“Federal Government cracks downs on weight-loss industry.”

That was the amazing headline I saw on News.com.au today. I nearly fell off my chair.

WEIGHT-LOSS programs and products will have to prove they can help people keep off the kilos long-term as the Federal Government cracks down on the $414-million-a-year industry.

The Rudd Government’s Preventative Health Taskforce is understood to have called for the weight-loss industry to be regulated in a report handed down last month.

I’ve blogged about (some not so great) recommendations made by the Preventative Health Taskforce before.

The Taskforce provided the National Preventative Health Strategy to the Government on 30 June 2009 and the Australian Government has been sitting on it ever since. This happens a lot with reports written by external Taskforces or Advisory Panels – they are submitted to the government (federal or state) and then various Ministers sit on them for months. There’s no indication when the Strategy will be released publicly.

It follows growing evidence that diets may actually be adding to the obesity crisis as overweight people lose weight rapidly while following programs but quickly put it back on after they stop.

 Amazing, right?

The taskforce said that young women in particular were spending hundreds of millions of dollars a year on programs to manage their weight.

Despite this, the nation’s obesity rate was climbing with more than 60 per cent of adults now overweight or obese.

Not only that…

 The Dietitians Association of Australia is backing the recommendation.

O RLY?!

The association said regulation should require businesses marketing a diet program to provide evidence to a panel of experts showing what percentage of those who used the diet kept the weight off two years after starting.

Chief executive Claire Hewat said a good diet would result in weight loss of about half a kilogram per week.

“If you can lose 5 per cent of your body weight you are doing really well,” she said. “Diets are not the point, it’s lifestyle change that is needed.”

Then the article puts the boot to the diet industry:

A Choice survey of pharmacy diet programs published earlier this year found they were successful at helping people shed kilos in a hurry if followed closely - but they did little to change a person’s lifestyle in the long term.

Many were so nutritionally deficient that dieters had to take vitamin supplements, while some counsellors selling the programs had just three hours training.

And then, of course, the Dietitians Association of Australia has to ruin everything with:

The association also wants national exercise guidelines reviewed because the 30 minutes of exercise a day promoted by the Government is good for general wellbeing but not enough to tackle obesity. 

 Let’s break that down.

Thirty minutes of exercise a day is good for general health, but won’t “tackle obesity”.

General health means nothing if you are still fat.

After the Chief Executive Officer of the DAA explicitly said “Diets are not the point, it’s lifestyle change that is needed”, the Association still believes that one’s fat – rather than one’s lifestyle – is at the root of all our problems.

How can that make sense to ANYONE?!

Alas. We were so close, so tantalising close to a mainstream Australian article espousing health at every size…

I eat, therefore I’m fat

The Fatosphere and various fat communities like to point out how active they are, how balanced their diet is, how they were fat children that grew into fat adults and their corpulent physique is not something they can control or change even if they wanted to. I understand why this is, and I’ve no doubt that for many people this is the case.

But I am not one of those people. I am fat because I eat too much.

I’ve never been small person; I think I was at my thinnest when I was around 17 and 65kg/140 pounds. But I know that if I were to exercise a bit more and eat a bit less, it’s probable that I could lose around 10kg and a dress size.

But I don’t want to do that. I love to eat.

For me, eating is an almost hedonistic experience. When I eat something truly amazing, like a beautiful cut of steak or a simple margherita pizza, my face beams. I dance unconsciously in my chair (my boyfriend calls it my ‘happy food dance’). And I like to eat a lot, because the feeling and look of fullness is so pleasant.

I am not fat because I eat ‘junk’; I don’t eat much processed food, not because it’s unhealthy, but because it tastes like crap and makes me feel gross. In fact, my body craves all manner of things: pesto pasta, opor ayam, wholemeal tuna sandwiches, pho, wood-fired pizza, rare steak and homemade chips, soft boiled eggs and toast soldiers, cake, porridge and stewed fruit, roast chicken, laksa, unadon, absolutely anything covered in garlic… I end up eating a reasonably balanced diet, just a lot of it.

While my growing belly is a consequence of my over-eating, it’s a happy one. I love being fat, and not in a ‘This is what I’m stuck with so I may as well love it’ sort of way. I genuinely think I look better now than when I was 30kg lighter. I’m certainly a helluva lot happier.

I wanted to make this all very clear because so far I have not found anyone in the Fatosphere that I relate to on this matter. Of course I’ve found people who enjoy food, but none who publicly love it as much as I do and none who identify it as a cause of their fatness. I am sure I am not the only one. I wanted to make this clear because I don’t think there’s anything wrong with it.

When the media is full of reports that FAT IS UNHEALTHY AND YOU WILL DIIIIIEEE, it’s natural for fatties respond with statistics proving that being obese does not automatically equate to unhealthiness and that the active fatty will outlive the inactive skinny. And that’s all very good; we should not allow misinformation to parade around as fact. But what I want to stress is that I am not ashamed for being one of the inactive fatties.

I do some exercise; I go to dance class and I swim at the beach in the summer. On the other hand, I also wish the whole world sloped downhill so I’d never have to walk up another incline again.

My point, in a roundabout way, is that we should not have to prove ourselves to be one of the ‘good’ fatties in order to be seen as people. We should not have to divulge our eating and exercise habits to family/friends/strangers/journalists in order to justify our fatness. Whether we happily overeat or happily run marathons, we all deserve respect.

“Obese could be paid to lose weight under Rudd proposal”

I want to address the articles that were published yesterday by News Limited: one in The Daily Telegraph/AdelaideNow and one in Herald Sun.

Some clarification for international readers: News Limited is the media company owned by Rupert Murdoch. In Australia it operates, among many others, the Daily Tele, AdelaideNow and the Herald Sun – all tabloid newspapers. Their equivalent in tone and style would be UK’s The Sun (but with fewer boobs), which is also owned by Murdoch. ‘Rudd’ refers to the Australian Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd.

The articles had two different tones. Daily Tele/AdelaideNow ran the headline “Subsidies for people to lose weight and get fit: Overweight people could be paid to lose weight under a radical plan to combat the nation’s obesity crisis” while Herald Sun ran the much more alarmist “Obese could be paid to lose weight under Rudd proposal: Fat people could be paid to lose weight under a radical plan to combat the nation’s obesity crisis commissioned by the Rudd Government”.

The articles led to predictable responses from both sides. The anti-fat brigade exclaimed that Kevin Rudd was rewarding obesity (obesity = evil, natch), discriminating against healthy people, that they should not expected to pay for the problems fat people bring on themselves. On the other side, fatties were blasting Rudd for failing to recognise health at every size.

When I saw the headlines, I expected to jump on the side of the latter. Until I actually read the article. Now I am convinced that the ‘FATTIES = BAD’ tone is more due to dodgy reporting rather than a fault with Rudd or within the actual report.

Not one of the expected recommendations is explicitly targeted at the obese and backs up these ridiculous headlines. The articles outline:

• Tax breaks or subsidies for gym membership, fitness equipment and/or sports club membership
• A ban on junk food advertising during children’s programs
• Nutritional information displays for fast food outlets
• Increasing the cost of cigarettes
• Restrictions on opening times for venues serving alcohol

Leaving aside whether these measures will even be effective, all the recommendations listed in the articles stand to affect everyone.

The most disappointing thing about the Taskforce is that one of the goals they have set is to ”curb the nation’s growing waistline.”

Though the attitude that obesity automatically equates to unhealthiness is frustrating, I don’t blame Kevin Rudd and I am not worried that this will be entered into policy. Rudd commissioned a report from an independent taskforce who will make a series of recommendations that the government is under no obligation to implement. I think that, for now, the fatties are safe from the Australian Government.

Edit: The ABC also covered this story. Apparently one of the recommendations could be that “overweight people would be given subsidies for gym membership or fitness equipment”, which was not explicitly outlined in the News Limited articles. Sigh. The National Preventative Health Taskforce was due to report on their recommendations this week but so far nothing has been released. Watch this space.