As if it weren’t bad enough that we are shamed from every direction for having normal, healthy human bodies, as soon as we decide to take back the power over our health and well being, and begin the process of learning to nourish ourselves properly to support our activity, so begins the calorie shaming.

What am I talking about? I cover several main themes on my facebook page, and the last week or so I’ve been focusing on eating enough calories. Here are a few of the comments people have left on my posts just in the last day, these are directed at me and my food choices:

“Ask yourself why you must defend your need to have [sugar]?” (left in response to my post about sugar being an awesome fuel for my workouts)

“Uh, hello? 3000 calories a day is not normal or healthy intake! Unless you are running a marathon every day.” (in response to my post that 3000 calories a day is not unreasonable for an active healthy adult – it’s about how much I eat. Not everyone needs quite that much, but many do.)

“3000 calories is a large amount of food if you are a healthy eater. Fresh fruits and veggies and lean proteins do not have many calories. What to you do? Eat a cheese burger on a big bun and than go running and call yourself healthy?” (same post as above)

The message here is that eating this much food is undesirable, unhealthy, bad.

How someone can look at my pictures and then criticize my eating philosophy as unhealthy and ineffective is beyond me. Well, I’ll take that back, we’ve seen very clearly that people who don’t want to hear the truth can make up some pretty amazing stories to rationalize away my success and ease their cognitive dissonance. These comments make me shake my head. Some have said to just ignore them, but I think it’s really important to highlight them and TALK about them. Disordered thinking is so deeply ingrained in or culture, I think that a lot of people reading comments like these won’t recognize the disorder, and will internalize it. That’s how our culture has conditioned us.

The good news is that the vast majority of responses my posts about this topic get are positive. Comment after comment from people who’ve increased their calorie intake to a more sustainable level and seen fitness, body composition and even weight loss progress where before they were frustrated. But these negative comments can be powerfully subversive, and have the potential to derail a person just beginning the recovery process. So I am talking about it. As you begin to emerge from the dark of the diet maze, you will be subjected to calorie shaming. It will come from all directions: the media, your friends, your SELF. Recognize it for what it is. It is not healthy.

You deserve a healthy strong body, and you can not starve yourself healthy and strong.

From the Amazon description:

'Can I get an 'AMEN!'?! This is so simple, and makes so much sense! If you have to white-knuckle your way down to a weight and struggle miserably to maintain it, how is that 'ideal'? About a month ago I found Go Kaleo, started tracking my food, upped my protein and calorie intake, and I've lost weight AND inches! All that weight training I've been doing is finally noticeable! But the miracle is that I'm not obsessed with food every day, I'm not fighting cravings and feeling hopeless, like if I lost my focus for one minute I'd blow it. I'm not afraid of food anymore! I feel like Go Kaleo has let me in on the 'secret' to being healthy' You are changing lives.' ~Denise

In a weight loss world where grueling 1200-calorie diets are the mainstream standard for weight loss, accompanied with long lists of evil foods to avoid, Amber Rogers, aka 'Go Kaleo' is the voice of reason.

Being healthy and finding your healthy weight simply doesn't work when it's hard. It works best when it's easy. Go Kaleo puts practicality and sustainability first ' two concepts often completely eliminated from popular diets in pursuit of quick, albeit impermanent results.

While most recommend eating as little food as possible and doing as much exercise as one can bear, Taking Up Space advocates finding the MAXIMUM amount of calories and minimum number of paranoid restrictions that still gets results.

In the book, Go Kaleo talks about her incredible 80-pounds of slow, effortless, hunger and craving-free weight loss that never came back ' all on a steady diet of 2800 calories a day with a few good workouts a week. No big cravings for carbs, meat, fat, or sweets ' as these were things that she was eating in ample abundance every day.

After reaching a healthy goal, what did she do? She increased calories even more only to find that this allowed her to build toned muscle and shed more fat than ever before.

Taking Up Space also contains some passionate and important discourse on getting past the illusions created by fake tans and Photoshop, and realizing that what everyone is increasingly thinking are 'flaws' are actually quite normal aspects of human physiology.

This book sets a new standard in approaching weight loss in a lasting way. It is the future of how better health and better bodies will be attained once the rest of the world realizes how counterproductive extreme approaches really are.
''You can get better, you can get stronger, you can get healthier, you can be MORE. You can't restrict, reduce, eliminate your way to any of these things. Yes, you can lose weight, but there is a healthier, saner, more sustainable way to do it.' ~Go Kaleo

If you’re a regular reader of my blog, you’ll recognize many of the themes I cover in this book. I’ve tied several of my more important posts together to create a more cohesive guide that will give you the basics on energy balance, maintenance of a healthy weight, self respect and self care, and a path forward out of the diet maze.

Be sure to check out my facebook page and the Eating the Food facebook group for support in putting the concepts in this book into practice.

To purchase Taking Up Space as a downloadable pdf:

To purchase Taking Up Space for Kindle:

Click me! To see study.

This study is making the rounds of the paleosphere, so I thought I’d take a moment to look into it and see if it lives up to it’s claims that a paleo-‘type’ diet ‘has strong and tissue-specific effects on ectopic lipid deposition in postmenopausal women’ (‘ectopic lipid deposition’ = fat deposits on organs and skeletal muscles).

I got my hands on the full text and had a look. Quick synopsis: researchers put 10 overweight and obese, sedentary, post-menopausal women on a diet that they call ‘paleolithic type’ and measured changes to several metabolic and anthropometric measures. The main areas they were looking for changes were fat deposits in the liver and skeletal muscles, and insulin sensitivity, but they measured several other things as well, including:

-weight
-BMI
-waist circumference and waist-hip ratio
-blood pressure
-cholesterol
-insulin
-blood glucose
-cortisol

The diet:

“All meals were prepared by the food service at Ume University Hospital and were weighed and frozen after preparation. The diet included lean meat, fish, fruit, vegetables (including root vegetables), eggs and nuts. Dairy products, cereals, beans, legumes, refined fats and sugar, added salt, bakery products and soft drinks were excluded. Participants were instructed to complement the provided food with other included food items from the list, ad libitum. To enable preparation of additional complete meals at home, the women received 14-day menus together with recipes and instructions regarding portion sizes. They were also advised to
use only rapeseed (canola) or olive oil in food preparation.”

The diet worked out to roughly 30% protein, 40% fat (predominantly PUFA as saturated fat was limited in this study by design, and most of the fat the subjects consumed came from nuts, fish and canola and olive oils. Wait, canola oil? DO YOU EVEN PALEO?). They ate to appetite and documented their intake.

The results were quite good. The subjects lost an average of 10 pounds, blood pressure improved, both waist circumference and waist-hip ratio decreased, and heart rate decreased! And there was indeed a reduction in liver fat! Good stuff! Lets look a little deeper at that. From the study:

“The dietary regimen resulted in a significantly reduced energy intake (520 kcal/day reduction) despite the ad libitum approach. This may be one of the factors contributing to the striking decrease in liver fat content. A series of studies have indeed shown that hypocaloric diets reduce the amount of liver fat.”

Layman’s terms: the subjects spontaneously ate about 500 calories less per day than they had been eating before the study (I talk about why diets high in protein and fiber, like the one in this study, can lead to a spontaneous reduction in caloric intake here. Protein and fiber are satiating and highly thermic foods. Diets rich in protein and fiber, paleo or otherwise, are very good at producing a spontaneous caloric deficit. It’s not magic, it’s science). It’s been established that hypocaloric diets (hypocaloric = fewer calories consumed than burned) reduce liver fat. Rut roh. Are they saying it might have been the calorie reduction that decreased liver fat, not the magic of paleo? Why yes, yes I think they are.

Speaking of which, you know what else a caloric reduction decreases? Weight. Could it be that the subjects lost weight because they were eating fewer calories? That’s certainly where my money is. The study authors note that the weight loss seems out of proportion to the degree of calorie reduction but then go on to acknowledge:

“Possible explanations include over-reporting of energy intake, increased thermogenic effects of protein (versus other macronutrients) and loss of glycogen which may contribute to loss of body water during the study period. Of note, increased
urinary volumes were commonly reported among participants during this intervention.”

Layman’s terms: maybe the subjects were overreporting their food intake. Maybe there’s something to the Thermic Effect of Food dealio (if you didn’t read my post that I linked above on food thermogenesis, you can do it now). Or maybe, just maybe, the low-carb diet they were on did what low-carb diets always do: flushed out several pounds of water weight as the body’s glycogen stores depleted. The subjects did report peeing more, after all.

So, we looked at the anthropometric changes the diet produced, lets take a look at the metabolic changes. Some good news. Blood glucose and insulin both decreased, and total cholesterol, LDL and triglycerides decreased. HDL also decreased though (that’s the good cholesterol), and cortisol increased (cortisol is a stress hormone). So the metabolic measures were a mixed bag, but overall more good than bad. Not so fast though, glucose, insulin and cholesterol all respond favorably to weight loss, as does blood pressure. Could these improved markers be a response to the subjects’ weight loss, which was a response to reduced calorie intake? That conclusion is certainly supported by decades of credible science.

Back to the original aim of the study: to determine if a paleo diet reduces liver fat and increases insulin sensitivity. Liver fat did decrease, but it turns out that whole-body insulin sensitivity didn’t change, nor fat deposition in skeletal muscles:

“…lipid content in skeletal muscles, as determined by 1H-MRS, was unaltered, as was peripheral insulin sensitivity…”

Because:

“…exercise regimens must be included to demonstrate effects on muscle/whole-body insulin sensitivity…”

Layman’s terms: to improve insulin sensitivity you gotta move yo’ ass.

Bottom line: paleo is, as fad diets go, pretty decent. It encourages eating nutritious, whole foods, and accentuates protein and vegetables (staples of weight loss diets from the beginning of time). But it’s not magic. The positive outcomes experienced in this study fall right in line with decades of credible science showing similar outcomes from weight loss due to reduced caloric intake. I’m not hating on paleo: paleo is a healthy diet. But promoting the myth that eating paleo will magically reduce weight and improve metabolic markers is irresponsible for one very big reason: it won’t work for everyone, because not everyone will spontaneously eat fewer calories on a paleo diet. Some people will even eat MORE calories on paleo. And when those people don’t magically lose weight and get healthier, they may blame paleo. Or they may blame themselves. They may think they’re just not ‘paleo-ing’ hard enough. Let be honest: paleo is a healthy diet, and some people may lose weight and see health improvements on it because they spontaneously eat less. But it’s the eating less that is responsible for the weight loss, and if you’re NOT one of the people that spontaneously eats less on paleo, it’s not because paleo is bad, or because you’re doing it wrong, or because you’re destined to be fat or whatever else people have come up with to rationalize away undesired results. Paleo is a pretty decent way of eating but it’s not magic, it can’t rewrite the laws of physics.

Improving the quality of your diet is GREAT, and paleo can help some people do that. There are other ways of improving the quality of your diet, though, and there are other ways of optimizing your calorie intake. Lets sweep away the dogma and magical thinking and be realistic. This study shows what countless other studies have shown before it: that calories matter, that food quality ALSO matters, and that exercise is essential for healthy metabolic function. If paleo provides a framework that helps you succeed in those aras, that is fantastic! But it’s one possible helpful tool out of many, and what works for some doesn’t work for others, we must look critically at the causative factors here (calories, weight loss, exercise) if we want to create a balanced and effective path forward and help more people achieve better health.

Bread doesn't make you fat. Your behavior makes you fat. Bread is a red herring.

“Carbs make you fat.”

Do you see the allure of that statement? It, and “Food Villain” statements like it, allow a person to shift the responsibility for their problems onto an outside entity. Carbs are a wildly popular Food Villain. Other examples of popular Food Villains are: High Fructose Corn Syrup, sugar, wheat, fat, fruit, PUFAs, processed food in general, dairy, animal protein, grains, gluten, starch and legumes. Food Villains are an evolved, more sophisticated form of Magic Pill. In days of yore, it was easier to sell people a Magic Pill that would miraculously cure all manner of ailments, but people are wiser now, and less likely to fall for spectacularly unrealistic marketing claims. Or so they think. Enter the Food Villain.

Food Villain Mythology is usually supported by a handful of (cherry picked) scientific studies and an elaborate and sophisticated web of logical fallacy. The resultant construct usually holds that the Food Villain in question is the root cause of either modern society’s obesity and diabetes epidemic, or the root cause of an individual’s obesity and illness. There is usually some kernal of truth in the claim. Take wheat for instance: it is true that wheat can be problematic for some individuals who have an allergy or intolerance, and for anyone who consumes it in excess or to the exclusion of other foods that would provide a more well rounded nutritional foundation. There are other issues with wheat too, involving it’s cultivation, processing, ubiquitousness and nutrient profile. But Food Villain Mythology has taken those issues and created what amounts to mass hysteria in some circles, with an entire mythology centering on wheat’s Magical Ability to single-handedly drive obesity and disease. Scary stuff.

Food Villains are generally foods that can cause problems for some people, under some circumstances. They are factors that can indirectly contribute to illness and weight gain. There is merit to many of the arguments against Food Villains. But Food Villain Mythology morphs those foods into primary drivers of obesity and illness. This is so very appealing to a desperate and suffering audience. Why? Because it gives them something to blame. It allows them to focus on an outside entity as the source of their suffering. It serves the human need for a Bad Guy. And shifting focus onto a Bad Guy is bad because…?

Because the REAL primary driver of obesity and illness is human behavior. Inactivity and poor eating habits specifically: too much or too little food (also known as ‘energy imbalance’), inadequate nutrient intake, lack of dietary variety, etc. There is a MASSIVE body of scientific evidence that supports this, it is so overwhelming that The Mayo Clinic, Johns Hopkins, the NIH and the NDIC and countless other credible scientific establishments state definitively on their websites and in their literature that obesity, diabetes, insulin resistance and metabolic dysfunction are caused by inactivity and energy imbalance.

Food Villains are secondary contributors at worst. But they are a bright, shiny red herring that deflects attention away from the big elephant in the room, the primary drivers of obesity and illness: human behaviors. And who wants to focus on the primary drivers anyway? That would require taking personal responsibility for one’s own behavior, and doing WORK to change it. It’s so much more appealing to blame the [carbs/sugar/wheat/fat/animal protein/PUFAs/gluten/starch/etc]. This is normal human behavior. We always look for a scapegoat. And Food Villains are a GREAT scapegoat. People get very passionate about their personal Food Villains, so much so that they lash out violently at anyone who threatens their world view that their Food Villain is the cause of all their problems.

You can eliminate every Food Villain in the world (and there are certainly good reasons to eliminate some of them!) but even if all you eat is organic kale and coconut oil, if you ignore the primary drivers, physical activity and energy balance, you will never totally overcome your problems. Likewise, if you optimize your physical activity and correct your energy imbalance, you will be surprised at how harmless most of the Food Villains you’ve been living in fear of become. A person with healthy metabolic function can pretty much eat whatever they want and remain healthy. Food Villains, by and large, only become problematic once metabolic function has been compromised. Metabolic function is compromised by inactivity and energy imbalance, not by Food Villains. Eliminating Food Villains treats the symptoms of metabolic dysfunction, not the cause. The cause is inactivity and energy imbalance.

So why do ‘they’ (ie, the diet book authors and the bloggers) want to keep us fixated on Food Villains and not the primary drivers? Because focusing on Food Villains keeps us sick and fat, and when we’re sick and fat, we keep buying their Magic Pills…oops, I mean ‘books about Food Villains’.

If a food causes problems for you, don’t eat it. It’s pretty simple. But if metabolic health is your goal, you must shift your focus away from the secondary contributors and on to the primary drivers, or you will continue to spin your wheels and make the Food Villifiers rich.

I grew up looking at underweight and yet impossibly perfect models on the pages of magazines. It did a number on me. Made me feel ashamed of my fleshy thighs, my broad shoulders, my small breasts. Sparked an unhealthy, decades long troubled relationship with food and my body.

A few years ago, when super-fit, uber lean models started to become popular, I celebrated! Progress, I thought! Perhaps my daughters wouldn’t have to grow up surrounded by such destructive images! Strength a desirable quality? Sign me up!

And as I began my journey towards health, I kept those images close. I replaced the skinny ideal with the super-fit, super-lean ideal as my goal. I began to hear the phrase ‘Strong is the New Skinny’ and was thrilled. I’ve kept a picture of Dara Torres at her leanest on my fridge for four years as inspiration. Crossfit gained in popularity and with it images of strong women accomplishing incredible feats of strength and fitness. How wonderful! Take that, skinny models and the magazines that pushed them on my impressionable daughters!

As I got closer to my goal of a lean, fit body though, something started to change. I began to realize how much time I spend thinking about my diet and my workouts. Don’t get me wrong. In our modern food climate, we need to be diligent and mindful about what we eat, and our lifestyles have become so sedentary and easy that we need to make time to get the exercise that was a built-in component of our ancestors lives. But as I got leaner, I needed to become increasingly disciplined about calories and macronutrients. At some point I realized I’d gone beyond simple mindfulness about food, and had ventured into the sort of behavior that some people might consider an eating disorder. Every calorie, every gram of protein, every micronutrient was being tracked. That’s what I needed to do to continue getting leaner. But oh, did I look great!

Do I want my daughters to grow up healthy and strong? Absolutely. Do I want them to feel pressured to be as disciplined about their diets as I am? Absolutely not.

I think most people can reach a healthy weight and body fat percentage by eating real food, keeping loose track of how much they’re eating and getting adequate exercise most days. I did that! I got down to about 165 pounds and 18-20% body fat fairly easily once I started eating well and exercising. But that wasn’t good enough. After all, I had a picture of Dara Torres at about 9% BF on my fridge. I sure didn’t look like that! Nor did I look like the models I saw in fitness magazines, or the women I saw competing in the crossfit games on TV. I had a lot of work still to do if I wanted to be what had clearly become the standard of beauty and desirability in the fitness world.

Last December, I decided enough was enough. This is ridiculous. That lean ideal is as unrealistic for most of us women as the underweight ideal I grew up with. I was maintaining at about 15% body fat and felt great, looked great, was getting stronger and healthier every day, had a husband who adored my body, and yet when I looked in the mirror I still saw the fleshy thighs. What was it going to take to be what I somehow had absorbed as the new standard of beauty?

I decided to find out, and to blog about it.

I set out with a goal to drop down to the level of leanness we women are barraged with in the popular media. 15% wasn’t it, and I suspected it was going to be single digit body fat for me, given my genetics. I did set some limits out of concern for my health, though:

-I wasn’t willing to sacrifice my basic nutrient needs. If I got to the point that I had to drop my calorie, protein, fat or micronutrient intake below that which is essential for health, I would stop.

-If I started to experience negative health effects of underfat (missing periods, bleeding and bruising, fatigue, hair loss, etc) I’d stop.

How’d I do it? I restricted my calories to just a few hundred less than I burn per day. This was so my body wouldn’t perceive a sudden reduction in calorie intake as famine, and start burning lean mass for fuel in an effort to preserve fat mass. I averaged an intake of 2200-2500 calories a day, I typically burn 2600-3000 calories a day. This kept my metabolism from slowing down. (Important for anyone trying to lose weight! Better to lose it slowly and get to the finish line with a healthy metabolism than to drop weight quickly but kill your metabolism in the process!)

Next, I maximized my protein intake to aid in lean mass preservation. When losing weight, some of the weight you lose will be fat and some will be lean mass. This is true no matter how healthfully you lose the weight. Getting enough protein can help limit lean mass losses though. I was aiming for 150+ grams of protein a day (at a body weight of 160 when I started). It’s difficult to get that much protein from food on 2200 calories a day, even for omnivores. I used a protein supplement to reach that amount.

I did enjoy my food, I didn’t eat anything I hate, so there was that. But I had to be strict with portions, and I had to plan my days carefully to make sure I got everything I needed. And I’m not a fan of protein shakes, so trying to dress them up to make them palatable without adding extra calories was tedious and difficult. There wasn’t any room for creativity, and going out to eat was a nightmare! I’m sure I was no fun in that department. No alcohol, teeny tiny portions of chocolate, no impromptu evenings out because I would need to look at the menu beforehand to plan my meal, and the rest of the day around it!

I kept up with my lifting 3-5 days a week and intended to do more cardio, but in reality that sort of went out the window, mostly because, as I’ll discuss later, I just didn’t have the energy.

I lost 10 pounds over the course of 12 weeks, which is exactly what I would have expected given my 300-500 calories/day deficit. (It IS calories in vs out, people, don’t believe the hype).

My weight loss stalled out at 147 pounds. This is because my weight ‘caught up’ to the number of calories I was consuming. To lose more I would have to reduce my calories or increase my burn through activity. This is where things got really uncomfortable. See, I wasn’t willing to reduce my calories further, because I’d have to sacrifice nutrition. And increasing my activity? Well, by that time I was experiencing unrelenting, low level fatigue, and I simply didn’t have the fuel to do more exercise. I have been bouncing around 148-150 for almost a month now, and it’s one of the reasons I decided to end the experiment when I did. I simply hit a wall that I couldn’t get over without risking my health, and that had been my limit going into this.

I scheduled a hydrostatic body fat test and maintained my weight until the test. That was a few-week wait. During that time I began to see some symptoms of ‘underfat’. There was the fatigue, for starters. And I was constantly impatient and irritable with my family. My husband, bless his heart, really stepped up and ran a lot of interference between my kids and I so they didn’t have to deal with my short temper. I’ve been spacey and forgetful. My libido has completely vanished. Most worrisome, my period didn’t show up when it was supposed to. As I write this, it’s 17 days late. I’ve been like clockwork since I’ve been at a healthy weight.

It’s difficult to find scientific info on the health impact of underfat. Most of it there is is specifically about women who are underweight as well as underfat, and even now at 12% body fat my weight is still a very healthy 150 pounds, making my BMI 22.1, smack dab in the middle of the ‘healthy’ range on the weight charts. I have over 20 pounds worth of ‘cushion’ before I drop into the ‘underweight’ category. Given my declining health, though, it’s clear I can’t spare that weight without risking serious complications.

Here is my before and after photo, the difference in color is due to the natural lighting at the time of day the pictures were taken, I’m standing in front of the same wall in both pics. On the left, November 2011 at 160 pounds and roughly 15-16% body fat. On the right 150 pounds and 12% body fat. I look great, don’t I? Aside from some fluff on my knees, I’d look right at home on a fitness magazine cover. And that fluff can be photoshopped out, no problem! But according to the American Council of Sports Medicine, a body fat composition of less than 12 to 14 percent is considered too low and a health risk. Other sources suggest falling below 15 percent is a concern. According to this site, having too little body fat increases the risk of brittle bones, loss of menstrual periods, infertility, dry skin, poor concentration, low mood, feeling cold, constant thoughts about food and low sex drive. Body fat protects the internal organs and aids in proper nerve function. Maintaining too little body fat for any length of time can weaken your bones and contribute to osteoporosis. Too little body fat can effect not just your moods, but your neurological function, triggering full-blown eating disorders in people who’ve previously had a healthy relationship with food.

I like this picture because while it highlights how lean I am, the look on my face is a great illustration of how I feel. Spacey, out of it, low energy. You’ll also note my complete absence of breast tissue. This is pretty standard when a woman’s body fat gets this low. There are a few lucky women who maintain some semblance of breasts, but most of us, when this lean, will lose the fat in our breasts too. Hence all the surgically enhanced boobs in the fitness industry.

They don’t tell you this stuff when they bombard you with images of impossibly cut and defined women, do they? They also don’t tell you that the models in those pictures take diuretics (check out the last tip at the end of the article) and restrict water intake, to dehydrate themselves and make their muscles appear more defined. Or that every image you see in the media has been photoshopped and altered to better fit the standard image of beauty. And don’t even get me started on the fake tans, the strategic posing, the surgical enhancements, the flattering lighting, and the drugs some of these women take.

I know I’m going to get lots of comments from people who can maintain an uber-lean physique without experiencing health effects. That’s great! You are very fortunate that your body type has been declared ‘Good and Desirable’ by our culture. There are people who are able to maintain weights and body fat levels that classify them as obese and remain healthy, too. Do we glorify them and suggest that all women should aspire to that ideal? Of course not. Because most of us wouldn’t be healthy if we tried to maintain that physique. Just as most of us wouldn’t be healthy at the body fat levels that are being pushed on us by the media and each other.

I no longer appreciate the ‘Strong is the New Skinny’ meme, mostly because it is generally accompanied by images that are unrealistic and unhealthy for most of us. I believe in the original intention, the celebration of strength. Being strong is great, but you don’t need to be shredded to be strong. And you don’t need to be, or look, strong to be healthy. The original message has been co-opted, twisted and turned into a marketing tool to sell us a new mythology. I’m calling for all of us, even the fitness models and figure competitors, to reject the cultural mythology that there is one standard of beauty and health. Stop buying in! Stop buying the magazines that promote only one ideal, stop sharing and glorifying the pictures on facebook, stop looking at yourself in the mirror and focusing on the ways you don’t look like what you see in the media. Not even the models in those pictures look that way in real life. Health first. If you end up looking ripped because you’ve adopted a healthy lifestyle, great! And if when you are healthy you don’t end up ripped, join the club. It won’t be easy to change the way we think. I admit, I really like the way I look now! There’s a part of me that wants to say ‘screw my health!’ and stay here, or even lose a little more! We are so brainwashed that even when confronted with evidence that what we’re doing is dangerous, we still are tempted to keep doing it because of the positive reinforcement we get from society. I hate it, and want better for my daughters. I want better for myself. I want better for all of you! We all deserve better than this, and to be loved just the way we are.

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