Weight Watchers admits that dieting doesn't work

A few weeks ago I attended the DitchDieting protest with the lovely ladies from AnyBody, Adios Barbie and the inspirational Susie Orbach (author of Fat Is A Feminist Issue) amongst others. After standing in front of parliament chanting out our anti-diet slogans we went inside to hear a panel of industry representatives give evidence to the Parliamentary Body Image  Enquiry. The panel included Susie herself (representing the no-diet/intuitive eating approach), and spokespersons from Weight Watchers, Slimming World and Holland & Barrett. The enquiry was chaired by Jo Swinson and Caroline Nokes, two pretty clued up MPs who gave the WW and SW people quite a grilling (frankly I'm not sure what the Holland & Barett guy was there for - and it didn't look like he did either!).   


It was fascinating to listen to. Fascinating to witness the tactics the diet industry giants are adopting first hand. I could write thousands of words, ranting and raving and tearing my hair out about what was said (and, just as importantly, what wasn't) but I'll keep my observations brief...and as objective as possible!


When asked about the negative impact of dieting on body image, the Weight Watchers and Slimming World spokeswomen went to great pains to distance themselves from the diet industry. They kept on insisting that they were not the same as all the other dieting outfits out there and that it was important to understand that they were offering something quite different. They kept talking about 'healthy' lifestyle changes and a 'responsible approach to weight loss'. What they were effectively saying was that dieting doesn't work. Have a look on the Slimming World website to see how they do this for yourself. One article says: "In stark contrast to these restrictive, quick-fix diets, at Slimming World we provide our members with a healthy eating plan that's flexible, generous and sustainable so it’s a new way of eating that they can enjoy for the rest of their lives."


Of course, nobody is disputing the fact that crazy fad diets and quick weight loss schemes are dangerous and guaranteed to fail and that WW and SW are selling their customers more reasonable eating plans. But they're still eating plans - and that's just another word for diet isn't it?  The definition of dieting is: "to restrict oneself to small amounts or special kind of foods in order to lose weight" (Oxford Dictionary) and whether you're subsisting entirely on acai berries, calculating ProPoints or Syns - it's a diet. What's interesting here is that by focusing repeatedly on something as indisputable as the idea that fad dieting is dangerous and ineffective, they distracted the panel's attention from talking about the real issue: that dieting and restricted eating - in any shape or form - doesn't ever work in the long term. 


However, Jo Swinson and Caroline Nokes are smart women and they refused to be distracted by this mutton dressing itself up as lamb. So they changed tack and grilled them about their members, asking how many of them were repeat customers. Interestingly, the Weight Watchers lady, who until then had had no trouble reciting figures to back up her claims about the number of members and target weights reached and percentages of body weight lost thanks to the WW programme, suddenly got a bit tongue tied and mumbled something about it being difficult to know exactly how many members were not first timers. She knew her numbers back to front for everything, except for this. Mmmmmh. The MP expressed surprise at this and grilled her a little more on the subject: she was concerned, she said, that the diet industry was roping people into a vicious cycle of yo-yo dieting.


This was when the Weight Watchers representative dropped her bombshell. She said: "Well we know that being overweight is a chronic condition" and went on to explain that weight regain was an inevitable part of dieting and that it was a fact that most dieters put any weight they lose back on eventually. She then went on to say that Weight Watchers' aim was to support women to lose weight when they needed it, even if that was several times over, or something to that effect. 


[Edit: what she actually said was " "People have to get over the idea that you just diet once and that is it. It is a life-long commitment." Many thanks to Ninabeenaribeena for providing the exact words in her comment below]


Extraordinary! I had just heard the Weight Watchers official spokesperson explicitly admit that dieting doesn't work, for the second time in an hour!


Sadly the meagre hour dedicated to the enquiry was soon over and I returned home feeling both hopeful and despondent. Hopeful because there are women out there like Caroline Nokes and Jo Swinson who are willing to challenge the status quo and take on corporations like Weight Watchers and Slimming World. Despondent because these corporations have huge financial resources and smart people working for them which means they can continuously shift the goal posts and adapt their marketing to get desperate people to buy their products. Despondent because I see hundreds of women each year who have spent years trapped in an endless cycle of weight loss and weight gain and wasted time and money on diet club memberships. Despondent because these women feel like failures and hate their bodies. Dieting doesn't work because it teaches women not to trust themselves. It doesn't work because it reinforces the fallacy that overweight = unhealthy and that thin = happy. It does't work because it doesn't address the real reasons why women overeat and offers no viable solutions for having a balanced relationship with food.


Have your say. The Body Image Enquiry is inviting people to take part and give evidence by completing a questionnaire about the causes and consequences of body image anxiety in the UK and what practical steps can be taken to address this. Lets give women like Jo Swinson and Caroline Nokes who have the power to bring about change some ammunition. The more we speak up about our experience of dieting, the more we have a chance of seeing something change.

Developing Body Intelligence

Gretel Hallet, is a Trained Chocolate Fairy and is running the Getting Started half day workshop in Norwich - perfect for beginners to experience the core principles of Beyond Chocolate and equally great as a refresher for any Beyond Chocolater. If you live in East Anglia and want to know more about Beyond Chocolate or her workshops, get in touch with Gretel. 

Oh how the internet LOVES lecturing us about dieting! This is one of the latest efforts and, at first, I thought we were heading in a Beyond Chocolate direction.

Check it out.

“This year, over 10 million of us will go on some sort of diet. Six weeks on, half of us will have thrown in the towel and, even if we do manage to shed a few pounds, 12 months later 95% of us will have put all the weight back on. The key to escaping this on-off dieting mentality, says Zest nutritionist Judith Wills, is to boost your body IQ. 'Intelligence is usually applied to our mental prowess; we rarely think of our physical intelligence,' she explains. 'Upping your body IQ means learning how your appetite works naturally ...”

At this point I was getting excited and thinking that this Zest nutritionist was a Beyond Chocolate fan. But then she blew it ... read on ...

“... and getting savvy about the hidden fat traps that send you off course, such as two-for-one supermarket offers, indulgent restaurant meals and shop-bought salads that come with a creamy dressing.... “

Oh dear. And we’re back to deprivation via the short route of ‘avoid anything that is generally considered ‘fattening’ or ‘bad for you’.

From personal experience I can categorically say that attempting to avoid the sorts of things mentioned in this article is a guaranteed short cut to bingeing. The body is a clever, but tunnel visioned, thing. As far as the body is concerned Fat = Good. Fat = Saving Us from Winter Famine. Fat = Rare and Must be Consumed Whenever Encountered. What the body doesn’t realise is that these days fat is no longer scarce; in fact, fat is all around and very freely available.

And the phrases she uses aren’t helpful either. ‘Hidden fat traps’, ‘send you off course’, ‘indulgent’ (I may forgive her the last one, but not in the context she uses it). I think it’s insulting to our intelligence to assume we don’t know that some foods are fattier than others and that if we buy two of something when we only needed one, we are likely to over-eat. We do actually know this. The ‘problem’ is that food manufacturers want us to buy lots of food, more if possible, and this can bring us into conflict with our dislike of ‘wasting’ food. We have two cakes where we only wanted one, so what do we do? Throw it away? Eat it?

And, if we are not dieting, how can we be ‘sent off course’ by fatty food anyway? Despite recognising that diets don’t work, this nutritionist hasn’t investigated the alternatives – she assumes that people will go on dieting but just not call it that to themselves, that people will live with constant deprivation and constant avoidance of ‘traps’ in foods.

The nutritionist does claw it back a bit by the end, however. She says:

“And if you change your habits? You'll get weight loss without the work... and no chance of the pounds creeping back on, either.”

I agree with her but I don’t agree with how she got there. Beyond Chocolate does involve a change of habits. It can lead to weight loss (and we do have to work at it), and, once we’ve got it all in balance, the weight won’t ‘creep back on’ again – ever.

When dieting works

A good friend of mine in Italy swears by dieting. For years, she has been successfully controlling her weight in the same way: about twice a year - usually in January and then again in July she puts herself on a controlled eating and exercising regime that lasts a month or so and she gets the results she wants. She's perfectly fine with this method and it causes her no great distress. Observing her over the years, I have come to the conclusion that, for some women, dieting really does work.


We often talk about our different approaches to weight-loss - I think we are mutually fascinated by each other's take on it. Sara's is quite straightforward: at certain times in the year, mainly Christmas and in deepest, darkest winter, she tends to sit around on the sofa eating too much and as a result she puts on a some weight. Her clothes feel tight and she feels sluggish and uncomfortable in her body. Her tried and tested solution is to cut down on sugar, refined carbs and processed foods and alcohol for a certain period whilst working out at the gym at least 3 times a week. Within 4 or 5 weeks, she has shed the extra pounds, has gone down a dress size and is back to 'feeling like herself', as she puts it.


When I ask her how she feels when she's on her diet and how she motivates herself to stick to it she says: "Well it is a little boring, I do sometimes crave chocolate and I don't always fancy going to the gym but I remind myself that it's not forever and that I really will feel better when I lose the weight. I know that I feel uncomfortable in a bikini if I'm feeling 'fat' and I hate the muffin top I get when I put my jeans on after all that eating at Christmas. It's no big deal, really. I've been doing it for years. It works."


"But don't you go off rails once you've reached your target weight. Don't you have the urge to make up for the deprivation and stuff yourself with all the stuff you haven't had for ages?" I ask. "Uhhh...no. I don't really see it as depriving myself - more like I'm doing myself a favour," she replies "in fact, I tend to carry on making healthier choices for a while after I've come off the diet. I find I eat less crap and move more. It's like it gets me going - until Christmas comes round again and then I just think, 'oh what the heck' and dive in!"


Several things strike me when I speak to Sara about her approach to weight management. The first one is that she has a relatively simple relationship with food. She likes it, she sometimes has too much of it but ultimately - food is just food. Although she's not what would commonly be defined as an 'intuitive eater' - she does tend to label foods as good and bad, she does manage her weight with deprivation - somehow, she has that 'take it or leave' attitude that is common to intuitive eaters. She doesn't have that tortured, out of control relationship that is common to so many Beyond Chocolaters. The other thing that stands out for me is how kind she is to herself. Sara views her dieting as something positive that she is doing for herself. As she puts it, she sees it as 'doing herself a favour'. On the flip side of that, I've never heard Sara berate herself for overeating or about her body. She'll say things like: "I really stuffed myself at Christmas, I practically lived on panettone! And look where it's all ended up!" as she grabs a roll of fat around her middle, "It's time for a little self restraint ladies. Salad bar and gym - here I come!" There's humour and kindness there - something which I rarely hear coming from Beyond Chocolate newbies.


So where is all this leading? Well nowhere special except to say that there will always be people who will diet successfully. People like Sara who don't understand what all the fuss is about and who really do live successfully by the 'east less, move more' mantra.


And then there will always be people like us. Women for whom chocolate has never been just a 'naughty indulgence' but the friend and the enemy. Women who feel guilty whatever they eat and ashamed by the way they look, whatever their size. Women who feel despair when they are on a diet...and despair when they come off it. Women who go on diet after diet after diet and just end up getting fatter and fatter and fatter. Women who feel out of control, weak and hopeless whenever they think about food. For these women, Sara's approach to weight-loss will never work. It will only make things worse. 


For us, dieting will never be the solution. It's not a simple equation. It's about working on our relationship with food and our bodies. It's about changing what, but also why and how we eat. It's about finding ways of dealing with life in ways that don't always involve food. It's about self esteem, it's about love, it's about patience and kindness and acceptance. It's about awareness. It's about not comparing ourselves with the 'happy' dieters like Sara and wondering why we can't do it that way. It's about support and community and talking with others who understand. It's taking one day at a time, taking one small action that brings us closer to a life Beyond Chocolate.