Gravy on your mashed potatoes? So passé. This year, why don't you try them with a nice big serving of guilt and insecurity?
This is apparently what Lynn Gill is suggesting. On Nov. 14, she ran a column in the Daily Egyptian, as a representative of the Wellness Center, offering advice for restricting your eating and staving off weight gain during the holidays. It seemed a little unsettling to me and has been bugging me since. For health advice from a dietitian, it seemed to me a bit lackluster and irresponsible.
When I look at a map of obesity and diabetes prevalence rates in this country, I'm as shocked and concerned as the most involved epidemiologist. But each month, when my issue of Runner's World comes in the mail and I'm assaulted with a plethora of weight loss tips and recipes in what is ostensibly a magazine about health and athletics, I'm reminded of a much more subtle, pervasive and pernicious health problem in our society.
For all the science and research that we have at our fingertips these days, it is an utter tragedy that our society is still mired desperately in this notion that thin means healthy and healthy means thin. You see it ad nauseam, and yet to so many, it's hardly noticeable.
While Gill's column was, I'm sure, written with nothing but the best intentions, the entire thing was based around the concern that most people gain "at least 1 pound each season." Really? One pound? That's it? Though I'm no licensed dietitian, as Gill is, I could easily think up a veritable laundry list of health concerns that are as important, if not more important, than gaining a few pounds over Christmas. Several of these health concerns are a direct consequence of a culture which maintains, and reminds us around every corner, that to be thin is the ideal standard in our society, that losing weight is equivalent to gaining health and that eating is bad for you.
Not only was Gill's column a tragically non-holistic approach to health advice, it serves to perpetuate this aspect of our culture. And I don't know about you, but when I grow up I would much rather my son or daughter be one standard deviation above the "normal" weight than to be perpetually paranoid and self-conscious or suffer from bulimia or any other eating disorder. These very real threats are infinitely worse than the idea of gaining 1 or 2 pounds over the holidays.
My suggestion to readers is this: enjoy yourself. Eat, drink and be merry. It's the holidays. Just try to get some salad in the mix, and don't sit on your butt all day.
My suggestion to Lynn Gill: Your focus should be on health and wellness. This includes far, far more than weight loss and certainly should not invoke a "thin equals healthy" mentality. In the end, this mentality promotes neither health nor wellness and too often detracts from both.
Packard is a junior studying anthropology and biology.
