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.
BMI is not a measure of health. It's crazy because I have always been underweight by that standard. 17.2 is the highest my BMI has ever been, despite having always ate lots of junk food and sweets. Yet no doctor has ever suggested I try to gain weight. But once you hit the overweight mark, you are immediately suggested to get back down into normal range. I don't think doctors should use BMI at all, really.
Posted by: Ashley | March 19, 2012 at 10:40 PM
i dont understand this blog, are you seriously arguing that being fat is not unhealthy when there are hordes of studies showing direct correlation between high BMI and a large number of health issues. are you saying that being fat is the symptom not the cause?
Posted by: daniel | March 20, 2012 at 01:07 AM