This Article contains some great advice for us all. 

The Courteous Healthy Eater
     
          by Kate

People who make an effort to eat in a way that supports their health have a bad reputation. 

It seems that many times, the "Healthy" eater is also the "Judgmental" eater. 

Let us band together, fellow healthy eaters, and change this stigma by killing it with kindness.

If you aren’t sure if you have the right to talk to someone about his/her food choices, ask yourself the following questions:

1.  Is this person my child?
2.  Am I this person’s doctor?
3.  Did she ask me?

Unless you answered yes to one of these questions, you do not have the right to make food choices for this person.

The following suggestions are for everyone who eats food, regardless of your personal choices: 
 

• Don’t Comment on Other People’s Plates.  When you see someone eating something you think looks unappetizing or that you would not eat yourself for whatever reason, you do not have to tell the person who is eating what is wrong with her food.  In fact, you may consider that this person could very well have eating choices of her own that impact her health, mental or physical.  You may even imagine that this person is very sensitive about eating or suffers from an eating disorder if it helps you mind your own business.
   
•  Let Other People Make Their Own Decisions.  Let other people decide what they are going to eat.  If you think the diet they are following is stupid or unnecessary, that’s okay.  Don’t follow it.  But let each person have the autonomy over her own life to decide for herself if and when she wants to make a change.
   
• Don’t Assume Everyone Has the Same Goal.  Do not tell a heavy person that if she stopped eating X she would lose weight.  Conversely, do not tell a thin person that she needs to eat a cheeseburger.  That is not your stomach or your body, you do not get to decide and your opinion is insulting unless it is requested.
   
•  Be Polite Online.  When you see a picture of a food you don’t eat, you do not need to comment about what’s wrong with it.  You can continue to not eat that food, but really, the world does not need to know about it.
   
• You Don’t Need to Broadcast Your Food Choices.  Many people are surprised to find out I am vegetarian because I don’t make a big deal out of it.  When I go out to eat with other people, I order the vegetarian option without ever mentioning it to the other people at the table.  If I am offered an appetizer that contains meat I simply say “no thank you.”  If I am offered a soda, again “no thank you.”  If I have a question about the menu or a modification, I make it to the server and I am polite and gracious.
   
•  “No Thank You” is the End of the Conversation.  Conversely, when you offer someone food and they refuse with a “no thank you”, your job is done.  For whatever reason, that person does not want to eat the food at that time.  You really do not need to know why.
   
•  Stop Talking About Your Diet Constantly.  If you follow a particular type of diet, let’s say you follow the Low Radish Diet, unless someone asks you about it, you probably don’t need to tell them.  The world is awash in dietary advice and most people are just sick of it.  Conversely, if you think Low Radish Diets are really stupid, you should probably stay away from Low Radish Diet communities.  Let people make their own choices.  If they choose not to eat Radishes, that’s their business.  Even if you believe there’s something inherently harmful in eliminating radishes from your diet, it’s really not worthwhile to go to the Low Radish community and start attacking people.  This is completely ineffective.  You cannot deny people the opportunity to make their own mistakes and discoveries. 
   
• Your Diet is Your Job, Nobody Else's.  If you are allergic to a food, then it is very important for you to avoid that food. Asking to know what is in a dish is perfectly acceptable.  If you are concerned about  being able to choose a restaurant that will cater to you, always be willing to research and make suggestions.  When I go to visit someone, I check out Yelp for good vegetarian restaurant options I can suggest.  You can even call the restaurant and ask them if they can make substitutions for your restricted diet.  However, this is your job, not anyone else’s.  In any case, it is quite simple to be civil and non-accusatory when asking questions.

Eating is a very personal activity.  Only you know what you need and how you feel when you eat certain things.  Never assume that what you feel yourself is what everyone feels.  Think about it, do you really want anyone telling you that the food you’re eating is gross or deadly while you’re eating it?  Of course not.  You want to enjoy your meal in peace.

There’s nothing wrong with sharing things that improve our health and make us feel good.  But let’s start doing it from an angle of leadership instead of reactionary fear.  This is my thought process when I share my food photos:

I want to show people how beautiful, appetizing, and appealing food can be when it didn’t come out of a box, can, or drive thru window.  I don’t want them to hear “what you are eating is bad and wrong”.  I want to say “what I am eating is delicious, I really enjoy it, and look, isn’t it beautiful? It’s also pretty easy, really!  You can cook it will just take a little practice.”

Because I do believe in these things and think they could really help a lot of people, I want to promote what I love.  I do this from the perspective of my own choice, rather than tearing down others choices.  People are far more likely to be open minded when you are kind than when you are judgmental.

Eating should not be a source of constant stress.   If you find yourself worried or angry about what strangers around you are eating, it may be time to examine your own relationship with food.

If you want people to accept your choices, then you have to be accepting of the choices of others as well.

         This article written by Kate at  www. thisisnotadiet-itsmylife.com

A Bigot is someone who, as a result of their own prejudices, thinks of other people with contempt, or intolerance on the basis of that other person's characteristics. Bigotry is the state of mind of a Bigot, and thoughts often tend to become actions.

Those who wish to be, or appear to be, "politically correct" in today's society, know they must work to filter out their prejudices against various characteristics such as ethnicity, gender, disability, socioeconomic status, sexual orientation, etc.

However, even the most "liberal" people commonly practice Bigotry when it comes to the physical characteristics of people who have Fat bodies. Our current society still accepts, allows, and encourages such thinking and behaviors.

Here, the term "Fat Bigot" is used to define someone who is prejudiced against the physical characteristics of people who have fat bodies, not someone who HAS a fat body. 

When Fat Bodies Just Look Wrong 
   
             by Ragen Chastain.

There is a post over on This is Thin Privilege written by a girl who was told that she couldn’t wear the same shorts as a thinner student because she didn’t “present” the same way as the other student.  This highlights a particular kind of fat bigotry wherein fat bodies are judged to look “wrong” doing the same thing that thin bodies do, just because they are fat.

Wrong can take a lot of meanings in this context, one of the first is the idea that they look obscene (remember the Lane Bryant ad that showed about 25% of the skin of a Victoria’s secret ad but was controversial because it was judged look obscene - obscene here meaning “omg big boobs!”?)  Or, as in the example from above, fat bodies are seen as un-presentable, or needing to be more covered/hidden than other bodies.

And how many times have we heard the “fat girl” rules of fashion – black clothes absorb light and hide our shape (aka “slimming”), choose clothes based on their ability to make you look as much like the thin ideal as possible (aka “Flattering“) and that anything else is an affront to everyone who sees us and a moral failing on our part.

This type of situation is often about a bigot asking to be accommodated by a fat person.  The assumption being that if someone doesn’t like fat bodies, doesn’t like looking at fat bodies, doesn’t think that fat bodies should do certain things or dress in certain ways, then the people with those fat bodies have a responsibility – nay, an obligation – to “fix” the situation by doing what the fat hater wants us to do.  As if the solution might not be for them to get the hell over their bigotry, or at least practice the ancient art of looking at something else.

When the teacher told the student that the shorts were inappropriate on her fatter body but not on the thinner body, what he was actually saying was “I’m a size bigot, accommodate me.”  Our society is set up to accommodate fat bigotry in many ways, perhaps the most insidious is convincing fat people to take an active part in it by policing ourselves and other fat people for failing to follow the fat girl rules of dressing.

Fat people are allowed to make clothing choices for any reason they want – including dressing for maximum societal approval, as long as they are only choosing for themselves and not trying to tell other fat people what they should wear (hello Underpants Rule, my old friend.)  My suggestion is not that all fat people dress a certain way, but that we should consider being very conscious as to why we make the choices we make, and what that means. So if we choose to dress for societal approval we are keenly aware of why we are doing it so that we don’t get confused and think that there is anything wrong with our actual bodies – rather than realizing that there is a lot wrong with society and that our bodies are fine.

When it comes to the idea of fat bodies looking “wrong,”  the choices I make about what to wear have been less important than my ability to realize when a bigot is asking me to accommodate them, and the fact that I am under absolutely no obligation to do so. If you struggle with feeling like fat bodies (maybe even including yours) look “wrong” then a big part of the problem may be that the media doesn’t seem to be able to show us with heads and faces, let alone as positive role models.  So I suggest taking some time each day to find pictures of fat bodies and work to increase your skill at perceiving beauty.  

by Regen Chastain. 
Dancer, Choreographer, Writer, Speaker, Fat Person
www.  Dances With Fat      

  Life has taught me things things about myself and others. I now realize that I grew up surrounded by Fat Bigots… meaning people who were prejudiced against people who exhibited the physical characteristic of being Fat. That nonacceptance range of of Fat began with the state of being "not thin"; included "a bit plump" or "overweight"; then progressed to "fat", "really fat", and then on to "morbidly obese" and up.

I adopted this mental state as my own, which was a problem since I was never "thin". I was curvy even as a very young adolescent in the late 1950s, I recall my mother's reaction when she weighed me and learned that at 5'1" I weighed 105 lbs. She exclaimed in fear and horror, "That's what I weighed when I got married!!." She was taller, 5'4" so I was already fatter than my mother was as a young adult.. and she was a "normal" person not a "thin" person.

This article brought my attention to the fact that as a child I was taught to dress to please Fat Bigots. When the "squaw shirt" was popular, it was to be avoided because it was a gathered skirt. My peers wore the straight sheath dresses favored by Jackie Kennedy, but these disguised my small waist and emphasized my hips and thighs, so I wore "princess" style, dresses, which skimmed past my waist to smoothly flare out over my hips.

Showing Skin was to be avoided, no bare upper arms or showing of knees or thighs. Modesty wasn't the true reason for this, it was to avoid showing fat. As a freshman in High School, while weighing 115 lbs, I was outfitted with long-line bras, and panty girdles in order to smooth out any bouncy fat that might show through my clothing.

I adopted this mindset as my own. Although there were many girls fatter than me, who dressed without regard to fat concealment, I regarded them with hidden contempt, and I judged my own appearance by comparing myself to girls who were naturally thin.

This attitude followed me throughout my life, and I considered it normal. However, I was a middle-aged woman with years of Therapy behind me, before I realized that what was wrong was Society, not my body.

I always knew that I was dressing for societal approval, and I still do this. However, I do it now as a conscious choice, using personal preferences I've established over years of habit.

There are lots of different types of bodies, and different ways to acceptably dress them.  
See below:  Aerosmith's - Pink 

                           
We need to unhitch exercise from weight-management.

Exercise is great for health,
but weight-loss comes from the kitchen.

Exercise is Not Likely to Be Your Ticket
             to the Weight-Loss Express 

 Among the most commonly held misconceptions about obesity, perhaps none does more harm than the notion that exercise is responsible for the lion's share of weight management.

Sure, it's true that exercise does burn calories, and yes, if you burn more calories you ought to lose weight. But unfortunately, it's just not that simple.

To put exercise into some perspective, to lose a pound of weight each week would require roughly a marathon of effort each and every week, as the calories burned running those 26.2 miles would likely be in the neighborhood of a pound's worth. Of course, it would also necessitate that not once did you "eat because you exercised" – neither as an indulgence to reward yourself for all that running, nor as a consequence to any running-induced hunger. Seems to me that'd be pretty unlikely.

Looking at real-world studies of exercise and its impact on weight, the results are underwhelming to say the least. Take this 2007 study published in the journal Obesity. Researchers instructed 196 men and women to exercise an hour a day, six days a week, for a year! And researchers weren't just telling people to exercise, they were supervising them and instructing them as well.

Compliance was incredible – only seven study dropouts – and over the course of the year, men averaged 6.16 hours of weekly exercise, and women, 4.9 hours. So did the 320 hours of exercise for the men and the 254 hours for the women lead to weight loss? Yes, but probably less than you might have guessed. Men lost, on average, 3.5 pounds, and women, 2.6. That translates to 91.5 hours of exercise per pound lost.

Now, to be very clear, there is likely nothing better for your health than exercise – truly nothing. There's no pill you can take and no food you can include or avoid that will give you the health benefits of regular exercise. I exercise regularly, and I strongly encourage all of my patients to do so as well. But I also tell them that they can't outrun their forks.

The notion that moving more will translate to weight loss is a dangerous one. For individuals, it may effectively discourage exercise when results aren't seen on scales. For the media and entertainment industries, it often leads to the perpetuation of the "people-with-obesity-are-just-lazy" stereotype. For the food industry, it allows an embrace of exercise by means of sponsorship and marketing, which, in turn, helps companies deflect product blame and forestall industry-unfriendly legislation.

And for public policy makers, it makes it challenging to make the case for interventions that increase exercise, as inevitably the outcome hoped for is weight loss, and when outcomes are poor, it becomes more difficult to make the case that the intervention is worthwhile (like P.E. or more recess time in schools, for instance).

We need to unhitch exercise from our weight-management wagons. Breaking it down, figure that your diet is responsible for 80 percent of your weight and fitness – unless you're incredibly active, just 20 percent. If WEIGHT's your concern you're much more likely to lose it in your kitchen than you are in your gym. But don't forget, if it's Health you're after, you need to do both.

Whoever said life was fair?

 by Dr. Yoni Freedhoff, M. D. - 9/4/2013 - US News, Health & Wellness 


Yoni Freedhoff, MD, is an assistant professor of family medicine at the University of Ottawa, where he's the founder and medical director of the Bariatric Medical Institute—dedicated to non-surgical weight management since 2004. Dr. Freedhoff posts on  www. Weighty Matters.

The number of calories we are advised to take in by BMR or RMR charts are based merely on Averages.

These Basal Metabolism Rate (BMR) or Resting Metabolism Rate (RMR) charts are based on the calculations of basic mathematical formulas such as Harris/Benedict or Mifflin, or some other less-accepted-but-very-similar formula.

There are a great many people who have a lower BMR or RMR than the posted Average.  There are also people who have a higher BMR or RMR than Average, but not very many of them choose to hang around in diet websites.

The standard BMR or RMR calculations might … or might not … apply to your individual body.

There is no predetermined calorie number that tells us whether or not we are eating in a deficit, eating at maintenance, or eating a surplus. The resulting changes in our bodies --- over time --- are what define the amount of how many calories our bodies are using as energy.

Here is an article explaining a few Key Definitions that might help some of us avoid becoming confused about Calories, Diet, and Nutrition.

Defining a Calorie Deficit
            by Brad Pilon, bodybuilder, author of Eat Stop Eat (Intermittent Fasting)

Eating at a calorie deficit.

From my understanding, by definition this means an amount of food that results in loss of body mass. By this definition you cannot be in a deficit if you are not losing body mass.

You can be eating less, a little, not much, like a bird, and not lose body mass since these are all subjective descriptions of an amount of food, but if you are eating less food than is needed to provide the energy you require to power your daily activities then a loss of mass must occur.

This loss may be masked by fluctuations in bodyweight caused by water or the weight of the food in your digestive track (at least for a little while), but make no mistake, it is the loss of body mass that defines the deficit, not eating below an estimated amount of needed calories. The Loss of body mass is what defines a Deficit.


Eating at maintenance.

The term maintenance can be confusing; it raises the question, maintenance of what?

From my understanding eating at maintenance does not mean maintenance of body weight, but maintenance of function.

When you eat at maintenance all of your body’s daily energy needs are equaled by the energy provided by the food and drink you consume. This includes the energetic needs for muscle growth since the energy needs of protein turnover are part of your basal metabolic rate.

In other words, if you were in some hyper-muscle-growth-mode induced by who knows what, the energy needs of that growth would be reflected in an increase in your metabolic rate. Meaning if you were not eating enough to cover these needs you would be eating at a deficit and loss of body mass would occur.

A good way to think of maintenance eating is an amount of food that does not result in an appreciable loss of body mass or an appreciable amount of body fat gain, since a gain in body fat is how we define a surplus, and a loss is how we define a deficit.

As an example – If you are eating 50,000 calories a day and not gaining fat, congratulations you are still eating at maintenance. If you are eating 8 Calories a day and not losing body mass, congratulations you are also eating at maintenance.

The amount of calories you consume does not determine if you are eating deficit, maintenance or surplus, the changes in your body does. Lack of a Loss of body mass and absence of a Gain of body fat defines eating at maintenance.


Eating at a surplus.

Since a deficit is defined by weight loss, and maintenance is eating to cover all daily metabolic needs, then a surplus is defined as eating an amount of food that surpasses your daily needs (including protein turnover) and thus results in the storage of energy for future use (body fat).

So a surplus (to me) is defined by the accumulation of body fat. If you are not gaining body fat, then you are not eating a surplus amount of food.

If you are gaining body fat (and not just weight, which could be water etc) then you are eating at a surplus (regardless of the number of calories you are eating). The accumulation of body fat defines a eating a surplus amount of food.

Summary.

Some random predetermined amount of calories does not define whether or not you are eating in a deficit, at maintenance, or in a surplus, the resulting changes in your body are what define the terms used to describe how much you are eating.