I don’t want to judge by appearance, but serious weight to lose? Seriously?? This woman does not appear to have serious weight to lose. I hate how all of the diet ads today feature extremely small women. What does that say to the rest of us? “If she’s that thin and is still watching the pounds, then I better get ready and watch the pounds too!” Who can live up to this standard? I certainly can’t and don’t want to. Ads like this show me how far we have come to believe that being thin is the only means to being a healthy person. As I have said before, this one-size-fits-all view of our bodies just doesn’t hold up. And despite what some readers may have felt, we believe this wholeheartedly.
My family suffers from high blood pressure and heart disease (my father died from a heart attack) and we are all genetically small people. Not one person in my immediate family has been close to what some may consider “over-weight”, but they have nevertheless suffered health problems that are usually correlated with weight. The only thing we should take serious is how detrimental these faulty ads are to our health. As an anonymous quote once read, “A waist is a terrible thing to mind.”
Yeah, I get these ads all the time in my spam email at Yahoo. I’m like, yeah right, serious weight to lose to you is 5 or 10 lbs. Tell me that you can help me safely and permanently lose 200 lbs and I might, maybe, listen to you. Oh, results not typical? I thought so. Delete!
If it sounds too good to be true, it (in the case of weight loss) is too good to be true.
“high brood pressure “…*heehee!* what is that….pressure to reproduce?
Hurry up an BREED! *hahaha!* goofy lil typo…I love it
* ; )
Aaah man I totally changed that in editing!!! I still haven’t perfected the art of editing on this thing…;oP
thanks Hope!
I think the woman pictured above is supposed to be an example of someone who lost weight on their program. I don’t think they’re saying she needs to lose weight.
On another note, my dad has had two heart attacks and is a genetically small person. The reason he had heart attacks, though, is because he was a pack-a-day smoker and drank many many beers daily. So, to say that weight is never a risk factor for heart problems is ridiculous. It’s just that there are other risk factors as well…such as drinking, smoking, etc.
guest – yes, there are many possible risk factors. but they’re just risk factors, they’re not the disease itself. plenty of people have heart problems that aren’t fat and don’t smoke and don’t drink.
or DO have those risk factors and DON’T get the disease.
predicting who will or won’t get a disease is a pretty imprecise science in most cases. (well, smoking and lung cancer is fairly certain, but a few smokers live to a ripe old age just to confound you.)
True, but one can never be too cautious. My grandparents on my dads side both died of heart attack, and knowing that it seems to run in my family, and that when I gain weight, I tend to only gain it in my belly (an indicator of future heart problems) I try to keep those risk factors to a minimum. I don’t smoke or drink and I’m keeping the belly fat off.
People who are overweight but who seem to distribute the fat more evenly (according to studies) seem to not be predisposed to heart problems, unless drinking/smoking, etc are also involved.
I’m not saying fat is bad. I’m saying those of us who only hold weight in the belly seem to be at a higher risk for heart disease. My grandparents were thin, neither really smoked or drank, but it seems that predisposition is there. Even my skinny brother has really high cholesterol and he eats well. It’s just genetic.
I think eat healthy and excerise and you will generally be able to counteract those risk factors belly fat or no belly fat.
I’m so glad to see someone posting about this. I’ve noticed this for years and have been wondering if the world was oblivious.
It’s also intersting that I visit a lot of eating disorder websites. Not weight loss websites or anything like it. And, yet when I visit a site like MSNBC.com for news, they flip through my cookies and almost always choose to put up some uber-thin, photoshopped woman up advertising the latest diet bullshit.
So callous. To me this is like determining someone is an alcoholic and then making sure they only get Absolut ads. Grrrr.
I think they leave it up to interpretation whether the woman in the picture is some diet success story or whether she is on a diet RIGHT NOW. I see all kinds of very thin and normal weighted women on diets all the time and I have long wondered if some of this is because it is portrayed in advertising and in articles of magazines like Self (for example) as normal for a someone who doesn’t need to lose weight to want to lose weight and to therefore diet.