Sometimes, leading the charge for a mindful, non-diet approach to healthy weight and wellness involves examining how today’s culture often gets weight loss all wrong.
For several years, Green Mountain has presented the “Slim Chance Awards”, which expose the most misguided claims made each year in the weight loss industry. These widely read awards are intended to build awareness around the futility and dangers associated with popular diet schemes.
This year, an esteemed panel of experts, including Marsha Hudnall MS, RDN, CD & co-owner of Green Mountain at Fox Run , chose the 2015 Slim Chance Award winners from nominations submitted around the world. Here, along with comments from the panel members, are the top approaches from 2015 that you really want to watch out for.
1.) Restrictive Eating Regimens
Included in this category are eating regimens that encourage you to fast (even “intermittently”). Fasting includes everything from going without food completely to juice fasts that supply very few calories on a daily basis. “[Fasting] for weight loss is an unsustainable approach that leads to alternating days of undereating and overeating.” explains Michelle May, MD, CSP & founder of the Am I Hungry?® Mindful Eating Programs and Training. May continues, “Your energy and attention are better invested in finding balance every day.”
2.) Celebrity Endorsements
When a celebrity publicly endorses a product, a way of eating, or an exercise regimen in exchange for some kind of pay-off, can we really trust them? “Before you believe endorsements made by anyone, look at their credentials,” says Marsha Hudnall, “Do they have the professional expertise to make the recommendations they do, or is their recommendation based on their personal success at losing weight? Remember, most weight loss plans do work temporarily. But long term, people usually end up gaining weight instead.”
3.) Dietary Supplements for Weight Loss
A study published in the New England Journal of Medicine showed that dietary supplements caused over 20,000 emergency room visits this year, primarily by young adults taking supplements for weight loss and an energy boost. These include pills and powders that contain various herbal ingredients as well as substances like caffeine. Hudnall explains that “weight loss supplements seem to offer an easy way out for people who struggle with weight. But as this study shows, they may really be offering health problems, not solutions.”
4.) Compulsive Tracking Apps & Devices
These systems track the foods users eat and exercise – including “steps” – they do in a day. “While awareness is helpful, the countless devices, apps, and other tools on the market for consumers to track their food, nutrition, calories, and activity tend to keep people obsessed with what they eat and how much they exercise,” says May. “[When] these diet and activity trackers are misused, they contribute to guilt, disordered eating, orthorexia, compulsive exercising… For some people, there’s no harm in it but an important question to ask yourself: ‘Is tracking all of these numbers making my life bigger or smaller?’”
5.) School-Based Obesity Prevention Curricula
This year marks a new focus for the Slim Chance Awards by taking a close look at the types of plans and programs targeting children, the most vulnerable people in our society. The judges pinpoint the growing prevalence of school curricula designed to “prevent obesity” by teaching concepts such as good and bad foods, regular weigh-ins and the like. Katja Rowell, MD says, “It’s scare-mongering to young children and setting them up for a relationship with food defined by fear and avoidance”.
Rebecca Scritchfield, RDN continues, “As a mother of two daughters I strive to raise my girls to know that bodies come in all shapes and sizes. My hope is for them to grow up in a society that embraces health at every size, where there are no forbidden foods and they are able to love their bodies for what they do, not the number on the scale.”The Slim Chance Awards are part of Healthy Weight Week, a week-long awareness event scheduled for it’s 23rd year on January 18-22, 2016.
- About Green Mountain
Over 40 years ago, the Green Mountain at Fox Run Women’s Retreat for Healthy Weight & Wellness pioneered an integrated mindful approach to ending struggles with eating, exercise and weight. That same liberating philosophy continues to help women become healthier and happier today. We have proudly taught women for years what is finally being recognized to be true — that restrictive eating per the diet mentality does not work, and it is not an effective way to address health and weight struggles. Here in this supportive Vermont residential retreat, women learn to better understand their own needs, change their thinking about healthy eating and exercise in order to make it a regular part of their lives, and end the cycle of shame and guilt that perpetuates emotional eating. Green Mountain moves women forward on the journey to healthy weight and well-being. To learn more, visit our website at www.fitwoman.com, or call 1-800-448-8106.
By, the Experts at Green Mountain At Fox Run
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