Article

Oh arrgh!  This dieting article made me tear my hair.  Are humans this pathetic?

"When it comes to dieting, Americans put on a good show, buying millions of diet books, watching TV programs about weight loss, obsessing over celebrities and their baby weight. But in the end, that may be all it is: a show. (snip)

"Our interest in losing weight is waning," says Harry Balzer, lead food and beverage industry analyst for The NPD Group,(snip)

Dieting was once practically a national pastime. In 1990, the same report found that 39 percent of women and 29 percent of men were on a diet. So, what's happened? Balzer, who's tracked Americans' eating habits since the 1980s, believes the answer is that dieting is simply too hard. "It's much easier to change your attitude," he said, than to sustain the willpower to eat less."

Amazing!  And the most astounding part is that people are like this about everything these days!  Relationships, parenting, breastfeeding (yes, I went there)!

That view is echoed by Kelly D. Brownell, director of the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at Yale University, who says that diets are "notoriously ineffective," and posits that many overweight people may have simply given up.


Marge McMillan, 60, is one who says she's given up on diets, if not on slimming down. A veterinarian who lives in Medford, McMillan tried the low-carb Atkins diet and Weight Watchers but threw in the towel on both. Now, she's just trying to eat healthily. "Diets don't work," she said. "You lose the weight but regain more."

Not true!  I vented about this over on my Thrifty Dieters Blog.


Dr. Sasha Stiles, medical director of the Obesity Consult Center at Tufts Medical Center, offers additional reasons why dieting is on the wane: "A lot of people are saying I don't have enough money to spend on a diet, or I'm going to try surgery."

Patently absurd.  You don't need a lot of money to diet, I can testify!  As for the surgery, well that's unessessary in most cases, IMHO.  "I'll just get my insurance to pay to dramatically and dangerously and permanently alter my body because I can't be arsed to put the fork down."




There's another possible explanation: Fewer people are dieting because there's no exciting new diet on the scene. In 2004, the top-selling diet book in the country, "The South Beach Diet," sold 2.4 million copies, according to Nielsen BookScan, a data provider for the publishing industry. In 2007, the most popular book, "You: On a Diet," by Oprah Winfrey's health guru Dr. Mehmet Oz and Dr. Michael Roizen, managed only 706,000 copies. This year's top selling book, "Eat This Not That!" has sold a mere 552,000 copies so far, and is more reference than diet book.


After years of being sucked into one weight-loss phenomenon after another - low-cal, low-fat, low-carb - serial dieters seem to have fallen into a fallow period. With no miracle plan animating dinner-party and workplace conversations, it's the same old, same old. That gets boring, says Amy Kropke, 41, of Newton, who says she'd be "fabulous" if she could shed 20 pounds.


"I love that moment where you're like, 'This is it. This is definitely the one," she says, her voice tinged with nostalgia for the days when South Beach thrilled her. She wants to be seduced again, preferably by "something that was easy, that you could lose 10 pounds without having to do too much."

Well butter my broad bum and call me a jumbo bisquit.  Perhaps she'd also like to sit at home all day and veg in front of her 'stories' whilst Zachary Quinto fetched her soda and brushed the cheesy poof dust off of her ratty sweatshirt?

(oh, wait ... that was MY fantasy ...)

If only reading diet books triggered weight loss, we'd be all set. Even without a new hit title, the number of weight-loss books sold in 2007 hit 4.8 million, up from 4 million in 2006, and 3.6 million in 2005, according to Nielsen BookScan. Still, sales aren't what they were in 2004 when the "South Beach" juggernaut was in full swing. That year, 5.3 million diet books sold.
(snip)
"I keep wondering if it's market saturation," said Oliver, professor of political science at the University of Chicago. "You have people who are interested in dieting who tried South Beach and tried Atkins. Some were successful, but they may have gained the weight back. We may be in a cycle where we're waiting for the next new Scarsdale, South Beach, Atkins . . . the whole rigmarole. Someone who is a clever marketer may see this as a time to strike."


So should I begin working on my Paleo Diet book now?  Should I? :excited: