2008 Woodie Awards
The skinny on dieting
Fighting negative body images in today's society
Alison E. Peters
Issue date: 3/11/08 Section: Features
In 1984, Glamour magazine ran a story about anorexia featuring Miami University's Oxford campus.
Since then, Miami has faced the negative stereotype of eating disorders and weight issues.
Rose Marie Ward, assistant professor of kinesiology and health, believes the Glamour article was the beginning of the negative image.
"The anorexic Miami myth came from a misquoted statistic a Student Health Center worker gave saying 'one in five women on Miami's campus had an eating disorder,'" Ward said. "This was obviously wrong."
However, since the article was published in 1984, body image and weight issues have been prevalent themes on campus. Almost twenty-five years later, a deeper look examines Miami's relationship with body image, dieting and the pressures to look one's best.
Finding the problem
Keith Zullig, assistant professor of kinesiology and health, has tried to get to the root of the Miami body image stereotype.
So far, Zullig said he is working with feedback from his students to try to track how Miami became categorized as a school with image issues.
"Body image is something I ask my students about every semester because people seem to talk about the 'Miami image' each year," Zullig said. "But, in all the data and research I have ever read about Miami related to eating disorders and body image, I have yet to find that we are any different from any other college."
So far, the feedback has been mixed.
Sophomore Caitlin Naples said she doesn't think there is a remarkable difference of instances of eating disorders at Miami compared to other colleges.
"I really don't think it's anymore of a problem at Miami than anywhere else," Naples said.
Junior Caty Daniels, however, said she visits the Recreational Sports Center (RSC) five to six times a week to keep up with her peers.
"I do feel a little bit of pressure to stay in shape on Miami's campus," Daniels said. "On this campus appearance is a big factor, especially because everyone else is relatively thin."
Sophomore Laura Godfray said she feels girls exercise to maintain a desirable body image.
"I once saw a girl at the Rec reading the diet book Skinny Bitch while on the elliptical," Godfray said. "Obviously she wasn't working out just to be healthy."
Echoing Godfray's statement, sophomore dietetics major Emily Spurlin said unhealthy eating attitudes may appear to be more prevalent at Miami due to a seemingly larger emphasis on image.
"I think there is a very big emphasis on body image," Spurlin said. "At other schools, people will go out in sweatpants. Here, girls do their hair and makeup and get all dressed up."
Statistically, Miami's student population is congruent with the national averages for eating disorders.
Tammy Gustin, a nurse practitioner specializing in eating disorder assessment for Student Health Services, attributes the higher ratio of women to men on Miami's campus as a reason for the skewed data. According to Miami enrollment reports, females make up 55 percent of the undergraduate population.
Gustin said unhealthy eating habits are always a concern among college-aged students. However, she said that at a campus with more women, the issue of eating disorders seem to pop up more frequently.
"Anorexia or any type of eating disorder is a significant problem on any college campus," Gustin said. "Demographically, there is going to be a higher incidence of eating disorders where young adults with a higher percentage of women reside."
The pressure to be thin
Lisa Swanson, a clinical dietician at McCullough-Hyde Hospital, said Miami's student population draws high achievers who can feel more pressure to succeed.
According to Swanson, strong levels of self-pressure and high achievement goals are a contributing factor to eating disorders.
"I think our society does put pressures on young women to be a certain size and uphold a certain image along with being successful," Swanson said.
In addition to pressure on campus, the media is another catalyst for a preoccupation with body image.
Zullig cited the enormous amount of celebrity photographs as contributing factors.
"You see images of Mary-Kate Olsen in magazines clearly struggling with an eating disorder, but the message to women is 'this is the ideal weight,'" Zullig said. "The media is extremely powerful and anyone who doesn't believe that is kidding themselves."
To Naples, the media does have an impact on college students and the way they view themselves.
"In magazines when they print so-and-so's workout program or list the exact contents of their diet, I think students pay attention to that," Naples said.
Zullig said eating disorders are not the only problem with women. Men also feel the pressure to fit in.
"Both men and women are at risk for developing any type of disorderly eating," Zullig said. "Usually men are dissatisfied with their image so they try to gain weight while women think they are too heavy and try to lose weight."
According to the Web site for the Eating Disorder Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to making eating disorders a public health priority, two out of five women and one out five men would trade three to five years of their life to achieve their weight goals.
The desire to achieve weight goals is especially prevalent during the spring, when college students gear up for spring break bathing suit bodies.
Josh Bisher, assistant director for customer and facility services at the RSC, said he has recently seen a significant increase in the number of students utilizing the facilities in the lead-up to spring break.
"Leading up to spring break, we average about 4,000 people during the week, but that number will drop to about 2,500 a day post-spring break," Bisher said. "Twenty-five to 30 percent of the student body does use the Rec center on a consistent basis, which is higher than your typical campus."
Senior Mike Schmidt said he believes Miami's student population does not reflect normal workout trends for college students.
"I think we have a more in-shape student body than average," Schmidt said.
Naples agreed that with spring break looming, students are more apt to make the hike to the RSC.
"I know some people who didn't go to the Rec regularly who now go every day," Naples said.
With the significant decrease in the number of students at the RSC after spring break noted by Bisher, students are not making exercise a permanent lifestyle change.
Gustin said that students who exercise sporadically will not be able to create healthy habits.
"Psychologically in order to truly change a behavior, it takes 90 days to make a habit without having to remind yourself-like choosing not to eat fried chicken without thinking and going to the gym everyday," Gustin said.
According to Gustin, those hopping onto the workout wagon just before spring break may be prove futile.
False hopes and limited results
For a quick fix, many students have turned to fad diets.
Trying to cut corners while losing weight may sound appealing to dieters, yet fad diets often offer unrealistic and unhealthy measures for losing weight.
Swanson defined a fad diet as a short-lived diet which eliminates or severely restricts one or more food groups, cutting out a whole set of vitamins and minerals bodies need.
Swanson said nothing beneficial can result from these kinds of diets.
"People can only stay on them for a short period of time because what they ask you to do is dramatically reduce calorie intake, which then puts your body into a starvation response mode," Swanson said. "This is why people usually gain all their weight back, plus more."
Despite negative stigmas attached to fad diets, Daniels said people are still willing to go to these extreme measures.
"I think everyone has tried a fad diet at one time," Daniels said.
The amount of fad diets may seem endless with options including the South Beach diet, Atkins, Weight Watchers, Slim Fast, Mediterranean Diet, 5 Factor Diet, NutriSystem, and the Zone diet.
In addition, bizarre and severely limiting diets such as the cabbage soup diet, rice diet, and grapefruit diet may broadcast quick results, but are far from safe.
In particular, the "syrup diet" consists of drinking a mixture of water, cayenne pepper and maple syrup as a substitute for regular meals. This method of dieting quickly caught the media's attention after Beyonce Knowles used it in order to lose twenty pounds for her role in the movie Dreamgirls.
"There are some funny ones-the best I ever heard was the stone soup diet," Ward said. "You literally put a stone in your soup to make yourself think you're eating more."
Spurlin described a friend's experience with an extremely limited diet.
"My friend would go on a diet and only eat cereal, soup or oatmeal to get down to her happy weight," Spurlin said. "She'd do it for one to two weeks, get sick of it and then eat fast food."
Spurlin said her friend waged a constant battle of going back and forth between diets.
"No matter what, she would lose the weight and then gain it back," Spurlin said.
When strictly cutting calories does not work, some dieters may turn to drugs to supplement the process.
February 2007 debuted Alli, an over-the-counter weight loss pill to be approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Alli claims to help dieters lose 50 percent more weight when they combine the pill with healthy eating and exercise.
While taking the pill, however, dieters face a limited amount of food choices due to "treatment effects".
The active ingredient in Alli, called orlistat, prevents enzymes found in the intestines from digesting and breaking down a quarter of ingested fat. Instead of turning into unwanted pounds, this undigested fat cannot be absorbed and passes quickly out of the body.
This is where the "treatment effects" come in.
According to myalli.com unless 15 grams of fat or less are consumed with each meal, users may experience "gas with oily spotting, and more frequent stools that are harder to control."
The myalli.com Web site recommends "wearing dark pants, and bringing a change of clothes with you to work."
Zullig said this is how far some people are willing to go to lose 15 pounds instead of 10.
"Do these things sound pleasant to you?" Zullig asked. "Doesn't it make more sense to have sensible eating habits? I think the FDA backing the drug brings more credibility to it, but we've had drugs taken off the market before because of research that was withheld. We are a quick fix society; so many people will try that pill."
Gustin agreed that dieters often succumb to a promise of a quick fix.
"We are not a society of patience," Gustin said. "There is no magic formula to lose weight. You should only expect to lose a pound a week. If you give yourself plenty of time, choose a program that fits your lifestyle and add in daily exercise. Once you see progress, you'll become even more motivated."
Zullig offered advice on how to properly decide whether one's weight is actually a problem.
"The first step to losing weight is deciding if you are a person that actually needs to lose weight," Zullig said. "Know your BMI (body mass index), know that losing weight is very different for men and women and know where you stack up to other people your age. Then you should approach healthy measures to lose the weight. There's no one size fits all-focus on a goal that is attainable."
According to Swanson, deciding to implement healthier habits seems a lot more straightforward than the usually broken promises offered by fad diets.
"Eat a wide variety of foods, watch your portions, and drink the recommended six to eight glasses of water a day," Swanson said. "Whole grain breads and cereal keep your stomach fuller, eat lean meats and low-fat dairy products. People categorize foods into good and bad, but the real key is balance."
Since then, Miami has faced the negative stereotype of eating disorders and weight issues.
Rose Marie Ward, assistant professor of kinesiology and health, believes the Glamour article was the beginning of the negative image.
"The anorexic Miami myth came from a misquoted statistic a Student Health Center worker gave saying 'one in five women on Miami's campus had an eating disorder,'" Ward said. "This was obviously wrong."
However, since the article was published in 1984, body image and weight issues have been prevalent themes on campus. Almost twenty-five years later, a deeper look examines Miami's relationship with body image, dieting and the pressures to look one's best.
Finding the problem
Keith Zullig, assistant professor of kinesiology and health, has tried to get to the root of the Miami body image stereotype.
So far, Zullig said he is working with feedback from his students to try to track how Miami became categorized as a school with image issues.
"Body image is something I ask my students about every semester because people seem to talk about the 'Miami image' each year," Zullig said. "But, in all the data and research I have ever read about Miami related to eating disorders and body image, I have yet to find that we are any different from any other college."
So far, the feedback has been mixed.
Sophomore Caitlin Naples said she doesn't think there is a remarkable difference of instances of eating disorders at Miami compared to other colleges.
"I really don't think it's anymore of a problem at Miami than anywhere else," Naples said.
Junior Caty Daniels, however, said she visits the Recreational Sports Center (RSC) five to six times a week to keep up with her peers.
"I do feel a little bit of pressure to stay in shape on Miami's campus," Daniels said. "On this campus appearance is a big factor, especially because everyone else is relatively thin."
Sophomore Laura Godfray said she feels girls exercise to maintain a desirable body image.
"I once saw a girl at the Rec reading the diet book Skinny Bitch while on the elliptical," Godfray said. "Obviously she wasn't working out just to be healthy."
Echoing Godfray's statement, sophomore dietetics major Emily Spurlin said unhealthy eating attitudes may appear to be more prevalent at Miami due to a seemingly larger emphasis on image.
"I think there is a very big emphasis on body image," Spurlin said. "At other schools, people will go out in sweatpants. Here, girls do their hair and makeup and get all dressed up."
Statistically, Miami's student population is congruent with the national averages for eating disorders.
Tammy Gustin, a nurse practitioner specializing in eating disorder assessment for Student Health Services, attributes the higher ratio of women to men on Miami's campus as a reason for the skewed data. According to Miami enrollment reports, females make up 55 percent of the undergraduate population.
Gustin said unhealthy eating habits are always a concern among college-aged students. However, she said that at a campus with more women, the issue of eating disorders seem to pop up more frequently.
"Anorexia or any type of eating disorder is a significant problem on any college campus," Gustin said. "Demographically, there is going to be a higher incidence of eating disorders where young adults with a higher percentage of women reside."
The pressure to be thin
Lisa Swanson, a clinical dietician at McCullough-Hyde Hospital, said Miami's student population draws high achievers who can feel more pressure to succeed.
According to Swanson, strong levels of self-pressure and high achievement goals are a contributing factor to eating disorders.
"I think our society does put pressures on young women to be a certain size and uphold a certain image along with being successful," Swanson said.
In addition to pressure on campus, the media is another catalyst for a preoccupation with body image.
Zullig cited the enormous amount of celebrity photographs as contributing factors.
"You see images of Mary-Kate Olsen in magazines clearly struggling with an eating disorder, but the message to women is 'this is the ideal weight,'" Zullig said. "The media is extremely powerful and anyone who doesn't believe that is kidding themselves."
To Naples, the media does have an impact on college students and the way they view themselves.
"In magazines when they print so-and-so's workout program or list the exact contents of their diet, I think students pay attention to that," Naples said.
Zullig said eating disorders are not the only problem with women. Men also feel the pressure to fit in.
"Both men and women are at risk for developing any type of disorderly eating," Zullig said. "Usually men are dissatisfied with their image so they try to gain weight while women think they are too heavy and try to lose weight."
According to the Web site for the Eating Disorder Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to making eating disorders a public health priority, two out of five women and one out five men would trade three to five years of their life to achieve their weight goals.
The desire to achieve weight goals is especially prevalent during the spring, when college students gear up for spring break bathing suit bodies.
Josh Bisher, assistant director for customer and facility services at the RSC, said he has recently seen a significant increase in the number of students utilizing the facilities in the lead-up to spring break.
"Leading up to spring break, we average about 4,000 people during the week, but that number will drop to about 2,500 a day post-spring break," Bisher said. "Twenty-five to 30 percent of the student body does use the Rec center on a consistent basis, which is higher than your typical campus."
Senior Mike Schmidt said he believes Miami's student population does not reflect normal workout trends for college students.
"I think we have a more in-shape student body than average," Schmidt said.
Naples agreed that with spring break looming, students are more apt to make the hike to the RSC.
"I know some people who didn't go to the Rec regularly who now go every day," Naples said.
With the significant decrease in the number of students at the RSC after spring break noted by Bisher, students are not making exercise a permanent lifestyle change.
Gustin said that students who exercise sporadically will not be able to create healthy habits.
"Psychologically in order to truly change a behavior, it takes 90 days to make a habit without having to remind yourself-like choosing not to eat fried chicken without thinking and going to the gym everyday," Gustin said.
According to Gustin, those hopping onto the workout wagon just before spring break may be prove futile.
False hopes and limited results
For a quick fix, many students have turned to fad diets.
Trying to cut corners while losing weight may sound appealing to dieters, yet fad diets often offer unrealistic and unhealthy measures for losing weight.
Swanson defined a fad diet as a short-lived diet which eliminates or severely restricts one or more food groups, cutting out a whole set of vitamins and minerals bodies need.
Swanson said nothing beneficial can result from these kinds of diets.
"People can only stay on them for a short period of time because what they ask you to do is dramatically reduce calorie intake, which then puts your body into a starvation response mode," Swanson said. "This is why people usually gain all their weight back, plus more."
Despite negative stigmas attached to fad diets, Daniels said people are still willing to go to these extreme measures.
"I think everyone has tried a fad diet at one time," Daniels said.
The amount of fad diets may seem endless with options including the South Beach diet, Atkins, Weight Watchers, Slim Fast, Mediterranean Diet, 5 Factor Diet, NutriSystem, and the Zone diet.
In addition, bizarre and severely limiting diets such as the cabbage soup diet, rice diet, and grapefruit diet may broadcast quick results, but are far from safe.
In particular, the "syrup diet" consists of drinking a mixture of water, cayenne pepper and maple syrup as a substitute for regular meals. This method of dieting quickly caught the media's attention after Beyonce Knowles used it in order to lose twenty pounds for her role in the movie Dreamgirls.
"There are some funny ones-the best I ever heard was the stone soup diet," Ward said. "You literally put a stone in your soup to make yourself think you're eating more."
Spurlin described a friend's experience with an extremely limited diet.
"My friend would go on a diet and only eat cereal, soup or oatmeal to get down to her happy weight," Spurlin said. "She'd do it for one to two weeks, get sick of it and then eat fast food."
Spurlin said her friend waged a constant battle of going back and forth between diets.
"No matter what, she would lose the weight and then gain it back," Spurlin said.
When strictly cutting calories does not work, some dieters may turn to drugs to supplement the process.
February 2007 debuted Alli, an over-the-counter weight loss pill to be approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Alli claims to help dieters lose 50 percent more weight when they combine the pill with healthy eating and exercise.
While taking the pill, however, dieters face a limited amount of food choices due to "treatment effects".
The active ingredient in Alli, called orlistat, prevents enzymes found in the intestines from digesting and breaking down a quarter of ingested fat. Instead of turning into unwanted pounds, this undigested fat cannot be absorbed and passes quickly out of the body.
This is where the "treatment effects" come in.
According to myalli.com unless 15 grams of fat or less are consumed with each meal, users may experience "gas with oily spotting, and more frequent stools that are harder to control."
The myalli.com Web site recommends "wearing dark pants, and bringing a change of clothes with you to work."
Zullig said this is how far some people are willing to go to lose 15 pounds instead of 10.
"Do these things sound pleasant to you?" Zullig asked. "Doesn't it make more sense to have sensible eating habits? I think the FDA backing the drug brings more credibility to it, but we've had drugs taken off the market before because of research that was withheld. We are a quick fix society; so many people will try that pill."
Gustin agreed that dieters often succumb to a promise of a quick fix.
"We are not a society of patience," Gustin said. "There is no magic formula to lose weight. You should only expect to lose a pound a week. If you give yourself plenty of time, choose a program that fits your lifestyle and add in daily exercise. Once you see progress, you'll become even more motivated."
Zullig offered advice on how to properly decide whether one's weight is actually a problem.
"The first step to losing weight is deciding if you are a person that actually needs to lose weight," Zullig said. "Know your BMI (body mass index), know that losing weight is very different for men and women and know where you stack up to other people your age. Then you should approach healthy measures to lose the weight. There's no one size fits all-focus on a goal that is attainable."
According to Swanson, deciding to implement healthier habits seems a lot more straightforward than the usually broken promises offered by fad diets.
"Eat a wide variety of foods, watch your portions, and drink the recommended six to eight glasses of water a day," Swanson said. "Whole grain breads and cereal keep your stomach fuller, eat lean meats and low-fat dairy products. People categorize foods into good and bad, but the real key is balance."
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