as laurel would say, christ on a crutch! the link is to an article on "sane weight loss" (not my specialty), and in general, the advice is good: atkins is crap; eat more fiber; exercise more; you'll lose the weight. it's not deprivation; it's easy! (sure.)

but there are ominous hints of trouble: the author asks her "slender friend" (is he actually fit? does she care?) bob about his new diet, and he says, "I work out at the gym for an hour a day." later she boasts that "We walk briskly for an hour each morning and, in addition, I swim three-fourths of a mile nearly every day. My friends and I walk to and from appointments where most other Americans would ride, and I do most of my shopping on foot or bicycle."

well, that's SUPER!

what's your annual income, ms. times writer?

when americans protest the scourge of obesity and make pronouncements about the ease with which people can and should lose weight, they often (inexplicably, in my view) seem to assume that all americans live lives full of free time and leisure. they have enough money to join a gym, or their streets are safe enough to jog and stroll in the early morning or evening hours (or ever); they have a nice, accessible pool, and extra minutes enough to swim those three quarters of a mile. there are grocery stores, jobs and bike paths in their neighborhoods.

interestingly, for the most obese americans (poor people) few or none of these things are actually true. i wonder increasingly whether we're ever going to be ready to fix the systemic problems that shorten poor people's lives (by a million mechanisms of which obesity is only one). i can only look at articles about how "easy" it is to lose weight in the context of a culture built on blaming the victim: it's there in our social welfare policies, and here it is in our (very much related) approach to personal health.

[there is another whole issue here, about this culture's decision to equate thinness and health, and its total ignorance of functional goals about bodies, but that's for another day.]