Preoccupation with dieting becomes neurosis

Louise Foxcroft 

 

 

For centuries the dieting industry has exploited our shame. 

This is the time of year when we all look down (not a good angle, as everyone knows) at our new, improved rolls of post-festivity fat and think about a quick-fix diet. Think again. Dieting is pretty much the norm in the West today, hardly surprising when few of us have what we might call a “normal” relationship with food, untouched by the constant barrage of diet-related news and a fast-food environment radically different from what it was even a generation ago. We still follow the latest diet fads, hoping for some weight-loss miracle because slimming down is hard, tedious work.

The ancient Greeks knew that slimming down was a question of time and moderation. For early Christians, gluttony, written on the body in flesh, acquired the status of a deadly sin — and we have been feeling guilty ever since. If we look back over the centuries, it's obvious that much of the dieting industry has ruthlessly exploited our shame. 

As well as the ever-present diet books — dating back to the 16th century — all written with a sense of urgency that mimics the anticipation of satisfaction, it has sold us some mad and faddish anti-fat “cures”. Both men and women began wearing skin-macerating rubber knickers and bought diet drugs that contained anything from arsenic to thyroid extract, or a cocktail of carcinogens. In the 1920s, there were Bile Beans, laxatives with an extra bite that prevented your body absorbing fat. By the 1950s, cigarettes were laced with appetite suppressants.

Over the last century, our preoccupation with dieting has grown into a neurosis, according to some psychiatrists. We have a common aversion to fat and a multimillion-pound slimming industry to go with it. Yet, fast fad diets are little better than useless. They do the biggest business and arguably the greatest harm. Initially, you might lose 5 per cent to 10 per cent of your weight if you try one, but it almost always piles back on. Give yourself a realistic, healthy and attainable goal, and keep a record of your progress. Getting some group support is very likely to make any diet more successful. So ignore all the surface diet glitter that distracts your mind from the ordinary and inescapable fact that you have to make sensible choices and stick to them.

(Louise Foxcroft is the author of Calories & Corsets: A History of Dieting over 2,000 Years) — © Guardian Newspapers Limited, 2012