The post-diet age

Dieting is out. It is now considered tacky and anti-feminist. It’s been replaced with “body acceptance,” “fitness,” “mindful eating,” “wellness,” “intuitive eating,” and so forth. Because of diet fatigue, Weight Watchers watched its membership decline. In January 2015 the company’s chief executive noted that, “We’re having one of the worst Januaries that anyone could have imagined.”  What to do? Call Oprah! Ask her to be their spokesperson!

She had turned them down  in the past, but they caught her at a good time. She had just gained 17 pounds. So she said yes and bought a 10 percent stake in the company for $43 million, after which the stock shot up. Her investment is now worth $110 million. At the same time, people were disappointed that Oprah was on another diet.  As Taffy Brodesser-Akner, the author of the article from which I got this information, commented, “It was hard not to suspect that she was trapped, like so many of us are, in a culture that says one thing about fatness and means something very different.”

 Apparently, Oprah doesn’t care if she’s ever skinny again. But she said yes to Weight Watchers because “It’s a mechanism to keep myself on track that brings a level of consciousness and awareness to my eating. It actually is, for me, mindful eating….” In particular, she worries about her cardiovascular health and the fact that diabetes runs in her family.

Weight Watchers is designed to be successful only if you can stay on it forever, which, apparently Oprah is willing to do. Sounds like dieting to me.

For an introduction to this blog, see I Just Say No; for a list of blog topics, click the Topics tab.