Companies that are hawking diets and other weight loss products claim to be interested in your health. Really? They're interested in your wallet. Ditto for "reality shows" that feature competitive weight loss. And there is a growing awareness that these products and programs are futile at best and dangerous at worst.

A great editorial titled "Weight-loss industry masks its economic interests with bogus health concerns," writes about the realities of our thin-is-in culture, with a focus on the new academic field known as fat studies.

For several decades, scholars in the social sciences have shown that when it comes to people’s attitudes about weight in the United State, thin is good and fat is bad. Fat people suffer from harassment and discrimination; thin people live in fear that they will gain weight and lose status...Fat studies scholars ask why we oppress people who are fat and who benefits from that oppression, arguing that weight, like height, is a human characteristic that varies across any population. Fat studies, then, resembles other academic disciplines that question discriminatory practices based on race, ethnicity, gender or age.

Essays like this have helped open my eyes to the fact that most diets really aren't about health, they're a form of status-seeking. And this status-seeking can only exist if larger people are considered second-class citizens. It's no different than discrimination based on gender or skin color.

Of course, there's a lot of money to be made in keeping people as second class citizens, as long as they can strive to become like the "rest" of us. And one of the most onerous examples of this is the show "The Biggest Loser." I've never seen the show and have no real desire to see the show- I've lived it. Basically, the show is based on the notion of "competitive weight loss," and shaming and starving people into losing weight. A great article in the New York Times took a long, hard look at whether this show was endangering the health of the contestants.

The series also highlights the difference between the pursuit of engaging television and the sometimes frenzied efforts of contestants to win, perhaps at the risk of their own health. Doctors, nutritionists and physiologists not affiliated with “The Biggest Loser” express doubt about the program’s regimen of severe caloric restriction and up to six hours a day of strenuous exercise, which cause contestants to sometimes lose more than 15 pounds a week.

At least one other contestant has confessed to using dangerous weight-loss techniques, including self-induced dehydration. On the first episode of the current season, two contestants were sent to the hospital, one by airlift after collapsing from heat stroke during a one-mile race.

{snip}

Medical professionals generally advise against losing more than about two pounds a week. Rapid weight loss can cause many medical problems, including a weakening of the heart muscle, irregular heartbeat and dangerous reductions in potassium and electrolytes.

“I’m waiting for the first person to have a heart attack,” said Dr. Charles Burant, a professor of internal medicine at the University of Michigan Health System director of the Michigan Metabolomics and Obesity Center.

“I have had some patients who want to do the same thing, and I counsel them against it,” Dr. Burant said. “I think the show is so exploitative. They are taking poor people who have severe weight problems whose real focus is trying to win the quarter-million dollars.”

The contestants were also required to sign waivers that said "no warranty, representation or guarantee has been made as to the qualifications or credentials of the medical professionals who examine me or perform any procedures on me in connection with my participation in the series, or their ability to diagnose medical conditions that may affect my fitness to participate in the series."

What perhaps absolutely gobsmacked me (though really isn't that surprising, when you think about it) is how the show essentially muzzles any prior contestants who might criticize the show.

Shortly after a reporter started contacting former contestants to interview them about their experiences, a talent producer on the series sent an e-mail message to many former contestants reminding them that “serious consequences” could ensue if they ever talked to a reporter without the show’s permission.

To do so could subject them to a fine of $100,000 or $1 million, depending on the timing of the interview, according to the e-mail message, which was obtained by The New York Times. The show’s producers did provide an opportunity to interview several former contestants, but the interviews were conducted with an NBC publicist listening in.

I don't know about any of you, but this sure sounds like a cult to me. Each time we watch the show or buy the products, we're encouraging such insanity. And I think it's high time that we stopped.

Low blood pressure and orthostatic hypotension (a massive drop in your blood pressure when you go from sitting to standing) frequently accompany eating disorders, and I am no exception to this. A recent letter my dad received from our health insurance company provided such a fantastic cure that I had to share it here:

Step One: Get initial blood pressure reading.

Step Two: Read first paragraph.
"As a valued customer of [Health Insurance Company], we want to inform you of an exciting new contest. [Health Insurance Company] is committed to [this state's] health through our unique mission and believe in supporting healthy lifestyles. That's why we're proud to join forces with [local TV station] and The Parade Company for the Biggest Loser: [Big City] Edition.

Step Three: Repeatedly use four letter words and contemplate ripping letter into small shreds and igniting it on the grill when you make s'mores as part of your new anti-anorexia healthy lifestyle. Your face may turn red- this is a normal side effect of rising blood pressure and should be expected.

Step Four: Read second paragraph.
"The contest is simple. Anyone can enter at [website] by telling us their story and why they want to change their life through healthy weight loss. The deadline to enter is July 24. [Health Insurance Company] and [local TV station] will then select six contestants and track their progress towards a healthier future. One of the six contestants will go on to be named [state's] Biggest Loser, win some great prizes and ride on a float during America's Thanksgiving Parade."

Step Five: Feel face turn from red to crimson. Some veins may emerge, especially on the forehead and neck. Again, this is a normal side effect of increasing blood pressure.

Step Six: Read last paragraph.
"It's about eating well and exercising to lose weight, and [Health Insurance Company] is looking forward to helping people take the first step towards a healthier lifestyle. We encourage you to check out the contest details at [website] and spread the word to your employees."

Step Seven: Get another blood pressure reading. Higher? Congratulations! You've cured your low blood pressure. Now it's time for some matches.

Of course, I would like to send the health insurance company links to educated, informed opinions about the general ineffectiveness of dieting (yes, it's still a diet whether you call it a "lifestyle change" or a "contest") and of the health risks of the Biggest Loser in particular. I would love for them to read in detail about my own former workplace's Big Fat Loser contest and how I wound up quitting to save what little sanity remained after being inundated with posters tallying people's weight loss and signs saying "Nothing tastes as good as thin feels."

I would also really REALLY like this Health Insurance Company to know that there are many different aspects to a healthy lifestyle, such as, I don't know, not having an eating disorder. The jury is still out as to whether obesity significantly raises mortality risk; it's not for eating disorders. A girl with anorexia is ten times more likely to die in the following year than a classmate without anorexia. This is the same douchebag insurance company that refused to cover a DIME of my last residential treatment stay because they said it "wasn't medically necessary" or that the facility I went to wasn't in-network. It depends on which denial letter you read, but the results are still the same. Never mind, of course, that I was in and out of the ER several times a week with hypokalemia, was in ketosis, had irregular EKGs, and was underweight and still dropping rapidly.

Committed to healthy lifestyles, my anorexic ass. They're committed to paying out as little money as they possibly can, and they think that by supporting crash dieting, they will save money in the long run and look good in the short run.

Have I cured your low blood pressure, too? Writing this sure cured mine!

Those of you who have been reading this blog from the beginning know firsthand of what happened when I returned to work after a six week leave for severe depression and anorexia and stumbled upon a workplace weight loss contest. For several months (until I quit in protest), I lived with calories, fat grams and sugar grams labeled on the coffee creamers, having the bowl of chocolates I kept on my desk forcibly removed (by vote no less! And might I add that I did not get to vote in this Survivor-esque "election"), and as much food/weight chatter going on outside my head as there was inside. Charts of pounds lost hung in the break room, but I did succeed in having those removed. I also removed the label on the coffee creamer, but the damn thing kept reappearing. And I kept removing it.

Keep in mind, I worked at a health department, who really should know that rapid weight loss is the least likely to be maintained. And these contests are only becoming more popular, not the least thanks to the popular show "The Biggest Loser."

But nowhere in the NY Times coverage was any dangers of losing too much weight, even when one of the men interviewed said that he went a little overboard. The article said this:

“I wanted to win, and I blew everyone away,” said Christopher Fallon, 36, a medical sales representative from West Orange, N.J. Mr. Fallon participated in a three-month diet bet with nine other colleagues, everyone contributing $100 to a winner-take-all pool. At a sales meeting a few weeks before the end of the bet, Mr. Fallon’s fellow bettors realized that he was way ahead.

“When I saw Chris at the gym at 6 a.m. looking skeletal, I knew it was over for me,” said one colleague, Carolyn Kramaritsch.

Mr. Fallon admitted that he enjoyed vanquishing his peers even more than losing the pounds. “I didn’t even need to lose much weight,” he said, “but when I saw everyone else, I thought, ‘I just won $900!’ ”

And that won't even pay for one day of inpatient or residential treatment for an eating disorder, so Mr. Fallon was lucky, indeed.

Why won't anyone say how dangerous this is? No one appeared remotely concerned that this man lost too much weight, just that they might lose their bet. Raise your hand if this makes you proud of humanity... I can't tell you how many stories I've heard from men and women with eating disorders whose illness was triggered by a pact to lose weight or eat healthier. Yet dieting and exercise are treated as if they are fail safe and no ill can possibly come from a group of people trying to see who can lose the most weight. People on pro-anorexia sites do this, and people judge these "silly girls" who are no different from anyone else. It's not healthy, period.

“It makes life easier if everyone around you is cutting calories, and the amicable competition keeps people driven. You are less likely to eat bad things from the candy jar,” says nutritionist Joy Bauer.

Yeah, except if you're the person who realizes that dieting is a) futile, b) stupid, and c) not likely to increase your health in the long run and then you realize you are completely shut out of this. To me, that was the worst part of the workplace diet bonanza: I had nothing to discuss with my co-workers. All they would talk about was food, weight, and exercise, and I couldn't or wouldn't participate. I was totally isolated and desperately lonely in a time when I really needed the support.

Nor does this "diet betting" address the really sticky issue of weight loss: how to keep it off. Figuring out how to lose weight has proven much easier than figuring out how to keep it off. A lot of it is, I'm guessing, the body defending its set point weight. But even if it weren't the case, a crash diet is unlikely to involve real and lasting weight loss and even less likely to make you healthier.

You just never read about that.

It seems that more and more workplaces are embracing the Weight Watchers at Work-esque programs. I've dealt with it, and wound up quitting my job because of it.

I resisted ripping down all of the fliers telling me that "Nothing tastes as good as thin feels."* I created an anti-diet zone around my desk, through the help of my wonderful therapist. I had fun posters, chocolates, you name it.

What I didn't have, and what the wonderful Paul over at Big Fat Blog created, was anti-WW fliers. You can download them here. Post them liberally around your workplace. My favorite places would be in the breakroom/lunchroom, on the vending machines, and in the bathrooms.

We all need these messages.

*I didn't rip those ones down- I got the lady in charge of the Big Fat Losers program to take them down.

Finally, an article that addresses "The Dangers of Competitive Dieting."

I wish this had been around when I was in the middle of The Big Fat Loser hell last year at my office. I wish I could have sent this article around to those parties involved.

I'm still angry at it, yes, but I've mellowed a bit. I mostly feel sorry for the lady who started the contest, a lady whose parents were always putting her on a diet and telling her she was too fat. I saw her at her 'normal' weight, and she wasn't too fat. I understand that- the feeling that you were never good enough, that you were flawed, that you were judged. It was never from my parents, but it was from most everyone else.

But the dangers of that type of competition are HUGE. And horrible. There was one woman I was worried about. Her dieting had almost become an obsession. So I wonder. I also wonder if people began purging or taking diet pills because they couldn't "stick with the program." I don't know.

What I do know is that this kind of weight loss contest (or "wellness contest" as some of them are now known) doesn't help.

I'm still feeling like that smooshy-faced cat because of my tremendous desires to beat my head against my desk.

So. Here's the conversation I overheard with my "favorite" co-worker (she's on the phone with her boyfriend the UPS guy):

"I'm going to go running over lunch...then B and I are going to a spinning class after work...no, I'm sorry. After that I have a basketball game...I don't know why I'm so tired anymore...last night my roommate made broccoli...I never realized how good broccoli tastes, you know?"

Yep. Broccoli will taste good if it's, like, the only damn thing you'll let yourself eat. Maybe she'll bring that to tomorrow's salad bar. Personally, I was going to bring in one of those microwaveable pizzas and sit in there with everyone. I'm kind of glad I'll be around for long enough to see them gain back all the weight they lost.

Here's the humorous/sad thing: they're talking about doing this again next year.

Which makes me wonder why. I mean, if this whole dieting thing really worked, why would they need to do it again? If dieting worked, you would only need to do it once.

If nothing else, this whole Big Fat Loser has taught me several things, namely how much of a pain in the neck I must have been while I was starving myself. Also, why I don't want to go back. I've only been really, fully able to commit myself to recovery when I understood that life without anorexia wasn't a scary as facing a life with anorexia. It doesn't mean that I necessarily wanted to get better- I didn't. Sometimes I still don't. But I'd rather deal with the fallout from recovery than think of living even longer with an eating disorder.

Yet I still can't believe that medical professionals would do such crazy diet stuff. It drove home the point of just how prevalent the diet mentality is in our culture. That no one would say anything of group weigh-ins, of posters with pro-ana slogans ("Nothing tastes as good as thin feels"), that people would talk solely of these topics. Think if it were an addiction. Like to crack. If someone proposed that we turn the break room into a crack den and had our dealer come in once a week, I don't think that would go over very well. Just think- we could compare who had the most hits, who spent the most, how not to get caught with the stuff.

Or we could all turn into a bunch of sex addicts. I could say to my co-worker "You should see the nice piece of ass I brought home last night. And I plan to do three guys tonight- I'm trying to break my old record of two guys." Or porn up in our cube walls. Nuh-uh. I can almost guarantee that someone would come in and counsel everyone and we'd all have STD testing. No one is giving my co-workers an eating disorders test. No one is saying "Enough. You're not being healthy anymore." They're just cheering each other on.

And not only do I worry about these women, I worry about their children. In a child's mind, if mommy's going to go on a diet to get healthy, then I should too. People with AN tend to think quite concretely about some things. If a food is healthy, then I shouldn't eat it. It's bad. A mother's diet doesn't cause an eating disorder in her child. But it could set off a series of events, especially when people so some crazy ass things like I've seen at work. Eating healthy is good. I love fruits and vegetables. I try not to eat processed foods, and I watch my salt intake. That's not bad. But exercising 2-3 times per day...don't you have anything better to do? More effective ways to spend your time, energy, and money?

I know I do.

See, here's the weird thing about working with a bunch of women on a diet. All they talk about are fat grams, calories, and clothing sizes. I feel like I'm back in treatment! One woman was talking about how glad she was to fit into an old pant size. Yippee for you.

The lady who is in charge of this "Big Fat Loser" contest knows about my eating disorder, having told her in order to have her remove those damn posters in the break room (er, weight room?) She has been singularly kind and sensitive. She even checked my book out from the library. This tickles me greatly; however, I kind of wished she would have bought the silly thing from me. I could have autographed it! And earned a couple of bucks! Gone for a latte, even!

Ah, the days when I had money.

So I'm assuming, since this woman has read nearly 3/4 of the book, that she has a little bit of a clue about eating disorders.

Wrong.

She was tallying the weight loss, and trying to decide in determining the winner/loser for the week whether it should be average pounds lost per person, or average pounds lost per percentage of body weight.

Aren't there bigger things in the world to worry about? Trust me, your ass isn't that big. It isn't nearly on the level of, oh I don't know, world peace and such. If you ask me if I think you're fat, you better know I'm not going there with you. It doesn't matter if I think you're fat, it matters if YOU think you're fat. Half the time when I asked that question, I was kind of fishing for compliments. I wanted to be told how great I looked, how thin I was, how svelte. People didn't see the sallow skin, the dark circles, the protruding bones. I was thin.

How boring.

I think that's a lot of what irks me about this whole weight loss shenanigan. I'm bored of it. Almost bored to tears. I have spent the last seven years of my life thinking basically about food and weight. I don't want to hear much more about it. If you want nutrition information, save yourself the trip to the website and just ask me! I could write the book on nutrition.

If only I could figure out how to read the darn thing.

I need some respect online because I sure don't get it at work.

Gah.

I'm sorry, but thus far I have magnanimously respected my co-workers' right to diet in public. Now why won't they let me NOT diet in public? All I did was put a bowl of chocolates out on my desk. And then the shit hit the fan. They voted that I should remove it. I refused.

What is this- some sort of "Survivor at Work"? You don't get to vote your fellow workers off the island. Nope. I feel like I'm perpetually stuck in high school, and I've been out for almost a decade. C'mon ladies, lets grow up. Do we need a diet club? Really? I don't ask what you did (or didn't) eat for dinner, so don't bug me. If I want to eat chocolate and keep them available for all, then I will. And by the way, I do actually hear you over the cube walls. I'm not deaf. I know when you're gossiping about me.

I had to restrain myself from telling the lady who yelled at me about the now infamous chocolates to "get some more willpower, chica!" But I didn't.

Then there was a mass email circulated updating the "Big Fat Loser" contest (the bank is beating the health department! Horrors!), and a tag line asking everyone to PLEASE respect those who are trying to lose weight and eat healthy.

So would you PLEASE respect my right to eat healthy? This includes chocolates. They're high in antioxidants you know.