Monday 30 December 2013

Because it doesn't work and we all know it

I couldn't help but be amused by the latest weight watchers ad campaign running over here in the UK. The tagline is; "Because it works", puh-leazzzze.

I don't know what planet the slimming industry is on, if they think they can pull that trick again. Of just asserting that dieting does work, when it has clearly failed and millions of people are learning to recognize that.

They no longer have the medical card to pull, or do they? The profession has sold its patients out on the pretence that they're the experts on weight loss. Surely they can only get away with saving the weight diet industry once?

This is effort is partly a tribute to fat acceptance, but it's mostly tribute to the good sense of fat people who've finally woken up to a dud. I don't doubt that it helps that we're surrounded by people who feel its acceptable to take pills to turn their smiles into frowns. Sorry, but if you rely on sunshine or calm out of a bottle, you can hardly tell people to struggle with a primary element of their life force as if that would be less unfeasible.

Though weight watchers has long since relegated its fatter clients to the background, featuring chubbies. Five minute fatties who are basically slim but temporarily expanded due to child birth, grief, depression and other things people expect to get stuff from their doctor for. It can only get away with so much with them too. Despite the fact that obviously they know what is like to be slim, so, know what they're losing/have lost.

Like all slimming lore, it requires fat people to be under the cosh to motivate, read scare others, tragic sad, hunted and haunted, aspiring to anorexia in order to keep the fat phobic engined chuntering on.

I don't believe it is necessary for fat people to hate themselves to keep dieting going. But its certainly felt that the nature of dieting makes it incompatible with self love and kindness towards oneself.  It also help dieters who's too often bitter self denial and reproach finds relief in beating up on fat people.

Fat people are increasingly refusing to go along with this, messes up this equation.

So, keep pretending people can't see their hard won semi-starvation induced weight loss snap back in their faces in a half or a third of the time it took to grind out that loss. And we'll keep questioning why there's nothing better for those who need or want it.

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