by Barbara Spanjers
Oprah Winfrey and Weight Watchers Try Again Weight Watchers debuted its new advertising campaign with Oprah Winfrey recently. I first saw it during New Year’s week – that sacred time of the year when we collectively don our metaphorical hairshirts in the form of...
by Barbara Spanjers
In the classic book Anna Karenina, Tolstoy declared, “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” In my work as a therapist, I learned this is not true. Behavioral patterns in families tend to repeat over and over, no matter whose...
by Barbara Spanjers
A diet mentality starts a chain reaction around “naughty” food. Inspired by, and with affection for, the children’s book If You Give a Mouse a Cookie by Laura Joffe Numeroff. If you give a dieter a cookie she’s going to ask for a...
by Barbara Spanjers
Maybe you tried the very low fat diet… you know, for your health. Maybe you tried the very high fat diet… you know, also for your health. Maybe you tried the eating plan that said you had to space your meals out at different times…you know, for weight loss. Maybe you...
by Barbara Spanjers
When Weight Loss Is Celebrated, Even for the Wrong Reasons (part 1) “Did you lose weight?! You look fabulous!” she cried to a passerby. Some variation of this welcome was pretty common for my coworker. She used it as a form of social connection, because there were not...
by Barbara Spanjers
This is what comes out of my head when I sit by the pool watching my kid get squirted in the face with a water-blaster. It’s one week’s worth of haikus about dieting, weight, and body image (with more to come). I wore a swimsuit while writing these. Gotta walk the...
