When it comes to dieting, Americans put on a good show, buying millions of diet books, watching TV programs about weight loss, obsessing over celebrities and their baby weight. But in the end, that may be all it is: a show. The number of people on a diet - 26 percent of all women in the United States and 16 percent of men for the year ending February 2008 - is the lowest it's been in more than two decades, according to a soon-to-be-released survey.
Discuss
"Our interest in losing weight is waning," says Harry Balzer, lead food and beverage industry analyst for The NPD Group, a market research firm, and author of the survey, the Annual Report on Eating Patterns in America.
The report, which asks 5,000 Americans to keep a daily journal for two weeks about their eating habits, also found that despite high levels of obesity nationwide, a declining percentage of people want to slim down or, for that matter, consider excess weight unattractive. In 1985, 55 percent of those surveyed "completely agreed" with the statement, "People who are not overweight look a lot more attractive." Today, only 25 percent completely agree with it.
Dieting was once practically a national pastime. In 1990, the same report found that 39 percent of women and 29 percent of men were on a diet. So, what's happened? Balzer, who's tracked Americans' eating habits since the 1980s, believes the answer is that dieting is simply too hard. "It's much easier to change your attitude," he said, than to sustain the willpower to eat less.
That view is echoed by Kelly D. Brownell, director of the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at Yale University, who says that diets are "notoriously ineffective," and posits that many overweight people may have simply given up.
Marge McMillan, 60, is one who says she's given up on diets, if not on slimming down. A veterinarian who lives in Medford, McMillan tried the low-carb Atkins diet and Weight Watchers but threw in the towel on both. Now, she's just trying to eat healthily. "Diets don't work," she said. "You lose the weight but regain more."
Dr. Sasha Stiles, medical director of the Obesity Consult Center at Tufts Medical Center, offers additional reasons why dieting is on the wane: "A lot of people are saying I don't have enough money to spend on a diet, or I'm going to try surgery."
Still, the emphasis on healthy eating may also be motivating many people to stop dieting, some say. "The way health is being approached today is to eat healthier foods, not to eat less," says Balzer. Indeed, foods once shunned as fattening - nuts, olive oil, avocados - have been reborn as elixirs, valued for their anti-inflammatory or nutrient-rich qualities. Even chocolate, once a dietary pariah, now enjoys a reputation as a flavonoid-rich disease-buster.
There's another possible explanation: Fewer people are dieting because there's no exciting new diet on the scene. In 2004, the top-selling diet book in the country, "The South Beach Diet," sold 2.4 million copies, according to Nielsen BookScan, a data provider for the publishing industry. In 2007, the most popular book, "You: On a Diet," by Oprah Winfrey's health guru Dr. Mehmet Oz and Dr. Michael Roizen, managed only 706,000 copies. This year's top selling book, "Eat This Not That!" has sold a mere 552,000 copies so far, and is more reference than diet book.
After years of being sucked into one weight-loss phenomenon after another - low-cal, low-fat, low-carb - serial dieters seem to have fallen into a fallow period. With no miracle plan animating dinner-party and workplace conversations, it's the same old, same old. That gets boring, says Amy Kropke, 41, of Newton, who says she'd be "fabulous" if she could shed 20 pounds.
"I love that moment where you're like, 'This is it. This is definitely the one," she says, her voice tinged with nostalgia for the days when South Beach thrilled her. She wants to be seduced again, preferably by "something that was easy, that you could lose 10 pounds without having to do too much."
The fractured state of dieting is reflected in the survey by The NPD Group, which collects data and provides consumer and market research for a wide range of industries. The firm regularly asks 1,000 adults, "Are you on a diet, and if so what is it?" In 2004, 29 percent of dieters were following a self-created regimen they described as "my own diet." By last year, the number had risen to 35 percent.
After "my own diet," the most popular weight-loss plans were those prescribed by a doctor (11 percent), and Weight Watchers (10 percent). Only 3 percent of dieters were on South Beach diet, a plan that emphasizes "good carbs" and "good fats," and 3 percent on the ultra low-carb Atkins.
If only reading diet books triggered weight loss, we'd be all set. Even without a new hit title, the number of weight-loss books sold in 2007 hit 4.8 million, up from 4 million in 2006, and 3.6 million in 2005, according to Nielsen BookScan. Still, sales aren't what they were in 2004 when the "South Beach" juggernaut was in full swing. That year, 5.3 million diet books sold.
"One of the real challenges for the diet book industry is - surprise - coming up with new diets," says Sara Nelson, editor-in-chief of Publishers Weekly. Having exhausted seemingly every type of diet imaginable, she adds, the industry is trying a new tack: focusing less on the diet and more on the dieter.
She points to the "Skinny Bitch" diet as an example of niche marketing, in this case to the "Sex and the City" crowd. Published in 2005, it started climbing the bestseller lists in 2007, after Victoria Beckham, a.k.a. Posh Spice, was spotted carrying a copy.
Beckham aside, many people are all dieted out, says J. Eric Oliver, author of "Fat Politics: The Real Story Behind America's Obesity Epidemic."
"I keep wondering if it's market saturation," said Oliver, professor of political science at the University of Chicago. "You have people who are interested in dieting who tried South Beach and tried Atkins. Some were successful, but they may have gained the weight back. We may be in a cycle where we're waiting for the next new Scarsdale, South Beach, Atkins . . . the whole rigmarole. Someone who is a clever marketer may see this as a time to strike."
But first they're going to have to convince the overweight they're actually overweight. Dawn Jackson Blatner, a registered dietitian and spokeswoman for the American Dietetic Association, says many heavy people don't see themselves that way. According to the 2003-2004 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, about 66 percent of adults in the United States are overweight or obese. The government asks people about dieting habits, but researchers have not yet compiled statistics.
"With 2 out of 3 people overweight in this country, it is hard for many people to gauge when they are overweight," she said. "If you look like all of your friends, you may not perceive there is a problem." Then again, maybe the drop in dieting heralds a new era in weight loss, one in which we're not counting, weighing, and measuring.
"Dieting is not your normal way of living," says Liliana Staiculescu, 48, an accountant from Plainville, who tried Atkins and a no-fat eating plan before cutting diets out of her life. "You have to limit what you eat and pay attention to your health."
© Copyright 2008 Globe Newspaper Company.
