Health At Every Size: The Surprising Truth About Your Weight Read Online Free PDF Page A

their weight and interested in feeling better about themselves and improving their health. Every respondent assumed they were applying to participate in a weight-loss program. After all, they figured, how can large women feel better about themselves and improve their health without losing weight?
     
    The disappointment was palpable during the orientation session when the women randomly assigned to the Health at Every Size program learned they would not be part of the weight-loss group (the control group). If they could have walked out then, I think they would have. Fortunately, they all decided to stay through the initial meeting.
     
    During that meeting, I asked the women to reflect on their history of trying to lose weight. We shared stories of diet and exercise routines; stress management techniques; years spent working with nutritionists, physicians, psychotherapists, hypnotherapists, personal trainers, clergy, and psychic healers. We laughed and cried as we remembered the money and energy we wasted on fat magnets, slimming slippers, thigh creams, ear staples, and even headbands purported to help dream the fat away.
     
    We bonded over the underlying pain and desperation that led us to try everything and anything, from the mundane to the outrageous, and repeatedly go back for more. It became clear that, in contrast to the negative stereotype of the lazy and undisciplined fat person, everyone in this group had exhibited tremendous determination, strength of character, and willpower in their persistent attempts to lose weight.
     
    You’ll read more about the study later in the book, but let me share with you one story that will show you how life-changing this book and its program can be.
     
    Kelly was one of the quieter participants that first night. Although highly motivated to make changes in her life, she was also dubious about our approach. Like the other women, she very much wanted to lose weight and had a long and painful history of fruitless attempts. She’d often felt that initial hope and enthusiasm at trying something new, only to be disappointed in the end. She was pessimistic that we could provide anything significantly different than what she’d already tried (and failed at) countless times before.
     
    It wasn’t until the end of the session that Kelly finally spoke. Slowly at first, then with increasing intensity and emotion, she described the ways in which her inability to lose weight and the subsequent self-hatred controlled much of her life. Other group members nodded in recognition as Kelly admitted that she rarely ate at restaurants because she dreaded the looks of other diners as she ate, feeling their judgment and disapproving looks at her body and the food she chose.
     
    She described how her self-hatred led to isolation, how she’d sometimes cancel plans with friends because she couldn’t bear to be out in the world in such a fat body. She kept returning to the refrain that she had tried to lose weight, she had really tried, but she was just too weak to keep up the regimen of dieting or exercise.
     
    I suggested to Kelly—to all of us—that perhaps we hadn’t failed. Maybe, I said, we had successfully tested many weight-loss regimens and they had failed us . Had it ever occurred to them that maybe we did everything right, but the techniques we tried just weren’t capable of delivering on their promise?
     
    They all looked at me blankly. This possibility was clearly something they hadn’t considered. They had spent years viewing their weight as evidence of their own personal failing.
     
    The women were provided with a rough draft of this book and met weekly to discuss the personal meaning of its contents. As they learned more about the science behind weight loss, why some bodies naturally weigh more than others, why conventional recommendations to diet or exercise may not have much impact on weight in the long run, and that weight is not such an important factor in measuring one’s