Over at primalmeded, Anastasia shares her “ideas in relation to weight loss” … it’s a must-read, do check it out.
But she gets QOTD mention for her spot-on conclusion:
For a health-conscious and somewhat rebellious community we are still remarkably superficial and eager to conform to the current body image stereotype.
Weight Maven is written by Beth Mazur. Beth believes that obesity is more symptom than cause and that the real problem is our modern culture -- especially diet. Beth writes about ancestral health, health policy, & mindfulness. And cats! 
Thanks for the mention, Beth. I just get frustrated when our efforts to promote healthy nutrition and lifestyle get reduced to weight loss. We need to make a concerted effort to educate our community that thin does not necessarily equal healthy and be mindful about what message we send out to the mainstream.
I am *completely* with you … thanks for saying it so well!!!
Beth, now it’s official: you have become my numero uno go-to gal for all nutrition-related views which, without your powers of linkage, I would never otherwise encounter! Thanks for highlighting Anastasia’s insightful post. Her conclusions underscore my own (disappointed) observations from the days when I followed *traditional* weight loss blogs and noted (time after time) an almost predictable phenomenon—whereby the blogger’s focus and emphasis (and, apparently, efforts) veered away from matters related to improved personal well-being and *health* (such as increased mobility, reduced joint pain, lower BP, higher quality of sleep). This pattern (shift of focus) became so familiar, it felt as though I was watching some unspoken cultural ritual of self destructive behavior—as the blogger became increasingly more enthusiastic about (and in some cases, it appeared, obsessed with) achieving some *magical* number(s) on the scale or BMI chart or measuring tape.
Often, I got the impression that the individual’s shift towards a goal-oriented quantity (weight or BMI number or waist size), which replaced or displaced the previous focus on enhanced QUALITY of life, psychologically represented a type of superstitious or magical thinking—as if, by manifesting the ability to *control* the desired numerical outcome, the person was then provided with an imagined sense of security or power. Perhaps the illusion of control symbolizes different (personal) hopes and needs, such as the power to avoid regain (to avoid the return of painful social stigma), or the power to predict and conquer more obscure future challenges, or even the power to avoid aging and death.
Our cultural obsession with weight *management* and/or *control* has become-symbolically-much more than an obsession with being thin or *healthy*, although the perceived social rewards for thinness certainly act as forceful inducements, at least on the surface. As a culture, I believe we are trying to give voice to our (shared) unmet needs—to articulate sources of profound loss and to express deep fears. Dominant cultural discourses cannot offer us the words we need to communicate our mutual pain and longings. Humans thus find other (creative) ways to act out the unspeakable conditions of our lives.
Thanks so much for the kind words … and for the thoughtful comments which I’ve found very intriguing (as readers of this blog will see more and more ;).
Speaking of which, I picked up Brene Brown’s latest book and was struck by her comments about connection being why we’re here. It just strikes me that too many of us are chasing after the chimera that is a “goal weight” (healthy or not) when what we truly want is something so very different. Or at least, I think that’s conceivably the case for those for whom some arbitrary way of eating is a struggle (like me).
I wonder how this would play out of weight didn’t have so much cultural baggage?