, maybe it can't be bought. And that sucks.

But it is also incredibly freeing if you, like me, have thought about your weight so many times throughout every day of your life that it becomes as maddening and distracting as if you'd stowed a beating telltale heart beneath your floorboards.

Ever since I wasn't little, I have thought about how much space I am taking up in the world as many times per day as men supposedly think about sex. I have wanted to be the girl who could playfully sit on a friend's lap, or be carried across a threshold on my wedding night. But I'm just not. I never have been.

At my pre-kindergarten physical my pediatrician asked me, "Do you like to eat?" and when I guilelessly said yes, he told me, "Well, you should like it less." In college, I was probably the thinnest I'd ever been in my life, and when I got up the nerve to tell an older classmate who ran with my group of friends that I didn't like it when he gave me unsolicited shoulder massages, especially in front of my boyfriend, he said, "Maybe you're just angry because your thighs are so huge." In front of my boyfriend.

These are just two of two million incidents where someone tried to make me feel small because I was bigger. And I guess it's made me the kind of person who would just stand on a 90-minute train commute every day rather than insinuate myself into an empty seat between two strangers who might sigh as they bring their own thighs marginally closer to make way for the entitled fat monster. But am I not entitled? To a seat? To civility?

As people, we all run into your odd crank every now and again, but I have seen a fat person turn the most decorous individual into an eye-rolling, tongue-clicking social contract breaker simply by daring to try to occupy the assigned seat on her plane ticket. I'm sure it's been a long time since Oprah's flown commercial, or since anyone's had the sack to roll their eyes in her face, but I'm sure she remembers, which is why I can't fault her for still wanting to change. But after trying to change so, so, so many times, I'm starting to realize it ain't me who needs to be different.

I'm not saying you should give up on your dreams of having the body you want. I'm just asking, if you never get that waist, will your life have been a waste? (I see what I did there.) Every day we are bombarded with media, content, and products. Special foods and drinks. Programs and plans. None of this shit has ever worked for Oprah, and it probably isn't gonna work for me or you. Not forever, anyway. Some science has said this.

Speaking of ... every day, that jackass science comes up with another possible reason for the so-called "obesity epidemic" America, and almost every other country, is facing. It's because of portion sizes. It's because of processed foods. It's because of genetically modified wheat. It's because of our microbiomes. It's because of stress and cortisol. It's because of a virus. It's because of insulin resistance. It's because we no longer use scythes to harvest rye. It's because of chairs.

The reason I hear about every piece of news relating to weight loss is because besides having an automatic Google search set up for my name and for the TV show I work on, for years I've also had an automatic Google search for "obesity," so I'll be among the first to know when some doctor comes up with something new I can try. And I've nearly tried it all, with the exception of having several feet of my intestines removed. Yet. That's ... sad.



Maybe someday they will figure out the reason for the rise in obesity, but I do know the reason isn't NOT trying hard enough. Oprah tries harder than anyone, and nearly every other thing she's ever tried in her life has been a smashing fucking success, so she's pretty good at knowing how to try.

I know the reason isn't because you're weak. If you're carrying around 10 or 20, or 50 or 150 pounds more than the tiny friend who always calls herself fat in front of you and you don't kick her in the back of the knee, you're the opposite of weak. You're very, very strong in at least two different ways.

I know the reason isn't because you're a bad person. Unless you gained weight from eating puppies and babies. But if you just ate some pizza like everyone else does all the time without giving it a second thought? What's bad about that? And, yes, eating sensibly is a great idea. Two eggs. Four ounces of chicken. A cup of Brussels sprouts. A third of a cup of polenta. That's what I've eaten today. Very sensible. I've gotten in the habit of memorizing what I put in my mouth so that I can write it down later.

I have years of food journals stretching back to when I should have been writing about my crush on Nicholas from Eight Is Enough and what I hoped Santa would bring me that year. (I probably would have said that I wanted a Barbie Dream House, Wonder Woman Underoos,  size extra husky, and to get skinny. Even then.) And all food journaling has taught me is that sometimes you can whittle down what you're consuming to the point where you barely have to write anything anymore, and you still might never be able to reach your goal before you break.

Do you think Oprah doesn't have the resources to pull together teams of people to tell her what is sensible to eat? And to berate her when she becomes emotional, melts down, and eats a potato with her bare hand? Where is the sensibility in any of that?

I realize there are people who are DYING to tell you what they think about what you should do with your body. It always starts with, "No offense, but..." or, "Not to be mean, but..." And it's always offensive and mean, but also, you probably say things to yourself every day that are way meaner than what any "well-intentioned" "friend" or internet troll could come up with.

You're gonna have to try harder if you want to beat us at our own game, internet trolls. I would pop someone in the chops if they spoke to me the way I speak to myself. And I would bet all of Oprah's money that Oprah says mean shit to herself too.

I've heard some ladies I really like on some reality shows telling other women to, "Get your life," and I think I finally understand what they mean. I think they're saying that it's possible for the person you are today to have a life full of good and worthwhile things that you want without waiting for some transformational moment to take place before you feel you have the right to pursue anything else.

Nobody is doing you a favor by thinking you kick so much ass at your job even if the business suit you are wearing was purchased at Lane Bryant. Nobody is doing you a favor by finding you sexy even when some BMI chart says you don't deserve life insurance. Nobody is owed your gratitude for "looking past" your weight. Those people are just seeing things the way a minimally non-garbage person is supposed to. Everything above and beyond that baseline, you're earning it. You're "getting your life," and the people around you are getting some of their life from you. And if that isn't happening right now, it's not because you've failed to become svelte. It's because the people around you are turd burglars whose biggest accomplishment, apparently, is owning a shorter belt.

You can do what you want. You knew that. But I'm gonna stop wishing that I didn't have dimples on the backs of my hands or that my ankles were more flattered by strappy shoes. I'm gonna stop telling people that they look great and start telling them what I really mean, that's it's nice to see them. And I see you. And I like you so much, just how you are right now, and not a year or five years from now when you may or may not be smaller.

I hope Oprah gets what she wants, and maybe $70 million in one day is the motivator that will finally make it happen for her, once and for all. Hell, according to her latest commercial, she's already lost 26 pounds while loving bread and eating it every single day!

As for me, I think I'm gonna stop wanting something that I might never get even though I'm very good and very strong and I try very hard all the time. I'm gonna take a break on all that, at least for a little while. Let me know how it turns out this time, though, Oprah. I'll love you either way.

Caissie St.Onge is a television writer and producer who has worked with David Letterman, Rosie O'Donnell, Graham Norton, Joan Rivers, Bette Midler, and Paul F. Tompkins. At the time this article was written she is the co-executive producer of Watch What Happens Live! with Andy Cohen on Bravo

The women in this picture are different shapes and sizes, but all are professional athletes at the peak.

It’s not a one-size-fits-all world. Every Diet works for Somebody, but not Every Diet works for Everybody. 

Also, the evidence seems to suggest that Some people can’t lose AND MAINTAIN WEIGHT-LOSS LONG-TERM on Any Diet.

Although as Human Beings, all people share certain physical characteristics, we have genetic variations which make us different from each other.  There are tall people and short people, males and females.  People can have different hair and eye and skin colors. Our facial features differ. 

There are also natural differences in body types. Some people tend to be a pear-shape, - naturally carrying more weight in their bottom half.  Others tend toward an apple-shape, naturally carrying more weight around the middle of their bodies.  Some bodies are shaped like an hour-glass, with a larger top and bottom divided by a small middle. Some bodies are rather straight with bodies that tend to be the same size from top to bottom.  Some are more triangular, having a smaller bottom half and carrying most of their weight in their upper half, chest, shoulders, arms. Some people are naturally more muscular. Some people have a stocky build, while others are naturally lean.

All of these differences are based on differences in Genetics, and mostly people understand and accept these differences. So why is it so hard for our society to Understand, Believe, and Accept that …..just like those other differences,….. the bodies of some people naturally work to collect fat, while the bodies of other people naturally work to stay thin. And, that just like some people are supposed to have blue eyes and others to have brown eyes, some people are supposed to be fat, while other people are supposed to be thin. 

Yet, …as is stated in the compelling article posted below,… our Society’s belief is that a Fat Body is Evidence that a person is Doing Life Wrong.

Or Maybe Fat People
Aren’t Doing It All Wrong
         .....excerpt from article....
         by Ragen Chastain - danceswithfat

Every day we are lied to about dieting, weight loss, weight, and health by people who profit from the lies. We are told that anyone who tries hard enough can lose weight and maintain that weight loss.  This despite the fact that there isn’t a single study, anywhere, in which more than a tiny fraction of the subjects were able to do so. Still, anyone who claims to have a method of weight loss that works seems to be able to get airtime, and to get their idea reported in the news as if it’s fact, despite the actual fact that there is simply no evidence to suggest that it will work.

There are obvious issues with this.  The most obvious is that it contributes to a world where the governments enthusiastically oppress fat people and try to recruit others to do the same. It sets fat people up for a life of yo-yo dieting, and putting the lives we want on hold until we get thin, which will never happen, thus ruining our lives and making the weight loss industry money (to the tune of over $60 BILLION a year,) selling a product that they know doesn’t work.

But there are also consequences that are more insidious. With all the weight loss plans out there we are told all kinds of things will lead to weight loss – the gym, “healthy” eating, vegetarian diet, boot camp workouts, vegan diet, crossfit, paleo diets, yoga, pilates, yogalates, intuitive eating, meditation, you name it and I can pretty much guarantee that someone has made diet out of it.

Of course the truth is that fat people participate in all of these things and remain fat, and that there is no reason to believe that any of them will lead to long-term weight loss. (And let me be clear that not everyone who is involved in these things sells them as a diet, but there are people who do.) But such is our trust in the diet industry that instead of using the opportunity to question stereotypes and beliefs about weight loss and body size, people simply claim that fat people must be “doing it wrong.”

If we are fat athletes, we must be doing athletics wrong (because, we’re told, the only “good” outcome of being involved in fitness/movement/athletics is a thin body.)  If we’re fat vegetarians we must be doing that wrong.  If we’re doing a diet but not getting thin we must not be able to properly measure a quarter cup of rice. If we’re meditating but still fat we must be doing meditation wrong.  

The belief is that a fat body is evidence that we are doing life wrong. And that’s oppressive, and it’s bullshit. If you did something to get thin and you didn’t get thin (especially if you lost weight and then gained it back) then welcome to the “Almost Everyone Club,” you should know that what happened to you is exactly what we would expect to happen based on all the research that exists.

I very much like and agree with the concepts contained in the article  below:

Why I Don’t Wear Makeup
 …. Excerpts from an article
by Aabye-Gayle Fracis-Favilla

Our culture is subtly (and not so subtly) waging war against the body — a result of an unhealthy obsession with youth and perfection. We tell women that they’re beautiful and that they should love themselves. We tell little girls to have self-confidence and that they can be anything they want to be.

But then, and often with the same breath, we suggest they can be beautiful (or confident) only when they are not quite themselves. We sell women (both young and old) products to “fix” or “improve” their appearance — wrinkle removers, concealers, eyelash enhancers, and other colorful cover-ups.

The young want to look mature. The mature want to look young. No one really wants to look like herself. Everyone wants to look unflawed. Feminine façades have become the norm — what’s expected. Maybe you’re born with it. Maybe you bought it (or had your plastic surgeon inject it).

I want to avoid falling prey to a self-erasing mentality when I look at myself in the mirror.

Bodies are imperfect and asymmetrical. Bodies come in a myriad of sizes, shapes and colors. Bodies grow older. I don’t want to view aging as an adversary, which I have to fight or the imperfections of my face and form as mistakes I have to hide. That’s not a safe approach to loving myself well.

I wish I could rid our culture of cosmetic dependence. I wish I lived in a world where every woman was encouraged to be satisfied with her face instead of bombarded by messages offering ways to improve it or cover over it. I wish the majority of our society viewed makeup as an optional accessory as opposed to the required response to any perceived deficiency.

I have enough insecurity that I’m working on. I don’t want to buy or apply more at the cosmetics counter. So I’ve made up my mind about makeup. At least for now, I’m not wearing it.

I don’t mean for this to be a battle cry. I don’t presume to speak for all women. If I’m going to be a woman capable of self-confidence and self-love, then I can’t allow my face to feel like a façade.

My hope is that all people will love their appearance, that wearing makeup (or dyeing one’s hair) won’t be compulsory, but something each person feels free to choose or refuse.

The article below is a keeper.

It definitely
belongs  here in my
DietHobby online scrapbook.
   I love it. 

When Can Women Stop Trying to Look Perfect?
                by Jennifer Weiner  - 1/8/2016 New York Times

As a lifelong devotee of fashion and tabloid magazines, I’ve read dozens of “Beautiful/Sexy at Any Age” features. You’ve probably seen these spreads, showcasing a bevy of lovely women whose faces, fashions, exercise routines and skin-care regimens are laid out to encourage imitation. For years, readers could stare at starlets and actresses and singers in their 20s, their 30s, their 40s and even edging bravely into their early 60s.

Then — nothing. While Vogue’s most recent “Age” issue expanded its range to include a runner in her 90s, and People’s “World’s Most Beautiful” made room for 75-year-old Jane Fonda in 2013, those are exceptions. It’s as if, for the purposes of good looks and sexiness, older women simply cease to exist. Or maybe they turn 60 and go marching, “Children of the Corn” style, into the racks at Nordstrom, never to be seen again.

On one hand, it’s obvious discrimination. The Golden Globes are Sunday night, and the red-carpet parade is likely to include the nominees Lily Tomlin and Maggie Smith, Helen Mirren and Ms. Fonda, proving that a woman can be stunning and stylish when she’s 70, or beyond.

On the other hand, those magazines always gave me — and, I suspect, other female readers — a little hope. Reading into the absences, you could make out a finish line, a point at which you were no longer expected to perform what sometimes feels like a woman’s major duty in life — looking good for men. You could bobby-pin the “babe” tiara atop the next generation’s head, throw away your Spanx and your food scale and enjoy your accomplishments, your grandchildren, your free time.

Sadly, recent events suggest that the finish line has moved — if it existed at all. Consider the fuss over Carrie Fisher, who reprised her role as Princess Leia Organa in “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” almost 40 years after her debut in the original “Star Wars,” when she was 19.

In the decades since the first film, both the actress and her character have dealt with a lot — mental illness and addiction in Ms. Fisher’s case, intergalactic warfare in Princess Leia’s. One might assume, what with the Dark Side to contend with, that the princess-turned-strategist might have found herself too busy to attend Pilates class, or to hunt down coconut flour for paleo pancakes.

But the “Force Awakens” filmmakers determined that Leia should not only be smart and powerful, but she needed to be slender, too. “They don’t want to hire all of me — only about three-quarters!” Ms. Fisher said.

She ended up losing weight for the role. Still, some fans were displeased. Online discussions about Ms. Fisher’s looks raged across social media. When the actress objected, tweeting “please stop debating about whether OR not I have aged well. Unfortunately it hurts all 3 of my feelings,” Kyle Smith, writing in The New York Post, swiftly put her in her place. Ms. Fisher should be as grateful to the studio for making her drop the pounds as she’d be if they’d forced her to quit heroin or cigarettes, he wrote, lazily equating “thin” with “healthy.” Never mind that many of the medications used to treat bipolar disorder can cause weight gain.

But the scorn didn’t stop there. “If she didn’t want the public to talk about her, she could have spent the last 40 years teaching kindergarten,” Mr. Smith wrote of the actress, and the discussion of her appearance. Which makes me wonder whether he’s ever visited a playground. Or eavesdropped during back-to-school night. The truth, as any woman can tell you, is that there’s no place, no profession, nowhere that a woman’s looks don’t matter. Just go live a quiet, private life? Tell it to the women on the London Tube, who say, last month, they were handed cards by people claiming to be from a group called “Overweight Haters Ltd,” which read, in part, “it’s really not glandular, it’s your gluttony … you are a fat, ugly human.”

If that isn’t depressing enough, an unlikely voice has joined the fix-yourself-fatties chorus. Oprah Winfrey is all over your TV, your phone, your Instagram feed, urging women to join her on yet another weight-loss journey with Weight Watchers. “Inside every overweight woman is a woman she knows she can be,” Ms. Winfrey says in the minute-long ad for the company. “Many times you look in the mirror and you don’t even recognize your own self because you got lost, buried, in the weight that you carry.”

Seriously? Oprah Winfrey, with all her influence, all her accomplishments, the school she’s built and the money she’s earned, is still feeling lost, buried, or like she’s not her best and most authentic self? Shouldn’t Oprah, of all people, be open to the possibility that she already is the woman she’s meant to be? And when you’re 61, are you really, still, expected to be fretting over whether you’ve got your “best body”? Can’t you just page through your high school yearbook, eat the way your cardiologist says you should, and call it a day?

Maybe Oprah’s find-that-woman-inside-shtick is unvarnished honesty, or maybe it’s savvy salesmanship. In October, Ms. Winfrey became a part owner of Weight Watchers, investing $43.2 million to purchase a 10 percent stake in the company. She joined its board of directors, enrolled in the program and has been trumpeting her 15-pound loss. She has been less vocal about the paper profit of more than $70 million she made after her involvement was announced.

If she keeps that (15 lb) weight off, she’ll be a statistical outlier. On Weight Watchers, as with any diet, “you lose weight in the short run, and it comes back in the long run,” says Traci Mann, a professor of psychology at the University of Minnesota and the director of its health and eating lab. “Your body senses deprivation and launches all of these changes to make sure you don’t starve to death, to make sure you eat. And they are effective changes — you think about food more, you want food more, it looks tastier to you, you can’t get it out of your mind.” So you eat. And you regain the weight.

Weight Watchers’ business model depends on repeat customers, Professor Mann says, adding, “I’m really depressed that Oprah’s done this.”

While her viewers have long seen Ms. Winfrey’s ups and downs — who can forget the wagon full of fat she schlepped onstage in 1988 after a liquid diet left her 67 pounds thinner — lately, she’s talked more about self-acceptance than she has harped on weight loss.

But just because Oprah’s back on the New Year/New You bandwagon doesn’t mean we have to follow. Each new year, women are encouraged to reduce — to measure out our lives in 55-minute barre classes and four-ounce servings of chicken breast, to adhere to the diet that we’re sure is going to work this time, even if none of the other diets worked any of the other times. Plastic surgeons run ads for injectable fillers, body contouring and laser skin resurfacing to stave off the inevitable.

But what if, instead of investing in paid diets and microdermabrasion, we donated our dollars to worthy charities and gave our time to the food pantry or elementary school? What if we thought about adding things to our lives — new foods, new skills, new classes, new walking routes — instead of taking things away?

“Lose weight and gain so much more,” invites Weight Watchers’ website. If you’re looking for a New Year’s slogan, here’s another one to try — in 2016, let’s look beyond the superficial and all resolve to make more of ourselves, not less.

The author of this article, Jennifer Weiner, is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of twelve books -, ....(some of her fictional novels are personal favorites of mine)....  Her books include: Good in Bed, In Her Shoes, which was made into a major motion picture, and Who Do You Love. She is a graduate of Princeton University and a contributor to the New York Times Opinion section.