TRIGGER WARNING: DISCUSSION OF WEIGHT CYCLING INDUSTRY IN THE 1970s

The History of Health at Every Size®: Chapter 3: The 1970s

The 1970s saw the building of feminism, iconoclasm, introspection, a peace movement regarding Vietnam, and mounting pressure on women to be thinner. Multiple studies and programs around "weight management" come to the forefront. But others look at fat as a matter of biology or being a feminist issue with publications from Vivian Mayer (also called Aldebaran), Judy Freespirit, Susie Orbach and Carol Munter.

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In Vermont, Ethan Allen Sims experimented on students and later, prisoners, to test intentional weight gain of 20-30 pounds. One subject required 7,000 calories a day to maintain weight gain. All the subjects doubled their normal daily intake of food and required an extra 2,000 calories a day to maintain their extra weight. Like the subjects of Keys’ weight-loss experiment in the 1940s, Sims’ subjects also got lethargic and apathetic, and rapidly returned to their pre-experiment weights once they stopped overeating.

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