I’m not buying it Coke; Your product OR your concern.
Why I started Fit vs Fiction and why I won’t shut up about it
BECAUSE:
We live in an image obsessed, fat-phobic, one-size-fits-all, thin is in, skinny jean wearing, thigh gap measuring, binging and purging, body hating society where kids barely out of pre-school are begging their mothers to keep them home from school because they feel like they’re just too fat to fit in!
And THAT..is NOT..Okay.
They may be skinny, but I’m not impressed
I was walking through the grocery store with my son yesterday and had a “WTF?” moment, when I passed by the snack aisle and saw bags and bags of a chip-like product with the words, “HI I’M SKINNY sticks ” boldly and brightly written on the packaging. I had to stop and check them out. It doesn’t take a genius to see that these are lower-fat options for the potato chip eater and I have no problem with that. My issue isn’t with the product, just with the marketing of it.
I get it.
The whole point of developing a product is to profit from it. In order to profit from it, you need to promote it and with the diet industry being a 40Billion dollar industry, it makes sense from a marketing perspective to hop on board the weight loss crazy train. But, I think that this company is selling themselves short. When I looked at the Hi I’m Skinny website, I found out that their snacks aren’t just low in fat, but contain whole grains and NO GMOs. That’s good,right?
The problem is that I cannot get past the obnoxious packaging.
It angers me that a company that seems to understand the importance of healthy foods would choose to focus on our fear of getting fat instead of our need to get healthy. I realize that ”I’m Skinny” is more of an attention grabber than “I’m Healthy” but every time our health takes a backseat to our weight, it reinforces the myth that skinny IS healthy and that is not always the case.
For me, this goes beyond cute or clever marketing. I think it’s dangerous and here’s why:
We live in an image obsessed, fat-phobic, one-size-fits-all, thin is in, skinny jean wearing, thigh gap measuring, binging and purging, body hating society where kids barely out of pre-school are begging their mothers to keep them home from school because they feel like they’re just too fat to fit in!
WHY is this happening?
It’s happening because we are constantly being told that fat is bad and skinny is good. But guess what? All fat isn’t bad, in fact, some it is pretty damn important! We need it in our foods AND in our bodies. Of course, there are healthy fats and unhealthy fats and moderation is key when it comes to how much of it we have in our lives, but demonizing it is just a dumb thing to do. There are too many low-fat/non-fat products on the market that might make you skinny, but the amount of chemicals and additives they contain, certainly won’t make you healthy.
We need to be so careful with the messages we’re teaching our kids. if we want our kids to grow up feeling self-confident, self-assured and full of self-respect, we need to encourage them to take more pride in being Smart or Brave or Fun or Inspiring or Curious or Unique than just being skinny.
I realize there are people who will read this and think, “Lighten up, lady. It’s just a crispy snack.” But if we continue to promote the idolization of skinny bodies while minimizing the importance of healthy ones, we need to accept that the only thing we’re going to be feeding is the diet industry’s insatiable appetite for profit.
UPDATE: I sent an e-mail to the HI I’M SKINNY website asking them about their name. I wanted to know if they had chosen it because they believe that being skinny is as important as being healthy or if it was all about marketing to desperate dieters. I was surprised to hear back from the president of the company within just a couple of hours and really appreciated her response. She explained that as a mom herself, she is very concerned with healthy food and it’s what their company promotes. She explained that their name was just a cheeky way of saying “lower fat” and compared it to coffee shops that sell “Skinny lattes”. She also said that it described the shape of their snacks. She sounded sincere and I believe her. However, I still think there’s a bigger picture that’s being missed here. Being obsessed with our weight has become so commonplace that we don’t even recognize it anymore. It would be hard not to think about our weight when it seems like we’re constantly being told we need to lose some! Personally, I think calling their product, “Skinny sticks” would be fine, it’s just the whole, “Hi I’m Skinny” thing that rubs me the wrong way. I guess it’s because with skinny messages everywhere these days, I am hearing from more and more kids who are feeling like they can never be skinny enough and are doing everything they can to try and get there.
Hi I’M SKINNY, I get where you’re coming from and I think your product is a good one. Unfortunately, I also think that by jumping on the “Everybody likes to be skinny” bandwagon, you’re missing out on the opportunity to change the way we look at food and our bodies. When I walked by your product at the grocery store, the message in bold print wasn’t about how your snacks would make me feel, just about how they’d make me look. Am I being oversensitive? Definite possibility. But if you knew how many kids were battling body image issues today, I think you might be too.
Thanks for hearing me out.
Latest Book review from VictorianEDTreatment Center, Newport Ca
Book Review: The Body Image Survival Guide
by mhurst220— last modified Apr 24, 2013 04:05 PM
Filed Under:
psychology
The Body Image Survival Guide for Parents by Marci Warhaft-Nadler is a must read for every parent raising a child in the 21st century. A negative body image is a contributing factor for developing an eating disorder. Eating disorders are on the rise in children. There was a 119% increase of eating disorder related hospitalizations among children under 12 years old between the years 1999 and 2006.
Watching a family drop off their daughter at the Victorian – Eating Disorder Treatment is heart breaking. Emotions are high; crying, screaming and bargaining are all quite familiar. Our staff calms the parents and client reminding them that they are making a wise decision to seek help for this deadly mental illness. It is a scenario every parent dreads – acknowledging their child is sick and in need of professional help. Many question if anything could have been done to prevent the eating disorder? A genetic and social disease, preventing eating disorders is hard to quantify. However, a new book titled, The Body Image Survival Guide for Parents by Marci Warharft-Nadler, eating disorder survivor and Certified Personal Trainer provides several preventative tools to navigate a child towards a healthy body image.
The Body Image Survival Guide is broken down into chapters addressing issues for every age group:
•Ages 0-3
•Ages 4-8
•Ages 9-12
•Age 13 and up
As well as how to address body image in a variety of scenarios:
•Body image issues with boys
•Building self-esteem
•How to help an overweight child
•When parents need to lose weight
•Post-pregnancy dieting
•Role modeling positive body image
•The dangers of negative body image
•Media literacy
My favorite thing about the book is the way Nadler breaks up the chapters with real questions from parents. The “Dear Abby” format of the book quickly makes it seem as if Nadler is simply one parent talking to another. I highly recommend The Body Image Survival Guide for Parents to parents, teachers and school counselors.
You can purchase The Body Image Survival Guide HERE
and follow Nadler on twitter here: @fit_vs_fiction
I’m 43! And just in case you were wondering…
I’m about to turn 43 years old, which is weird because there are times when I feel like I’m still 16 (of course, there are also times when I feel like I’m 143). I don’t dread birthdays. I don’t see getting older as a curse. I think it’s a privilege that too many people never get. But, at the risk of sounding like an “old” person, I will say that the time has gone by REALLY quickly and has been jam packed with LIFE. Some of it good, some of it weird and some of it pretty friggin’ bad, but it’s been my life and all I can do is embrace it.
So today on my 43rd birthday, I’m sharing 37 facts about ME! (because 43 facts would be crazy!)
Some are things you might know, some you’d never guess. WHY am I doing this? To be honest, while you don’t want to live in the past, visiting it once in awhile can help you appreciate how far you’ve come. I realize this is completely self-indulgent, but hey, it’s my birthday!
Here we go:
1. My (ex) stepfather was the Satchel Bandit. He spent 2 years robbing banks between Montreal and Toronto. (He told us he was a caterer) He was caught in the act and convicted on 47 counts.
2. I was a contestant in the 1990 Golden Girl International Talent Competition where Jackie Stallone (Sly’s mom) was one of the judges and I WON! (Just kidding, I lost miserably. May have even come in last place)
3. When I was in my late teens I was followed around the Cavendish mall for an hour by 2 girls who thought I was British pop sensation Kylie Minogue.
4. For an entire year, I decided to change my name to Jordan and drove my mother crazy by refusing to answer to anything else.
5. I failed home economics in High school (cooking and sewing) which should really be of no surprise to anyone.
6. I have the absolute worst sense of direction and once got lost jogging in my own neighbourhood.
7. I am a HUGE UFC fan! The only way I can fall asleep is by alphabetically listing UFC fighters in my head. Some people count sheep, I count Silvas, Guidas and Fabers.
8. I got fired from Club Med for being bossy. (There’s an interesting story there..)
9. I was the ONLY injured passenger in a via rail train crash in 1994. (I broke my nose) Canadian actor Saul Rubinek carried my bag off the train for me.
10. In 2000, I spent 2 months in the hospital (17 days in the I.C.U.) with kidney and respiratory failure. I was a medical mystery until 2 major surgeries confirmed that I had an unusual case of C-Diff, complicated by MRSA and pneumonia. I was given a 25% chance of surviving and was 5.5 months pregnant with our son Jackson. I couldn’t talk, eat or breathe on my own. After several weeks, I started to heal, but we lost Jackson. (His initials are tattooed on my ankle)
11. 3 years later, for reasons completely unrelated, I needed to have part of my liver removed. I now have quite a collection of Kickass Scars.
12. My scars are finally outnumbered by my tattoos. Scars:7 Tattoos:10
13. I worked at Pizza Hut for 1 day, but couldn’t handle the uniform.
14. I’ve never seen the movies: Ghostbusters, Gladiator, Braveheart or any of The Back to Future flicks.
15. Rob and I were contestants on “Love Handles”, the Canadian version of The Newlywed game hosted by Stu Jeffries and we won! Our prize was a train ride from Vancouver to Banff.
16. My first non-fitness related job was at the Second Cup cafe on Church street in downtown Toronto. I was their only heterosexual employee and met the most amazing people and learned a lot.
17. I became a vegetarian at 17, not for moral or ethical reasons, but because a friend of mine dared me to go a week without eating meat and I can be UBER competitive.
18. I met actor Jerry O’Connell when I was a “special skilled” extra on his teen show “My Secret Identity”. He teased me about how I wiggled when I walked. (FYI..he played a 14 year old with superpowers).
19. I moved from Montreal to Toronto on my own when I was 19 years old and had a CRAZY roommate who lied about EVERYTHING and stole whatever I didn’t hide. Last I heard, he was collecting money for a fake charity he created.
20. When I was 15 or 16, one of my family members had an insane stalker who terrorized us for months and forced us to spend some time at a friend’s place when he put his fist through our kitchen window. It took awhile (no stalker laws back then) but he was finally arrested.
21. On my 18th birthday, my mother got me a cake that said, “Happy Birthday Bitch”. She was extremely embarressed to order it, but it was an inside joke between the two of us and I thought it was a hoot!
22. I once got up to sing a Rihanna song at a PACKED Karaoke bar and completely forgot how to sing it. Instead of singing, I ended up repeating, “Holy shit, how does it go again?” over and over until the song ended.
23. Before I was 30, I had lost my mother, my brother, my father and my baby, Jackson. Every year on their birthdays (and mine) as well as on the anniversaries of the days I lost them, I do Random Acts of Kindness around the city so I can celebrate their lives instead of mourn their deaths.
24. Whenever I walk through the cologne department of a department store, I find the Polo Cologne (green bottle) and smell it. It was what my brother Billy wore and it reminds me of him.
25. I’m a terrible cook.
26. I used to have a crush on Pink.
27. I now have a crush on Rick Yune and Jon Stewart
28. Before getting into recovery for my eating disorder, I once walked to the gym, alone, at midnight on a Sunday (1 hour away), worked out for 2 hours and then walked back at 3am because I felt I had eaten too much that day. My fear of gaining weight was stronger than my fear of the danger I was potentially putting myself in that night.
29. The only reason I went into recovery was because I felt that my sons deserved a mom who was at least half as amazing as mine was. Even though I had given up on myself, I could never give up on them. I gave them life. They saved mine.
30. #29 came out sounding much more dramatic than I had planned.
31. At my Sweet 16 party, while I was dancing with my friends, somebody stole ALL of my gifts. I heard he pawned them for drugs.
32. In high school, my best friend hit another friend in the face because she didn’t like the way she talked to me and got suspended for it.
33. Twenty-five years later, I’m friends with both of them and hope they got a chuckle when they read the previous fact.
34. I made a promise to myself many years ago, that I would someday, somehow meet Prince and tell him about my brother who was a major Prince fan. He constantly listened to his music when he was in the hospital and when he died, we put Prince casettes (it was 1987) in his casket with him.
35. I took drum lessons for a month, always wanted to learn sign language and presently, wouldn’t mind learning how to box.
36. My first book was just published. I wrote it for parents who are trying to raise healthy, happy, self-confident kids in a society that keeps telling them they’re just not good enough. I wrote it because I spent most of my life feeling like I wasn’t good enough and robbed me of relationships, dreams and goals. It took me until I was in my 30′s to find recovery and I’ve made it my mission to save other kids from going through the trauma I couldn’t avoid.
37. I know it was kind of silly to write this but I did it anyway. 
)
What would your list look like?
My ex-stepfather.
The satchel bandit with my mom at my Sweet 16.
The Golden Girl International talent Competition 1990 (UGH)
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My crazy family
We need to fight FOR our kids and not against eachother
I decided to send my Huffington Post article about Childhood obesity to a fairly well-known local fitness team and asked them for their thoughts. I did this, knowing that my article “Childhood obesity is not the problem” is a tad controversial. In my post, I discuss the dangers of anti-obesity campaigns and the fact that I believe we need to focus less on weight and more on health. I was genuinely interested in hearing their thoughts as people who have spent the last 25 years or so, offering health tips to families. They responded by saying, “The author is missing point. I think she is taking the topic and twisting it to write an article.” I wrote back explaining that I am, in fact, the author and that while I understand that there’s a health crisis in this country, focusing solely on weight is completely ignoring all of the other factors that play into our kids overall health and well being.
I was really looking forward to the discussion that I was hoping was going to follow. Afterall, we’re both trying to reach the same goal and I believed in the benefits that could come from extremely dedicated people approaching the same issue from different angles. Sadly, that’s not what happened. Not only did the conversation end, but my entire post had been deleted from their Facebook page.
REALLY?!
What this showed me was that some people are so stuck in their own opnions, that they aren’t even willing to consider that there may just be another way to look at things. I wasn’t looking to completely change their outlook, just expand it a little and I was just as open to the possibility of learning something new as well.
Here’s why I find this SO FRUSTRATING: There is hardly a lack of weightloss experts, programs and campaigns out there trying to make us lose weight and yet, obesity is still an issue. Maybe, just maybe, it’s time to look at things in a different way. If we keep banging our heads against the same “Skinny means healthy” concrete wall, nothing will ever change.
Do I believe that I have a TON of knowledge to contribute? Yes, I do. But I am also not so arrogant as to believe that I have nothing left to learn.
We all know that childhood obesity is a problem, but here are a few things most people don’t know.
Fact: In Canada, for all the kids who are overweight, there are even more kids who are NOT but THINK that they are.
Fact: Eating disorders aren’t just a teen girl issue anymore. Girls AND boys as young as 5 years old are destroying their bodies in an effort to be skinny
Fact: It can be extremely difficult to find treatment for eating disorders due to lack of resources or finances.
Fact: Some people suffering from eating disorders find it nearly impossible to be taken seriously if they don’t “look the part”. It’s easy to look at someone who weighs as much as 380lbs or as little as 80lbs and recognize that they probably have a problem but someone battling a severe eating disorder can look healthy while slowly dying inside and can be overlooked even by medical professionals.
Fact: Anti-obesity campaigns tell kids they need to be skinny to be healthy by focusing on numbers, but we are more than just numbers and our self-worth should not be measured in pounds.
I understand that obesity is an issue, but I also understand that it is one of several issues that need to be tackled simultaneously if we have any chance of truly raising healthy children. While I understand this, there are way too many people who refuse to see the bigger picture and choose only to look at fat as the enemy. For there to be any chance of us finding solutions to the health crisis we’re facing, and for our kids to stand a chance at the long, quality filled lives they deserve, we need to fight the risks of unhealthy living instead of eachother.
If we let ego get in the way of progress, WE may feel better, but our kids won’t get any healthier.
The Body Image Survival Guide for Parents:Helping Toddlers, Tweens and Teens Thrive
This is my book.Body Image Pledges for Parents and Kids: A promise to be good to ourselves and eachother!
Body image pledge (for older kids):
I promise to believe in myself and to reject the unrealistic and unhealthy ideals that may be thrown at me by society, the media or marketers trying to profit off my bruised self-esteem. I will lead; not follow. I understand that nobody can make me feel bad about myself unless I let them. And I will not let them. I believe in myself and I am amazing just as I am.
Pledge for younger child:
I promise to always treat myself with love and respect. I promise to be proud of who I am and not let anybody make me feel like I’m not good enough. I won’t judge other people on how they look because it’s what’s on the inside that matters. I will believe in myself and follow my dreams. I don’t have to be perfect. I’m great just the way I am. I don’t need to be exactly like everybody else, because I am unique and special in my own way. I’m me and I’m magnificient!
SELF-WORTH SHOULDN’T BE MEASURED IN POUNDS!
* “The Body Image Survival Guide for Parents: Helping Toddlers, Tweens and Teens Thrive”
Available through Amazon.com and www.fitvsfiction.com
Mayor Bloomberg, do you want us to be healthy or just skinny?
The judge has spoken, the ruling’s been made and our right to drink super sized, sugar loaded beverages remains in tact.
I’ll be honest with you and say that I’m feeling somewhat conflicted by the decision. I know that the main argument against the ban was from people who just don’t want the government telling them what to do. Nobody likes to be told what they can and cannot eat or drink and people tend to get a little annoyed when they feel like their being treated like children, or fools, or foolish children. That said, who the hell needs to be drinking soda from a cup big enough to swim in, anyway? If you’re still thirsty after drinking enough liquid to bathe in, you’ve got some bigger issues that need to be addressed. I have no problem with Mayor Bloomberg wanting to limit the size of sugary drinks being sold, what I do have a problem with is that, once again, he is completely missing the mark on doing the HEALTHY thing.
An article by The Canadian Press states, “ The rule prohibits selling non-diet soda and some other sugary beverages in
containers bigger than 16 ounces.”
NON-DIET SODA.
Aye, there’s the rub.
WHY is drinking copious amounts of sugar-laden drinks unhealthy but consuming the same amount of chemical filled crap just fine? WHY are we protecting people from the evils of sugar while promoting, accepting and even encouraging the consumption of chemicals that come with risks related to health issues like depression, severe migraines, inflammatory bowel disease and Cancer?
Oh wait a minute, I know, because they have less calories! Calories are bad because they make you fat and fat is bad, because it can lead to health issues. Can you see my concern here? Why is that certain health risks are acceptable as long as they don’t affect our size? Why are we, once again, putting our weight ahead of our health?
He’s the really crazy part, some research has suggested that artificial sweeteners can lead to, say it isn’t so, OBESITY!
I have no problem with the government wanting to help us get healthier, but I do have an issue with it just wanting to make us skinnier.
I work with kids as young as 7 and 8 years old who have already started counting calories for fear of getting fat and that’s just not okay! If we want to raise healthy children we need to teach them that eating well makes them FEEL good, instead of promoting the dangerous messages that eating less makes them look skinny.
Time to stop trying to lose weight and start focusing on gaining HEALTH!
Why I had to write the Body Image Survival Guide for Parents:
Why did I write this book?
I always thought that if I ever wrote a book about my life, the title would be, “Who knew?”.
It seems fitting because whenever I look at old pictures of myself from when I was just a little kid, before the traumas came fast and hard, I look at the little girl in the pictures and think, “You have NO IDEA what life is about to throw at you. Get ready, it’s gonna get rough for awhile”.
Life has definitely sucker punched me in the gut on more than a few occasions and thrown a crapload of challenges my way that proved extremely hard to overcome. I’ve lived a lot, lost a lot and learned a lot. Along the way, there was one thing that was there for me through it all. My eating disorder.
Yup, when life got too hard and the pain too intense, I turned away from what was hurting me and turned to my disorder for help. At the time, it made sense. When I was 17 years old, my brother Billy died and a huge part of me died right along with him. The pain of his loss was too much to bear and my life seemed completely out of my control so I turned to the one thing I thought I could control. My body. I started starving myself in an effort to feel like I was in control of SOMETHING or else I was sure I’d go completely insane.
It was easier to deal with the pain of an empty stomach than the sadness I felt walking into his empty room.
My disorder was the diversion I thought I needed. I thought it was helping. I didn’t know it would end up robbing me of my friendships, my health and my dreams. It kept me from making new friends and made it hard to keep old ones. It encouraged me to drop out of school and give up my ambitions. It told me I was nothing without it and I believed it.
I know what it’s like to think that everything you are and everything you could ever be depends on what you LOOK like but to feel like you’ll never look good enough. I know what it’s like to feel like you could never be smart, or funny or interesting enough to matter so you sure as hell better be pretty enough, but to never feel that you are. I know what it’s like to hate who you are so much that being the “girl with the eating disorder” becomes your entire identity and even though it hurts so much, you don’t want to give it up for fear you’ll just disappear.
I know what it’s like to battle with body image. I know what it’s like to watch my mother see me in pain and feel completely powerless about how to help me. I know that this is an issue that is confusing and complicated and incredibly hard to understand.
I also know what it’s like to recover.
My body image issues may have taken me to hell and back, but the important part is that I came back.
I know that with the right tools and information, parents don’t have to feel powerless. There is so much we can do as parents to instil the right messages from the time our kids are babies that can help them grow up with the confidence they deserve. Kids younger and younger are feeling pressured to be who they THINK society expects them to be instead of appreciating who they already are. They need our help.
I wrote the book I wish my own mother had had when I was struggling. I want parents to feel EMPOWERED. I give practical, solid answers to sticky questions and suggest games and projects that build healthy body image and self-esteem. I’ve included positive internet resources and body image pledges and include tons of stories from real people sharing real experiences.
My goal is to teach people that the “Best” bodies are HEALTHY ones and that SELF-WORTH IS NOT MEASURED IN POUNDS!
xoxoxoxo
