Public Health: a personal story

When bandaids aren't enough

The harder I tried to diet, the more I ate…

Back in 1975 I was fighting a losing battle with my weight. All I thought about was what I should or shouldn’t eat and why I kept eating what I shouldn’t. Worse, I felt so shallow and petty a person to obsess over my weight, when children around the world were starving.

I desperately wanted to get away from myself, but everywhere I went, I was there too. In my crazed mind, the only choice was between suicide and giving up diets—which seemed almost as scary. Since I’m still here today, you can safely assume I chose the non-lethal path.

Diets were only bandaids to cover up my pain, but none got to the root cause of my misery—my thoughts. I needed to look deeper, with open-minded curiosity.

So did the scary thing. I quit dieting…

While I waited for still more pounds to pile on, I decided to treat myself like a scientific experiment—observing and recording exactly what I ate, how hungry or full my body was, how the food in my mouth tasted (did I actually like it? or was I tasting my beliefs about it?). I did my best to listen without judgment to my constant mental chatter. Oh, the stories I told myself! Amazingly creative excuses! So much self-loathing! I just knew that the fat person in my head was just waiting to escape and steal all the donuts before I noticed.

Illustration by Kim Murton from The Cherry Pie Paradox

Here’s the crazy part: As I began to allow myself to enjoy the foods I loved, the weight started coming off. I was seeing through the bullshit stories I’d told myself for years. Eventually my inner fat head slunk off into the bushes and has not been heard from since.

I knew many could be helped by this transformative process, so I created a series of workshops in 1975 I called Thin Within: Winning at Losing.* The program was extremely popular in the San Francisco Bay Area at the time. [This was decades before “intuitive eating” became a thing.]

Without their favorite diet bandaids, our Thin Within participants uncovered all the ways they’d kept themselves stuck, and many got slimmer once and for all. But I quickly realized that our individual issues with food and our weight pointed at much bigger issues—over which we had no control—starting with the culture.

What we now call “diet culture” is only part of the picture.

How were we fed by our parents? What were we fed in our school lunches? What foods got promoted in TV commercials? What did the women’s magazines tell us? What kinds of foods were cheap and easiest to grab? What products gave food manufacturers the highest profit margin? And what foods received government subsidies to lower farmers’ costs? (Capitalism, capitalism, capitalism.)

Were we blaming ourselves as individuals for what is in fact a systemic problem? I wanted to get further upstream, to work on preventing our weight issues. So in 1980 I sold my part of Thin Within to my business partner, Judy Halliday (who turned it into an evangelical Christian program—never my intent) and I enrolled at the School of Public Health, University of California, Berkeley.

I was thrown into the fascinating world of epidemiology—the study of diseases/disorders within groups of people, tracking the ailment sources and transmission channels, and figuring out interventions to prevent and/or control their spread. One of my favorite classes was Social Epidemiology, with Leonard Syme, who died Jan. 28 at 92. He was the professor whose ground-breaking work focused on the health impacts of social and cultural factors on various groups—like poverty, social class, race/ethnicity, religion, education, stress, locus of control, social ties, etc.

Which brings me to today—

GAHHHH. Public health is non-partisan. So are diseases, accidents, and other health conditions. The health of any one group is connected to the health of all of us. However, with President Musk and his lackey Mr Trump at the helm—if you are “DIVERSE,” i.e. female, black, brown, native, LGBTQ, disabled, veterans, poor, an immigrant or child, resident of a disaster area, you are totally fucked. My professor Dr. Syme must be weeping in his grave.

• When the lock-stepping GOP Senate confirms a vaccine-denying wacko sex-(and former drug) addict to head the Dept of Health and Human Services, we’re in deep doodoo. He’s a man with no medical or governmental training, who doesn’t even know the difference between Medicare and Medicaid. {Just today we learn that 22 unvaccinated children in one Texas town have measles, and NINE of them are in the hospital—several in the ICU. Measles is no joke.]

• When the unelected, unconfirmed Pretend President strips funding for the National Institutes of Health, freezing life-saving research on cancer, diabetes, heart disease and countless obscure diseases, it could be your kid who won’t get the treatment. When he slashes the budgets and workforce for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Food and Drug Administration, Medicare and Medicaid, I promise everyone of us will be affected.

• When the megalomanaical Pretend President and his young interns got into the databases of the Treasury Department and HHS, all your personal data is at risk.

Let me ask you: how, in your daily life in your town do you expect personally to benefit from what Musk and his so-called boss are doing? What positive impacts do you foresee for your community? Your job? Your health care? Your future? Do you feel safer? Have your daily costs gone down? I really really want to be able to see an upside, so please let me know some good stuff.

Because from where I sit, all I see is wanton destruction, personal vendettas, self-dealing for themselves and their billionaire buddies, total disrespect for women and anyone who is not a white heterosexual male, and ZERO consideration—NONE—for the coming fallout for millions of Americans who have already lost or will soon lose their jobs and ability to pay their bills. Have you or someone you know been affected yet? Please tell me about it.

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*Department of Shameless Promotion

I wrote a book describing the Thin Within process, The Cherry Pie Paradox: the Surprising Path to Diet Freedom and Lasting Weight Loss. It’s damn good, if I say so myself, and a lot more fun that you might expect. There’s also a workbook and an audiobook.

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PUT YOURSELF IN THE WAY OF BEAUTY

I just saw this limited-release documentary, featuring closeups from the blockbuster Van Gogh exhibit at the National Gallery in London—and found myself moved to tears by his genius. The beauty of his brush strokes and color choices, the eloquence of his words, which were read from letters he wrote his brother and agent describing his process, sources of inspiration, his mood, the place, the people. Unforgettable. Look for it and go see it.

P.S. Sorry I can’t help myself—one more thing. CONFLICT OF INTEREST! Note that 17 different US government agencies have at least 100 contracts with Elon Musk’s six companies, worth billions of dollars. And eleven agencies he’s attacked are in the middle of 32 continuing investigations, pending complaints or enforcement actions into Mr. Musk’s companies. Surprise surprise.