My considerations about the Brazilian event, in the auditorium of one of the biggest Brazilian newspaper, “Folha de São Paulo”:
Different and interesting points of view, shared by an endocrinologist, a nutritionist, a psychoanalyst who works with a non-diet approach to Eating Disorders and a psychoanalyst who specializes in body issues in contemporary times. The meeting set up a very current Panel on the subject and speakers from different fields of knowledge agreed on the main:
-Diets don’t work. In the long run, they tend to make people gain weight,
-Alternatives to balance the weight:
– To focus on health and not on appearance
-To change one´s relationship with food demands an individual and long search for self knowledge.
-There´s no magic and the road is a long one.
-People with a slight overweight tend to live longer and better than people with low weight.
-Obstetricians are now counselling pregnant women to gain from 10 to 12 kg and not 8 to 10 kg as it used to be. Children whose mothers do restrictive diets during pregnancy to keep the weight down tend to be born eager for food, with higher propensity to compulsion, obesity and diabetes in their later development.