It doesn’t take much detective work to see that diet books are an obsession in our culture. All it takes is walking into your neighborhood Barnes & Noble and looking at the front “dump bin,” the pyramid-like stack of nonfiction books near the entrance of most stores. There, at any given time, you’ll find six to ten diet books stacked up like cordwood: flat belly diets, over 50 diets, five-minute diets, diets for men, celebrity diets and more. Diet books are among the most consistently popular genre of nonfiction, even though time and time again, we’ve seen that fad diets rarely work for keeping weight off over the long term. Heck, our publisher even talked to us about a diet book as a follow-up to The Beauty Prescription.
What does our seeming obsession with diet books say about us as a culture? We’ll give you some multiple choice options:
We’re obsessed with being as thin as the celebrities we see on the covers of magazines (forgetting that they have chefs and personal trainers and many hours a day to devote to just staying in shape).
We’re eager to believe the hype about a fast, easy weight loss miracle if it hides the simple truth that to lose weight over the long term we have to eat less and move more.
We consistently feel bad about our bodies thanks to pressure from a culture that promotes unrealistic body images.
All of the above.
We don’t know about you, but we’re going with #4. Basically, the multi-billion dollar diet industry (which encompasses a lot more than books) thrives in a rich soil of wishful thinking and willful self-deception, as we convince ourselves that THIS diet, THIS time, will do the trick and keep us thin and healthy without sacrifice. This all points to a national problem with accepting some realities about weight, health and beauty. These are as follows:
You don’t have to be thin to be healthy. It helps, but there are plenty of people who are endomorphs (the body type that retains fat and loses weight slowly) who are fit, eat well and exercise regularly. There are also plenty of thin folks who smoke to suppress their hunger or simply don’t eat enough and are malnourished.
It’s more important to be active than thin. Studies have shown over and over that physically active overweight people do better on tests for heart disease and diabetes risk factors than thin sedentary people.
The only way to consistently lose weight and keep it off is to permanently change your lifestyle. Move more, eat less, give up some unhealthy foods and dedicate yourself to working out 5-6 days a week for life. There are no shortcuts, sorry.
It is far more attractive to be a bit overweight but happy and accepting of yourself and your inner beauty than to be thin, always worried about what you eat and beat yourself up when you gain an ounce. Self-love is beautiful; self-loathing is not.
We would love to write a diet book for the inner self, perhaps about losing the excess “pounds” of guilt, resentment, shame or envy that seem to drive so many women in our culture to starve themselves in the name of beauty. Perhaps someday, we will. Tell us, what kind of diet book would YOU like to see?
We’ve said all along that aging wasn’t strictly a biological issue. Now there’s some proof that we’re right. A new study (read the story about it here) by Dr. Bahman Guyuron, chairman of the department of plastic surgery at the University Hospitals of Cleveland and Case Western Reserve University, has revealed that identical twins, who are genetically programmed to age in the same way, can actually show different facial signs of aging depending on their lifestyles and life experiences. We find this especially interesting because it suggests that your choices on how to view the world and your relationships with others can have a tangible effect on your Outer Beauty, and indeed can affect the entire Beauty-Brain Loop.
The researchers recruited nearly 200 sets of identical female twins who were attending an annual twin festival in the aptly-named Twinsburg, Ohio. They collected photos of each set of twins and asked an independent panel to review each pair and assess whether one twin looked older than another.
They found several factors influenced facial aging, including sun exposure and smoking. Based on the assessment, 10 years of smoking added about 2.5 additional years of aging to a twin’s face, compared to a twin who didn’t smoke. Sun exposure, particularly among those who spent a lot of time outside playing golf or tennis, also increased the appearance of aging.
Stress also appeared to be a factor in aging. Divorced twins appeared, on average, at least two years older than a twin who was married or widowed.
The study also found that users of antidepressants such as Prozac also appeared older, raising speculation that perhaps the chemical components of the drugs affected facial muscles or tissues in some way. Interestingly, weight loss was both white and black hat in terms of aging. Women who lost weight before age 40 looked younger, but women who were heavier after 40 actually appeared more youthful than their slimmer siblings, suggesting that fat loss may somehow affect collagen and the skin’s natural moisture content.
What’s really interesting about this is that it puts responsibility for how your face looks as you age squarely on the shoulders of nurture, not nature. Sure, genetics play a role in everything from your odds of developing skin cancer to your propensity for developing bags under your eyes. But overall, the choices you make for your diet, your recreation, your relationships and your attitude toward living are what really determine how well you age and how your face shows the years.
It makes sense that stress is a major factor: the release of powerful stress hormones like cortisol can cause the body to release oils, provoke breakouts and damage skin in the long-term. And there’s nothing worse than smoking, which produces an oxidative reaction that damages the skin and collagen at the cellular level. What’s positive about this news is that it means you can control, to a remarkable extent, how your face ages with the choices you make. It means that your Inner Beauty—your self-esteem, love and ability to see beauty in others—directly impacts your exterior.
So to give yourself the best odds of aging gracefully, stick to the basics first. Eat well. Exercise. Protect yourself from the sun. Don’t smoke. Breathe. Live with joy and find healthy ways to manage stress. Find a doctor you trust and maintain your overall health. Anything else you do on top of those choices, from spending on cosmetics and skin care products to choosing dermatological procedures, is only going to be effective if you’ve given yourself a great foundation for lifelong beauty.
Valentine’s Day is about all the stages of the Beauty-Brain Loop. Sure, you want to look great for your loved one, but it’s also about being happy with who you are and grateful for the blessings you have. Health and fitness is a big part of both looking and feeling beautiful, and what is more romantic than a physical Environment that’s beautiful and welcoming and sensual? Yes, Valentine’s Day is definitely a Beauty Prescription kind of holiday, so it’s appropriate that Dr. Eva Ritvo will be joining several other physicians on WFOR CBS4 television in the Miami-Ft. Lauderdale area on Wednesday, Feb 11 for a special “Looking and Feeling Your Best” phone bank.
Eva and the other docs—two dermatologists and a family medicine specialist—will take live phone calls from WFOR viewers from 5 to 6:30 p.m., during the regular evening newscast. This will be an opportunity for viewers to call in to ask questions about skin care, general health, beauty products, stress management and more. Eva, who regularly contributes to the WFOR newscast on subjects related to psychiatry and behavior, will focus on her specialty: Inner Beauty. She will answer your questions about feeling good from the inside, mental adjustments that will make a visible difference in your perceived beauty, making closer connections with key people in your life and more.
If you want more information about this special live event, call WFOR at 305-591-4444 or visit www.cbs4.com. We hope you’ll call in and ask Eva a question about your own efforts to be as beautiful as you can be!
She’s the toast of the country and the object of admiration of millions of women, African-American and otherwise. She’s the new First Lady, Michelle Obama. Already, the nation is dissecting and obsessing over her appearance and fashion sense; her hair stylist, Johnny Wright, already has a development deal for his own reality show. Clearly, we’re on the cusp of a new era not only in style but in the concept of female beauty in this country.
We say that because for the first time, we have a black first lady, a fact which puts African-American features, hair and style front and center. For most of the past century, for mainstream America, female beauty has equated to a certain set of characteristics: Caucasian, tall, model-thin, large-busted, and charming. Intellect wasn’t really a requirement, and certainly African-American women—even stunning ones like Beyonce or Halle Berry—were sort of on the periphery. But now we have a woman at the crux of American social and political life who’s not only black, but curvaceous, strong-boned, educated, brilliant (she’s a Harvard Law grad and an author in her own right) and clearly just as strong as her husband. It appears that we’ve finally left the “delicate flower” image created by Jackie Kennedy in the past.
This was a process started by Hillary Clinton, who also refused to smile in the background when her husband was president, and caught heat for it. But she began the process of making the powerful, accomplished, highly intelligent woman into an icon of style, confidence and beauty. Michelle Obama is taking the baton that the new Secretary of State handed her, and she seems to be gaining speed. What does this mean for the American perception of beauty? For one thing, it means that for millions of African-American women, their form of physical loveliness will be more regularly in view. This may mean that the unique qualities of African-American hair (though Michelle currently wears her hair straightened, and it remains to be seen if she’ll allow it to become more “ethnic” as time goes on), complexion and body will hopefully become more a part of our lexicon of what is beautiful.
It also may mean that African cultural style, including traditonal clothing, may become something more than a curiosity but more part of mainstream fashion. The Obamas are already talking about adding art to the White House that reflects the African-American experience; can it be too long before the First Lady shows up to a state dinner wearing a kitenge (a Kenyan traditional sarong-like dress)? We think this is all incredibly healthy for our national Inner Beauty for several reasons:
At the simplest level, a generation of African-American women and girls are going to see themselves reflected in the nation’s most visible woman and enjoy having their own physicality and style widely regarded as beautiful, a boost for self-esteem.
As more Americans open their minds to the new ideas of beauty embodied in Michelle Obama’s charisma, strength and intelligence, we begin to see beauty in new areas and new people. And as we have said before, seeing beauty throughout life is a hallmark of Inner Beauty.
The greater tolerance of difference that we hope will come from having a black President and First Lady should make us all more loving and understanding of the differences between us.
Many pundits have already remarked on the ways in which the Obama presidency represents a watershed moment for the nation. Allow us to call Michelle Obama what we believe she is: the symbol and embodiment of a new era of more inclusive beauty for everyone.
We don’t announce most events on our blog, but this one is special: the first annual Marissa Nestor Invitational Doubles Tournament is being held on Saturday, March 9 at 9 a.m. at the La Gorce Country Club, located at 5685 Alton Road in Miami Beach, Florida. What makes this tournament so special. Marissa is Eva’s lovely daughter and the event is in honor of her 18th birthday
This is the listing from the website SocialMiami.com:
Sign up for a day of tennis and fun at the first ever Marissa Nestor Invitational Doubles Tournament, a fundraiser for United Cerebral Palsy of South Florida. Player fees are $30 per individual and $50 per team, which includes lunch and a chance to win tickets for the Sony Ericsson Open. Registration begins at 9 a.m., and the matches get underway at 10. Tennis Pro Daniel Capote will organize this kick-off tournament, an introduction to the main event that will take place November 14, also a benefit for UCP. The tournament is named in honor of Marissa Nestor, a young woman living with cerebral palsy and the daughter of UCP of South Florida board member, Dr. Eva Ritvo, who is hosting the tournament. For information about participating or sponsoring the tournament, please call or e-mail Janelle Cedeno.
Marissa was born with a condition called hemiparesis, which is a weakness on one side of the body that can be caused by cerebral palsy. That’s why the fundraiser is for UCP. This is also special because Eva is a huge tennis fan who has been to Wimbledon and spends a lot of her free time on the court. So this is a chance to engage the sport she loves to both show her love for Marissa and to support a worthy cause, namely, cerebral palsy and hemiparesis research.
This is also an example of the Beauty-Brain Loop in action. You activate your Inner Beauty because helping others makes you feel good. You protect your Outer Beauty by wearing sunscreen and a hat, and burning calories to keep you trim. You improve your Health with the cardiovascular exercise, and improve your Environment because you’re surrounded by friends and giving to a good cause.
To find out more about the 2009 Marissa Nestor Invitational Doubles Tournament, you can go to the Social Miami website here, or call 305-325-9018.
