The value of weight - what really matters?

This weekend I had the pleasure of attending a sports nutrition workshop hosted by a co-worker of mine. Isn't it amazing how much you can learn about something, even when you've heard it, read it and preached it yourself - but then you hear the words again out of someone else's mouth and it's like you're hearing it for the first time all over again? The topic was nutrition for athletes, and yo-yo dieting; losing weight pre-season and gaining back the same 20 or 30 pounds over the course of the season, only to have to try and lose it again to get in shape for the next season. This cycle is incredibly stressful on the body. Even yo-yo-ing 10 or 15 pounds is hard on the body. We know that yo-yo dieting is not specific to athletes, but to everyone who has lost and re-gained weight once, twice, or ten times because of diets. Diets that are not based on sound nutritional since. Diets that do not support mindful eating, balanced eating and eating for your body's needs. One thing about diets I've mentioned before is how they are not sustainable. Guess what happens when you follow a strict diet for 2 weeks and lose weight, then try to go back to "normal eating"? Weight re-gain is what happens. The cycle has begun  and you are stuck. I want to get you unstuck. There was a person attending the workshop from Germany, and what was so interesting I thought our host did a great job of pointing out to him, is that in this country, as a dietitians, we spend a great deal of our time trying to educate people how to get away from the black and white mentality of being "on" or "off" with healthy eating. That more often then not, a client will not come back to see me if he feels he messed up his diet, failed, or fell off the wagon. This is what is keeping people overweight. This unnatural relationship with food and eating. But even before you can start learning about all sorts of wonderful healthy eating principles, recipes, calories and protein, you have to start in your own head. You have to decide that you're ready and that you're worth it, and that you CAN trust yourself to eat well, eat in moderation, enjoy food and say active. You need to trust the facts- that foods are not "good or bad" but it is the diet mentality, the fear of "falling off the wagon" and the temporary plan of diets which will leave you without reaching your goals.  I feel like what may be the number one most important factor for someone to lose weight, change her eating habits, and maintain whatever a healthy body weight might be for her is how that individual talks to herself in the mirror.

Giuliana Rancic is a celebrity who was recently interviewed on The View and she spoke out about her very personal struggle to get pregnant. She talked about how her doctor strongly recommended that she gain 5 or 10 pounds in order to improve her chances of conceiving. Sadly, as a woman working and living in Hollywood this is not something she has been able to commit to doing -even though it may mean the difference between having a baby of her own or not. I'm not sure how many of you know what this beautiful woman looks like, but she is very thin. She is beautiful, happily married, successful and ready to be a mother - but she cannot face the thought of putting on a few pounds because it may make her a little less of exactly what our society has created as the ideal picture of beauty.  To me, that is heartbreaking. I was literally talking to the TV - "Is she nuts!! Is she really that afraid of what people might say or think if she gains 5 pounds, that she is willing to sacrifice getting pregnant to stay ultra-thin?"  But then I realized, this is not her fault - it is the outcome of our environment, our culture, and the unrealistic, unhealthy ideals we all know have been created over the past few decades. Doesn't everyone see, that there is a strong correlation between obesity rates in our nation and the obsession with dieting, thinness and extreme ideals of beauty?  Beautiful, wonderful people who may happen to be overweight are getting stuck in the diet cycle that is the result of a society so foolishly invested in fad diets and thinness that it is a multi-billion dollar industry and growing each year. The diet industry is banking on the fact that none of their products or fad diets work - that we will continue to gain weight and continue to buy the lies. Throw in a food industry which makes it easier and cheaper to buy 500 calories of corn syrup and trans fat then it is to buy 500 calories of real food and you have one messed up place full of unhealthy people who are set up with ideals and expectations that are not achievable... a place where a woman does not even know if she can afford to gain 5 pounds to meet her daughter.