by Laura Heffner
I was perusing FaceBook when a friend of mine posted a link to the Huffington post where Iris Higgins had posted a former apology to her former weight loss clients. People post all sorts of things and it is rare that I ever bother to click on the link to actually read the story but this one intrigued me.
Bravo to Higgins who starts by apologizing first for putting her clients on a 1200 calorie diet and if you were running five days a week, she only increased it to 1500 calories when they needed more. She apologized for making them feel such the failure that they quit the program after hours by leaving a message. She apologized to those who were gluten-intolerant but so desperate to lose weight they didn't put it on their intake form and only told her later. The damage they did to themselves on her conscience.
She apologized to those with body dysmorphic disorder for not recommending a therapist rather than a weight loss program when the client did not need to lose weight. And to those who wrecked their metabolism eating too little and starving themselves. To breast-feeding mothers who couldn't have been getting enough calories on 1700 a day.
Higgins went on apologizing to the many she wronged and I sat there in silent reverence reading her well-thought out apology that exposes the problems with diets and the diet industry. It takes courage and guts to admit you are wrong. Every person who has any sort of weight issues should read this letter to see just how much we've been jockeyed around by doctors and experts and weight loss gurus.
In the end of her letter, she says to just eat real food, eat healthy and be active and forget the rest as it's all nonsense. In the ironically wisdom-filled words of George Carlin "Eat less and move more." What more do we need to know?
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