A Black Girl’s Guide to Weight Loss finds that Weight Watchers’ celebrity ads featuring Jennifer Hudson and Jessica Simpson reinforce an unfortunate message:
so what lessons do you think the public will gather from this? A full-throated song sung by a full-body – in leather-ish pants (that she needs to let me borrow), no less – that goes by the nickname J-Hud, running at the same time as a body-less, blonde, apologetic Jessica Simpson talking to a million strangers about how she has “so much work to do?”
Thanks, Weight Watchers, for reinforcing the idea that women shouldn’t be seen until they’ve lost weight! …
I can’t believe I’m actually saying this. I can’t believe I have to say this.
Thanks, weight loss counseling company, for perpetuating and reinforcing the same body image issues that encourage women to go running, desperately, to you for help.
Or was that the plan all along?
Weight Maven is written by Beth Mazur. Beth believes that obesity is more symptom than cause and that the real problem is our Western diet -- especially sugar, refined grains, and industrial oils. Beth writes about nutrition, ancestral health & food policy. And cats! 
Reblogged this on Whitney's Weigh and commented:
I read this blog. I have limited time like everyone and hate to waste it, sooo this is an awesome blog. Frankly I like it alot better than mine, lol!
Dr. Gabhart
I go back and forth all the time on using body-weight/body-fat as a tool to help my clients get healthy.
While a focus on appearance / BF% has a strong element of moral judgment and can lead to all sorts of emotional/medical complications….it’s also the easiest way for people to understand that their body isn’t operating at peak efficiency.
If it was just as easy to “see” our BP, blood sugar, c-reative protein levels, we wouldn’t need to focus so much on obesity.
And then maybe we could ditch our collective “you suck if you’re fat” attitude.
I think the real problem is the connection (sometimes tenuous) between measures and outcomes. Weight is not the world’s best proxy as you know (and BMI isn’t much better). Body fat is a little better, but doesn’t take into account the differences between subcutaneous and visceral fat. And even BP, blood sugar, CRP etc, all have issues.
There’s also the question of the health vs performance curve that Keith Norris wrote about. Folks should very definitely be able to put the efforts into these efforts whether they want to be healthy or they want to look good naked.
I think what resonated with me about the quote above is just the pervasiveness of it being mostly about how we look. I think this constant cultural pressure that we essentially take for granted makes it a lot harder to be intentional about our efforts than we might like.