Rethinking “Rethinking Thin”
If anyone watches the Colbert Report frequently, you might have seen the interview he had with a woman named Gina Kolata (or as Colbert called her, Pinacolada). Kolata was on the show to market her new book, Rethinking Thin, a book about how obese people may not have any control over their weight. She cites many bits of evidence, though none are convincing. First she uses poll statistics from a University of Pennsylvania study that showed very few obese people were able to lose a significant amount of weight, even while on a strenuous diet and exercise routine. She then goes on to say that obese people are the product of genetics, a force they can’t control. She points out that 80% of children born to two obese parents become obese themselves. She also explains that people with these genes in an environment where food is cheap (McDonalds) is a recipe for obesity, which she links to the high obesity rate for those in the lower economic branches. Finally, she claims that dieting is more harmful to people than being obese because of the unhealthiness of most fad diets.
First of all, how can you claim that obese people have no control over their weight? While there are disorders that make it almost inevitable for people to become fat, the majority of people in our world do not have those disorders. What always gets to me is people claiming to that they can’t do anything about their weight. That is a completely ridiculous statement. ANYONE can lose weight by dieting and exercising. If you cut down on the amount of food you eat, and exercise daily, I guarantee you will lose weight. Even if you only lose 10 pounds in a year, that still shows that you are losing weight. To claim that these methods of diet don’t work for people facing obesity is absurd. It defies the laws of science which state that if you intake less calories than you burn, you will lose weight. It is a formula that doesn’t change for anyone.
The next argument she tries to make is the role of genetics. She attributes obesity in children with two obese parents to the genes that child recieved. Did it ever occur to Pinacolada that maybe the parents had bad eating habits that they passed onto their child? If your parents eat at McDonald’s every day, chances are you will too. I don’t want to hear this genetics stuff because I have seen plenty of skinny people with fat parents. It’s all about the eating habits you acquire. If you are groomed from a young age to eat nothing but low fat foods, vegetables, and other healthy snacks and meals, you are almost guaranteed to retain those eating habits throughout your life.
Finally, an interview with an obese person yielded this statement; “we eat not just because our appetites drive us to but because our psyches do.” All I have to say to that is, EVERYONE’S psyche drives us to eat! We all desire good tasting food and we all want to eat tons of it. The only difference is that people who are not obese have will power. They can say, “I’m not hungry anymore so I won’t eat for the sake of eating.” The second you blame your body or accept that it’s beyond your control, you lose. You will continue to eat unchecked because you feel like there is nothing you can do about it. Instead of buying what is said in this book, continue to take it upon yourself to eat right and exercise. You can lose weight, but it rides on YOU and how determined you are.
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The last name of the author is Kolata not Kolada.
Thank you
Nagjom
I tend to disagree with you. As a person who has always struggled to keep my weight at a ‘desireable’ (by the society’s standard) I know how difficult it is to battle weight gain. I have completely cut off bread, pasta, rice from my diet. I constanly have to think about what I eat and how much exercise I get per day. Because of my built (short and stubby) weight, food and exercise preoccupies a good portion (no pun intended) of my life. Believe it or not - a slice of bread and butter shows a gain of half a pound the next day for me.
What Kolata is saying is that overweight people Can lose weight but due to their genetics and the ‘normal’ body size (a size which is normal for their genetic blueprints) the majority of them will go back to their previous size. Please note this quote from the review of the book in The New York Times Book Review (Sunday, May 6, 2007) by Emily Bazelon:
“For those determined to foil biology, strict dieting is a life sentence. “I am a fat man in a thin man’s body,” an M.I.T. obesity researcher who shed his unwanted pounds years ago tells Kolata.”
Also, in her book she refers to studies of twins and adopted childeren which shows the role of genetics in 70 percent of weight variance.
Thank you
Nagjom
I hear what you are saying completely. I am by no means thin myself. There is no doubt in my mind that genetics plays a role, but it is not the reason that people gain weight. While people may gain more weight more quickly due to slower metabolisms, this doesn’t prevent you from keeping weight off. It just means you must be all the more diligent. I find that if I stay under a thousand calories a day and exercise fairly hard each day, I can lose at least three pounds in a week. I don’t mean to sound insensitive to the subject because I certainly know how tough it is. I have constantly fluctuated with my weight, but I still believe that anybody can be thin with enough work, and admitting that there are other factors involved will only destroy your determination and confidence.
I think things tend to get lost in translation, especially in interviews. I read through Rethinking Thin’s prologue on the book’s website www.rethinkingthin.com, and it’s a very objective view at weight loss. I think her point is that while habits play very much into weight and body type, everyone has a predefined genetic blueprint as to what their body is suppose to look like, which is pretty much inescapable. By no means are we to just accept what we’re given, which is why a lot of people exercise and try to eat right. She’s not saying “let yourself grow fat”, she’s telling us to be realistic and do the best we can without aiming for ridiculous societal standards (Nicole Richie? Kate Moss?)
That is a much more valid viewpoint. I just think that that the message is kind of hackneyed. The argument I have been making is very generic, and certainly not original in any way. Even if Kolata is telling us not to conform to unrealistic standards, there are hundreds of articles about that already. The same goes for genetic blue print. I should really read the book, but it seems to me that she isn’t really saying anything that hasn’t already been said. Also, I still don’t think that genetic blue print is inescapable.