One of the areas in which we differed was diet and health. I could throw her links to blog posts and online articles and mention book titles til I was blue in the face and she never wanted to look at any of it. She speaks of losing weight, then complains about having to eat smaller portions and having to exercise, and she’s not even that far overweight. And said to me, quote, “I’m just not interested in all that science stuff,” even after I told her how easy it really is to low-carb for weight loss. OK, you miss the carbs sometimes, and it’s hard to maintain when NO ONE around you is doing what you’re doing–swimming against the tide can be exhausting. But it’s a damn sight easier than self-starvation. No dice. She wouldn’t hear it.

The last time we talked about any of that stuff, she accused me of being obsessive about the relative health of different foods. I was like, “OK, let’s hear your version–how do you lose weight again?” She said, “Move more and eat smaller portions.” I said, “Smaller portions of what?” She was like, “Huh?” I said, “Do you really think you’re going to lose weight on smaller portions of Doritos? How’s your body going to get the nutrition it needs?” I might as well have been speaking Klingon. And it’s not like she lives on Doritos. She’s half Japanese and actually gets healthy food into herself now and again. I don’t get it.

But that’s the mentality. Eat fewer Doritos, but God forbid you should avoid them entirely, and then run yourself into the ground. And we’re mystified that older women get osteoporosis in such record numbers.

Let’s hope after years of failure, she sees the light.

Have you checked Jimmy Moore’s posts on stalling and regaining? He’s been through what you described. I know he had to give up artificial sweeteners, among other things. Turns out just the taste of anything sweet can trigger insulin spikes for some people.

When I was a teenager my parents sent me to something folks commonly called “charm school”. “Charm School” graduates had before and after photos posted, so that people could see how charmingly they had transformed themselves by the training.

For my before photo I tried to pose in what I thought was a way flattering to me, but the school and photographer would not allow it. They insisted I stand in a sort of flat-footed, wide-legged Neanderthal-like stance. Then, weeks later, when it came time for my “after” shot, they tried to force me into the exact pose that I had chosen for myself earlier, and which they had refused to allow me to use. I was so disgusted I refused to let them take any photo at all. And this was before Photoshop – just manipulation by posing.

I’m sure happy I’ve chosen my low-carb, grain-free, sugar-free diet for the sake of my health, as I sure have not lost an ounce on it in the last five months.

Posing, lighting, makeup … it’s true; there’s a lot you can do even before you go to Photoshop.

The diet is indeed about health. I’m still a little thick around the middle, and so be it. That seems to be where I’m in homeostasis. The last time I semi-starved myself into weighing less, I began losing muscle. Considering that other men in my family are WAY thick around the middle and outweigh me by 40 or 50 pounds, I’d say my diet works just fine.

Not sure the chef will like it, but it made me laugh.

“There isn’t a magic bullet. We don’t have a pill for it,” said Levi, whose group is pushing for health reform legislation to include community-level programs that help people make healthier choices — like building sidewalks so people can walk their neighborhoods instead of drive, and providing healthier school lunches. “It’s not going to be solved in the doctor’s office but in the community, where we change norms,” Levi said.

Riiiight. Exercise is the answer. I’m going right out to walk around my neighborhood so I can be thin.

Yeah, that’s why our grandparents were thin … all those community programs to combat obesity. Or, just maybe, it’s because they weren’t told to avoid fat and eat carbs.

I saw a Weight Watchers ad yesterday, it was stupid, a guy catches out two normal-seized women eating chocolate bars and they say it’s alright because they are WW bars. The implication… Women eating chocolate is bad? Even normal weight women need to go on WW? I’m glad I’m a guy.

The societal pressure on women to all look like skinny models is ridiculous. Oddly, little of that pressure actually comes from men, most of whom prefer curves. I guess it’s how the fashion and weight-loss industries create their markets, promising a goal that always seems just within reach, but isn’t for most people.

I also agree she looked better in the before shot.

Indeed, the stretching was so obvious, it was hard to miss. Makes you wonder how often we just don’t notice.

To anyone who’s reading comments but not the article, she’s 5’11″, and went from 175 pounds to 133.

(snarky) Bulimia: it does a body good.

As someone who has studied photography a little bit, the camera does indeed lie. A persons face looks totally different with a 300mm lens than with a 30mm lens. Here’s the best example I could find demonstrating the effect. There’s also lots one can do with perspective to make a body look longer and leaner. That’s without getting into digital manipulation, which has gone to comic book proportions on the cover shot of any women’s magazine and many others.

That’s quite an impressive difference with the lenses. Yup, a camera can lie quite nicely.

That’s a good analysis. I made the same point in the film; people labeled as overweight (which is based on a bogus standard anyway) live longer. The real epidemic is high blood sugar, not obesity, and by focusing on weight, we’re missing many people who are at risk.