There's this long-held myth here that if you're slim, you're fitter than the fatter person next to you.
Soooo NOT TRUE!
A slim person may actually have higher cholesterol levels than the fatter one, surprise! surprise!
It's time we become more enlightened in this area. There are many reasons why someone ends up fatter, amongst which could be - hormonal imbalances / hormonal medication, plain ol' genetics, laying off exercises for a period due to injuries, etc etc.
I'm reading this very interesting book now, 'The Fat Girl's Guide to Life' written by Wendy Shanker, a big girl herself who's one of US Weekly's Fashion Police and has appeared on TV shows like CNN and The View. She has also written for Glamour, Shape, Cosmopolitan, Marie-Claire and MTV.
Here is a very interesting excerpt from her book :
"Plenty of research suggests that obesity - at least as it's clinically defined - is not nearly the death sentence that most media outlets and weight loss companies would have you believe. Half of the obesity battle is won when you start reading between the lines. You hvae to look for alternative opinions, because they don't get a lot of publicity. No one makes money from telling you that you're fine just the way you are. Writer Paul Campos re-evaluated the weight-loss industry standards in a shocking essay in the New Republic called, 'The Weighting Game : What the Diet Industry Won't Tell You.' This essay is the Pentagon Paper of fat. Campos reveals the following mind-blowing facts :
- "A moderately active fat person is likely to be far healthier than someonen who is svelte but sedantary. What's worse, Americans' (largely unsuccessful) efforts to make themselves thin through dieting and supplements are themselves a major cause of the ill health associated with being overweight - meaning that America's war on fat is actually helping cause the very disease it's supposed to cure."
- "There is in fact no medical basis for the govt's BMI recommendations or the public health policies based on them... The BMI range correlating with the lower mortality rate is extremely broad, from about 18-32, meaning that a woman of average height can weight anywhere within an 80-pound range without seeing any statistically meaningful change in her risk of premature death."
- "In a decided majority of studies, groups of people labelled 'overweight' by current standards are found to have equal or lower mortality rates than groups of supposedly ideal-weight individuals."
- "Large-scale mortality studies indicate that women who are 50 or even 75 pounds 'overweight' will on average still have longer life expectancies than those who are 10 to 15 pounds 'underweight', aka. fashionably thin."
- "Numerous studies have shown that weight loss of [20-30 pounds](and indeed as little as 10 pounds) leads to an increased risk of premature death, sometimes by an order of several hundred percent."
"Campos summarizes : "In the end, nothing could be easier than to win the war on fat : All we need to do is stop fighting it." Not a popular or widely publicised opinion, I assure you, because information learned is minds relieved and money lost.
"Campos is not the only one reassessing traditional weight-loss beliefs. In his book 'Big Fat Lies', Dr Glen Gaesser states, 'The idea that a given body weight, or percentage of body fat, is a meaningful indicator of health, fitness, or prospects for longevity is one of our most firmly-held beliefs, and one of our most dubious propositions... [When] you scrutinize all the relevant data, it becomes apparent that the health risks of obesity, as well as the purported benefits of weight loss, have been greatly exaggerated."
Well... not exactly information that we're used to reading, right?
It ties in though, with what I see on a daily basis in my workplace... we do not have a higher proportion of fat folks being admitted for, say, stroke, compared to thin folks. This observation applies to people with diabetes and various heart problems too.
Hmm... maybe, it's time to slowly start re-thinking our common notions of fat and fit.
One closing quote from the same book,
"... I draw the conclusion that it's not the FAT that causes disease (except perhaps in the case of estrogen-related breast cancer), but a SEDANTARY LIFESTYLE that causes fat, that causes disease."
