What Size are You, REALLY?

.....It Depends....

In what Store?
In what Style of clothing?
In what Brand of clothing?
In what Year of Time?

I’ve been a female wearing clothing all of the years of my life. 

I was born in 1944, and it is now 2017, and during those many years, my body has fit into many different sizes of clothing.  Sometimes this was because I was fatter or thinner, and sometimes it was because of the extreme size variations involved in manufactured clothing.

I’ve spent the past 60 years dieting, and hanging around other dieters, and am very familiar with how women use the size of an article of clothing to track their weight progress.  Frequently, I've heard women about 5’4” tall, age around 50, weighing about 185 pounds say:  “This is the first time I’ve been in a size 10 pants for years.” 

I shake my head, remembering ….. It was 1959. I was 5’2” tall, 14 years old, weighing 113 pounds, and was incredibly excited because I was able to find a pair of size 10 slacks that my body fit into.

Using clothing to track weight-loss is a very subjective method. It concentrates on how we feel.  This method relies heavily on our opinions of ourselves.  Our opinion of how we look often changes from day to day, regardless of how much weight we have lost or gained. A shirt that we love one day may seem either too long or loose … or … too short or tight on another day. 

Another problem is that sizes are often different depending on the store.  What is a size 0 in one place may be an 8 in another. The article below gives some fascinating details about this.


The Absurdity of Women’s Clothing Sizes
                by Christopher Ingraham, Aug 11, 2015, The Washington Post.

Here are some numbers that illustrate the insanity of women's clothing sizes: A size 8 dress today is nearly the equivalent of a size 16 dress in 1958. And a size 8 dress of 1958 doesn't even have a modern-day equivalent — the waist and bust measurements of today’s era size 8 come in smaller than today's size 00.



These measurements come from official sizing standards once maintained by the National Bureau of Standards.

Centers for Disease Control and Preventio...

The Angry Chef: Bad Science and the Truth About Healthy Eating by Anthony Warner (2017)

This brilliant book is an investigation of bad science in the food world.  It is full of forceful, amusing, and convincing information which explodes the “theories” of health and wellness bloggers by the application of rock solid science. Warner shows the falsehoods which pervade the healthy eating industry.  He uses evidence to attack the myths, quackery, and nonsense claimed for coconut oil, paleo, sugar, detox diets, eating disorders, cancer, and convenience foods.

The author has spent 25 years working first as a chef and then in food development in the UK, after obtaining a University Degree in Biochemistry.  He is outspoken and well-informed, and his goal is to get people to see beyond the  “clean eating” and “superfoods” craze to a place where eating is actually a joy.

He challenges our culture’s current value judgments on “processed food”; along with the perception that sugar is our most dangerous foodstuff; and provides cutting criticisms of health and wellness gurus, including unqualified bloggers, who spout nutritional nonsense. 

In the book Warner explains the difference between causation and correlation. He  says: “paleo is about as realistic as The Flintstones.”; and “The phrase ‘you are what you eat’ is a commonly held wisdom within the bullshit-nutrition community. Of course we are not what we eat.  Vegans are quite clearly made of meat.”

Warner explains why people choose pseudoscience over science.   He argues that the problem lies in the nature of science and its inability to give definitive answers. Our brains prefer things to be simple, and in patterns, even if they aren’t backed up by proof. It is human nature to search for answers, and we tend to take answers where we can find them, even when they lack proof.

This is a thoughtful, scientifically researched and referenced work on healthy eating, which is also an entertaining read.  It makes us think carefully about why we are really looking for quick and easy fixes for something complex and long-term.  It questions why so many of us are slaves to programs that blame us for our illnesses, humiliate overweight people, and expect us to swallow the logic that if something “works for me” it equals a solution for all.