Weekender
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Some helpful pointers
on eating properly
Lucy Minuto, a UNC Student Health Service educator
pictured at left, offers several ways to developing good
eating habits and avoiding the urge and practice of
overeating. Some of Minuto's hints are:
List all food and drinks consumed for a few days, so that
obvious excesses can be discovered and eliminated.
Eat slowly and in the same place at every meal.
Give up distractions like television or reading while
eating.
Leave something on the plate at the end of every meal.
Increase physical activity.
Avoid pitfalls like beer parties or restaurant meals that
can sabotage a diet
. IZT'
about nutrition, but they are usually really sensitive
about their problem' she said. "They may be afraid to
try to diet again, to come to me, because I'm just one
more person they might go to to fail."
7- or Martha (not her real name), Chapel Hill's
m Overeaters' Anonymous has become the latest
Li attempt to lose weight in an adulthood full of
failures, of different cures and tools designed to
reduce her poundage.
Vital to the O.A. philosophy is the idea that self
examination, group support, re-education about food
dependency and restructuring of an entire value
system are essential to the obese person's success in
the program.
In a meeting last fall, Martha, who was taking her
turn as group leader, retold the story of her weight
problems. Like so many others, Martha had been
overweight all her life. When she left school at 19, she
weighed 200 pounds.
"For reasons I still don't understand, ! never
admitted my problems as an adolescent. ! deliberately
went against my own best wishes to defy my family'
she said in a quiet, controlled voice strengthened by
some three other testimonies in her two years with
O.A.
Those whose largest focus for
pleasure in life is food have to find
something just as pleasurable as
eating beautiful, gooey food
Marcia Mills
Her first step toward solving her problem was to go
to a doctor, who prescribed amphetemines. But, she
said, "Although I got down to 150, the pills did it all. I
never learned anything about food. I never learned to
discipline myself."
After a marriage and two children, she watched her
weight climb even higher, to more than 300 pounds. "I
worried only about eating," she said. "I longed for
food more than anything else in the world."
Martha said she tried both fasting and the "rice diet"
at Duke University with considerable temporary
success. On the rice diet, for example, she cut her
weight in half from 330 to 165 pounds only to gain it
all rapidly back when she went home to old problems
and habits.
"By that time," she said, "I realized that my problem
was more than could be solved by just knowledge. I
was sure I knew intellectually all l had to know about
eating a balanced diet and counting calories."
Overeaters Anonymous has given her what all the
other diet programs she had tried lacked. "I am
learning to make over my life, put food in its right
place .... I'm thinking in spiritual terms."
O.A. borrowed the concept of reliance on some
"higher power" from its parent rehabilitation group,
Alcoholics Anonymous. Indeed, the religious
atmosphere, a feeling of nurturing fellowship, is not
lacking from O.A. meetings. They open their meetings
with a prayer and close with the Lord's Prayer as the
members hold hands in a parting circle.
The guidelines for self-help that the members follow
are far from mystical, however. The essential aspects of
weight loss recognized by most psychologists,
physiciansand counselors interviewed was shared by
O.A. that jieiuiionVabout eating be recognized and
' steadfastly, overcome, t "named; : claimed:: 'and
dumped," as one O.A. member put it. ;
The member, call her Jane, explained the
importance O.A. has had in helping her admit her
compulsive eating.
"We have a disease and meetings are our medicine,"
Jane said. "We neecLto keep in touch with other
human beings, to break the isolation so many of us live
in.
Jane, like the others in O.A., relies on the telephone
to link her with other members to discuss crises or
downfalls. , . -
"I will not lie to someone else like I lie to myself,"
Jane said. "It sounds silly at first, but it
(communication) gives me a freedom I wouldn't have
known otherwise! . - . , ,
- Each day. or week, OA memberrplarTtheir own
diets (within reasonable nutritional limits) and read
them over-the" phone totheirrparticular "food
sponsor," Ivhowill approve the diet-of make
suggestions. ' ;"--"r:rr----"
Their goal is merely to successfully repeat this
process on a day-to-day basis, following O.As
concept of "abstention," eating their three (approved)
moderate meals per day with no snacks in between.
In this way, Jane explained, they are really laying
plans for good habits in the future, not just "going on a
diet" until the novelty wears off. Like alcoholics, they
recognize themselves as compulsive eaters whose
problems will never be cured but can be kept under
control. "We're growing up, learning how to get well,"
she said.
HTn art of that learning process is recognizing the
kinds of things in the environment that can
" encourage eating.
Marcia Mills, who runs a private diet counseling
service in Chapel Hill, advises clients about weight
management by analyzing their nutritional and
behavioral patterns.
"I help people to learn to be in control of their own
situations, to look for problems in their lives other than
food that might cause them to eat," she said. "We
examine eating behavior and emotions, nutrition and
exercise all need to be treated.
'Social development has a lot to do
with one's body image, and any
overweight person is at a
disadvantage. The picture of the jolly
fat lady in the circus is a myth
Lucy Minuto
"Most people who come to me have some problems
with assertion, but almost anything can get someone to
overeat. Those whose largest focus for pleasure in life
is food have to find something just as pleasurable as
eating beautiful, gooey food.""
Private sessions with Mills at her Community Diet
Counseling Service cost $32 per hour and group
meetings are $5. Overeaters Anonymous costs
nothing, although specific dietary information is not
discussed. The group meets at 7 Monday nights at
University Baptist Church.
Another popular group option in the area is Weight
Watchers Inc., which meets at 7:30 Monday nights and
aMO Wednesday mornings at the Chapel Hill YMCA
and at 7:30 p.m. Thursdays at the Orange County
Mental Health Center in Carrboro.
Weight Watchers costs $10 to join and then $3.50 per
week thereafter. There are weekly weigh-ins where
the food program, the voluntary exercise program and
behavior modification techniques are discussed.
Whatever the program or techniques used for
weight control, all the experts interviewed agreed that
motivation was the key to any of the client's successes.
"It's a matter of short-term vs. long-term goals," said
one psychology Ph.D. candidate who has studied
obesity at UNC. "For the immediate pleasure of a
chocolate sundae, most people will gladly forget about
their health." D
Ann Smaltwood is a stiff writer for The Dally Ttr HeL