5 FAKE Health Foods To Avoid!

Sean Croxton of Underground Wellness talks about five foods that pretend to be healthy but are, in fact, not healthy at all.

The Skinny on Obesity (Ep. 5): Generation XL

Obese six month olds? If you have childhood obesity you’re more likely to be obese as an adult. Lifespan is going down instead of up.

This is part 5 of 7. Did you see part 1, 2, 3, and 4?

NYC Anti-Sugar Ad

This is so silly! Nobody would eat packets of sugar like that. The carbonated water in soda is there to wash the sugar down. Duh!

The Skinny on Obesity (Ep. 4): Sugar - A Sweet Addiction

This is part 4 of 7. Did you see part 1, 2, and 3?

The Skinny on Obesity (Ep. 3): Hunger and Hormones

Why “eat less, exercise more” doesn’t work. (See part one and two of this video series in the previous posts.)

Sugar the Bitter Truth

Heather Jo Flores recently went off sugar and she posted the above video by Sean Croxton, which you must watch. It’s a summarized version of the Bitter Truth video by Dr. Robert Lustig.

Fat Week, Day 5: Harmful or Healthy? Thinspo vs. Fitspo

“Thinspo” and “Fitspo” stand for “thinsperation” and “fitsperation.”

Fitspo people focus on being the healthiest they can be while the Thinspo people focus on being the skinniest they can be.

Fitspo people promote exercise and eating right while Thinspo people promote not eating at all (and presumably they haven’t got the energy to exercise).

The images below were taken from Thinspo and Fitspo tumblr blogs. (For those who are not familiar, tumblr.com is a blogging community where people can easily post and share information.)

From what I can tell, all of these blogs are curated by young women who are striving to feel “beautiful” and/or “healthy.” Click on an image to be taken to the associated blog / tumblr account.

Thinspo

Definition from Urban Dictionary: Thinspo is used by people suffering from eating disorders to help keep them inspired. The idea behind thinspo is that it helps motivate and inspire you to lose weight and become or stay thin. Thinspo is usually of photos of skinny or bony celebrities or models. It sometimes takes the forms of celebrities who have lost a great deal of weight. Thinspo can be anything. Book quotes, song lyrics, films…

Source: Skinny Mini Warrior

Source: ED (Eating Disorder) Girl Problems

Source: Black Girl Thinspiration

Source: Skinny Binny or Die

Source: Let’s Just Be Perfect and Thin

Source: Nothing Tastes as Good as Skinny Feels

Source: The Pursuit of Pretty

Source: Just Another Teenage Experiment

Source: Unperfect

Source: Fuck Fat Let’s Get Skinny

Fitspo

Definition from Urban Dictionary: Images of active, strong, and fit women that promote proper exercise and diet. May also include images healthy foods much like thinspo (images of dangerously thin women used by people with eating disorders to motivate) but healthier.

Source: Believe to Achieve

Source: My Perfect Skinny Story

Source: My Perfect Skinny Story

Source: Get Skinny With It

Source: Healthy Sexy Bitch

Source: Fuck Fat Be Slim

Source: Skinny Flower

Source: 100 Pounds 100 Days

Source: To Shock Those Who Thought I Couldn’t Do It

Source: My Slim-down Journey :)

Guys Feel It Too

How do males fit in? Do they have an outlet on tumblr? I was curious and did a search, which turned up a Facebook page titled, “Boys with a tumblr are like girls with a penis.” I did, however, find some blogs on tumblr by males and about them being skinny or losing weight. They were from “aspiring models” or gay boys.

The following tumblr is quite sad. It’s a message posted to her son’s account where he had been connecting with others about anorexia.

Source: Starving Boy

Source: The Skinny Boi, Changing Beauty Into Perfection

Source: Boys Need Help Too

The caption for the above image reads, “My goal is to be able to fit into a pair of Abercrombie and Fitch jeans…”

Source: A Boys Thinspiration

Source: A 90 lbs. Boy

Source: A Skinny Man

The Mind-Body (Advertising) Connection

I am fascinated by the people involved in Thinspo and Fitspo and the way they create media. Slogans are written by the people who make the blogs. In some cases the images appear to be made completely from scratch by the author of the blog. Advertising images are reworked to encapsulate an idea rather than a product. This is powerful stuff. It’s as if they are crafting a media campaign to promote the mindset to which they’ve subscribed.

The Thinspo people seem much more obsessed with fetishizing thin, sexy girls than the Fitspo people. Thinspo is about being frail and weak while Fitspo is about being strong in mind and body. Thinspo people are hurt while the Fitspo people are empowered. Oddly enough, both groups are making and sharing media to support and commune around their approach to weight loss, health, and beauty.

If Fitspo is positive and Thinspo is negative, which one do you most identify with? When you see these images, what alienates you the most? Size? Hair? Skin color? Gender? Are you affected or unfazed?

Fat Week, Day 4: I Hate Myself Because I’m Fat & Ugly

Some things you just can’t change.

While surfing the web I came across a blog post titled, “Maude Save Us From the Headless Fatties” in which Melissa McEwan writes about the following two ads.

These were temporary placeholder billboards designed to lure new clients to Interbest Outdoor advertising. They also published these:

It’s obvious that the advertising company is saying, “You don’t want to see fat, hairy people who are the equivalent of a booger from a nose pick. Pay us and we’ll put a photo of someone sexy up here.”

While I consider myself to be good humored, I can’t help but feel rejected when I see these ads because they make me feel like a booger. They remind me of the time I was in a book store here in Portland. In the kids section, I spotted a book about gross stuff. The pages displayed line drawings and featured the science behind things such as boogers, eye gunk, ear wax, poop, pee, and vomit. At the very end of the book—as if for the grand finale—was a drawing of a hairy man. The message was clear: I am gross.

BUT…

I’m not gross. There are some things I can’t change and the hair on my body is one of them. I am not going to spend hours a week shaving so that I can attempt to be fit in like the hairless people in razor blade ads. (See Shave the World.)

Why are we so gullible? The above ads seem to be more the result of people drinking too much soda. Meanwhile, large corporations like Cocoa Cola are using mind numbing ads like the one below.

Don’t fall for it! Don’t believe the hype! Buying their crap isn’t going to make us special. In fact, it’s the exact opposite. The billboards sell us food and drink products that cause the obesity they’re trying to scare us with. It’s a form of brainwashing.

Want to be unique? Want to stand out? Want to be attractive? Stop being sweet! Don’t spend your money on fake fixes and fake health.

Forget the things you can’t change and focus on the things you can.

You can’t alter how the public portrays or perceives you but you can change how you represent and recognize yourself. When you change the story you tell yourself you begin to present that story to the world and those around you will begin to echo it back to you. Try it!