Fat Chicks Rule

Stigma never works

I don't really want to give a lot of time to the HBO series Weight of the Nation, the 8o million part series (Okay, it's actually four parts) about poor stupid fat people who will only get better if they learn to put down the doughnut and run 5 miles. Looking  at their web site, it looks like the same shit different day because the first thing it does was start us off with a fat joke. As you can see we fat people are so heavy we are putting cracks into the United States. My only hope is no one will watch it. I don't want have to go into detail about it because ASDAH has given us ten reasons to be concerned about it and a viewer's guide. Plus Dr. Deah Schwartz also weighs in.

And this Jezebel article sums it up nicely:

I know this is a terribly uncool, bleeding-heart thing to say, but language like "crush the United States into oblivion" hurts people. It sets up fat people—in case you forgot, fat people are people—as not just the adversaries of our own health or some lady's airplane elbow room or your boner (the usual crimes), but as the future downfall of humanity itself.

Oh and Michele Simon won't watch it either.

How many years has it been since we got serious about the "weight" problem in this country? Yet despite pushing for dieting, removing treats from schools, taking fat kids away from their parents, victimizing the poor, and stigmatizing, we are still fat. Despite that our weight is leveling off, we are living longer (BTW living longer is the biggest drain on our health care system. It's just easier to blame fat people). The answer to every ailment has become weight loss. It's an easy out, far easier that looking at the complex issues of health including genetics, the environment (Not just food but pollution) and yo-yo dieting (I say my fatness is about 50% genetic, 40% dieting and 10% other). No matter what the issue a person has, if they are fat the answer is always weight loss. 

However weight loss doesn't work for the majority of people.  We've been dieting, doing lifesysle changes, drugs and surgery and we are still fat. We are also being made fun off a lot and it is considered perfectly acceptable. For example a NYTimes article covered whether plane travel is safe for fat people since the seats and safety belts aren't made for big people (Let's ignore the fact that is still safer to fly than to drive), an article in gizmodo picks up this story and instead of chastaise the lack of safety in the airline industry, makes fun of fat people. 

That's right, obese air travel could kill you. Standard seats are a legacy of old airplane design, and as people get plumper, they haven't been rethought. 

First off what is "Obese air travel." Is that a travel agency or finally our own airlines where seats are made for us? 

Second getting plumper is wrong, we've apparently been getting plump for about 30 years. Yet despite 30 years of dieting, we are still fat.

 The hystiera of Weight of the Nation will do nothing to make people healthy, it will make continue the fear mongering and stereotypes about fat people. It will make fat people the villains, the victims and will continue to marginized them. 

An article in Reuters show prejudice affects behaviors. 

The stigma also hurts the efforts of America's 73 million obese adults and 12 million obese children to get back to a healthy weight: Targets of stigma often fall into depression or withdraw socially. Both make overeating, binge eating, and a sedentary existence more likely, studies show.

It's funny because a similar article about stigma has a picture of a women's back with fat rolls who is wearing an exercise bra. 

 I don't find this unattractive but others might find this humiliting, a headless fattie with rolls of fat. To me this underhanded hatred is more dangerous than the outright stigma because it's ingrained. This woman is wearing an exercise bra. She is being healthy, she's exercising, just like her fucking doctor told her to but seeing this picture she might be embarrassed by it. Maybe even humiliated enough to not exercise anymore. 

Stigma is far worse because the often those who create stigma either don't think they are doing it or don't realize they are. The person who choose this photo, did they think they were creating stigma? Or groups like the Rudd center who always get quoted when talking abut how horrible stigma is don't think they are the cause of it. The truth is this, they can't ever end stigma until they also realize that fat people are people who exists, good or bad. Overeating or listening to body ques and that being fat is as just a normal state as being thin. 

What if a picture like this was used instead?

 

Dieting, HAES, Doctors and the Flea

Happy (one day belated) International No Dieting Day! Today (or any day you want) is when we cast off the dieting shackles and learn to eat and move normally. I started my blog in 2005 with the same advice I have now: Diets. Don't. Work. This includes non-diet diets such as Jenny Craig and Weight Watchers. They have a high failure/ low success rate (especially among their spokespersons). Eightly million people in the USA are currently on diets and most will not succeed because they are often fighting against biology. Dieting can cause disordered eating, binge eating, body dysmorphic disorder, low self-esteem, health issues from yo-yo dieting and a hit to your wallet. Most dieting plans are fewer calories than your body needs to function. Instead of fighting against your body, listen to it. Feed it when it's hungry, and put food that it likes in it. 

To me something like HAES (TM) is a good outlook on health for people of all sizes who want to incorporate healthy habits without being dictated by the scale. I have mentioned before when I was dieting everything was black and white. On the diet, everything had to be perfect in what I ate, and how I moved. If was good, my self worth was high.  Off the diet was binging on unhealthy food, no movement and self loathing. Today I try to eat a "diet" of mostly fruits and vegatables and move every day. I don't stop doing one healthy habit because I didn't do the other.

This is something doctors in the UK might want to take notice of. Apparently a survey of some UK doctors found that 54% of them don't think smokers or fatties deserve treatment for non-emergency care. (Good thing it was a small sample.) 

Bedfordshire PCT, for example, decided to withhold hip and knee surgery from obese patients until they had slimmed down by 10% or had a body mass index of under 35. Similarly, North Essex PCT obliged obese people to lose 5% of their bodyweight and keep the pounds shed for at least six months before receiving treatment.

So imagine you are fat and while walking, you trip on something and hurt your knee. You aren't dead or have a life threatening condition. You can still walk but boy does your knee hurt. You go to the doctor who tells you he won't fix your knee unless you lose 25 pounds. Where does that leave you? Even if you believed in the myth that fattness is 100% to do with eating too much and not exercising, how are you supposed to exercise on a bum knee? What might  happen is you end up lying around and eating more. What the doctor needs to do is FIX YOUR FUCKING KNEE.

This is has very little to do with Healthcare and more to do with nickle and diming to save money. We are moving into a scary place where are casting those who are sick or preseived to be sick to just let them die. And in the case of fat people these aren't actually health judgements but moral ones. 

Ragen Chastain on her blog sums it up pretty well.

I will say it again: My life is not worth less than a thin person’s life. My health is not less important than a thin person’s health.  I do not need to do anything to “deserve” the same healthcare that people with a lower BMI receive.

And to go completely off topic, to escape fat hatred for one day, if you are in the New York Metro area, get yourself to the Big Fat Flea. I took about 10 bags over to their storage unit yesterday, so I expect a lot of awesome clothes. 

 

 

Food waste, Let's move and Environmental justice

This week I want to talk about food waste. I recently read a book called Greenwashed, which, while the author had no problem with CSAs, local or organic, her primary concern was food waste. (Of course according to stereotypes if you're fat no food goes to waste.)   April Herndon of Psychology Today criticizes Let's Move for the same reasons I have. We need to encourage healthy eating and movement for all children (not just fat ones) and have access to food.

Given that we can all probably agree that children deserve access to a variety of foods and the ability to play and be active, why the focus on obesity? Because obesity has become a convenient means of motivating people to care about issues like nutritious food and safe neighborhoods and playgrounds for children who are members of marginalized groups, groups that mainstream America may not care about otherwise.

Let's say in 30 years Let's Move had increased fitness and access to nutritious food but we still have fatties. The program will be a failure. Exactly as 1994 version of "Let's Move" Called "Shape Up America" which is almost 20 years old and yes, there are still fatties.

Two recent studies have shown that Food deserts may be a myth. 

But two new studies have found something unexpected. Such neighborhoods not only have more fast food restaurants and convenience stores than more affluent ones, but more grocery stores, supermarkets and full-service restaurants, too. And there is no relationship between the type of food being sold in a neighborhood and obesity among its children and adolescents.

What does this have to do with food waste? I have also mentioned before that starvation kills more people than obesity ever will.  The United States has high rates of food insecurity (i.e. we aren't starving to death but we aren't getting enough food). Many of the states with high food insecurity also have high rates of fatness.  Most of those who have dieted know you lose weight then gain it all back plus more. (I'm fairly certain I weight about 50 lbs more than I should because of dieting.)  Could it be possibly that people in food insecure households are technically suffering from the dieting/binge cycle? We also waste food, up to 30% in the USA and up to 50% worldwide which is a travesty.

We again view fatness in simplistic terms. No matter what, fat is always going to be labeled as eating too much, that's it end of story. No one looks at other issues, for example  food insecurity, and say other things such as poor medical care or how about pollution? Poor neighborhoods often find themselves near pollution sources.  Parts of the Bronx have high asthma rates because they are near expressways.  There are now links between pollution and diabetes AND air pollution and fatness. (Oh and Diabetes and stress as well.)  We don't really look at medical care, food insecurity and pollution because these are complex situations that require actually hard work. It isn't easy compared to telling the nation to stop being so fat.

Cake, Clothes, and Consumption

When I wrote my essay for the Fat Studies Reader one of my source materials spoke about the book Jermina J by Jane Green. In the book the main character is fat and to impress a man she never met she drops 80 pounds through crash dieting then buys a whole new waredrobe.  The essay spoke about the issue of consumption. Fat people are often the examples of consumption gone wild. We obviously steal food from hungry babies while driving our gas guzzling automobiles.  However the essay points out the Jermina consumes much more after she becomes thin. When Jerminia is fat, she consumes less clothes, when she is thin, she buys a new waredrobe. She consumes way more materialic things than she did when she was fat. (And btw, I am not saying thin people consume more or less than fat people. It's Clothing and fashion instustry consumption, and they happen to make mostly thin people's clothes.)

Fat people, being shunned by the mainstream fashion industry, consume less clothes. I barely buy new clothes, instead chose to get most of my selection at Big Fat Flea (formerly the Fat Girl's Flea Market) (May 13 btw, you better be there) and keeping my old clothes in good repair. 

*

Oh look it's me and the fabulous Lesley Kinzel of fatshionistas  who also wrote a fabulous book based on her blog: Two whole cakes. Leslie is a self described "clothes horse" but she lamants in her book what many other fat people can share with her, unable to find clothes in her size. Another book I happened to be reading at the same time Greenwashed talks about the immense amount of clothes waste (clothes only have  ten wear lifes span. I have a skirt from high school still in my closet.) 

Getting back to Leslie's book. It's a short but intense read of vingettes and most fat people could share stories almost to the same as hers.  If you are unfamiliar with where the term Two Whole Cakes comes from. On Fatshionistas, there was a troll who on another board said that all fat people eat Two whole cakes a day (at my worst binging (i.e. not eating normally), I only managed to get most of one and I got really sick afterwards). One particular story I shared with Leslie was about going to Jenny Craig (in my case Nutrisystem) eating the gross food, losing weight in the beginning than tapering off. For me and for Leslie, both the tapering off and the hungry were the reasons we "gave" up (or our bodies did.) In Leslie's case she walked away, in mine Nutrisystem went "out of business". I got a whole refund of $89.  

So recommend this Earth day that you buy Leslie's book (available as an ebook) and fat people tell the fashion industry to stick it, you are consuming less of their crappy badly made clothes. 

 *(Note: purple shirt, Fat girl's flea market,  Pink Jacket, Re/Dress)

Diabetes, Autism and Pepsi oh my!

This starts with two facts,

1. Just because you are diabetic doesn't mean you are fat;

2. Just because you are fat doesn't mean you will get diabetes. 

I felt the need for these two facts to be fresh in people's minds for the two infuriating stories I am covering today. 

No one knows for sure what causes autism. It could be anything, genetics, low birth rates, later in life pregnancies and better diagnosis (autism may have been diagnosed differently in the past as retardation or bad behavior). Now comes a new study saying fat mothers are bad because they are giving their children autism. After all every single autistic child has a fat momma right? Right?  

 

As far as fat women and autism, there could a host of reasons for the increased rate including: dieting, weight loss surgery, poor prenatal care (there was a study probably more OB/GYN doctors not giving fat women the best of care), and the high rates at which doctors perform C-sections on fat women.

 

Or could it be that the study itself was based on fat women with metabolic disorders? Not healthy fat women. The gist is women with metabolic diseases might have a higher rate of autism but that doesn't mean fat mothers have more kids with autism (or even that MD have more autistic kids; the sample size was 1000 from California only and self reported). It is the false assumption that all fat women have or will get diabetes and hypertension. Diabetes is a complex disease. Merely simplifying it down to weight loss creates a horrific risk for thin people who have it in their family. 

 

And it is our irresponsible media that ran with "all the fat mother's fault", because in reality what they really want is fat women to stop breeding. After all fat parents are more likely to make more fat people and we wouldn't want that. 

I've spoken before on soda. It's a tax that doesn't affect me because I don't drink soda. I'm now perfectly willing to have a tax on soda as long as it's on Pepsi. Pepsico, yes the soda maker is now charging it's smoking and fat bottlers and drivers $50 more per month for health coverage. Yes,

Pepsico the makers of Pepsi, 7up, Mountain Dew, Lipton, Lays potato chips wants to charge "unhealthy" employees $50 more a month. What next? Is Marlboro going to charge more for smokers? (Also all these employees are unionized but union busting is another story for another blog.)

And when they talk about fat, they actually mean "Obesity related diseases" which at this rate is diabetes, hypertension, cancer, global warming, autism, plane crashes, stroke, car accidents, and plumber's crack. Now if you have one of these diseases, but are thin do you get $50 charge and if you are fat and healthy do you still get that charge? Targeting diseases is a horrific slippery slope that will lead to employers hiring only perceived healthy people, and firing anyone who gets a disease. It also faults diseases on those who got them. We need to learn that it's very rare that someone brings a disease on to themselves. 

So now I'm for a soda tax. $50 tax on all pepsi products to go into a fund to cover the employees forced to pay this ridiculousness. 

Fatties need not apply.

Forgive the fact that I might curse, and completely rant in this post but I've come across three stories that are really pissing me off. 

Let's start with the first one, namely Michelle Obama on the Biggest Loser. Biggest Loser is a irresponsible show that makes contestants lose as much weight as possible through starvation and over exercising. This contradicts the the National Institute of Health tips on safe weight loss which they recommend 1/2 to 2 pounds a week. (You know the NIH which is a government agency whose big boss would be the President) As I wrote in March 2010, a contestant lost 34 pounds in a week.

That's not even pissing me off as much as this story:

So after showing that the great American Obesity Epidemic is finally dying down and while we might not be getting thinner, we aren't getting fatter. There may be different reasons for this trend. The money spent on the diet industry is still high but people may be doing less crash diets or people may also be trying to get healthy and in the process losing some or no weight but not becoming skinny.

So because of that there is more this push on this new trend of "skinny fat." Skinny fat means your BMI while still valuable and defining your entire life and that if you are 25.1 you better get on to that treadmill, you are pre-obese. Some scientists are questioning the value BMI, because you see some people who are "obese" BMI are athletes, so they are starting to look at body fat. You'll need 25% body fat to be normal but banal as athletes are now super normal. 

So while I don't agree on body fat being an indicator of health, does this mean we really can say bye to BMI.

Not according to New York State Health Commissioner Nirav Shah.

Based on their findings, Braverman and his coauthor, New York State Commissioner of Health Nirav Shah, M.D., say the BMI threshold for obesity, which now stands at 30, should be lowered to 24 for women and 28 for men.

So congrads women who are 24.1, you're obese. And congratulations Nirav Shah who if anyone adapts your guidelines, this country will have an epidemic of eating disorders beyond imagination which would be fine for this hospital: 

Overweight? Then don’t bother applying for a job at Citizens Medical Center, a Victoria, Texas hospital whose hiring policy prohibits the hiring of people who are obese.

The Texas Tribune reports that the hospital’s hiring policy was implemented a year ago, and does not permit the hiring of anyone with a body mass index (BMI) greater than 35. BMI is a common way of measuring body fat; a person with a BMI of 30 or greater is considered obese.

So if you're a doctor, nurse, PA, orderly etc and you go on an interview at Citizens Medical Center. Surely with a name like that, they are good and fair people who treat their staff as nicely as their patients. You dazzle them with impressive resume, intuitive and people skills. Everyone likes you but they have one more test,

The scale.

Sorry you have a BMI of 37, you cannot work at Citizen's hospital. We don't care that you don't have any health problems, we don't care if you're Dr. House, you are a big fat fattie fat and we only want you here if we can perform dangerous weight loss surgery on you.

Tell them that something stinks on their facebook or email them info@citizensmedicalcenter.org And if you live in that area of Texas be sure to let them know you will never consider Citizens Hospital as your health center.

I don't want to leave you with stories that will piss you off, so here's a good one about learning to stop putting down your body.

I have a very strange allergy. Some people are allergic to wheat, others are allergic to cats. I'm allergic to hearing women put down their appearance. I use the word allergy because something truly visceral happens to me: my toes curl, my hair stands on end, and I stumble over my words as I try to come up with the appropriate, scripted-yet-sincere response.

No fat vegans? And another traumatic day at the shopping mall.

Physicians for "responsible medicine" have unveiled an ad campaign whose only purpose seems to insult fat people, blonds, and vegans. The campaign is for eating less or no meat but you wouldn't know it from the ad they use. One man has to sit next to a rude fattie who carelessly forgets to say excuse me and deliberately barrels through to his window seat. (Quite possibly because what we didn't see was the thin man deliberately not moving his legs so the larger man can get through.) The thin man on the other aisle adverts disaster when a fattie with a ticket for that seat is turned away because this thin man is the king of the plane with the power move those horrible fatties to the back of the plane (Did PFRM forget plane seats are assigned?) He could do this because TA-DAH he has spent a whole 10 bucks to humiliate a fat person and be able to sit next to a hot blond thin vegan.  (Personally I would like to sit next to the original guy who looks like he's cool and laid back).  The ad ends with the slender woman yakking on about the evils of meat.

What any of this has to do with the fact that airlines like to crush as many people together as possible per flight to compensate for crappy business pratcices is beyond me. For some reason this "option" has been pushed on American Airlines. I mean does American have an all you can eat meat buffet? If they offer bacon, I may very well drop my boycott of them.

Anyway, this seems to be the intended message:

Fat people are fat because they eat meat and are too stupid to realize that meat makes you fat. I'm sure all the fat vegans and vegetarians out there might have something else to say about that.

Vegans are all thin, slender and blond and will talk your ear off. Absolutely no vegans are non-white. They especially aren't Asian or Indian.

The ad is confusing about what they are trying to push and it seems to go out of its way to stigmaized fat people.

Write them a new asshole:membership@pcrm.org. 

Speaking of stigmaized: Unfortunately this economy has claimed a fat positive causelity, namely the wonderful store Re/Dress. The physical store closed in November, but the owner still has chic clothes available online.

For me this is bad because I have a body that fits no cookie cutter. For the most part I have to try on everything.  I was in need for a dress shirt and my only option (which I thought at the time was a good one) was the Avenue. I don't have any problem admitting I've gained some middle age weight and that I'm creeping closer to size 22 (although some 20's still fit). I went to the Avenue, grabbed two blouses both 2x and 3x. I was surprised to find the 3x was tight. All the 2x and 3x clothes in my closet fit, so while I got pissed off that the Avenue was making sizes too small, I was at least used to that (another store Rainbow did the same thing).  Surely they had a 4x, 24 I could wear?

No, not a one. I couldn't find a single fucking dress shirt in 4x or 24. I walked out of a store with a frilly tank top to wear under a jacket, annoyed at how even  a plus size store was "sizing" me out.

What am I getting to?

Ah yeah. The fat girl's flea market, now known as the Big Fat Flea. Why the name change because guess what big handsome men? They'll be carrying men's clothes this year.

I'm fairly certain that at the flea I will find a nice dress shirt, whether it be 2x, 3x, or 4x. 

So Sunday May 13th, if you live in the Tri-state area, come to the flea. If you don't, this might be a good time to visit New York City. I won't say it's a fabulous place, but on May 13 at the Big Fat Flea it will be. 

The good, the bad and the nutty.

The good

This awesome billboard has gone up in Atlanta until the end of may. 

 

The California weight loss clinics I wrote about last September that push lapband surgery as an easy and simple way to lose weight are being investigated. 

The ubiquitous ad campaign and the surgeons affiliated with it are under intense scrutiny. At least three wrongful death lawsuits have been filed, and the Los Angeles County Coroner is investigating one of the deaths. And according to a spokesman at the California Department of Insurance, the agency has initiated an investigation into allegations of insurance fraud.

The Bad

The April issue of Vogue has a story about a mother, Dara-Lynn Weiss, who put her 7 year old daughter on a diet because *gasp* her daughter was fat. Her response wasn't to get her daughter to eat healthier and move more, but an actual diet that included skipping meals  (she didn't allow her daughter to have dinner because she had a big lunch), moralization of food (foods became 'good' and' bad'), and no attempts at moderation. (Her daughter is not allowed pizza at the weekly school pizza day because she ate a corn salad.) The mother herself clearly has issues with food.  Projection, anyone?

I'm not a fortune teller but I think I see anoxeria or bulimia in her future or she might actually be *gasp* fat.

Meanwhile in Melbourne, Australia, Amy Smith the CEO of Jenny Craig Australasia, will be speaking at the  conference for educators for girls. It is igniting a storm of protest. 

On May 25 Amy Smith, the CEO of Jenny Craig, will present to a conference of educators for the Alliance of Girls' Schools (AGSA). Described as a "champion of women's health" by Catherine Misson, Principal of Melbourne Girls Grammar School, Jenny Craig's CEO will be enlisted to "inspire" attendees: what they learn will impact on what they bring back to the classroom.

Already letters from health professionals have begun flooding in, with some voicing their protests from as far as the US and Middle East. They all agree on one thing: Global giant Jenny Craig, which profits from the billion-dollar diet industry, is not an appropriate 'leader' for educators of young girls.

Sign the petition here against it.

The nutty.

From my neck of the woods, New York City Mayor Bloomberg has decided that certain foods can't be donated to the poor and homeless because *gasp* they can't tell if the how much salt, fat and fiber the food has.

Glenn Richter arrived at a West Side synagogue on Monday to collect surplus bagels — fresh nutritious bagels — to donate to the poor. However, under a new edict from Bloomberg’s food police he can no longer donate the food to city homeless shelters. 

So if you're homeless, hungry and poor in New York, make sure you dumpster dive for some carrots instead of getting some fresh bagels. The bagels might make you fat and we can't have that happening. 

Real Habit Heroes

An article from the Vancover Sun asked these questions:

What's more important to your health: eating plenty of fruits and vegetables, or sporting a healthy waist-line? What about an active lifestyle vs. an optimal body mass index (or BMI, a measure of height vs. weight)?

Most medical professioners and organizations seem to think being in that arcane 18.5 to 24.9 BMI range is the most important thing you can do for your health. Even if never in your adult life you have been in that range and all attempts end up making you fatter.  My healthy weight using that standard would put me at 154 lbs. A number I've never been at even at the best of my dieting days. 

Going back the past few weeks about the scare monger campaign of CHOA and the Disney portrayal of fat people as villains, an article in CNN points out the increase of fat hatred and fear of fat in young children.

Children pick up on stated and unstated messages from their parents and media starting from the time they can open their eyes, quickly learning what the ideal person for their gender looks like. When parents are more concerned with weight, the children are more likely to have the same concerns. 

It's bad enough that children have to deal with teasing from their peers but they don't need it from adults as well. CHOA thought they were helping children by being scary.  All these scare tactics do is create a fear of fat. Kids make fun of you and adults tell you will get horrible diseases and die early if you aren't thin. 

Linda Bacon's article in the Huffington Post points out 

In other words, as long as we're focused on changing our bodies -- which the data shows isn't going to happen for most people, anyway -- we are missing the real benefits that come from caring for our bodies.

We need to break the dieting habit and learn the most important one, really caring for your body. Listen to it, give it foods and movement it likes. Don't starve it, don't hurt it. Just accept we all don't come from the same cookie cutter. 

 

 

Fat, Happy and HAES.

A study at Warwick university indicated that you remain happy in your old age regardless of your weight. 

The researchers also found that being overweight or obese did not have a significant impact on mental well-being levels, with people with a BMI of more than 30 showing similar mental quality of life levels to those considered to be a healthy weight...

...We suggest that this could be due to better coping abilities, an interpretation supported by previous research showing older people tend to have internal mechanisms to deal better with hardship or negative circumstances than those who are younger.

The good news is being fat or thin in your old age should not effect your well being. As I grow older conformist appearence doesn't bother me as much. I no longer care if I'm fat, have cooties, sport a stylish haircut or wear this season's fashion.  Coming to terms with being fat has given me a tremedous sense of wellbeing.  I think as you get older, stigma about your appearence doesn't effect you as much. Such as the scene in Fried Green Tomatoes where Kathy Bates' character hits the car of the younger and "prettier" girls who had previously mocked her due to her middle age.

Speaking of feeling good, Yahoo Shine has an article about health rules you can break including one surprising HAES rule. One which I have mentioned here about a zillion times (okay, maybe only a hundred million). Eat healthy and move and let your body decide what your normal weight is. 

(Joanne) Ikeda advises her patients to stop obsessing over their BMI, eat a nutritious diet, and log 150 minutes of exercise per week. "A healthy lifestyle results in a healthy weight." 

A New York Times blog points out the importance of exercise for disease prevention. 

To avoid that fate, he says, keep moving, even if in small doses. “When I’m really busy, I make sure to get up and walk around the office or jog in place every hour or so,” he says. Wear a pedometer if it will nudge you to move more. “You don’t have to run marathons,” he says. “But the evidence is clear that you do need to move.”

I've mentioned several times on this blog, the importance of movement and that you move to the best of your abilties (which may mean anything from a short walk around the block to running a marathon.)

So eat right, exercise and be happy!