Nondiet activist measures success in lives changed not pounds lost

by Ann Douglas, Radiance Magazine, issue 54, Spring 1998

You will find a scale in Linda Omichinski's office - but you won't find it being used to weigh human beings.

"When I first started out as a dietician, I bought one of those expensive scales that doctors use in their offices for weighing people," she explains, cringing as she recalls how closely linked the concepts of "weight" and "health" were at that time - even in her own head.

Ten years later, the scale is enjoying a pleasant second career, working for - rather than against - the nondiet movement! "We use the scale to weigh the packages that we mail out to our facilitators," she laughs. "So I guess you could say that the scale did come in handy after all!"

Judging by the response to HUGS International Inc. - the nondiet company that Omichinski founded - that trusty scale must get a fair bit of use. HUGS has a network of facilitators that span North America as well as such countries as New Zealand, South Africa, and - to a lesser degree - the United Kingdom.

The reason for Omichinski's success is simple: she's pioneered a program whose time has come. In a nutshell, HUGS is concerned with combatting the diet mentality of "all or nothing thinking" that is so harmful to a dieter's self esteem, and eliminating the "shoulds" and "shouldn'ts" that control too many people's relationships to food. But while a body acceptance and a healthy relationship to food are at the heart of the program, HUGS also goes beyond those issues.

Omichinski explains: "HUGS teaches people how to live a nondiet lifestyle, keeping their lives in balance, building in time for themselves, and abandoning some of the perfectionistic tendencies that may be affecting their enjoyment of life."

HUGS got its start when Omichinski began offering classes in the small Canadian town of Portage la Prairie, Manitoba where she lives. Participants who attended her classes loved the program, and began asking for a book, a video, and so on. In 1992, You Count, Calories Don't was published. That's when the momentum really began to pick up.

"We financed a book tour across Canada and brought facilitators on board at the same time," Omichinski recalls. "This part was satisfying and exciting. However, there were many hard times. Facilitators found it fairly easy to draw people out to the first few classes, because of the media attention that these classes initially attracted, but since the message was still very much ahead of its time, participants didn't spread the word about HUGS. Their reluctance to speak about their experiences is understandable: at that time, only a very small percentage of people were ready to hear the message that you could be healthy at any size."

Fortunately for Omichinski, there were people who were eager to embrace her message, and - slowly but surely - interest in HUGS spread.

"Over time, we moved into the United States, attending American Dietetic Association conferences, presenting at conferences, and writing a number of articles for the Healthy Weight Journal - an internationally respected publication. At about the same time, Mary Evans Young - founder of International No Diet Day - introduced You Count, Calories Don't into the United Kingdom, and the word about HUGS began to spread as far as South Africa and New Zealand."

Despite its success and international reach, HUGS International Inc. remains - for all intents and purposes - a one woman show. "It's me, myself, and I - plus individuals working with me on a contract basis," Omichinski explains. Administrative assistant Heidi Mead - herself a HUGS devotée! - is picking up an increasing amount of the workload, however, as HUGS continues to grow.

In the early days, there was just Omichinski herself: a certified dietician offering traditional diet programs. Then, after one of those defining moments (the ones that strike when you least expect them!), Omichinski suddenly realized that diets didn't work. That realization changed the path of her life.

"I noticed that my clients seemed to be really happy with the individualized diet that I put them on, saying that they didn't feel deprived and that they were pleased with their weight loss results," she recalls. "Then I wouldn't see them for a while, but noticed that if I ran into them at the grocery store they felt embarrassed because they had gained the weight back.

"Something was wrong: it didn't feel right. I began searching and listening some more, and over the years HUGS came about. However, I must admit that this was quite a long process. Before it became the nondiet approach to health, it started out as the nondiet approach to weight loss.

"It took a few years of inner searching and talking to more and more people before I realized that the focus on weight needed to be removed all together. I think the turning point for me came when a client said to me, 'Linda, I am no longer starving and bingeing. I am eating more regularly. I am beginning to enjoy healthier foods and feel the energy those foods bring me. I am enjoying walking for the fun of it. But I am not losing weight. What am I doing wrong?'

"That hit me like a ton of bricks. I said, 'You aren't doing anything wrong. You may be at the weight your body was meant to be.'

"Now that was hard for the participant to accept, because she had learned to judge her success by the number on the scale. It was obvious to me, however, that the number on the scale did not accurately reflect her success. This individual glowed with health but would be considered unsuccessful nonetheless if the traditional measures of success - her weight and her BMI - were used.'"

As you might expect, these days, Omichinski relies on measures of success other than weight and BMI. She feels that a client's overall health is far more important than his or her weight.

"Once a week, I work as a consulting dietician in a hospital-based diabetes education centre and heart health education centre. The diabetes education centre is one of twelve in the province of Manitoba. All of the centres take weights and calculate BMIs (body mass indexes). We need to send in forms and indicate weight, blood sugar, level of education, etc., both for statistical purposes and to justify the continuation of the program. I never weigh people and the BMI index is always blank. No one dares to say anything as they know I won't do it!"

If Omichinski comes across like a bit of a crusader, it's certainly for good reason. For many years, she's been going against the tide in her work as a consulting dietician, telling people that diets don't work and that there is an alternative to counting calories. Her mission? "To challenge the myths of the diet industry by shifting the attitudes and beliefs of the public from the preoccupation with weight and size to an acceptance and appreciation of healthier living."

It's a message that the nutrition community was not prepared to accept - initially, at least.

"The idea that one can be healthy and large is quite foreign to health professionals for whom the scale has always been at the centre of judging success," Omichinski explains.

"The other day, I saw a client at a diabetes clinic. She wanted to discuss why she had gained 20 pounds since having surgery. On probing further, I discovered that she had lost 20 pounds while she was sick, and then had simply put the weight back on after her surgery. Once she realized that it is quite normal to regain the weight that you lose when you are sick, that it wasn't her fault or anything that she was doing wrong that caused her to gain this weight, she immediately felt better. However, the big surprise for me came when my colleague, who overheard our conversation, asked me at the end of the day what I thought about the client's weight gain. I looked at her and said, 'Mary's blood sugars are wonderful. You can be large and healthy, too.'"

It's a message that both health professionals and clients need to hear time and time again. The challenge in the early days was to get people to listen at all.

"I think that the dieticians felt particularly threatened by HUGS at first," she recalls. "After all, diets are what dieticians are trained in and what they know best. If they don't instruct people on diets and don't gain new skills, then what do they do? It was a hard message to sell."

Clients were slow to buy into the idea, too. "Just as health professionals are slowing moving along the continuum from using a weight-focused medical model in which the professional set the rules to a nondiet empowerment model that shows participants how to take responsibility for their own health, clients must move through the same process. First there's frustration, then a realization that dieting doesn't work, then an awareness of nondiet approaches and a process of educating themselves to find out more, and finally seeking out programs. This process may takes years."

Fortunately, says Omichinski, diet-weary clients and a new generation of health care professionals are beginning to embrace the nondiet message with considerable enthusiasm.

She's met with the most success at home.

"Canada is the most progressive country in terms of accepting the nondiet message, even though it took many years for momentum to pick up (i.e. from 1987 until about two years ago). We are there now. We see more and more nondiet books on the market. Compare that with the early '90s, when my publisher's distributor was not interested in carrying the book for long because it was not a diet book."

While Canada appears to be a few years ahead of other countries in terms of the nondiet movement, there's growing momentum around the world.

"Wherever I have travelled, people seem to be struggling with the same diet issues as we are in North America, perhaps because of our large cultural influence overseas.

"I recently returned from New Zealand, and was surprised to see the same type of diet commercials and emphasis on 'losing that gut' as you see on North American TV. Fortunately, countries such as New Zealand are looking at working with a more nondiet approach as part of their national health policy."

It isn't easy for governments - or individuals - to counter the powerful messages being sent out by the diet industry, however.

"The diet industry is certainly a good business in that it gets people to feel that the program worked and they failed, and so every time people go 'off the diet,' they gain the weight back and need to go back to the diet program again. It's a wonderful repeat business, and that's why the diet industry makes billions.

"We in the nondiet movement need to get the message out that diets don't work.

"I tell my clients, 'You didn't fail. Diets failed you!'"

"I tell them to stop putting their lives on hold for that magic number on the scale that may never appear. I tell them that they no longer need to attach their self-worth to the number on the scale, that they can throw away the scales, the diet sheets, and be free to relearn some of the basic skills they knew before they started dieting: to eat when they are hungry, to stop when they are full, to live a balanced lifestyle that includes enjoyment of food and a celebration of body movement, to learn to make small changes that help them to appreciate tastes and textures that are healthier for them, to build in time for themselves, and to learn to pace themselves. We do have choices, and we need to make the choices that are best for us."

Sometimes that means educating your family doctor that it is possible to be healthy and large. "Tell your doctor or health professional that you have been on many diets before and they have only made you heavier. Then tell him what you are doing positively in terms of your lifestyle," Omichinski suggests. "By then asking if there is anything else you should be doing, he'll soon get the point that you have made positive changes to your lifestyle and that, yes, one can be healthy and large."

While Omichinski has accomplished a lot in ten short years, she's quick to put her achievements in perspective.

"I don't want to give you the impression that we are wildly successful," she insists. "We certainly have made a dent or impression in helping to move the market forward as the message gets multiplied by our growing number of facilitators. But we are a small company and realize that we can't compete head-to-head with the major diet companies. We simply don't have the finances to run the commercials required to combat those diet messages - even though we do have visions of what those commercials would look like!"

And if those anti-diet commercials ever manage to hit the air, the North American consumer is likely to do a double-take. One proposed script shows a woman weighing herself and feeling happy because she's lost weight. A subsequent scene shows her husband using a screwdriver to set the scale back so she will continue to be in a good mood. The caption would read: "Are you tired of the scale determining your mood and setting the tone for the day?"

"We have grown slowly and use the same philosophy in business as what we do with lifestyle: one step at a time, recognize and appreciate the mini-successes, and don't judge success simply by external terms (i.e. weight loss when referring to lifestyle or income when referring to business success). Internal gratification is important, too.

"It's hard to sell something when you're ahead of the market, and somehow manage to stay in business long enough for the market to catch up. It's also costly to try to push the market along. That's why It really took until year eight of our business that we began to see a significant momentum, but we were - and are - committed to sticking with HUGS for the long haul."

Omichinski is pleased with the work HUGS has done so far.

"We have done a lot of development with our adult and teen nondiet programs and books. My main interest now is to nurture our existing network and expand it so that the momentum grows and it becomes easier for our facilitators to attract participants to the program. The one big problem that we have had in the past is that participants tells us they love the HUGS program, but yet they want to keep it to themselves. The reason is simple: the message that they get from HUGS is so different from what society says that often people haven't the time or the energy to spread the word. I say 'energy,' because that's exactly what it takes to explain the philosophy to new people. Many people outside the nondiet movement are not yet ready to hear the message and can be confrontational.

"I am pleased to be able to say that this is beginning to change, thanks to the increasing number of nondiet books and the fact that the nondiet message is becoming a bit more mainstream. People are beginning to share the freeing life changes they have experienced, and word is beginning to spread."

Linda measures her success in the number of lives she's helped to change.

"This work is very satisfying in that I feel I am making a difference for many people. My philosophy of taking time out to regenerate, relax, and do something completely different allows me to maintain my freshness." (The location of HUGS International Inc.'s head office also helps: it's just a stone's throw from the woodlot and river that Omichinski credits with keeping her sane!)

Fortunately, the facilitators who lead HUGS groups are always quick to provide her with plenty of encouragement. They generously pass along stories that illustrate time and time again that HUGS is making a difference in people's lives.

"A recent graduate of our program recently told her facilitator that she had agreed to her first photo of herself in years after completing the program."

Another participant - Leah Sorenson of Victoria, B.C. - is equally quick to sing HUGS' praises. "When I first came across the HUGS program, I was walking through a plaza and saw the booth about International No Diet Day. I was intrigued yet slightly defensive, as I had just embarked on my fourth attempt with Weight Watchers.

"A few days later, I heard from Christie, the HUGS facilitator who had been staffing the booth. She asked me about my current situation. I told her that I had been feeling quite 'out of control,' but had taken a positive step by joining Weight Watchers again. The program was working and I was doing quite well.

"Then Christie said something that really hit home for me. She said something like, 'If you're rejoining for the fourth time, how do you mean that it is working for you.' I was left at a loss for words."

Sorenson joined the local HUGS support program, and soon found herself making some positive changes in her life.

"From the information session forward, this program has been life-enhancing, thought-provoking, and energy building. It has changed my way of thinking and my way of life. I've learned that the scale doesn't matter: what matters is that I am happier when I look in the mirror, that I can run farther, and that I feel good."

It's stories like these and the unwavering support of her enthusiastic network of facilitators that keep Omichinski going when the going gets tough.

"Just as our participants need support, so do all of us working in the nondiet field; it's important to remain connected."

"Otherwise, it can be very lonely out there going against the grain."

To find out more about books, newsletters, videos, support groups, and other products and services available through Hugs International Inc., you can either drop by the company's web site (http://www.hugs.com), write to Hugs International Inc., Box 102A, R.R. 3, Portage la Prairie, Manitoba, R1N 3A3. CANADA, or call 1-800-565-4847.

Please note: the HUGS web site includes a message board and chat line where you can meet other "nondieters" for mutual support and friendship.

Ann Douglas
3108 Frances Stewart Road
Peterborough, Ontario. K9H 7J8
CANADA
(705) 742-3265 phone
(705) 742-9672 fax
pageone@oncomdis.on.ca e-mail

Ann Douglas is plus-sized and proud of it! She makes her living as a freelance writer based in Peterborough, Ontario, Canada.

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