Home truths The reality of downsizing

It has fallen from fashion, but the concept of a diet is not actually bad, writes Amy Nelmes Bissett.

Ican’t remember a time when ‘‘diet’’ wasn’t part of my vocabulary. My adolescence and then adulthood has been regularly punctuated by the idea that cutting back after a bit of excess is kind of normal and healthy.

It’s never really been about surviving on cabbage soup or juice cleanses until your gassy guts can’t take anymore. But about striking a balance to ensure that annoying human drive to search out carbohydrates, once needed for survival in the hunter-gatherer days, didn’t rule for too long.

You ate too much at Christmas, you then sliced down the calories in January. You had a slightly chubby phase, you then decided that indulging had gone on too long and it was time to eat a few more salads.

This awareness has led to a healthy approach to my body. Sometimes it gets bigger, sometimes it gets smaller. Sometimes I eat an extra bit of cake, sometimes I eat an extra serving of veg. But I always try to remain healthy.

In the past year, there’s been a distinct shift in the diet world. It’s found itself well and truly out of fashion. In fact, dieting is now seen as a downright dirty word in the world of embracing what you got.

Even the diet industry has been scrambling to rebrand itself. Last year, Weight Watchers changed its name to WW, saying it now looks at overall health instead of just weight loss. Strangely, the programme is still about cutting back the calories.

The demise of diet is the result of the leading movement of the moment, body positivity. And it’s a welcome change, right? Finally, the unrealistic goal that eating less will transform you into one of the Hadid sisters has been rejected.

And the changes as a result have been magnificent. The use of rail-thin models at fashion shows has been banned. Mainstream advertisers are using women that aren’t just straight-up, straight-down carbon copies.

In fact, we’re so over this make-believe offering of perfection that images that have been touched-up with Photoshop have to come with a little warning now in France. It’s something body positive campaigner Jess Quinn is trying to get in place in New Zealand.

But what often happens with the movement du jour is that we swing too far to the extreme.

Yep, it appears we are rolling fast into an acceptance of obesity and it’s scary. In fact, research released out of the United Kingdom last year delved into the outcome of this new attitude and it was truly sobering.

It compared data collected between 1997 and 2015 and found that a large chunk of those with a high BMI that once would have labelled themselves as either ‘‘overweight’’ or ‘‘obese’’ now instead believed themselves to be ‘‘about the right weight’’.

We’re not talking slightly curvy here. We’re not talking about those with a bit of cellulite on their thighs or a bit of a bingo wing. We’re talking about those who are in danger or are

In the past year, there’s been a distinct shift in the diet world. It’s found itself well and truly out of fashion. In fact, dieting is now seen as a downright dirty word in the world of embracing what you got.

currently gripped by the whole range of medical issues that comes with being medically obese.

Right now, 1.2 million people in New Zealand are officially classed as obese. That’s 32 per cent of the nation and a number that is surpassed only by the United States. And, at last tally, that cost our healthcare system a staggering $624 million in one single year.

But that was in 2006 and a lot has changed since then. Auckland University Professor Boyd Swinburn, who was involved in the 2006 research, estimated the annual cost was now about $1 billion.

And with the latest prediction stating that by 2038, 2 million Kiwis will be obese, the accompanying health issues will continue to rise and so will the strain on the country’s healthcare system.

Ultimately, we’ve never needed dieting more than right now because, when used correctly and outside of extremism, it is a truly effective form of being mindful of what we are consuming and how it affects our waistline and our overall health.

Without it, aren’t we just enabling a different type of eating disorder? Because no matter how hard we try to tell ourselves that all weight is ‘‘about the right weight’’, a size 20 isn’t as healthy as someone who is a 14.

Using obesity as a pin-up for body type aspiration isn’t body positivity, it’s burying oneself in a sandpit of dangerous denial.