News

You could say it was the BMI (body mass index) heard round the world: When the news broke last week that Oprah Winfrey had lost control of her eating and now weighs 200 pounds, it spread, as one Huffington Post blogger put it, “like butter on a hot skillet.” (Oh, how easy it is to make fat jokes.)

The media queen of self-esteem, a woman who undoubtedly has life coaches, personal trainers and weight experts on permanent standby, and who has also made it her lifelong mission to encourage people to be their best selves, confessed in a rueful article in the January issue of O magazine that she's embarrassed about her weight: “How did I let this happen again?” she wrote.

She attributes her weight gain to a variety of factors – thyroid disease, a lack of balance in her life, and the fact that food is “my drug of choice.” She even says she felt like a “fat cow” when interviewing Tina Turner and Cher.

Well, I'm sorry for Oprah, but what does it mean for the rest of us? Especially in this season of overeating and the inevitable January rush to the gym and weight-loss programs.

Does this mean millions of women around the world who admire Oprah, who relate to her body-image saga, will think, as University of Alberta obesity expert Arya Sharma put it when I called him, “If Oprah, with all her stature and resources and knowledge of the subject, fails the battle, how will normal mortals cope?”

Last year, I vowed I would never again waste my time writing about the fat-thin societal obsession – it's boring and futile, and I deeply disapprove of those predatory, big-butt celebrity pictures that are splashed in all the glossy gossip magazines.

However, I think Oprah's confession is a teaching moment. Although maybe not the one she intended.

Oprah has talked in terms of her own growing up about stopping the cycle of abuse. Now she has to stop another cycle of abuse: the self-abuse of yo-yo dieting and thinking that all you are is your weight. Here is a woman whose accomplishments are legendary – her generosity, her influence, her book club that has spurred the sale of millions of books and encouraged millions of readers – and she plaintively writes: “I can't believe that after all these years, all the things I know how to do, I'm still talking about my weight.”

Well, I can't believe she is still talking about it, either.

We've got to get off this depressing and self-defeating obsession with weight. And when I say “we” I mean it: Apart from not being a 200-pound media queen worth billions, I'm just like Oprah: I have thyroid disease and have packed on a few pounds. My doctors told me that it wasn't my “fault,” which made me feel better until I remembered that last winter Saint-André cheese was my comfort food of choice.

Now I'm back at Weight Watchers trying to lose the last eight pounds so I can weigh in the 120s again, a goal that Dr. Sharma was none too kind about: “You don't have a weight problem,” he suggested. “You have a body-image problem.”

I suppose Oprah felt she owed it to her fans to be honest. Now I hope she doesn't do something blatantly dishonest and embark on another highly publicized weight-loss program that has everyone watching to see if she can do it. Because the chances are she will just gain it all back. (Most people do, Dr. Sharma says, unless they stay on their diet and exercise regimens for the rest of their lives.)

But what if she had chosen not to write about her weight, not to make it front and centre in her January issue with a picture of her fat and thin selves on the cover? Some people may have continued to sneer that she was indeed packing it on again. But most of us would have paid more attention to what she had to say about other important matters – the pending Obama presidency and a brutal recession among them.

By making her weight topic No. 1, she invites us to judge her by her weight, even though she herself has now said her goal isn't to be thin.

According to Dr. Sharma, we all have to arrive at a realistic assessment of what's possible for us. And it may not be losing the weight so much as “stopping the gain.”

In other words, he says, if you weigh 200 pounds and a year later, after practising a healthy lifestyle, you still weigh the same, “that's fantastic.” You haven't gained.

Dr. Sharma says there are some pretty healthy 200-pound women out there. I believe him: In my mother's generation, a 200-pound woman would have had circus-freak notoriety, but today one of my fitness instructors weighs that much, and she told me this not proudly, but not in deep shame either (200 is the new 160?).

As to whether Oprah's I'm-fat-again announcement will discourage anyone else, my Weight Watchers meeting was packed last weekend. There was a lot of talk about how to get through the holiday season without hoovering all the shortbread. And Oprah's name never came up.