Susan Powter is a Hypnotizing Twinkie

Susan Powter was a big deal in the 90s, along with C&C Music Factory and scrunchies. Before there was a Shamwow or a Tony Robbins, she was something of a mash up: a motivational huckster.

What Susan Powter was not:

• A doctor
• A nutritionist
• A dietician

What Susan Powter was:

• "housewife that figured it out"
• an awfully good, charismatic snake-oil salesperson

Thinking about Susie P yesterday, I did an in depth email survey of a representative segment of S.P.'s target market back then (a.k.a. emailing my wife, B.) I asked her, without internet-thinkin' googling, what her memory of SP was. She said:

powter = shaved head, telling (oprah? some interviewer) about the first time in her life she realized her thighs weren't rubbing up against each other. she was walking in a mall, i think, and she just stopped and started screaming: my thighs! my thighs!

I was impressed. I just remember her lookin' kinda hot in spandex and a butchie haircut, kinda smiling and shouting at people to bend to her will....and the catch-phrase that she hung her empire on: FAT MAKES YOU FAT. B remembered a very personal, charming story, irrefutable and mushy. I only remembered her bald-faced (bald-headed?) lie and, ummm, sex.

According to a lengthy profile in the NY Times at the time,

"It's not food that makes you fat. It's fat that makes you fat," Susan Powter thunders into her microphone, as she is broadcast live on the New York City radio station WPLJ. While she paces the stage, the women watch, transfixed. It's not just that her blond buzz cut so closely resembles Sinead O'Connor's. It's that if you're hungry enough and don't sit too close, she can look like a giant Twinkie.

I don't think SP looks anything like a twink....what's that? It's a what? Oh.

He he, the NY Times made the funny back in the 90s. Twinkies are always funny (twinks, not so much -- do NOT google "twink" without safe-search on). Anyway, remember, Susie P. is not a doctor, nutritionist or dietitian, the same way wonder-mom Jenny McCarthy is not a scientist or biologist, but still does real harm. Fat makes you fat. Hmmm. Let's look at some nutritional thinking from the 90s:

 Fat doesn't make you feel full, while carbohydrates take far longer to do so. Restricting calories doesn't help you to lose weight permanently because it leaves you hungry all the time and most sane people refuse to go to bed hungry when there's plenty of food around.

 Oddly enough, I had 3 strips of bacon instead of a big bowl of kolon-bloe. It was delicious but it didn't feel like enough, despite it having about the same calories at the bloe. My hunger remained in check until when it was supposed to. Of COURSE fat makes you feel full, it has TWICE the calories at carbs. Of course, you dismiss restricting calories and promote carbs, so you can sell a whole lotta junk like:

Sweeeeeet

These fat-free foods held the promise of weight reduction while literally eating your cake, too. Unfortunately, cake without fat is akin to wood pulp and cardboard so they pumped them up with sugar to mask the dull flavor. Even as a kid, I remember eating one of these things and thinking, "nope,too sweet." The sugar enabled these things to have more calories than their full-fat counterparts. The author goes on:

The key is to mix lots of different foods into the same dish, sweeten beans and corns with fruit, such as pineapple or apple slices, grapes or raisins and add lots of spices.

AAAIGH!! EWWWW!! 90s food sucked!! Back to Susie:

"I just spoke at a big conference of the American Medical Association, and I said, 'Please tell me I'm being irresponsible, tell me if I'm saying anything wrong, and I'll stop.' And it was silent. Because the information is all out there. The problem is that no one understands it. I just interpret it. None of this is mine."

The medical establishment didn't object because they were equally in the dark. We now know, due to binging on things like Snackwells and spicy bean & pineapple salad, fat doesn't make you fat -- over consumption makes you fat. Remarkably, despite speaking 19 years in the past, Susie P took a personal jab at me:

"Do we need to keep food records every day?" one woman asks timidly. "Food records!" Powter shrieks. "If you have the time to write everything down, get a job. You have too much time."

A love a lady who speaks her mind, she was. She made untold millions of dollars back in the 90s with a veneer of being anti-diet establishment, but really, she was just a part of it, raking in the big bucks with books, videos, gyms, products, etc etc. In fairness, she did proselytize a lot of things that made sense, such as eating less, against obsessing over scale-readings and women's dependence on men, etc. It was the media and lazy people who perhaps took "Fat Makes You Fat" out of context and put it into quite fattening Snackwells. So what does SP say now?


OOooh, she's hypnotic! She says "Daily Caloric Consumption Chart" sooo many times...must follow the Daily Caloric Consumption Chart. All hail the Daily Caloric Consumption Chart. Chart chart chart. Xenu. Here is the chart she speaks of:

Actually, I already follow the Daily Caloric Consumption Chart. You must obey the Daily Caloric Consumption Chart.

Susie P is pretty much towing the line of today's nutritional establishment. Though as a self proclaimed "Radical Feminist Lesbian", it's not completely shocking she doesn't appeal that much to today's housewives. Looking around her (not very updated) website, I can't help but really like her, though at arms length, the way you like a good friend who has some good ideas, but is susceptible to cults and paranoid conspiracy theories. Huckster? Perhaps. Charismatic? For sure. Saleswoman? The best. Source of advice on diet? Well, she has some really cool stories about walking in the mall with her thighs...

THE COUNT:2500
Started the day off with some surprisingly filling bacon, once it sat in my stomach for about thirty minutes and made me feel full. B hoe late, but gramma was over to help out, and we ordered in Chinese. No idea how many calories, but kept the portions reasonable and the main dish vegetable-heavy, but it's safe to say probably half my budget came from the meal.


AM SNACK: 7am, iced green tea, 25 cal


BREAKFAST: 8:15am, 3 slices of bacon, 300 cal


AM SNACK: 10am, 7oz diet coke, 0 cal

LUNCH: 12:15pm, Stoufer's French Bread pizzas, momma salad, 950 cal

DINNER: 6pm, shrimp & string beans in garlic sauce, veg fried rice, fried wontons, diet coke, water, +/- 1225