Health at every size

Last week, the Ontario Medical Association called for menus at chain restaurants and in schools to display calorie counts, as part of an ongoing effort to prevent obesity.

But what if calorie counting doesn't actually help—and can hinder your body's natural efforts to maintain an ideal weight?

That's one of the premises of Health at Every Size: The Surprising Truth About Your Weight by Linda Bacon, Ph.D. As a professor of nutrition and a psychotherapist, she is well aware of the issues involved where weight, health, and body image intersect. She also has personally struggled with weight and body image.

She argues dieters regain weight "because the contributor to your body weight, such as what, when, and how much you eat, as well as how you expend energy… are not completely under conscious control." As dieters lose weight, the body's own weight regulation system kicks in: in particular, lowering the amount of a hormone called leptin, which suppresses appetite. Over time, the amount of leptin produced is lowered and so your body's natural "setpoint"—the weight it struggles to maintain—is increased.

In other words: dieting can make you fat over time. Bacon points out that a 1970s research study showed that adult weight stability over time was the norm, with an average 60 year old weighing about 5 pounds more than an average 30 year old. By doing the math she notes that would be about 50 calories extra a month over 30 years—or a regulation of energy of about 99.9 per cent.

Listen to your body, not the scale

With that kind of regulation system, Bacon suggests, individuals would be better off learning their body's own cues around hunger and satiety, rather than focusing on the calories in particular foods. And as a society we need to accept that health is not just about the numbers on the scale, but about an entire lifestyle. Focusing solely on weight, calories, and dieting, may result in shame and a sense of failure that actually inhibits people from becoming active and vital.

To that end, she developed—and studied—the programme she calls Health At Every Size, or HAES. 

The basics of the HAES program are:

• Accepting and respecting the natural diversity of body sizes and shapes.
• Eating in a flexible manner that values pleasure and honors internal cues of hunger, satiety and appetite.
• Finding the joy in moving one’s body and becoming more physically vital.

Rather than focusing on weight loss, the programme focuses on respect for one's own body and health goals other than losing weight: Eating more nutritiously, and becoming more active—without the calorie counting.

Did it work for the women studied? Yes and no. "Did the HAES women lose weight? The answer is no—at least not enough to be considered scientifically significant. But neither did the dieting women." So what did the HAES women gain? An increase in self-esteem and a renewed interest in vitality and good health—as opposed to just losing weight.

To quote Bacon, "If there is one message to take away from this book, it's this: Start living life fully now, in your present body, because waiting until you lose weight is a big old waste of time."

For more information, visit Linda Bacon's website

This article is original content on More.ca