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Photo Essays Explore The Way We See Overweight Women (And They See Themselves)
You may have heard that too little weight gain during pregnancy—or too much—can genetically program a fetus for future obesity. Or that being obese can increase a pregnant woman’s risk of gestational diabetes, blood clots and miscarriage. Now researchers at Wake Forest University have found yet another danger associated with excess weight and pregnancy: It could negatively affect a developing baby’s brain. More
If I had one wish for every woman this year, it would be this: Forget about trying to lose weight; just go out there and kick some ass.
When I used to do personal training, I would always advise clients to not weigh themselves. Yes, that went against the advice of many traditional weight-loss and fitness programs, but here’s the thing: Getting on the scale is a recipe for disaster. In my experience, it only furthered the anxiety, shame and low self-worth for many women when the scale didn’t read exactly what they wanted it to (and does it ever, really?). Not only that, but because people traditionally weigh themselves first thing in the morning, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that starting your day off with feelings of self-loathing is not healthy.
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There’s a growing body of research on how obesity can be ‘programmed’ in the womb—and a growing campaign to thwart America’s obesity ‘epidemic’ by targeting pregnant women. We’re all for public health agendas aimed at increasing maternal and fetal health. But the trend toward blaming obesity rates on women’s choices is worrying—don’t pregnant women have enough to think about without being responsible, literally, for the weight of the nation? More
The root causes of America’s obesity problems are too complicated to distill into simple sloganeering like “Obesity is a disease, not a decision.” Yet that’s exactly the tack an Indiana hospital is taking with a series of billboards designed to attract people to its weight-loss and bariatric surgery services. More
Remember when we told you earlier this week that experts say divorce leads to hair loss? Well now they’re telling us that marriage can lead to even more unhealthy consequences.
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We talk a lot here about the importance of a positive body image, but is that something you can really just will yourself to have? Can you simply look in the mirror one day and decide that today is the day you will love your body, flaws and all? We wish it were that easy, but with the media constantly barraging us with the “perfect body” images (and letting you know just how you can get one in a mere 10 minutes a day!), it can seem like a never-ending battle. So when I heard about a new iPhone app, Body Beautiful, designed to promote a positive body image to women, I was curious. Would this help me muddle through all of those negative messages and stay focused on loving myself? Sounds a bit cheesy, but I decided to give it a try. More
Fat women could trim down if only they weren’t so addicted to junk food. Fat women use food as a love/sex substitute. Fat women pig out on ice cream every night. Find attitudes like those offensive? So does Nancy Upton (and, uh, for the record, so do I). She deliberately set out to skewer those notions in a series of photographs she submitted to American Apparel’s ‘The Next Big Thing’ plus-sized model search. Then she won the contest … More
During last night’s Emmy telecast, I was following the conversation on Twitter. I liked the real-time reactions of everyone from friends to professional entertainment reporters as awards were handed out and truly terrible music played. But there was one recurring theme that really started to bother me: people giving unsolicited eating/nutrition advice to actresses, specifically telling some thin women to “eat a sandwich.” While Julie Bowen was winning an Emmy for Best Supporting Actress in a Comedy for her work on Modern Family, Twitter lit up with jokes about how her breasts looked saggy (“Maybe she should have won for least-supported actress!”) or how thin she looked. Instead of celebrating Bowen for her achievement or her hard work, too many people chose to focus on her looks. More
Don’t you just love it when you’re standing in the check-out line of the grocery store and you find yourself surrounded by all of these “get fit by tomorrow” headlines? We’re put off by media that promises unrealistic amounts of weight loss (this week!) and unrealistic bikini bodies (in just 15 minutes a day!), but we have to wonder why we women continue to buy these lies. No matter how much we want to believe that we can drop 30 pounds in 30 days or wake up to slimmer thighs, these empty promises just set us up to fail. When the end of the month rolls around and 25 of those 30 pounds are still there or our abs don’t look one smidgen flatter, we wind up feeling worse about ourselves and our bodies. More
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When society is not busy equating weight to health, doctors are busy lamenting the fact that BMI is a more accurate indicator. Now two new studies are furthering the debate over fat versus skinny and just how we determine who is healthy. What they found was neither body type automatically means you’re healthy or unhealthy. More
Look at any magazine cover, open any newspaper or watch any talk show and there’s a really good chance you’re going to see a discussion about “fat”. Is a Lack of Sleep Making You Fat? 12 Fitness Tips for Fat Folks, Does Seeing Fat People Cause Overeating? Are Fat People to Blame for Global Warming? We even had a discussion last month wondering if our society was too fat-friendly. More
Anyone who’s ever seen TV shows like The King of Queens and According to Jim knows that when a fat guy is married to a hot, thin chick, the union is an inevitably happy one, filled with zany pratfalls, mildly witty banter, and, ultimately, massively profitable syndication. Well, now there’s scientific proof. A new study published in this month’s issue of the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science reveals that, “consistent with predictions derived from interdependence theory, normative resource theories, and evolutionary perspectives”—i.e., by watching Kevin James movies—“husbands were more satisfied initially and wives were more satisfied over time (when) wives had lower (Body Mass Indexes) than their husbands.” This doesn’t bode well for me and my six-pack. More
When did relationships become less about true love and compatibility and more about how much the other person weighs?
In a new research study, AskMen.com and Cosmopolitan.com polled 70,000 people about how the modern man and woman thinks for their “Great Male Survey” and “Great Female Survey”. While the findings revealed some typical man-like behaviors, like 32% saying beer is the ultimate guy’s drink and 48% saying they would punch a colleague in the face, nearly half said they would dump their female partner if she became fat. More
I used to stand in front of the mirror and wish my butt was bigger, my thighs were fatter and I was about three inches shorter.
I was 13 and it was the era of skin-tight designer jeans—a fashion that didn’t complement my growing, stick-thin body. Gloria Vanderbilt, Calvin Klein and Jordache jeans—all the girls had to have them. And the tighter the fit, the better they looked. But with the body of a 10-year-old boy (which I still have in many respects), those jeans were anything but the hip-hugging, body-accentuating pants they were meant to be. More
