40 years of diets and we're fatter than ever!

Daily Mail. July 23, 2009, by Sally Ann Voak.

Sally Ann Voak is the author of 28 diet books and this is, therefore, billed as a 'startling confession'. It is quite cynical, from someone who has made 'slimming' her profession since 1971. It concludes: "The problem is that the diet industry doesn't really want women to be slim, because if we were all a healthy size 10, who would ever buy a diet book or product?"

I don't entirely buy this. I think that the 99% of diets that are based on the myth "To lose 1lb of fat you need to create a deficit of 3500 calories" are probably, in the main, well intentioned. The crime, for me, is the fact that slimming clubs up and down the country observe women (especially) creating this deficit, week in week out, and not losing a single pound and yet they don't stop to question the fundamental formula and question its entire validity. That is the unforgivable bit in my view. I do believe that these clubs would be happy for people to lose weight and keep it off, but they also do well financially when most people don't lose any weight and those that do mostly put it all back on (and often more).

I personally want to help anyone I can in the world to be and stay slim. Interestingly, when I was anorexic, I wanted to feed up everyone around me (typical anorexic behaviour) because them being fatter would make me appear slimmer. Now, my goal is to help get as many people as I can to a normal BMI (with all the heart, cancer, diabetes, health, well-being etc benefits that this would deliver).

There are 1 billion overweight people in the world already and the number is rising! That's more than enough 'customers' to go round. Sadly, I truly believe that any diet that makes a person eat less is destined to make them fatter in the long run. Hence we are just producing more 'customers' every time someone sends their body into a pseudo-starvation situation and trains the body to store fat. The definition of madness is doing the same thing again and again and expecting a different result. We must stop trying to eat less to lose weight! It doesn't work!