What Non-Fat Really Means

I'll give you a hint:  It doesn't mean skinny.

Regular vs. Diet

When I was working at this company, they provided us with free sodas every day.  The thing was, they gave us a choice between regular and diet, and to my surprise, every one of my coworkers, besides me, chose diet.  I thought this was the strangest thing in the world considering that I was about the thinnest person in the company.  But it seemed that everyone in the company, average or above, felt that they needed to be on a diet.

I guess I shouldn't have been too surprised.  I mean, this was L.A., after all.  Everyone's on a diet in L.A.  Still, not being exposed to that sort of hyper-dieting I was taken aback.  Even people who I considered a healthy weight, who didn't need to lose weight, would always feel that they could stand to lose a few pounds.  Why?, I thought.  They were perfectly fine.  But somehow they got it into their mindset that they would never be skinny enough.

And when I would try to convince my coworkers who might actually have some weight to lose, that non-fat or diet stuff was not good for you, they discounted my claims even with my thin figure.  I had to figure that they had been so completely brainwashed by the food industry to think that non-fat food was a necessity that they looked at me, and put my slender weight off to good genetics and nothing more.

But that is not the truth.  The truth is, I don't eat much.  Compared to most Americans, I eat very little.  And my skinny friends are a lot like me.  They don't eat much either.  They also drink regular soda.  But the thing is, they also don't deprive themselves.  It's not like they are unhappy with food.  They love it!  There's something to that, don't you think?  But if I were to tell a dieter of this causal link between skinny girls and regular soda, they would probably again just chalk it up to good genes.  They can drink regular soda because they're already skinny.  But it seems to never occur to them that regular soda helps keep us skinny.

I Can't Get No Satisfaction

Let me explain.  And so I don't sound like the people in my previous post who believe that whatever happens in their personal experience is true everywhere, let me refer to a study I read.  Although I don't remember the particular article because it has been some time since I read it, I remember the point it made, and it was this:  Non-fat food actually makes you eat more.  Yes.  That's right.  Let me repeat that:  Non-fat food actually makes you eat more.  That doesn't seem to make any sense, but if you listen to your body's point of view, it actually makes a world of sense.

See, your body is always trying to keep you healthy and fully satisfied.  That is the best way for you to keep your energy up and charged for whatever task you might need it for.  When there is extra energy, your body stores it as fat, to be used later.  If you don't use that fat, well, then it builds up.  The problem with non-fat food lies in the fact that it doesn't satisfy you.  And because it is non-fat, it replaces the fat it would have had with a lot more empty calories.  Calories which your body then stores as fat.  Fat actually satisfies you more.  That's why if you eat a regular fat food, you'll feel satisfied.  If you eat one that is non-fat, it will not satisfy you, and since you are not satisfied, you will eat even more of that non-fat food, and even more until you feel satisfied.  All the while, you are consuming even more calories than if you had just eaten the regular food.  And the sad part is, not only will your body store all those extra calories as fat, but you will still be left feeling unsatisfied.

It is a sad fact, in another study done, that when you eat non-fat foods, your brain does not enjoy it as much as if you eat regular food.  Somehow, you think you are depriving yourself, and you are.  This even holds true when you eat regular food that you thought was non-fat.  Just the idea of it being non-fat, makes your enjoyment of it less, and leaves you deeply unsatisfied with it.

The other problem with non-fat foods is that people think it's good for them, and so that means that they can eat more of it without watching themselves.  And since the non-fat food is not satisfying, they eat more and more.  And then, since people think they are being so good by depriving themselves of regular food or junk food by eating this so-called "good" non-fat food, when they get a chance they reward themselves by indulging in regular food, and overeating it, because they deprived themselves of it and the satisfaction of it in the first place.  It all makes for a terrible cycle, because if they had just eaten the regular food, they would have felt full and satisfied, and that would be it.

Non-Fat or Pro-Skinny?

But non-fat food makes you want to eat more non-fat food.  It makes sense, doesn't it?  I mean, if I was in the food industry, I would love to sell non-fat foods.  Because I would know that not only could I charge more for it (it is special, after all), people would end up buying more of it because they would still be unfulfilled by it and also at the same time, think that eating more of it was good for them.  I'd rake in so much money that way.  It makes me wonder:  Don't people realize that non-fat food makers make money if you remain fat?  Of course, then you'll keep buying their products to keep the weight off.  And since you already started eating their food and don't want to gain even more weight, you keep eating their food, even though it's what's probably causing you to keep the weight on. 

There was a study that also said that skinny people enjoy their food more.  I can see that.  Whenever I eat, I try to enjoy whatever I eat, and really savor the taste of it.  For people who want to lose weight, however, I've noticed - and the study also says - they tend to just shovel their food in without really tasting it.  This means they get less satisfaction, and they end up eating more because they consume more calories before their stomach can react (within 20 minutes) to tell their brain that they are full. 

Whenever I see someone eating non-fat food, I want to ask them, "Does that help?  I mean, do you find that you are losing weight since you've started to eat that?"  Because I think that people just consider that it's good for them, without considering that it might be actually doing them harm.  But I don't question people and their diets, because it's not my place.  I have no M.D. after all, so who would believe me?  I'm just a skinny girl who knows what works for her.

I do have one suggestion for the non-fat food industry because I don't, in fact, think that they are evil or anything.  They are just selling a product that works and that people buy.  But, I think if they were really interested in helping people lose weight, they would change their label from "non-or-low-fat" to "pro-skinny."  Yes.  I know it sounds weird.  But actually, I think it will work.  The problem with the label "non-fat," is that it is a negative idea, and it makes you think of the thing they took out, ie. fat.  So you feel in a sense that the food has something less, it's not whole.  But if you change the label to "pro-skinny," it makes you feel that the food is whole and will help you be what you want, ie. skinny.  And you won't feel you have to eat more of it to fill that void because it's already a whole, and besides, it reminds you you want to be skinny, not non-fat.

For those who like metaphors - If I was selling a glass of water, say, and it was 99% full, I could say that it was "low-air".  This glass has very little air, is what I am selling.  But then that makes you think of the air in the product, and it makes you want to drink that 1% more of water, just so you'll have your intake of 100% water.  Of course, instead of just drinking that 1% more of water, you end up drinking a lot more because you don't know how much that 1% is, and you want to make sure you got it in.  If instead, I was selling the glass of water and I simply called it "water," you'd feel it was whole at it was and that you didn't need to drink more for it to be whole.

The Inverted Food Pyramid

I could go on and on about this topic.  It is a passionate topic for me, I guess because of the weight issues I discussed in my previous post (A Skinny Bitch's View).  But I'll just note one last observation I made and that is that the rise of obesity in the United States seems to correlate with the issuance of the food pyramid.  I have a special scorn for the food pyramid, having grown up learning the Four Basic Food Groups in grade school.  I loved the Four Basic Food Groups.  There was so much food to eat, and you could eat a sandwich and fulfill all the groups.  That was great.

And then for some reason, whoever it was felt that they had to mess with a good thing and release the now defunct Food Pyramid.  Maybe it was in the name of progress or in the name of doing something new just to get attention, but it was terrible.  For starters, it ranked food by how good it was for you, and it touted that complex carbohydrates - breads, pastas, and such - were what people should be consuming the most.  In my mind, people saw this and started putting an arbitrary value on the worth of their food, probably consuming more pasta and breads, and started gaining weight.  And then because they were gaining weight, the food industry broke out with even more diet foods.  And because these people had gained weight, they started to eat these diet foods, and on and on until they gained weight that became really hard to take off.  Then about the time that the obesity epidemic got really bad, the experts finally realized that the Food Pyramid didn't work after all.


When it comes down to it, what the Food Pyramid, non-fat foods, and skinny girls can teach us, is that if you want to be a healthy weight, eat regular food and enjoy it.  That's my delicious advice.