Seriously, who cares whether you’re technically overweight or technically obese? True, there is a point where obesity impairs basic movement, and that’s what people oftentimes define as “obese”.

But does it really matter if a man who’s 5′10 and 210 lbs. doesn’t think of himself as “obese”? Hell, I’d be glad to be 5′8 and 210 - when I’m that size, I think of myself as being in good shape, with good health stats (blood pressure, cholesterol, etc.)

There’s NFW I’m going to get down to 180 lbs. just to please the &&^$^#$ diet industry.

IOW, if we tend to value appearance over health, then we’re gonna tend to eat poorly.

Yeah, that’s definitely true. And lord knows a lot of low-calorie processed foods are nutritionally useless. I’m mostly just responding to the “if undereating is an eating disorder, why isn’t overeating one, too?” meme that seems to be floating around. As far as I’m concerned, it’s the compulsive aspect that makes an eating disorder. If you just find it easier to live on ramen and jello, that may be a bad call, but it’s not necessarily an eating disorder.

Maybe they assume people won’t follow the recommendation on green leafy veggies or other foods containing calcium?

Possibly. But it may also be that the dairy industry has more influence than they should over the FDA. Call me cynical.

I’d add the caveat that everyone should learn to love greens. It shouldn’t be too hard, once you buy a cast-iron pan and some decent olive oil. Mmmm…

I happen to love dairy, particularly in the form of hot chocolote. Still, I’m not sure why they raised recommendation is since 3 servings would give you 90% of your calcium needs from dairy alone. Maybe they assume people won’t follow the recommendation on green leafy veggies or other foods containing calcium?

In any case, lack of weight bearing exercise seems implicated in osteoporosis, so even drinking milk, or taking supplements, may not help if you are very sedentary.

For “Yoplait” read “whatever sweetened diet-marketed yogurt product just hit the market”, plus of course we are supposed to drink glasses upon glasses of moo juice.

I am really not crazy about equating “poor eating habits” with eating disorders.

I wouldn’t make that mistake, either…but I think there is support for the argument that a lot of “poor eating habits” in one direction or another are the result of a culture with some ideas about food that are, erm, familiar to eating-disorder survivors. IOW, if we tend to value appearance over health, then we’re gonna tend to eat poorly.

piny, I agree with the larger point you were making; I got irritated with the generalities partly because I get tired of the “Drink milk or DIE!” messages women are bombarded with, and partly because I’m a lawyer. ;)

Isn’t it more like, “Eat Yoplait or DIE!”?

shannon, word. I even get calcium-fortified stuff (and tofu) for my kids, who I’m sad to say are themselves members of the Butter People Clan and technically don’t need it.

Eating 1000 fewer calories a day is not starvation if one is eating 3000 calories a day. Thinking that is starvation is how people get really obese.

I think you’re referring to kilocalories instead of just calories (2000 cal diet would certainly kill anyone, no matter how low hir metabolism).

Even with that assumption, I have to disagree a bit. If a person’s metabolic rate is over 2000kcal per day, then changing to a 2000kcal diet can have two consequences:

1) The fat storaged in a person’s body (about 3500kcal per pound of fat I think) will get transformed into energy in response to the lowered energy intake.
2) The person’s metabolic rate will drop in response to the lowered energy intake.

It is the second option that makes weight-loss a difficult “non-linear” phenomenon. Certainly, if there were no metabolic differences, then we could just stick numbers into simple formulas and get a guaranteed weight loss plan.

(This doesn’t change my overall believe that eating and weight are correlated, though.)

Here is Hugo’s first post on the subject.

(Thanks for the link lesson for those of us who are bloggingly challenged, Amp - hope I did it right.)

Mendy, only because the men won’t discuss it, not directly with a woman. Go over to fattymcblog.blogspot.com and read the “Would You Date a Fat Girl” post? The girls did an experiment permitting men from Craigslist to respond anonymously to that inquiry. Now, there are a lot of mouth-breathers on Craigslist, but I think the responses (and the comments on the experiment) point to some interesting male variants on the type of female presure you were just talking about.

Professor Hugo Schwyzer also has a post on the relationship between men’s perception of their homosocial status and how it’s related to the perceived hewing of their mate/wife/girlfriend to prevailing social standards of beauty, and today that means thin thin thin. So even though I certainly don’t deny the pressure we women put on each other, don’t underestimate the equal - although generally more silent - role of men in this mess.

Er, folks, not everybody comes from an ethnic group where everybody eats dairy products well into adulthood and nobody is “lactose intolerant.” Just because you may have grown up among the Butter People doesn’t mean that women who didn’t are freaky anorexics, destined to die of a broken hip.

Actually, everyone on my mom’s side is lactose intolerant. And frequently allergic to soy.

You’re right; like lucia said, the generalizations were unconsidered. I said a few times that I definitely was not talking about “freaky anorexics” (and thanks so much!), but about women who opt out of nourishing foods because they’re worried about heaviness–IOW, how our weight-not-health objective might be damaging women in subtler ways. Dairy is one example among many; I used it because osteoporosis, unlike a great many other health problems, is one that the yogurt lobbyists have made visible.

(To be perfectly fair, you only argued that this holds between normal-weight and obese people, but it just seems weird that with the morbidly underweight food suddenly becomes an indicating variable. The former theory is pretty much shot down by the notion of feederism.)

Yes, it’s totally inconsistent to point out that significant weight loss for the obese frequently involves starvation and then to post about how people who starve themselves tend to lose weight.

The way FAs hate feederism always shocked me. I guess obese women don’t want men with mental illnesses. Or maybe they just don’t want to get fatter. But I’m not sure why they think that eating more would make them gain weight.

Your right. I should have given a longer answer instead of making a broad general statement. White and/or asian women are prone to osteoporosis, particularly if they avoid dairy products in order to keep their weight down.

While osteoporosis occurs in all ethnic groups, it is less prevalent in people with African ancestry. Lactose intolerance is fairly common in adults, but very uncommon in people with northern European ancestry.

Still, for many women, avoiding dairy with the intention of controling weight puts them at risk of osteoporsis. Avoiding it for other reasons may not be as big a problem. (And if you really don’t want to consume dairy, there’s always broccoli and green leafy veggies.)

Just recently you blogged about how the amount of one’s eating doesn’t correlate with weight.

(To be perfectly fair, you only argued that this holds between normal-weight and obese people, but it just seems weird that with the morbidly underweight food suddenly becomes an indicating variable. The former theory is pretty much shot down by the notion of feederism.)