Dieting: We've Lost Our Way

The cult of thinness and fear of its apparent opposite, obesity, has gone too far, says Susie Orbach in an extract from her new book Bodies.

The West has grown terrified of obesity. To read the figures put out by the International Obesity Task Force, one might believe we were in the midst of an obesity epidemic that will swamp our health service and ruin the lives of the next generation.

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Playing about with appetite, or eating only on weekends, or just one meal a day, or some such scheme, can indeed lead to thinness, but because it cannot be sustained, it can equally well lead to fatness. Emotional and biological rebellions against a life of food restriction, deprivation and compulsive exercising can produce either anorectic-style responses or what appears to be its opposite - out-of-control eating. Read more