A wave of new diet plans, including Zone Perfect, the South Beach Diet and the Atkins Diet, is flooding the country. In addition to these relatively new programs, Slim Fast and Weight Watchers have become household names due to their popular longevity. Despite the enormous attention nationally, on campus, dieting appears to be a social taboo.
According to the official Atkins diet website (www.atkins.com), Dr. Robert Atkins’ book “Dr. Atkins’ New Diet Revolution” has become “ one of the best-selling books of all time.” The Atkins diet reduces dieters’ carbohydrate intake, yet allows the consumption of fatty foods like beef, bacon, and cheese.
Although high-fat foods seem to contradict the notion of a diet, this fad has caught on. Low-carbohydrate and Atkins-friendly products are being sold throughout Middletown, at General Nutrition Center on Washington Street, Subway on Main Street and even at WeShop. Students, however, seem reluctant to publicize their own dieting habits.
“Often people [at Wes] won’t admit that they’re dieting because of the stigmas associated with it, like buying into the typical societal constructs where women have to be thin,” said Vanessa Meer ’06. “Those who [diet] tend not to publicize it.”
“Dieting is less socially acceptable now so people take that obsession with trying to lose weight and put it into other aspects… just exercising all the time or just not eating enough,” said one female athlete who requested to remain anonymous.
According to Dr. Davis Smith, Medical Director at Davison Health Center, students inquire about dieting “pretty infrequently.”
“About one person each year [whom I treat] is medically overweight or obese,” Smith said. “In terms of people wanting to discuss weight loss, that’s about two or three a year.”
According to Smith, the publicized success stories of fad diets is not testimonial to the nature of a single diet plan, but an obvious consequence of any program that increases one’s awareness about food.
“People become much more attentive to what they’re eating on these diets,” Smith said. “They’re often just reducing the caloric content of what they eat.”
Smith does not support diets like Atkins, which eliminate or severely restrict certain foods.
“[Those diets] don’t make any medical sense,” Smith said. “There are three components to food: fats, proteins, and carbohydrates. Everyone needs some of those, in a balance. If you eat cheesecake all the time, you will get fat.”
WesWELL, the Office of Health Education, provides information on its website about various nutritional and dietary issues. The site does not provide explicit information in support of dieting, and it links to information that discourages the practice.
“Truly, the only healthy way to lose weight is to maintain good nutrition balanced with fitness activity, and both of these subjects are addressed on our website,” said Lisa Currie, Director of Health Education.
According to Currie, the appeal in these diets lies in their popularity.
“Popular doesn’t translate into healthy or effective in the long run,” Currie said. “[These diets] probably all can help someone lose weight in the short term, but they may have long-term consequences that we’re not able to see yet.”
Smith also sees aspects of the fad diets that attract attention but which are unrelated to nutrition or weight concerns.
“It’s exciting, stimulating for people to feel like they’re part of a club,” Smith said.
According to Smith, there is a far greater concern on campus with issues surrounding eating disorders and being underweight.
“Disordered eating… [is] epidemic on college campuses,” Smith said.
“Of all the people who have come to me for weight loss issues in the last couple of years, probably half of them are normal weight or less, which I think gets at larger issues of pressures to have certain body image,” Smith said.
“Being in Freeman a lot, I see people who just don’t take care of themselves or try to do it the wrong way,” the anonymous female athlete said. “You see so many people just ellipticalling [using the elliptical cross-trainer] obsessively every single day, and I always hear conversations of people at the scale… people being really obsessed about weight.”
“My basic advice is to eat less and exercise more,” Smith said. “If you expend more than you consume, on average you’ll lose weight.”
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