The Latest News on Eating Disorders

Janet Jackson plans to write a book about her endlessly yo-yoing weight. Ms. Jackson gained, and apparently lost, 60 lbs. last year. Though she doesn’t say she has an eating disorder, that math isn’t healthy on either end. She said she will share both her emotional and nutritional journey, but she is already preempting her diet plan. “It’s different for everyone,” she warns. Sounds like code for dangerous dieting methods. To counter, I give you my favorite EDA saying, “Your body is not the exception to science.” Yes, every body is unique, but no body is built for abuse.

A new study suggests that going to extremes is becoming the norm. Researchers compared the height, weight and BMI of teenagers in 1966-69 and 1995-97. Just as they thought, modern teens are heavier and taller than their predecessors. The average BMI has increased significantly in boys of all ages as well as 18-year-old girls. However, the mean for girls 14-17 stayed the same due to a surprising change in the distribution of BMI. The study showed an increase in the upper percentile BMI values and a decrease in the lower percentile values, implying the thinnest teen girls are getting thinner.

I’m including this last story because it reminds that my extreme overexercising really was a stupid idea. Not only did it screw up my knees and shoulders, both of which healed significantly once I stopped my intense daily routine, it probably didn’t keep all that much weight off. Overweight volunteers at the University of Leeds were put on an exercise regime designed to burn 500 calories a day. And yes, that is a lot, a number I would have been able to live with. The results? “By the end of the 12-week study, some exercisers had lost a staggering 32 pounds. But five of them actually had gained weight, as much as four pounds… Most volunteers fell somewhere in the middle, losing only a few pounds despite the regimen.”

“Simple math tells us that it takes a tremendous amount of exercise to burn a meaningful number of calories. Depending on your weight, for example, a mile jog might burn about 100 calories. In theory, that means it would take 35 such jogs to lose a single pound. But as this study demonstrates, the math doesn’t always work so neatly. The body does everything it can to steal back the calories you are so desperately trying to work off, studies have found, and different bodies do it at different rates. Resting metabolism may slow, for instance, or appetite may increase as the body strives to maintain its weight. Some research suggests that heavy exercisers may unknowingly move more slowly during the periods when they aren’t exercising.”

So that means we should all be exercising to stay healthy, not to try and whittle that extra smidgen of flesh from our calves. Whatever Janet Jackson has to say, don’t listen, this concept of moderation really does work.