SOURCE: SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE/SFGATE.COM

Katherine Seligman
Sunday, January 4, 2009

If it's January, then it must be time to diet, right? You've spent the
past month at the buffet trough. Now every time you turn on the TV
news you're seeing that same person with a three-story midsection
jiggling past, head discreetly out of the picture, an illustration of
that same statistic: 63 percent of us reside in the fatosphere.

But maybe we're getting the wrong message here. Perhaps 2009 should be the Year of the Un-Diet. What if we finally settled what one
researcher calls "the war with our bodies"?

"Dieting is the worst thing people can do if they're interested in
weight control," said Linda Bacon, a nutrition professor and clinical
psychotherapist in the East Bay whose book, "Health at Every Size,"
was published in November (BenBella Books). "Dieting seems the fastest way to gain weight."

Research has shown that dieting accomplishes the opposite of what you want, she said. It trains your body to conserve energy. If you starve
yourself, your metabolism slows down and decreases the level of
leptin, a hormone produced in the fat cells that is key to appetite
control. With less leptin, you're hungrier. "It goads you to eat
more," Bacon said.

Bodies have a "set weight" where they hover when people eat in
response to normal hunger cues, she said. Eat more at one meal and
your body will crave less at another. Dieting disrupts this.

Bacon's book and research have been embraced by the fat acceptance
movement and those who work - as she does - with people who have
eating disorders. But it's also reaching beyond. "It's an easy message
for people to get behind," she said. "It transcends what your weight
is, transcends the size spectrum. People are desperate. They're tired
of self-denial and feeling bad about themselves. They are fed up with
the diet industry and the pain of watching their weight all the time."

The subject is deeply personal to Bacon, who struggled with weight and
self-image growing up. Like lots of young women, she thought she was
too heavy. She lost weight only to gain it back.

"At one point it was too painful to me," she said. "I'm academically
oriented, so the easiest way for me to tackle my problems was through
studying."

After earning a master's degree in psychology she still thought about
dieting. "I wanted to understand why I weighed what I weighed," she
said. "I wanted to be a better dieter."

It was further study, a doctorate in physiology from UC Davis, that
changed her perspective. She realized, she said, that everything she'd
learned earlier was "not science."

She now has "a culturally acceptable body," but that's irrelevant, she
said. The message is "lighten up and trust yourself" when you eat. Eat
what you enjoy ("eat what's delicious" and stop when it's "only
good"), learn about hunger (people eat less when they're moderately
hungry than when they're starved) and don't make certain food
off-limits. Above all, she advises, don't diet. --

Katherine Seligman is a frequent contributor to the magazine on health
and psychology.