THE OVER-WEIGHT/UNDER-WEIGHT/OBESITY MYTH
Posts like these bring me down, I capped this from this morning, I’m sure the notes keep climbing. I understand needing to lose weight for health purposes, I love you all so much, health is very important. But so many want to lose weight thinking it will make them more “beautiful”… some are already skinny and just can’t see reality in their reflection.
I wish you all could see the truth. I wish you all could see just how beautiful you really are.
True, but healthy doesn’t necessarily mean you’re skinny.
Thinness is nothing more than a modern fetish, not proof that you’re healthy. I have thin friends who live off of doritoes, debbie cakes, mountain dew and beer. That’s hardly healthy.
Fat MIGHT be a symptom of ill health but there is no proof of it by a long shot. Weight, likewise CAN be a symptom but there is no proof. You can be fat, ‘overweight’ or ‘obese’ and still be healthy. Health is about what you’re consuming and what you do with it. So contrary to popular opinion, no one can tell a person’s health by judging how their body appears. Our perception of what an ‘unhealthy’ person looks like is the myth caused by BMI. The entire foundation of BMI is faulty because there are no true studies and has arbitrarily, been altered repeatedly over the course of time.
In fact, there was a study that showed that BMI is ready to be scrapped:
Body Mass Index (BMI), the standard measure of obesity, is badly flawed and a more accurate gauge should be developed, according to doctors.
Writing in Friday’s Lancet medical journal, the researchers from the Mayo Clinic College of Medicine, Rochester, Minnesota, found that patients with a low BMI had a higher risk of death from heart disease than those with normal BMI.
The CDC has even admitted that the formula is misleading, because the BMI doesn’t take into account all aspects that make up a human being (muscle, height, etc. etc. Bruce Willis would be considered overweight!)
‘This overweight category of body mass index of 25 to 29.9 is a phony category. It doesn’t have medical justification,’ says Paul Campos, JD, a law professor and author of The Diet Myth: Why America’s Obsession with Weight Is Hazardous to Your Health.
Campos says the BMI was developed as a statistical sorting tool for researchers and was never meant as a gauge for weight loss.
‘It just doesn’t make sense,’ he says, pointing to muscular celebrities such as Matthew McConaughey and Brad Pitt, who he says would be considered too heavy based on their BMI numbers.”
So, again more weight doesn’t equal, less healthy. Just like less weight, equals more healthy. These are illusionary correlations, and backed by many doctors and scientists.
“Dr Rick Kausman, Australian Medical Association spokesman, believes in looking beyond body size — instead focusing on fitness as a measure of true health. ‘We’ve been brainwashed to believe that healthy weight is a size 8 … We’re clearly not all meant to have a BMI of 22, or be a size eight or 10,’ he says. ‘Human beings are meant to come in all shapes and sizes. We have to allow our weight to be the healthiest it can be to us, not to anyone else.’”
“Paul Campos, law professor at the University of Colorado and author of The Obesity Myth, agrees. ‘What a healthy weight is for you as an individual has little or nothing to do with what a healthy weight is for anybody else,’ he explains. ‘Within a very broad range, a healthy weight is the weight that a particular individual maintains while living a healthy life.’”
“‘I don’t believe height and weight is a good indication of health,’ said Joanne Ikeda, co-director of the Center for Weight and Health at the University of California at Berkeley. ‘If a fat person or obese person has normal blood pressure, if their total cholesterol and glucose levels are normal and they are healthy, there is no reason they should necessarily have to lose weight.’”
Of course, I have no problem with people wanting to lose weight. That’s your choice. However, it’s important to realize that you don’t medically need to lose weight anymore than you do to be more attractive or beautiful. You are beautiful the way you are right now. You are uniquely you, and you don’t need to alter who you are for anyone. If this is intrinsically motivated, then fine, I wish you luck! If you want to keep eating Cheetos and drink Mountain Dew, then you should share your Mountain Dew with me. Just sayin’. =P
Well said, Taylor. This is all very important information.
I have had several long conversations about this lately. If you took my labs and pictures of me and a size 0 model and took them to a doctor and asked them to pick who they would assume the labs belonged to they would pick the model.
Internally I am in perfect health now (since I got my thyroid in check). Just because I'm overweight doesn't mean I'm not taking care of myself.
That's my goal, to be healthy and happy. If I am happy and health and a size 24 then so be it.
