New Year Resolution Suggestion: Give Up Dieting!

You've tried many diets. They didn't work. You know that dieting doesn't work. You know that you end up weighing more than before. To do again what you have done so many times before and expect a different outcome does not make sense. - Give up dieting! - Let the deadly dieting industry make money out of other people, not you, in 2011.

Eating fewer calories than your body needs is likely to cause you health problems like eating disorders and osteoporosis, and will NOT make you slim. - Here is how to lose excess weight without counting calories or going hungry: cut down on salt and salty food. This reduces the fluid retention which is the basic cause of overweight or obesity. You will definitely lose weight - and you will lose it rapidly and safely.

Salt/Sodium in foods

Who benefits from diets and dieting?

Well, the dieting industry benefits, you will agree:
the manufacturers of diet foods and diet drinks,
the authors of diet books,
the women's magazines that publish the latest diets,
the newspapers that do similarly,
the slimming clubs.
I'm sure you can think of others to add to these I have listed.

Who doesn't benefit from diets and dieting? - Sadly, the people who do not benefit from dieting are overweight and obese people who want to get rid of excess weight, because in practice, dieting is far more likely to cause an increase in weight than it is to reduce obesity. - If you are obese and you have already tried to lose excess weight by dieting you will have experienced for yourself that what I say is true. - DIETS DO NOT WORK.

The safe, fast way to lose excess weight is to reduce the amount of added salt/sodium you eat. This means cutting down on salt, not cutting down on calories or cutting down on food.

See how to lose weight by eating less salt. And see salt/sodium in foods.

Calorie counting nonsense and calorie restriction advice are propaganda/misinformation. You do not have to believe propaganda. Recognise it and confront it for what it is. - If your personal experience proves that low calorie diets do not work and that they make you hungry, tired, cold and depressed then accept that proof. It is called empirical proof. - 'Empirical' means derived from experiment and observation rather than theory.

The theory about low calorie diets is based on arithmetic; it is not based on what happens to real people who try to reduce their obesity by testing out the theory: those real people who become cold and tired and hungry and feel weak and faint, and catch colds, etc. easily because the dieting has lowered their immunity to infection.

If you follow my suggestions of giving up the calorie game and instead eat real food and don't go hungry, and avoid salt and salty food (that means mainly avoiding ready meals, takeaways and processed food as these are usually high in salt and pretty low in nutrition) - if you follow these suggestions you will not feel cold or tired or hungry or depressed. - Instead you feel very much better. You will have more energy. You will have excreted some of the excess fluid that has been held in your body - held there by the added salt in your food - fluid retention weighing you down. Your health will benefit in a multitude of ways. You will enjoy your life so much more and you will not be sacrificing your life and health and happiness to the dieting industry and the food industry and all the other guys who profit from the usual dieting propaganda. - And you will lose weight...(o:

Low-calorie diet drinks (usually sickly sweet with dodgy sweeteners and other chemical additives that would be better staying in the lab than entering the human body) don't make fat people slim, and low-calorie diet meals (usually low-fat, salty junk) don't make fat people slim.

So why does the dieting industry sell us this false propaganda and non-nutritious diet meals and diet drinks which don't work? - Well I hope that it is obvious when you think about it: they don't actually want fat people to become slim and fit. - They need fat people to keep buying their products - cheaply produced out of low-cost ingredients, dearly bought at the cost of the health and happiness of the consumer. If diet products did what they promise to do, the dieting industry would go out of business.

Lose weight by eating less salt! - Go on! - Try it! - You will feel so much better!
See http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/
The site does not sell anything and has no banners or sponsors or adverts - just helpful information.

Similarities Between Lysenkoism and Prevailing Obesity Advice

Wikipedia defines Lysenkoism thus:

Lysenkoism is used colloquially to describe the manipulation or distortion of the scientific process as a way to reach a predetermined conclusion as dictated by an ideological bias, often related to social or political objectives. (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysenkoism)

Wikipedia informs us that Lysenko was a Russian agronomist who, in 1928, "claimed to have developed an agricultural technique, termed vernalization, which tripled or quadrupled crop yield by exposing wheat seed to high humidity and low temperature." His many ideas/theories were politically popular with the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, but because the theories did not stand up in practice when the farmers tried to achieve the successful results claimed by the theory, the theories were eventually discredited, but that was only after decades of serious harm to agriculture and Russian science, and after terrible unjust punishments, including executions and being sent to labour camps, had been meted out to Russian geneticists who disagreed with Lysenko's claims.

I suggest there are strong similarities between 1) Lysenkoism, which made the already unsuccessful forced collectivisation of Soviet agriculture at the time catastrophically worse, and 2) the already huge problem of obesity on the increase throughout much of the world being made very, very much worse by the harmful and incorrect misinformation and advice being given to the public and in particular to the overweight and obese people themselves.

In the main, the advice can be summed up as something approximating to 'eat less food/fewer
calories/smaller portions/less fat and do more exercise'. When their clients/patients/victims try to lose weight by following this advice very few succeed. For most of them, following the advice causes weight gain, not weight loss, because when a fat person eats insufficient food for the body's needs, the body has to feed on itself. This makes the skin and the walls of the blood vessels become thinner and weaker, with the result that the fluid retention that has initiated the excess weight increases, along with further weight increase. See how to lose weight safely.

When these innocent subjects of this vast, damaging, unscientific worldwide 'experiment' report back that they have genuinely tried hard to lose weight but have not succeeded in so doing, the usual response is not to believe them and to say that they are mistaken or lying or have not followed the instructions properly, and they have really been eating more calories, which accounts for the weight gain. - You get the idea. - And so the failures of the results of following the conventional advice do not get accepted. - To exclude these results, which are the results for most obese people who try to follow the advice, is obviously Bad Science, like the propaganda machine in Soviet Russia, which also omitted mention of failures.

Now when obese people lose weight the fast, easy, safe way by seriously reducing their intake of salt/sodium but not their calorie intake and they report this welcome result to their advisers, their reports too are manipulated/doctored/distorted. The researchers who studied the fact that when children cut down on salt intake they lose weight, refused to believe that the weight loss was because of reduction in fluid retention. They introduced an unnecessary and unscientific explanation for the result.

Cutting down on salt intake reduces weight because it reduces thirst and so subjects drink less and fluid retention (excess weight) is reduced. But the researchers claimed that the reduction in weight was because when their thirst was reduced they stopped drinking so many fizzy drinks and that the fizzy drinks were sugary and contained a lot of calories, so weight loss was really caused by calorie reduction! That is Bad Science, like the Soviet propaganda, distorting the evidence and leading to a predetermined conclusion. The researchers in this instance recorded the data correctly, as far as I know, but then extrapolated from it to invent the explanation of the calories in drinks that were assumed to have been drunk.

If you have a pet dog or cat that is obese, it is obese because it has been habitually given salty food to eat - for example the last bit of its owner's takeaway meal. If you give it food that contains no added salt it will rapidly lose weight by excreting more water in the urine. - Hands up anyone who gives their pet dog or cat sugary fizzy drinks instead of water? - No hands up for that, I suspect. So losing weight by reduced salt intake occurs because of sodium reduction, not because of calorie reduction.

Failure to admit the truth about how best to reduce obesity is causing weight gain in the obese people who try to lose weight by dieting and reducing calories. And lying about salt reduction as a means of losing excess weight and claiming it is really calorie reduction resembles the history of Lysenkoism in its damage to Science and in the massive harm it is doing to millions of innocent obese people.

If you want to lose excess weight, do it the fast, easy, safe way by avoiding salt and salty food.
See Obesity and the Salt Connection and Sodium in foods.

International No Diet Day: that's today, May 6th

That's right: today is International No Diet Day. I hope all dieters are observing it...(o:

But seriously, I urge you to give up dieting, not just for today, but for ever. Dieting is not necessary to lose weight and, indeed, diets do not work. In fact dieting is harmful.

Why do you think people find that diets don't work? - It's because obesity is caused by fluid retention/salt sensitivity, not by eating too many calories. It's not the calories in junk food that make you gain weight; it's the SALT.

We all know people who eat like trenchermen but never get fat. - They are the lucky people who are not sensitive to salt. For them, eating salt doesn't lead to fluid retention because their strong veins can withstand the input of salt/sodium when they eat more of it than their body needs. - Their kidneys do not have a problem dealing with the salt/sodium and they excrete any excess salt/sodium in their urine, along with the water that salt always attracts to itself.

When excess fluid (i.e. excess salt and water) is held in the veins, the extra blood volume obviously adds to a person's weight: water weighs heavily in fact. - So if you are overweight and reduce your salt intake you will shed some of the excess fluid held in your body and will therefore lose weight - easily, safely and fast.

And do not despise the weight lost and think well, it's only water. - Excess WATER is what you need to lose in order to lose weight safely. - You don't want to lose lean muscle/firm flesh. You don't want your skin and bones to become thinner and more fragile. - You don't want to lose your hair.

Believe me: you want to lose excess fluid. - There is a great bonus to losing excess fluid. - If you have fat retention as well as fluid retention, then reducing salt intake also reduces fat retention.

There are no calories in salt - but if you cut down on salt you will easily lose excess weight. If you cut down on calories you will not lose excess weight.

See Sodium in foods

Read my Mensa article on Obesity and the Salt Connection

Lose weight

vulnerable groups

FAT RETENTION

Do not believe the lies of the Diet-Gurus who tell you that by eating fewer calories than your body requires you will 'burn off' excess fat.

You won't! Your body's calorie needs will have to be met somehow. You will lose some of your precious firm flesh: some of your skin will be sacrificed and over time you will notice its loss as the skin becomes thinner.

The healthy body has a natural way of ridding itself of excess fat: it is excreted in the faeces. In this matter, a healthy body means a body that is not deficient in calcium. If your body is retaining excess fat then it isn't a diet you need, it is more calcium.

If you are overweight/obese, your blood vessel walls have been weakened by salt sensitivity and excess fluid in the bloodstream. This salt problem results in the body being depleted of calcium as calcium is excreted in the urine. You can reduce the excess blood volume by eating less salt and salty food.

See Sodium in foods

Read my Mensa article on Obesity and the Salt Connection

Lose weight

vulnerable groups

FAT RETENTION

Consider this: if the Diet-Gurus were to tell you the truth about how to lose excess weight (i.e. by avoiding salt and salty food) they would no longer be able to peddle their dangerous nonsense; they would be out of a job and their source of income would dry up.

Diets don't work! Give up dieting! - Give it up forever! Diets lose you your looks and your health; they do not make you slim.

Fed up of diets that don't work? Willing to try anything? - Are you willing yet to try the one method that will definitely work?

Fed up of diets that don't work? Willing to try anything? - Are you willing yet to try the one method that will definitely work? - Cut down on salt and salty food! - You are sensitive to salt and it is salt that is causing your weight gain.

Lose weight safely, reduce your risk of most cancers, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, stroke, heart disease, heart attack, vascular dementia, osteopenia, osteoporosis, hypercholesterolaemia, depression, liver and kidney problems, and improve your health in many other ways without drugs, hunger or expense by eating less salt! - Try it! - You will feel so much better!

Read my Mensa article on Obesity and the Salt Connection

And see Sodium in foods

Appetite too big? Here's what to do:

Cut down on salt! - Salt stokes up your appetite.
Give up dieting, eat good healthy meals with plenty of protein and fat and fruit and fresh vegetables, and avoid salt and salty food. You will feel so much better!

Here is a page of information about foods high in salt/sodium (the foods to avoid) and those low in sodium and/or high in potassium (the foods that are better for people who are wanting to lose excess weight)
Sodium foods

You will lose excess weight easily, rapidly and safely, and you will have more energy. - Go on! - Try it! - You KNOW that counting calories and going hungry doesn't work...

Forget about calories! Lose weight by eating less salt! - Go on! - Just do it!

Doomed to failure: Scotland's new initiative, entitled ‘Preventing Overweight and Obesity in Scotland – A Route Map Towards Healthy Weight’.

Why do I predict that THIS is doomed to failure? - Because yet again, influential, but ill-informed, people are claiming that obesity is on the increase because of energy imbalance, i.e. that obesity is being caused by taking in too many calories and expending too few calories. They see part of the answer to this supposed cause as pressing restaurants to limit portion sizes! - See this Telegraph article. What an intrusion into the personal liberty of both the customer and the restaurateur! - Why do I say this? - Isn't it worth it to improve people's health? - Well no, actually. - Limiting portion size will not improve anyone's health, and it certainly won't improve their temper or their blood pressure!

It dismays and astounds me that they are still, even now, peddling this lie, despite the destruction it is wreaking on the health of the people they are paid to serve.

Why don't they read the research? - Diets don't work! - Renaming diets 'healthy living' doesn't make them work. Restricting calories in and increasing exercise (calories out) is counter-productive. - It actually causes WEIGHT GAIN, because it weakens the blood vessel walls and so increases fluid retention. See the article in the British Medical Journal of November 2003 http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/content/full/327/7423/1085 for actual research on what happens when this advice is followed! - Over 800 obese adults were put on energy deficit diets, given diet sheets and plenty of instruction and help from trained staff, and apparently, visited fortnightly for a year, at the end of which they had GAINED weight! This mirrors the real experience of obese people, viz. - dieting makes you fatter.

To reduce obesity in Scotland they should be explaining that it is initiated by fluid retention, which tends to be followed by fat retention as well. The vector for both of these forms of excess weight is salt - more exactly, SODIUM. Reducing salt/sodium intake is the fastest, safest way to lose excess weight because it reduces both fluid retention and fat retention. - Fat retention is not caused by eating too much fat and is not cured by eating meals low in fat.

See Lose weight and
Fat retention and fat excretion: the importance of getting enough calcium.

Don't bother about portion control. It is neither necessary nor desirable.

Read my Mensa article on Obesity and the Salt Connection

And see Sodium in foods and

Children and Obesity

And they should be curbing the reckless prescribing of pharmaceutical drugs, since their side-effects are the major cause of adult onset morbid obesity. See

amitriptyline

prescribed steroids and HRT

Channel 4's 'My Big Fat Diet Show' last night gave the usual bad advice to people wanting to lose excess weight.

Channel 4's 'My Big Fat Diet Show' last night gave the usual bad advice to people wanting to lose excess weight. The overweight women dieters featured on the show were told they must cut down on calories to lose weight, and that for this diet they must eat only 1200 calories a day - i.e. fewer calories than their bodies need.

For the purposes of the programme there was a gimmick of providing 100 calorie portions of different foods, e.g. a quarter of a cup cake was a 100 calorie portion and one very large egg was a 100 calorie portion. Fresh vegetables obviously provided a lot of food for 100 calories, compared with the junk processed food that seemed to be the major element of the food usually eaten by the women.

At the weigh-in after a few days, most of the women had lost weight, and one, who had lost several pounds, was congratulated warmly and told excitedly that that was proof that reducing calorie intake reduces overweight. - This was despite the fact that another one of the women had gained 2 pounds! - The woman who had gained 2 pounds was very distressed because, presumably, she had put a lot of effort into reducing her calorie intake. - But she was not told that gaining weight was proof that eating fewer calories increases overweight! - No, of course she wasn't. She was told not to worry, that weight gain sometimes happens, but that she would lose weight if she continued with the calorie reduction.

It's all such nonsense. The women victims chosen for the show are all serial dieters and therefore should know from experience that dieting almost always results ultimately in weight gain to a heavier weight than before the diet.

If only programme-makers could abandon their misplaced obsession with calories and dieting, and instead think of outcomes for the subjects in their programmes. All overweight people are sensitive to salt and that is why they are overweight. And so the safe, fast, effective way to lose excess weight and reduce obesity is to cut down on salt/sodium and salty food, and eat plenty of fruit and vegetables and plenty of real food, instead of salt-laden processed junk.

And no need at all for that pointless exercise, struggling up and down stairs to 'use up calories'...)o: - What a waste of life that is!

If those women had cut down on their salt intake instead of cutting down on calories they would ALL have lost several pounds, without any hunger and without damaging their health. And then we could have stopped having these silly TV dieting programmes cluttering up the schedules and harming people's health.

How to lose weight

Sodium in foods

It's not the calories in junk food that make you gain weight; it's the SALT.

It's not the calories in junk food that make you gain weight; it's the SALT.

Why do you think people find that diets don't work? - It's because obesity is caused by fluid retention/salt sensitivity, not by eating too many calories.

We all know people who eat like trenchermen but never get fat. - They are the lucky people who are not sensitive to salt. For them, eating salt doesn't lead to fluid retention because their strong veins can withstand the input of salt/sodium when they eat more of it than their body needs. - Their kidneys do not have a problem dealing with the salt/sodium and they excrete any excess salt/sodium in their urine, along with the water that salt always attracts to itself.

When excess fluid (i.e. excess salt and water) is held in the veins, the extra blood volume obviously adds to a person's weight: water weighs heavily in fact. - So if you are overweight and reduce your salt intake you will shed some of the excess fluid held in your body and will therefore lose weight - easily, safely and fast.

And do not despise the weight lost and think well, it's only water. - Water is what you NEED to lose in order to lose weight safely. - You don't want to lose lean muscle/firm flesh. You don't want your skin and bones to become thinner and more fragile. - You don't want to lose your hair.

Believe me: you want to lose excess fluid. - There is a great bonus to losing excess fluid. - If you have fat retention as well as fluid retention, then reducing salt intake also reduces fat retention.

There are no calories in salt - but if you cut down on salt you will easily lose weight. If you cut down on calories you will not lose weight.

Lose weight, reduce your risk of most cancers, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, heart disease, heart attack, vascular dementia, stroke, osteopenia, osteoporosis, hypercholesterolaemia, depression, liver damage and kidney problems, and improve your health in many other ways without drugs, hunger or expense by eating less salt! - Try it! - You will feel so much better! See my website www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk
The site does not sell anything and has no banners or sponsors or adverts - just helpful information.

Read my Mensa article on Obesity and the Salt Connection

And see Sodium in foods and

http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/story.html - my 'political' page

amitriptyline

prescribed steroids and HRT

See advice for pregnant mothers

Children and Obesity

Associated health conditions

and FAT RETENTION

http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/socio.html - social and economic considerations.

When Obese People Get Swine Flu There Is a Risk of Severe Complications

Google News today has a number of reports about obesity resulting in severe complications and even death for people who catch H1N1 swine flu. My advice to anyone who is obese is to cut down your intake of salt and salty food as much as you can. - This is the way to lose weight safely and it will boost your immunity to infection.

People who are overweight/fat/obese are sensitive to salt, which for them can result in sodium and water retention and therefore, obviously, weight gain. This in turn can result in calcium deficiency, which causes fat retention. Reducing salt intake reduces both the fluid retention and the fat retention. - Reducing calories does not address the fluid retention problem at all and that is the explanation for the fact that diets don't work.

Prescription drugs including many steroids, many antidepressants, anti-psychotics and epilepsy drugs as well as other pharmaceuticals, are a major cause of fluid retention/obesity/salt sensitivity and especially of morbid obesity. - Avoid taking prescription drugs unless they are absolutely necessary.

Lose weight, reduce your risk of most cancers, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, heart disease, heart attack, vascular dementia, stroke, osteopenia, osteoporosis, hypercholesterolaemia, depression, liver damage and kidney problems, and improve your health in many other ways without drugs, hunger or expense by eating less salt! - Try it! - You will feel so much better! See my website www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk
The site does not sell anything and has no banners or sponsors or adverts - just helpful information.

Forget calories! - If you're obese or overweight, SALT is the poison on your plate!

If you are trying to lose excess weight, I urge you to try this way of losing weight. It is safe and simple and it involves no hunger and no drugs.

Diets don't work! - Salt reduction does work.

Remember:

If you're obese or overweight,
SALT is the poison on your plate!
Margaret Wilde © 2008

Lose weight, reduce your risk of most cancers, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, heart disease, heart attack, vascular dementia, stroke, osteopenia, osteoporosis, hypercholesterolaemia, depression, liver and kidney problems, and improve your health in many other ways without drugs, hunger or expense by eating less salt! - Try it! - You will feel so much better! See my website www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk
The site does not sell anything and has no banners or sponsors or adverts - just helpful information.

Read my Mensa article on Obesity and the Salt Connection

And see Sodium in foods and

http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/story.html - my 'political' page

http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/socio.html - social and economic considerations

amitriptyline

prescribed steroids and HRT

See advice for pregnant mothers

Children and Obesity

Associated health conditions

and FAT RETENTION

If you have wasted years of your life trying to lose weight by dieting and/or exercising and had no success, I urge you to try this:

Give up the dieting! - Diets don't work; they really DO NOT WORK.

Instead of limiting your food intake, limit your intake of salt/sodium. - By avoiding salt and salty food you will lose excess fluid from your body, because it is salt that is holding that excess fluid in your body. - Everyone who is overweight has some fluid retention and that is the problem that needs to be addressed. - You've wasted years being unsuccessful with your diets. - Surely you could spare a couple of weeks or a month trying the salt reduction way of losing weight? - You would not have to give it up because of hunger, or because you have no energy or feel cold. - These are problems associated with dieting, not with losing weight the way that I have suggested to you.

Lose weight, reduce your risk of most cancers, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, stroke, heart disease, heart attack, vascular dementia, osteopenia, osteoporosis, hypercholesterolaemia, depression, liver and kidney problems, and improve your health in many other ways without drugs, hunger or expense by eating less salt! - Try it! - You will feel so much better!

Read my Mensa article on Obesity and the Salt Connection

And see Sodium in foods and

http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/story.html - my 'political' page

http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/socio.html - social and economic considerations

amitriptyline

prescribed steroids and HRT

See advice for pregnant mothers

Children and Obesity

Associated health conditions

and FAT RETENTION

I can be contacted via my website if you need my further help. My help is free.

I've been thinking about Steve Wright in the afternoon and the weight he has gained.

The unfortunate fellow, surrounded as he is by publicity, cannot escape the insulting comments of the hate-filled fattists and the misguided advice to 'just eat less and exercise more'. - I do hope he can manage to resist their dangerous bullying. - He does not need to eat less or to exercise more. He needs to cut down significantly on his intake of salt/sodium, because now that he is substantially overweight, he is clearly sensitive to salt. - It is salt sensitivity/fluid retention/sodium retention that causes obesity. - Obesity is not caused by overeating/greed or by inactivity/idleness. - When fat people follow the 'eat less, move more' advice they gain weight, not lose it, because this harmful advice causes an increase is fluid retention.

CALORIE REDUCTION DOES NOT REDUCE OBESITY BECAUSE OBESITY IS NOT CAUSED BY EXCESS CALORIES. - IT DOESN'T MATTER HOW MANY 'EXPERTS' TELL YOU THAT IT IS; IT ISN'T. - THE EXPERTS HAVE NEVER BOTHERED TO PUT THEIR ILL-INFORMED ADVICE TO THE TEST. - THERE IS NOT A SCRAP OF CONTROLLED SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE TO SUPPORT THEIR CLAIMS.

Obesity is easily reduced by addressing the fluid retention, i.e. by reducing salt intake.

If you see Steve, tell 'im!

Lose weight, reduce your risk of most cancers, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, heart disease, heart attack, vascular dementia, stroke, osteopenia, osteoporosis, hypercholesterolaemia, depression, liver and kidney problems, and improve your health in many other ways without drugs, hunger or expense by eating less salt! - Try it! - You will feel so much better! See my website www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk
The site does not sell anything and has no banners or sponsors or adverts - just helpful information.

Read my Mensa article on Obesity and the Salt Connection

And see Sodium in foods and

http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/story.html - my 'political' page

http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/socio.html - social and economic considerations

amitriptyline

prescribed steroids and HRT

See advice for pregnant mothers

Children and Obesity

Associated health conditions

and FAT RETENTION

I can be contacted via my website if you need my further help. My help is free.

Women in Britain spend far more time thinking about food than sex, a new report has revealed.

Women think about food more than sex
article in the Telegraph

Extract:

"The study commissioned by Weight Watchers showed that while 58 per cent of women surveyed think about sex at least 10 times a day, some 70 per cent admitted having far more regular fantasies about food.

According to the research nearly two thirds of UK women are dissatisfied with their size and 53 per cent of those who took part in the survey admitted to thinking about their weight up to 10 times a day.

The report also pinpointed the day and time when women feel they have the best chance of dieting successfully."

Dieting to lose weight is unnecessary and harmful. Diets don't work; they usually cause weight gain rather than weight loss. The safe, sure, fast way to lose excess weight is to avoid eating salt and salty food. This reduces the fluid retention which is the cause of obesity.

Lose weight, reduce your risk of most cancers, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, stroke, heart disease, heart attack, vascular dementia, osteopenia, osteoporosis, hypercholesterolaemia, depression, liver and kidney problems, and improve your health in many other ways without drugs, hunger or expense by eating less salt! - Try it! - You will feel so much better!

Read my Mensa article on Obesity and the Salt Connection

And see Sodium in foods and

http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/story.html - my 'political' page

http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/socio.html - social and economic considerations

amitriptyline

prescribed steroids and HRT

See advice for pregnant mothers

Children and Obesity

Associated health conditions

and FAT RETENTION

I can be contacted via my website if you need my further help. My help is free.

These are healthy breakfast cereals that will not make you gain weight - Shredded Wheat, porridge, Ready Brek

But don't put salt in the porridge/porage! - Overweight people should avoid salt and salty food, so as not to increase fluid retention and hypertension.

Most other breakfast cereals contain a lot of salt and so will tend to make fat people fatter and will raise the blood pressure of people who have high blood pressure. - These 'baddie' breakfast cereals include Kelloggs Crunchy Nut Clusters (honey and nut), Kelloggs Bran Flakes, Kelloggs Rice Krispies, Kelloggs Fruit n fibre, Kelloggs Cornflakes and other brands of cornflakes too, Cheerios, Special K, Quaker Oat Krunchies. (I don't know how the manufacturers get away with claiming that Special K helps you lose weight when you have it instead of 2 of your 3 meals in a day for 2 weeks...(o: - It contains a high proportion of salt so it cannot help you to lose excess weight.)

Maybe you think you don't eat much salt/sodium? - I invite you to have a look at the labels on the packs of food in your store-cupboards. - You'll be surprised...

Obesity is a very serious disease syndrome caused by the medical profession and its acolytes, by the dieting industry, and by pharmaceutical companies, all of which have supplied harmful misinformation to innocent members of the public and then blamed their victims for the harm caused...

The processed food industry has been equally culpable in doing harm by adding far too much salt to their products.

While women and men continue to be constantly misinformed by the foolish, unscientific 'experts', then obesity will continue to increase both in incidence and in severity. The best way to extend your life-span and improve your health is to cut out salt as far as you can and also to avoid prescribed pharmaceutical drugs as far as possible.

To lose excess weight it is necessary to eat less salt and salty food because this will reduce the body's fluid retention. This is the safe, sure, healthy way to lose and it works like magic.

DON'T DIET! - Dieting is unnecessary, harmful and IT DOES NOT WORK!

Lose weight, reduce your risk of most cancers, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, stroke, heart disease, heart attack, vascular dementia, osteopenia, osteoporosis, hypercholesterolaemia, depression, liver and kidney problems, and improve your health in many other ways without drugs or expense by eating less salt! - Try it! - You will feel so much better!

Read my Mensa article on Obesity and the Salt Connection

Children and Obesity

And see Sodium in foods

The Telegraph reports that being overweight is a curse not just on a woman's health, but on her entire life, a new study has found.

Obesity is a curse for women
article in the Telegraph

Extract:

"Researchers have discovered that overweight women are more likely to lose their jobs, be a victim of crime and have money troubles. They are are more likely to be criminals themselves.

To make matters worse, because of these stressful life events, they are driven to comfort-eating which only perpetuates the problem, increasing the probability that they will be unluckier still."

The first paragraph of the extract I have chosen is doubtless correct. These findings are measurable and are capable of being checked to see if they can be replicated. - The second paragraph is assumption (false), based not on evidence, but on learned prejudice. - The fatter/more obese people are, obviously the more food/calories they need in order to service their heavier bodies - to move their heavier bodies around and to keep their bodies warm. - If the fat people do indeed eat the greater amount of food/calories they need why should it be called 'comfort-eating' or any other derogatory term?

And here's a fact - not an assumption for the misguided, condescending 'experts' that bring out these flawed 'studies' to ponder - when fat people disobey the dictates of their bodies' needs and stay hungry by forcing themselves to take the sort of advice these 'experts' give, i.e. to eat less food/fewer calories in order to lose excess weight, they do not lose excess weight: they gain weight.

This is because eating insufficient food for your body's requirements weakens the blood vessel walls (as well as weakening every other system and every organ in the body), thus bringing about swollen, overstretched veins containing more fluid, and it is fluid retention that is the cause of obesity/excess weight. Whilever women and men continue to be constantly misinformed by the foolish, unscientific 'experts', obesity will continue to increase both in incidence and in severity.

To lose excess weight it is necessary to eat less salt and salty food because this will reduce the body's fluid retention. This is the safe, sure, healthy way to lose weight and it works like magic.

DON'T DIET! - Dieting is unnecessary, harmful and IT DOES NOT WORK!

Lose weight, reduce your risk of most cancers, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, stroke, heart disease, heart attack, vascular dementia, osteopenia, osteoporosis, hypercholesterolaemia, depression, liver and kidney problems, and improve your health in many other ways without drugs or expense by eating less salt! - Try it! - You will feel so much better!

Read my Mensa article on Obesity and the Salt Connection

Children and Obesity

And see Sodium in foods

Fat Underground Throws Weight Into Obesity War - cut and pasted from another website

I found a moving article on the internet today. It is clearly an account of deeply-felt true experience. - I just feel so very sorry that these people, and millions of other obese people today, have not discovered the facts about what really causes obesity and how it can easily be reduced, without dieting, without hunger, without extra exercise, without drugs or doctors - and without fail! - Read my Mensa article on Obesity and the Salt Connection

I've cut and pasted the article from http://www.largesse.net/Archives/FU/LATimes.html because the webpage gives permission to do so, provided that the following statement is included:

Presented as a public service by Largesse, the Network for Size Esteem
http://www.largesse.net/
This document may be freely copied and distributed in its entirety for non-commercial use
in promoting size diversity empowerment, provided this statement is included.

Fat Underground
Throws Weight
Into Obesity War

BY JANE WILSON

"I just can't bear fat bodies. 1 think there should be fat catchers, like dog catchers, to go around and put big nets over fat people and take them all someplace and get them slimmed down. And then show them what really good eating is. Because what they're doing is advertising their unhappiness and their anger or frustration for everyone to see, and 1 don't want to see it."

--Cloris Leachman, quoted in the December issue of Family Circle

As a nation, we have an obsession with slimness. The prevailing aesthetic, which dictates an essentially adolescent body shape for everyone, makes millions miserable while fattening the weight-loss business into a multibillion-dollar industry. For the obese in America, for those who are not simply a little plumper than fashion requires, but who are 30, 40, 50 or more pounds above what doctor's weight charts say they should be, getting into socially acceptable shape is a desperate undertaking.

To be found "unbearable" by those who, like Cloris Leachman, weigh 110 pounds and like to go on periodic fasts is among the least of the burdens borne by the truly fat. They are in many ways outcasts, denied jobs, threatened with dire medical warnings about the results of their supposed gluttony, lectured for their own good by anyone of "normal" weight and ridiculed behind their backs and to their faces with cruel jokes and personal remarks. To be obese is to be unable, ever, to go to a show, a movie or a concert because you can't fit into the seats, and to stay away from all but the most spaciously arranged restaurants for the same reason. To be obese in our fiercely antifat culture is to be perpetually ashamed of your own body. Cloris Leachman is right in supposing that fat people are unhappy, angry and frustrated-but these feelings, many fat people contend, are much more often the socially induced result of being fat than its cause.

So why would anyone either become or stay fat in a society where every possible motive for thinness is provided? The answer, according to a group of women in Santa Monica who call themselves, uncompromisingly, The Fat Underground, is that they have no choice-unless an intestinal by-pass operation or having one's jaws wired together or living out one's life in perpetual gnawing hunger may be seen as any kind of acceptable alternative. The Fat Underground is an offshoot of the growing Fat Liberation movement, whose cry until now has simply been "Leave Us Alone!" Since an obvious reply to this appeal would be to say, "OK-if you want to kill yourselves," a basic concern of The Fat Underground has been to examine carefully the validity of medical evidence that a fat body is, necessarily, an unhealthy and shortlived one.

The underground has also done some investigation of the side effects of reducing diets, the generally prescribed "cure" for a large body. Underground members point out that it is a well-established,.if little publicized, fact that at least 95% of those who go on reducing diets of any kind will regain any weight lost within five years or less. Of these dieters, some 90% will regain more weight than they originally lost. Nevertheless, since it is so socially painful to be fat, very few obese people are likely to accept permanent fatness as their natural condition, so even if they know the odds they repeatedly diet in hopes of being among the metamorphosed 5%. Thus large numbers of fat people are fooled all the time and, after two and a half years, there are only 20 members of The Fat Underground, 20 women who have stopped dieting, stopped hoping to be thin, and started working to change public prejudices and ignorance about fatness. Having come to the hard conclusion that their own obesity is permanent, they need also to offer one another constant support in dealing with the pain involved in such acceptance.

All the members of the Fat Underground are radical feminists and many have also participated in a radical therapy group established in Santa Monica. They are therefore committed to changing society rather than adapting themselves to it, and they are habitually skeptical of received medical and psychiatric wisdoms. The group began when a few women in the radical therapy group became aware that they felt oppressed not simply as women but as fat people. As one of their members put it, "Fat was the crisis area, the area where our identification ran highest and where we felt most strongly persecuted."

A young woman who gave only her "radical name," which is Aldebaran, met with me first as a representative of the whole group. Since she has a background in graduate chemistry, it was she who had initiated most of the medical reading and source research undertaken by The Fat Underground, using as her principal tool the Index Medicus in the Bio-Medical Library at UCLA. "I discovered there, she said, "that what doctors tell the public about obesity, and what the public therefore believes, is somewhat different from what doctors tell each other in their research papers. The first thing I discovered is that the average fat person eats no more than the average thin person. Some eat more, and then again some thin people eat enormously without ever getting fat. But the average is the same. This finding is the result of more than 20 years of research by nutritionists, and is well documented. But the popular view, sponsored by the medical popularizers, is that fat people are all gluttons who sit around scarfing up cupcakes without restraint. Fat people are seen, so to speak, as thin people gone bad.

Dull Ache of Hunger

"There is a minority of fat people who have been so heavily oppressed around their eating habits that they have reacted by becoming gluttons. But the average fat person has enough self-control to lose the 10 to 20 pounds that affluent, sedentary life adds to many people in America. Beyond that, to lose 50 or 60 pounds, to get down to the doctor's weight chart figures and stay there requires intense, prolonged hunger and much, much more exercise than is necessary for the mildly overweight. You are going to have to eat much less than the average person, forever. And you never do get used to the dull ache of hunger on a 1,000-calorie diet. You never lose the anxiety that at any moment you may lose control and go on a starvation-induced eating binge. The best you can hope for is that you will remain sufficiently alienated from your feelings, sufficiently coerced by your dread of becoming fat again, with all the pain that that will entail, that you will be able to minimize and endure the hunger. But very few can endure it indefinitely.
"Some doctors and nutritionists, who do not have a vested interest in making a lot of money from weight loss programs, will admit the degree of hunger that must be borne by obese dieters. Yet psychiatrists and psychologists still insist that any eating beyond what is necessary to be slim is 'emotional.' The problems of a fat person on a diet around food are not emotional but physical-the physical pains of hunger."

Ballet Dancer

Aldebaran's weight since she stopped dieting has remained constant at 60 pounds more than the charts say it should be for a woman of her height and build. She says she eats moderately, has no more trouble with eating binges and her blood pressure, when she has it checked at work, is normal. When she has it checked by a doctor it is high--because, she says, she is then in a stress situation.

Aldebaran told about a community of 1,700 Italian immigrants, living in the town of Roseto in Pennsylvania, whom she had read about in the Journal of the American Medical Assn., and also in a book called "Fat Power" by Llewellyn Louderback. These Rosetans are notably fat as a group and cheerfully consume large quantities of high-calorie, high-cholesterol Italian foods. Yet they enjoy remarkably good general health, dying from heart disease at about one-third of the national toll, and being afflicted with diabetes at only a quarter of the rate of the population at large. Teams of researchers from the University of Oklahoma investigated the Rosetans three times, in 1962, 1964 and 1967, but could find no explanation for the low incidence of supposedly obesity-related disease among their number. One researcher did suggest that "contentment" might have something to do with it.

"It seems", commented Aldebaran, "that the Rosetans liked themselves a lot and thought it was pretty neat that they were so fat. They felt no anxiety or stress about it and didn't find it undesirable. But when the fat children of these fat parents went into the mainstream of American society, and went on diets, they began to suffer from obesity-related diseases at the same rate as the rest of the population."

"It does appear", she said, "that fat people are particularly susceptible to heart disease and strokes, that they tend to have high blood pressure and to suffer from kidney disorders and metabolic problems such as diabetes, together with a whole range of psychological ills ranging from depression to 'bad self-image'. I don't think it's necessary even to talk about the origins of the psychological problems. But the medical difficulties do bear a lot of examination. Statistics on the health of fat people are most often based on fat subjects found in medical settings, where it is unlikely that they will have avoided either subjection to dieting or feelings of intense anxiety about their health. Such fat patients, who have been sufficiently serious about weight loss to have consulted a doctor, are people under stress who may have gone on and off diets repeatedly, each time losing weight only to regain it again. The dangers of such a procedure have been known for more than a decade."

At this point Aldebaran produced a copy of a 1966 U.S. Public Health Services Report on "Obesity and Health" and read the following extract: "Repeatedly losing and gaining weight may be more harmful than maintenance of a steady weight at a high level. For example, it has been shown that serum cholesterol levels are elevated during periods of weight gain, thus increasing the risk of deposition. We have no evidence to show that once cholesterol has been deposited it can be removed by weight reduction. It is possible that a patient whose weight has fluctuated up and down a number of times has been subjected to more atherogenic stress than a patient with stable though excessive weight...If an animal has once been obese and then has been repeatedly reduced it will have a shorter life expectancy than an animal which has never been reduced.

"We feel", she went on, "that any doctor who knows this information about serum cholesterol levels--and he most certainly should know it--and who tells a fat person who has dieted many times before to make yet another. doomed attempt at reduction is, in effect, saying, 'Go kill yourself.' It simply has not been profitable for bariatricians to face up to the contradictions in their approach to obesity, to the stupidity, for example, of their mystified use of the term 'overeating.' Perhaps that's why they never put out more than the first edition of something called 'The Journal of Bariatrics'. They have refused to learn from their own failure rate, but just go on saying, 'Go on a diet' with the unspoken thought, 'Perhaps a miracle will happen for you.' On a purely practical level, the worst problem that a fat person can have with doctors is that any physician can say, 'This fat person is not healthy enough to work at such and such a job' and there is no appeal. We can be routinely denied a civil right because a doctor says we shouldn't have it until we reduce the size of our body. The doctors, you see, are backed by a multibillion-dollar industry, and by national prejudice."

The future of The Fat Underground does not include any large-scale plans to recruit. They have learned that it maybe a long and difficult process for a new member to come to terms emotionally with the idea that her own obesity is probably genetic in origin, and is permanent. "Most fat women's feelings about fat are so dreadful," said Aldebaran, "that they have really 'numbed out' in that area--they can accept incredible insults without reacting. But when they start to get in touch with the numbed feelings it is excruciatingly painful--so we have needed to have constant support groups to help us stop feeling wretched about ourselves, to stop feeling worthless and ugly."

At a recent weekly meeting of the Fat Underground there was some good cheer in that a feminist newspaper in Denver had written, out of the blue, to offer moral support and suggests that the Underground might help to produce a special issue of the paper on the oppression of fat women by society at large, with particular attention paid to the role of the medical profession. But then they heard that a woman author, whose new book contained several expressions of aesthetic disgust at fat bodies, had been unwittingly invited to speak to some members of their own feminist group. There was anger in the room.

Obese Americans are, some contend, the scapegoats of a guiltily well-fed nation. The Fat Underground is working to reestablish the lost distinction between gluttony as a sin of self-indulgence and fatness as a natural characterisic which, like unusual height or above-average intelligence, occurs in proportion of the population.

The underground has a motto--"Fat people of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose!"

You won't lose excess weight by restricting calories or cutting down on fat. - You need to reduce your fluid retention by cutting down on salt .

Lose weight, reduce your risk of most cancers, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, stroke, heart disease, heart attack, vascular dementia, osteopenia, osteoporosis, hypercholesterolaemia, depression, liver and kidney problems, and improve your health in many other ways without drugs or expense by eating less salt! - Try it! - You will feel so much better!

Read my Mensa article on Obesity and the Salt Connection

And see Sodium in foods and

amitriptyline

prescribed steroids and HRT

See advice for pregnant mothers

Associated health conditions

and FAT RETENTION

I watched Ann Widdecombe present a programme criticising the Diet Industry on ITV1 tonight

There's more information about it here: http://www.itv.com/PressCentre/AnnWiddecombeVersustheDietIndustry/Ep1/default.html

Ann Widdecombe is a good presenter for this sort of programme. Her main message was that "Diets Don't Work!" I think and hope that it will do some good. It highlighted the harmful role that so many of the glossy magazines do with their emphasis on dieting and on celebrity tips for losing weight and on photos of celebrities with extremely slim bodies, very unlike most people.

I was particularly impressed by the success of a woman psychologist who worked with a small group of teenage girls to raise their confidence and self-esteem so that they no longer felt that they had to lose weight in order to be liked. Her work was very worthwhile and the girls were clearly happier and no longer obsessed with diet nonsense.

Ms Widdecombe's visit to America and to Hollywood showed people whose obsession to be ultra-slim was so great that many resort to hugely expensive, ridiculously extensive weight reduction surgery, which she herself was offered and sensibly refused, not being a gullible fool.

The experts on the programme were wisely against the daft and often dangerous diets. Sadly, not one of them gave the best advice of all for losing excess weight safely and reliably, namely avoiding salt and salty food. - And Ann Widdecombe own advice for losing weight: "the best way to shift the pounds and stay slim is to eat less and move more" is not correct. - Very, very few people lose weight by doing that, and are often harmed by trying it.

To lose weight safely and rapidly, you need to give up dieting and low calorie/low fat junk altogether! - You can eat more food, more calories and still lose excess weight provided that overall your salt/sodium intake is lower. And faster still if you eat plenty of fruit and unsalted vegetables, i.e. potassium-rich food.

Yes, although it contains no calories, salt is fattening! - because it causes fluid retention - but only if you are sensitive to salt... - Read more:

Lose weight, reduce your risk of most cancers, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, stroke, heart disease, heart attack, vascular dementia, osteopenia, osteoporosis, hypercholesterolaemia, depression, liver and kidney problems, and improve your health in many other ways without drugs or expense by eating less salt! - Try it! - You will feel so much better!

Read my Mensa article on Obesity and the Salt Connection

And see Sodium in foods and

amitriptyline

prescribed steroids and HRT

See advice for pregnant mothers

Associated health conditions

and FAT RETENTION