Richard Simmons and Anorexia

Every now and then, in his Message of the Day, Richard Simmons reminds people how he was anorexic in his younger days and would go on fasts and even purge. Every now and again he also tells people that even though he lost his weight the unhealthy way, we shouldn't follow his example, only his current food and exercise plans. He eats 1600 calories and exercises a minimum of an hour a day of cardio, plus 3 days a week weight training and possibly his "day of rest" he walks an hour.

People who follow his food and exercise plans do lose weight, but Richard has also mentioned a number of times that he meets people a year or more later than many have regained all their weight because they no longer follow his plans. Could it be because according to his charts, an average-height woman at her goal weight should only be eating 1200 calories a day, a level about 200 calories below what the World Health Organization says people around the world should be eating for optimal health? And when a body's intake is consistently below it's needs it slows the metabolism down and retains even more of those calories put into it, so when a person who has been on a restricted food plan finally snaps and has a binge (fully explained in the Overcoming Overeating book) their body gains more weight than if they had just eaten normally all along.

Dr. McDougall, on the other hand, reminds us in his MWLP book and lectures that the body is a magnificent machine that knows what it needs. We don't over-breathe, he says, and if we only ate the foods he deems safe we can't over-eat, either, and that by eating only the allowable foods our bodies will naturally go to their correct weight. Well, many of us have proven otherwise and not lost and have even gained weight eating only MWLP-legal foods, and no, we haven's let things slip in, like oil, higher fat foods, or flour products. Not even the couscous (which was added as as editing mistake) or tortillas (which he allows at the live-in program), ONLY foods listed in the MWLP book. For some of us, we just ate too many calories; for others, once they switched jobs and were no longer active for 12 hours a day, the weight first stopped coming off then started coming back on. Dr. McDougall told us we should eat less starch and more green/yellow vegetables. Gee, then it's more Eat to Live than the starch-based McDougall program, isn't it? And for those of us who still continued to gain, he recommended the Rice Diet - the original one, as followed at the Rice House in Durham, NC to this day, that is 600 - 800 calories of only 1 serving of starch (3 ADA exchanges) and 3 fruit exchanges for all three meals a day. Anyone can lose weight for a while at that calorie level, but eventually metabolisms slow down enough that people have even gained while still eating 800 calories and exercising an hour each day - whey they had the energy to, that is.

So what's the point of this post? No idea, except to bemoan once again how fat I am and the depressing reminders that everything I've done to lose this bulk has failed, from the attempts of my first doctors who had my mom water down my formula when I was a newborn infant to my current physician who refuses to give me enough thyroid hormone replacement to keep my TSH in the normal reference range, insist I restrict myself to 1000 calories and do a minimum of 60 to 90 minutes a day of cardio exercise, then gets angry at me when I can't eat that little and can't exercise that much without making myself ill and come into his office showing a gain instead of a loss. I'm due to go back to him again now for an official weight loss check-up visit (I've seen in in-between for other problems). He already knows that I haven't lost any weight since the last official visit. He knows I still feel like crap from my hypothyroid. He already knows I've been in pain and unable to exercise as much as he wants. So what's the point of even going?

And what do I do next? Do I do again what I did before the last weight loss check-up and starve myself by eating half the amount of oatmeal at breakfast and only salad and soup for dinner for a few weeks and then make the appointment when the scale has finally shown a loss? Do I go and tell him where to shove his scale and get off the merry go round and get labeled non-compliant so no other doc will ever want to go near me in the future?

I hate living like this, but I hate to lose this doc. As much as I disagree with him on so many things, his practice is still one of the best in the city. We can get an appointment the same day, we can talk on the phone with one of the doctors without charge, we can easily get referrals and copies of our paperwork, and with 5 doctors in the practice there's always someone around.

I guess I better go change my menus for the next few weeks so there's soup for dinner every night. Either that or start reading up on the Rice Diet (home version) again.