Lulu Hunt Peters (1873-1930) popularized a mathematical approach to weight loss. In doing so, she transformed modern diet culture and many of her ideas still permeate through society today.
Lulu Hunt Peters (1873-1930) popularized a mathematical approach to weight loss. In doing so, she transformed modern diet culture and many of her ideas still permeate through society today.
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Hello, from Wonder Media Network I’m Jenny Kaplan and this is Womanica.
Our woman of the day popularized a mathematical approach to weight loss. In doing so, she transformed modern diet culture and many of her ideas still permeate through society today.
Let’s talk about the influential Dr. Lulu Hunt Peters.
Lulu Hunt Peters was born in 1873 in Maine, but moved to California in her childhood. Not much is known about Lulu’s young life, aside from the fact that she struggled with her weight as a child.
In 1909, Lulu graduated from the University of California at Berkeley with her Doctorate in Medicine. After receiving her medical degree, Lulu became the chair of the Public Health Committee for the California Women’s Club federation of Los Angeles. Having a complicated relationship with her own weight, Lulu began experimenting with the ways food and exercise impacted her body. She created a reliable way to understand the amount of calories she was consuming versus burning - a revolutionary framework for the time. Through her own rigorous methods, Lulu lost upwards of 70 pounds.
This led Lulu to write about her findings in a ‘Diet and Health’ column for the LA Times Women’s pages. And In 1918, Lulu published the book that would make her famous and permanently alter diet culture in America.
The book was called “Diet and Health: With Key to the Calories” and it single handedly popularized calorie counting. Lulu wrote that “the lack of knowledge of foods” was the foundation for those who were either overweight or underweight. Therefore, Lulu went about explaining her own method for calorie counting, how to assess your ideal weight – a metric similar to our modern day body-mass-index – and a sample diet plan.
The book took a historically dry topic and infused it with witty and relatable language directed right at American women. It featured stories of Lulu’s own failures in her weight loss journey and included silly names of fake patients. Scattered throughout the book are primitive drawings by Lulu’s young nephew. The drawings add both playful and fat-phobic imagery to the book. While clearly the work of a child, overweight people are drawn as doddering stick figures with perfectly spherical bodies. Whereas people exercising are depicted in the traditional stick-figure form.
Another problematic element of Lulu’s book was the connection she drew between thinness, morality and beauty. For Lulu, dieting involved self-restraint and diligent work. In her eyes, those who failed to keep up these practices simply lacked the will power to do so. Similarly, she emphasized the desire to be thin just for the pleasure of being thin. Stating in her book, “if there is anything comparable to the joy of taking in your clothes, I have not experienced it.”
At the same time, Lulu’s book also advocated for more holistic approaches to monitoring one’s diet. She repeatedly warns against dangerous schemes to quickly lose weight. And she dismissed the idea that any food was off limits. Lulu’s only limitations were calories.
After publishing “Diet and Health: With Key to the Calories”, Lulu traveled to the Balkans to work for the American Red Cross. When she returned several years later, she discovered that her book was a hit. In the time since its publication, it’s estimated to have sold upwards of 2 million copies.
In 1930, Lulu died from pneumonia.
Lulu’s book is still in circulation and many of its ideas are just as enduring. Her basic premise: that weight loss occurs as a result of fewer calories consumed in relation to calories burned, remains a fundamental approach to weight loss. The problematic ties Lulu suggested between beauty and thinness also remain very prevalent to this day.
All month, we’re looking at women who changed the landscape of health and wellness.
For more information and pictures of some of the work we’re talking about, find us on Facebook and Instagram @womanicapodcast.
Special thanks to Liz Kaplan, my favorite sister and co-creator.
Talk to you tomorrow!