A Growing Body of Evidence

When it comes to dieting, most of us are less interested in the history of human efforts to change nature’s evil equation (eat more, weigh more) than in the latest, most effective way to lose 10 pounds of ugly fat now. (Please, no decapitation jokes.)

But the recent Mayo Clinic warnings about the “miracle” drug cocktail fen-phen should come as no surprise to anyone with even a passing knowledge of the great Weight Loss Circle of Life. This is how it usually goes:

A substance, formula or technique is discovered or repackaged.

The inventor, maker or purveyor sells the product.

People--women, usually--lose weight.

The media catches wind.

A fad is born.

Money flows.

People--women, usually--die.

Lawsuits are filed.

Or tastes change.

A new substance, formula or technique is discovered or repackaged.

And so it goes, ad nauseam. So to speak.

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The modern era of dieting is said to have coincided with the introduction of the bathroom scale. This was roughly 1930, when a little pill came on the market, made of the industrial poison dinitrophenol, a constituent of some bombs used in World War I. The little pill caused rashes, fever, blindness and, sometimes, death. (Oh, and weight loss too.) The latest fad in dieting is, of course, that little drug cocktail fen-phen, implicated now in the serious cardiac illnesses of at least two dozen women.

With 18 million monthly prescriptions written last year, I doubt the bottom will fall out of this market. After all, a 1991 report on people who had lost at least 100 pounds claimed that 90% of the formerly obese said they would rather be blind or have a leg amputated than gain back the weight.

There was a time when I was swayed by arguments that the pressure to be thin was a subconscious sexist power play, perpetrated by those who would benefit from the preoccupation by women with their bodies. According to this theory, the timing of Twiggy (1967) was no accident. Her fame, based on that willowy frame (and those painted-on eyelashes), can be seen as a repressive response to the post-birth control pill era of female liberation. “Dieting is the most potent political sedative in women’s history,” wrote Naomi Wolf in her 1991 bestseller “The Beauty Myth.” “A quietly mad population is a tractable one.”

No, no, Naomi. A dieting population is not a quietly mad population. A dieting population is a truly testy population. As a former waitress, I can tell you that hungry people are the least tractable people on the planet.

The pressure to be thin may be a social evil, in that it can lead to serious illnesses, depression and discrimination against the obese, but it is not perpetrated by those who would keep women in their place. It is something we do to ourselves, something from which men suffer too.

Given that almost all of us have enough to eat, that food is not a real marker of class or economic status, what it comes down to is simple: Thinner usually feels and looks better than fatter.

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Like many women, I consider myself a dieting expert. I was a chubby kid. And the world is a brutal place for a chubby kid. (“Robin can gain weight just by looking at a cookie,” my lovely, slim mother used to say.)

My mother was a model of caloric banking. Smoking like a chimney, she’d eat maybe a cup of cottage cheese for lunch in order to drink a beer or two each night without physical penalty. She once told me that a friend of hers swore she’d lost weight by massaging her fat every night and that the fat cells “just disappeared” into her bloodstream and were carried away. For a while after that, I was basically a walking bruise.

(Lest you doubt the great Weight Loss Circle of Life theory: In 1890, according to Smithsonian magazine, a Boston druggist sold corset-like “obesity belts” that supposedly disintegrated fat. And who can forget those jiggling machines of the 1950s and ‘60s?)

With the exception of liposuction and high colonics, I’ve pretty much tried everything that’s promised a svelter me: amphetamines. Coffee and cigarettes. Diet pills. High carbo / low protein. Low carbo / high protein. Low fat. No fat. The Stillman Diet. The Beverly Hills Diet. Weight Watchers. Jenny Craig. A shake for breakfast, a shake for lunch, a dinner fit for Tommy Lasorda (Hello?). Nothing worked permanently. Or should I say, nothing could come between me and my Snickers for long.

Indeed, the only diet that works for me is the Hoover-and-Hoof eating plan. If I had any sense, I’d package it and make a million bucks. But to you, I’ll pass it on for free:

You eat like a vacuum cleaner.

You run five miles.

You repeat daily. Dammit.

* Robin Abcarian’s column appears on Wednesdays. Her e-mail address is rabcarian@aol.com.

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