Friday, July 13, 2007

Diet Wars

Last night I was flipping through the channels, and I came across a re-run of the Tyra Banks Show. I don’t usually watch her show because, frankly, she’s a lousy talk show host, but I decided to watch this one because of the topic: Diet Wars. When I first heard that title I knew that it was going to be a train wreck because of the word “war.” I am currently reading A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle, and I had read the following passage yesterday morning.

“These days you frequently hear the expression ‘the war against’ this or that, and whenever I hear it, I know that t is condemned to failure…War is a mind-set, and all action that comes out of such a mind-set will either strengthen the enemy, the perceived evil, or, if the war is won, will create a new enemy, a new evil equal to and often worse than the one that was defeated.”

So, in light of that quote, I was concerned that combining the word “diet” with the word “war” might just turn into a perfect storm. Turns out I was right. It may have been the worst display of diet mentality I have ever seen on TV.

This show was actually the follow up Diet Wars show. On the first show, Tyra teamed up three diet gurus with three teams of two women each. The teams were supposed to compete. The guru whose team lost the most weight after three months would win. I probably don’t need to tell you that this show ended up drenched in destructive diet mentality.

The first team was lead by Dr. Ian Smith author of The Fat Smash Diet. I don’t know anything about the diet (and I don’t particularly want to), but his team was by far the most “successful.” These two women lost a combined total of 69 pounds in just three months! Dr. Smith spent the rest of the show gloating about how his diet is the best diet.

The second team was lead by Jillian Michaels who is a diet coach from The Biggest Loser. I have never watched that show, but what I have heard about it reeks of all-or-nothing diet mentality. Anyway, her team “failed” to comply with her plan, and they “only” lost a combined total of 25 pounds. The team admitted to not following Michaels’ plan. She told them that they had to completely give up pizza, which they refused to do. They said that they didn’t understand why they couldn’t have a piece of pizza now and then and still lose weight. That’s a very good question if you ask me!

But what really drove them away from Michaels’ plan was the exercise. These two women were significantly overweight and didn’t exercise at all, so what did Michaels’ have them start out with? A spinning class! They said they felt like they were going to die fifteen minutes into the hour long class and that they weren’t willing to put themselves through that again. Something tells me that Michaels would have had better results if she had eased them into exercising instead of dropping them into an extremely challenging class.

The worst part of this show (and there were many bad parts) was that Tyra was clearly horrified by how these women “failed.” She lectured the women and then gushed to Michaels about how successful she is as a diet guru and was so apologetic at how her team had “failed.” Tyra clearly felt bad for Michaels! If 100 people went on Michaels plan, at least 95 would “fail.” Michaels’ failure rate may actually be higher than that, as her diet sounded like it is particularly difficult to follow. Yet Tyra clearly didn’t see it that way. She kept saying that this isn’t how she envisioned the show going, and she placed all the blame for that on the dieters. I wanted to jump through the TV screen and ask Tyra to take a closer look to see what was really going on.

Diets don’t work. Crazy, hard-core, all-or-nothing diets REALLY don’t work. How do people not know this? Evidence that they don’t work is everywhere. It’s difficult to find any evidence that they do work. Yet most people persist in thinking that diets are the answer. I guess it shouldn’t be so shocking that Tyra was surprised by the “failure” of the Diet Wars. I’m sure most of her viewers felt the same way.

If you want to read the synopsis of this show on Tyra’s website here’s the link. Just a warning, the person who wrote the synopsis did a great job sugar coated Tyra’s reaction.

66 comments:

wife2abadge said...

HA! The winners should have been the people who kept off the most pounds at the end of three years. We haven't watched TV for 10 years and sometimes I'm really glad we don't!

gl said...

I just read through the article you linked to - it does seem like the diets were really impractical. A raw food diet? So that's raw veggies and fruit? Well, technically you will lose weight doing that, but how on earth are you supposed to follow it long term?

I think in terms of long term effectiveness all three of the diets probably fall down (although I don't really know anything about the Fat Smash one, but if they lost a load of weight very quickly it's probably very strict). According to the review, Tyra said something like one group of girls followed the diet at their own pace rather than doing it to win the competition. Well excuse them for living their lives rather than competing for Tyra. Absolute madness.

Nicola said...

I guess the reason people still follow diets is that there seems to be no alternative.
Until I read the Beyond Chocolate book I thought intuitive eating/living was about accepting that I was going to be fat forever and learning to live with it. How wrong I was!
But from the outside looking in, you see that diets work in the short term (at least that is the image portrayed in the media) and that if we "just work hard enough" it would work forever.
It is sad, and I want to tell people all the time that there is another way, you don't have to torture yourself anymore!

Nicola said...

Ha. I just looked up the fat smash diet.
http://www.dietandfitnessresources.co.uk/diets/fat-smash-diet.htm

An hour of exercise is required five times a week in the maintenance phase.

Yes, because that's totally realistic! [rolls eyes]

LMM said...

Ironic that Tyra is on one hand saying "kiss my fat a$$" and promoting woman be proud of who they are and then promotes the diet mentality on the other hand. Sad how ingrained the diet mentality of "we all need to lose a few" is...

Lily T said...

I can’t believe Tyra actually reprimanded one group for losing weight on their own pace! That’s the best way! The true test of a diet is it’s long-term-ability not how fast you can lose it at the moment!

Tree Lover said...

WMC - I agree! Sticking to a diet for three months is hardly proof that it's a good diet.

Gemma - A raw food diet is more than just raw veggies and fruit. It's a whole new way of cooking. You can even make breads using a food dehydrator. Believe it or not, raw food is really delicious. That said, I think it would be really hard to stick to a raw food only diet, especially if someone assigned you such a diet. It's so opposite to the way everyone else eats.

Nicola - You are right. Most people don't know that there is an alternative. I learned about intuitive eating for the first time a year ago. Before that I thought that my only two choices were to be on a diet or to gain weight. Wouldn't it be wonderful if there were as much information about intuitive eating out there as there is about dieting?

lmm - Yes, that is sad. I would go so far as to say that her pushing diets after her reaction to her own reported weight gain makes her a hypocrite.

Lily - Agreed! Obviosly Tyra wasn't concerned with long term results. It was painfully obvious that the only thing she was interested was an entertaining hour of television.

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RAW food is not Diet in terms to limit of quantity of food, is just eat like before we handle fire, they finish losing weight because you get full with less, and is good for long term, is obvious you can live like that.

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Dairymade234 said...

You spoke about team 1 and 2 how come you didn't mention Alyssa's team. I am only asking because I saw a clip on youtube. I would love to check out the entire episode but not sure where to find it.

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This comment has been removed by the author.
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