Here's a copy of an article about embracing imperfections as a path to success by Dr. Yoni Freedhoff, M.D. which was published Aug 10, 2014 in the Globe, Health Advisor.

Aim for the healthiest life you can enjoy,
not just tolerate.

Would it surprise you to learn that according to a recent poll, more than 60 per cent of those who struggle with their weight have failed more than six weight-loss efforts? Amazingly, of those who have failed more than six times, a third of them report having failed more 20 times. An incredible 20 per cent report they’ve failed so many times that they’ve lost count!

Our shared weight-management failures aren’t a great surprise, however. Dieting is predicated on suffering and humans aren’t built to suffer in perpetuity. Yet we keep coming back for more. Every year there’s a new crop of New Year, New You books, each boasting its own set of draconian rules. Oh, you’ve tried a low-carb diet before, hmm, well perhaps this year you should give up dairy and grains. Been there and done that – maybe now eschewing sugar is the way to go.

Why, despite knowing better, do we blame ourselves when the nonsense fails? Could it be a case of suffering from post-traumatic dieting disorder (PTDD)?

Because, really, what are modern-day diets, if not traumas? They’re generally some combination of undereating, overexercising or blind restriction. People on diets are trying to live the healthiest lives they can tolerate, rather than the healthiest lives they can enjoy.

Merely tolerable lives, given food’s starring role as one of our lives’ most seminal pleasures, are understandably short-lived. Many who crash their weights down via overrestrictive diets are surprised when they regain not only what they’d lost, but more. In reality, though, it’s not a shocking outcome given the known negative impact an overrapid loss has on metabolism.

PTDD is not a formal diagnosis, but rather a shared constellation of symptoms that I’ve seen in my practice having worked with thousands of people trying to manage their weights and who have been through the diet trenches. These are people whose recurrent dieting has led to feelings of failure, shame, hopelessness, insecurity and sometimes even deep and abiding depression. Their body images are often worse than when they started dieting in the first place and their relationships with food are anything but healthy – in many cases they feel threatened by the very foods they love most. They can also become socially withdrawn and their personalities can change, which in turn can negatively impact their closest relationships and lead some to believe themselves unworthy of love, marriage, intimacy, health or a normal lifestyle.

The triggers of PTDD lie not just with a person’s chosen diets, but with society as a whole and the hateful weight bias that permeates it. Whether it’s shows such as NBC’s The Biggest Loser, which teaches that scales measure not just pounds, but also success and self-worth, or whether it’s well-intentioned health professionals suggesting that unless a person reaches a particular weight their health is doomed. Celebrities’ weights are endlessly critiqued, with popular magazines shaming women, mostly, when they “pack on the pounds.”

Even a seven-year-old reads in the Harry Potter series J.K. Rowling’s brilliant but incredibly ugly portrayal of one family’s weight as a direct personification of their gluttonous, sloth-like evilness. Society’s overarching message is that thinness is attainable if a person wants it badly enough; failure is simply a reflection of personal weakness and laziness.

People don’t fail diets, diets fail people. Diets fail people because they regularly insist upon the adoption of lifestyles that are merely tolerable. The past 100 years of diets, regardless of their actual recommendations, have tended to be strictly prescriptive paths where dietary transgressions are tantamount to sins.

For dieters to succeed, their approaches can’t be traumatic, nor can we continue to perpetuate the narratives that suggest success is suffering and that scales are somehow able to measure the presence or absence of health. For diets not to be traumatic, we need to understand human nature and evolution; that in an environment where food, in all its succulent, sugary, aromatic, colourful, decadent glory surrounds and tempts us, it is hard to resist the siren call when we’re wired not to.

Rather than deny imperfections, we need to embrace them, and in turn dieters, instead of trying to live the healthiest lives they can tolerate, need to start cultivating the healthiest lives they can enjoy.


Dr. Yoni Freedhoff's book, "The Diet Fix" is featured here at DietHobby inside the BOOK TALK section.    He is a medical doctor; an assistant professor of family medicine at the University of Ottawa; and the founder and medical director of the Bariatric Medical Institute.

For an entire lifetime of almost 70 years, I’ve put tremendous effort into getting my body to, and keeping my body at an “acceptably normal size”. Following every conceivable diet, and every conceivable “non-diet” to achieve this has often seemed like falling down the rabbit hole with Alice, into the deep black hole of Hungerland.

If I have any wisdom at all to share, … something that has worked for me in my lifetime … it would be:

........................Stop waiting for another body to show up...........................

Ragen Chastain of danceswithfat makes some very good points about this in her recent article,
Fat Lives On Hold. She says:

"My life changed drastically and dramatically for the better the day I decided to stop waiting for another body to show up and just take the body I had out for a spin.

I arrived at that decision when, having yo-yo dieted for years, I decided to do the research and find the best diet.  After reading every study I could find about weight loss, I was shocked to find that  there wasn’t a single study where more than a tiny percentage of people had lost weight, and “success” was typically defined as having lost 2-5 pounds.

Based on the research (rather than the constant drumbeat of “everybody knows,“) the truth was (and is) that being thin will probably never happen for me, or most fat people.  So was I supposed to live a joyless life subjected to constant bullying, stigma, stereotypes and oppression all of which I should accept because I deserve it for being fat, hiding my body in shame, putting my life on permanent hold?  Screw that.

I’m here today to suggest this:  If you are putting your life, or aspects of your life, on hold until you lose weight, then whether you decide to practice Size Acceptance and/or Health at Every Size, or try to manipulate your body size for whatever reason, consider taking your life off hold, starting right now. 

Start today!  Do something that you’ve been waiting to do.  Or start planning to do something that you’ve been waiting to do. 

Or start asking questions – like:

• where you got the message that you should wait to do things that you want to do until your body looks different (was it by any chance from people who are profiting from that message?);

• if those messages serve you; and

• if you want to keep buying into that."