Obesity: the true experts speak
Those who are overweight know all there is to know about losing weight, and about the social and health consequences of obesity. So why do they hold on to the excess weight? What would help them in their attempts to lose it?
By Anna-Stina Nykänen
Psychologist Lea Polso once became something of a celebrity after she interviewed a number of overweight women. Her study received much attention, as the approach was so rare; those who are overweight are hardly ever asked about the matter themselves.
"Even doctors are often evasive when they talk about a patient's weight problem, or then they might ask if the person has ever thought of trying to lose weight, when he or she has tried to do it probably 50 times", Polso says.
Many who are overweight have been trying to lose weight practically all of their lives. But the results are not permanent: the kilos come back sooner or later, and often there are more of them than before.
Polo has actually come to the conclusion that dieting is not the solution to the obesity problem.
"Never have people slimmed as much as now, or eaten as many diet foods. If it were a solution, it would have worked by now."
Polso also believes that excess weight is an increasingly common problem. She says that there are attempts to constantly find solutions and explanations that are too facile.
"Mere education will not help; we have heard far too much of the arrogant know-it-all attitude. Oversimplification is also unhelpful - saying 'let's all be happy and lose some weight'."
She feels that it is best to understand that excess weight is a complex problem on many levels. The difficulty with it is that the causes are always individual.
Polso says that societal structures can make people susceptible to gaining weight. The food environment has become hazardous to our health: everything is on offer, all the time, and in large packages. People get less basic exercise than before, beauty ideals cause pressure by putting a high priority on being slim, and a hurried rhythm of life makes people more susceptible to gaining weight.
"People rush around and not much time is left over to listen to oneself. Many lose touch with their internal self, dealing with emotions is difficult, some eat to satisfy their hunger for life", Polso explains.
Many lose weight when they learn to understand the emotions and needs linked with slimming.
Polso heads a group in Tampere called The Happy Eating Woman, which practices that very thing. Often people find a certain phase in their personal history that is linked with gaining weight.
Polso no longer tries to lose weight, even though she has previously attempted to do so.
She feels that excess weight is a little like a headache: there are many causes.
"What if a headache were suddenly seen to be as a societal problem, and people tried to find a single common solution for it? Everyone with a headache would be made to feel guilty, saying that it is their own fault."
Excess weight is a protective wall
Who remembers when entertainer Anneli Saaristo was chosen to represent Finland in the Eurovision Song Contest with the piece La Dolce Vita? At the time, Helsingin Sanomat music critic Jukka Hauru wrote that a "buxom white-haired matron" stepped onto the stage. Jibes about her appearance spread to the foreign media as well. Saaristo filed a criminal complaint, but withdrew it when it was not taken seriously. It was said that a celebrity must accept criticism of her appearance.
"Now I am already a 'grand old lady', and I no longer get negative feedback about my looks. I have grown spiritually, and consequently people no longer dare make comments, but it has been tough", she says.
Saaristo longs for tolerance and the right to be her own self. The notion that being overweight reflects a lack of self-discipline contains the seed of discrimination and fascism in her view.
"I am waiting for a rebellion of the fatties. It irritates me terribly that we are treated like citizens of a lower class."
She feels that the atmosphere has become more hostile. Just over a year ago people were shocked to hear Esko Aho propose that overweight people should pay more for their health care.
"Now they're actually planning such legislation. How the world does change!"
Saaristo sees excess weight as a complicated psycho-physical matter. She has battled obesity and continues to do so.
"For me, being overweight is a protective wall that I have developed against the outside world. It is something between my ears with a very personal cause. Understanding it has been a long therapeutic process. Now I know the reason, and that is why it irritates me that those who are overweight are called indolent, and even stupid."
Now she is trying to lose weight again, but this time the reason is her health. She does not want to get diabetes, to which she is susceptible. In her view, others can be whatever they like.
Saaristo knows that she is seen as an idol by large women. She has always dressed in a conspicuous manner. She says that she has had to have beautiful clothes custom-made for her, as she has not been able to buy off the rack.
"I have stopped covering myself up, and even I go on stage with my arms exposed. Many who are my age get strength from me."
Would slimming ruin your image?
"Could be. But my charisma does not hinge on my body image, but rather my experience of life - on what has become attached to my soul. I will not attain the measurements of a model, but in my dreams I am the slender Anneli that I was when I was young."
Total weight loss - 500 kilos
Journalist Aarno Laitinen has publicly criticised the appearance of Finnish women. He now says that he was not very serious about it, but nemesis has occurred: his appearance has also come in for public scrutiny and criticism.
This is nothing new for him. Like other overweight people, he has been called fat ever since childhood.
"Always somebody was calling me fat, even though I think that I looked quite slim in my childhood photographs."
Laitinen calculates that he must have lost 500 kilos during his lifetime. Nevertheless, he says that he continues to suffer the consequences of overeating, alcohol, and tobacco. He suffers from diabetes, and feels that it is largely self-inflicted. He has lost a toe to diabetes. The wound of the amputation has not healed, and now it is infected, and Laitinen is in hospital.
Doctors have told Laitinen to lose weight, and in fact, he is not as heavy as he was in his worst days. He has stopped smoking, but doctors also tell him that it is important to enjoy life.
"When I lost the toe, I thought about all of the fun I had while enjoying good food and wine. Losing one toe might just have been worth it."
Aarno Laitinen has always lashed out against "health terrorists" who cause harm through their moralising and preaching, and through making people feel guilty - even though he admits that they often mean well.
He does not believe that health education is effective. "For more than 50 years I have been a victim of anti-drink, anti-smoking, and anti-food propaganda, and here we are. I would have stopped smoking much earlier if I had not been so annoyed by the guilt-tripping."
Laitinen stayed in shape as long as he had two hours of exercise a day. With his eating habits, anything less would have been insufficient for burning all the calories. Now the loss of his toe places limits on exercise, but food still tastes good. It is an unfortunate equation.
"I was a child of the wartime. I was five the first time that I ate sweets. The first time that I had ice cream was at the same age, on doctor's orders after a tonsillectomy. I think that I have been left with a sweet tooth from my childhood. I am very fond of desserts."
Finns today take pride in the fact that children here drink fat-free milk. Such a thing would have been considered criminal before.
Fat is like climate change
Photographer Lauri Eriksson has photographed fashion, advertising, glamour, but he has also raised eyebrows by photographing young Finnish overweight men.
"All those guys know why they are overweight, and they understand the importance of diet and exercise. But being overweight is a little bit like climate change: people do not react until they have to", he says.
There is still debate over the extent to which climate change is caused by humans. Eriksson says that the same could be said about gaining weight.
"The increase in weight has taken place ridiculously quickly in the West. I myself have a tendency to believe that certain combinations of food influence metabolic syndrome. Why else would everybody gain weight at one go?"
He feels that a combination of hamburgers and insufficient exercise is too simplistic an explanation.
"There is something mystical there. That is why it is hard for people to react even though they can see in the mirror that they are getting fatter all the time. Perhaps sometime 200 years from now people will understand the cause. Or perhaps the food industry will be made to answer for it, as has happened with the tobacco manufacturers in the United States."
Eriksson also believes that genes are important. He is part of a high-risk group: his father was overweight, and suffered from diabetes, as well as from cardiovascular diseases.
Even our climate favours television and snack foods. Healthy food is expensive, and appearance is not appreciated in Finland; there is a lack of healthy self-appreciation, which might serve as a motive to lose weight.
"Decisions by individuals are also affected by the fact that even skinny people die. I am baffled myself in the face of this fact."
Eriksson once lost ten kilos. It was hard work, he says - almost a religious effort. To work off the calories of just one biscuit, he would have to pedal his exercise bicycle for a long time - to say nothing of the effects of a pizza. "Sick."
He started to live a healthier life after becoming a father to a baby girl, which made him want to stay alive. During his relationship he had gained weight, just like many men do.
"I have an underweight girlfriend, who would leave most of her pizza uneaten - and I always ate the rest, in addition to my own. Now we order one pizza for the two of us."
Eriksson feels that overweight people are often considered lazy and unclean. In his view, they are actually pedantic, with a tendency to be overstressed and worried. "I have never met a fat person who would just let things go."
Losing weight requires such a big change in life that Eriksson does not feel that health is a sufficient motive. His generation is already lost, and perhaps the next two as well. Change is a long process and requires the same kind of a common spirit as sports clubs or mass skiing events once did.
"I would not blame anyone. This is a historic phase", he says.
Eat, or go crazy
Author Eila Jaatinen has written several children's books, collections of light essays, and works of poetry. However, she is best known for Lihavan matamin laulu ("The Song of the Fat Lady"), Iloiset kilot ("Happy Kilos"), and Totta ja tarua tuhdeista tytöistä ("Truth and Fiction about Hefty Girls").
Jaatinen says that being overweight used to be a cause for shame - a stigma that people would be silent about. She is pleased that it is something that people can talk about now.
"However, in other respects, the atmosphere has become more difficult. I am shocked by girls who start to slim down at a young age, and who keep doing it throughout their lives, and by those who leave this world without being accepted."
Jaatinen feels that obesity is too important an issue to remain silent about.
"But we should distinguish between habitual slimmers, who lose five kilos again and again, and those who are seriously overweight, like I am, and for whom it is a clear problem. For some it is just a few harmless kilos, and for others, it is life-threatening."
She has been diagnosed with an eating disorder, which started already when she was a baby. She has been told that her options have been either eating or going crazy. "It is frighteningly complicated", she says.
For that reason, she feels that integral psycho-physical treatment is needed for obesity. Sometimes she feels envious of the situation in the United States and Sweden in this respect.
"Fat is my fate, and it has brought me suffering", Jaatinen says. At times she has gone quite deep in her reflections. "I think about conceding the flesh or denying death. After all, I oppose the concept of life control, because everyone will die someday anyway."
So, could watching one's weight and protecting one's health constitute a fear of death?
Jaatinen ponders what kind of philosophy would be the best for approaching obesity. Certainly not one that would make a person despise and hate himself or herself, but rather one that would make a person try to understand what he or she is carrying and eating. "A person does not consume food, but rather something else."
Answers are needed on the level of public health, but as individuals, people need many different kinds of health. Nowadays people are left alone with their obesity: they are simply told to straighten up and to read calorie charts.
"However, this is not much of a question of knowledge", she says. "I dream about a holistic lecture series, in which obesity is not considered from the point of view of the intake of nutrition; instead, the focus would be on the obesity of young, marginalised people, the relationship between nutrition and poverty, globalisation, and how the massive food industry in the United States uses us like a dishcloth. Who has time for calorie charts?"
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 18.2.2007
ANNA-STINA NYKÄNEN / Helsingin Sanomat
anna-stina.nykanen@hs.fi
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| 20.2.2007 - THIS WEEK |
 Obesity: the true experts speak |
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