Health At Every Size: Myth or Reality?

Check out my Terrmeister Fitness Channel on Youtube!!! https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCuXGN6-oGA-vBJ7OYdNZHCg 

Today’s topic:  

Health at any size

Sumo wrestlers are amazing athletes and when they are in the ring, they have to have enough power to get the other person out of the ring. These athletes train to keep up with their sport, like any other athlete. One man stopped training but still ate like he was training; needless to say the pounds came on. He has a host of health problems, joints ache and walking is labored for him. You can even eat yourself into an alcoholic liver; I’ve seen it in a 12 year old girl…

Underweight people face a lot of problems too from not fueling their body properly, hair, nails and teeth may be brittle as well as bones, and they may look skeletal because there’s no fat on them. We need fat to process our food and vitamins.

Many people say that you can’t gauge someone’s activity level by their size, and for the most part that’s true but you can just about bet that most people who are overweight don’t have a massive amount of activity going their way and I mean fitness. We’re busy today but we don’t make time for fitness because it’s looked at as something else to do and making time for it is silliness.

So being both overweight and underweight pose risks, risks that make the body work harder or store more nutrients thus in underweight women they will get irregular periods because the body must store blood because it’s not getting what it needs. Brittle bones will bend under the weight of a person because it’s not being fortified the way it should be, mouth ulcers are another risk factor. WE don’t hear about this a lot because we are so focused on how being overweight is bad for your health

I recently came across something that said Health at Every Size and it has ties to the fat acceptance movement. I outlined just now how this is a bunch of rubbish based more on emotion than actual science, and common sense. My main issue with it is that many peoples’ version of health is subjective. I could be healthy because I’m not 500 pounds even if I eat very unhealthy food every day. I could consider myself healthy because of a goalpost I set that is not actually in the correct picture of health like: Eating habits, do I get enough sleep? Do I have enough activity in my day to burn off more than I take in if my goal is losing weight? Do I have proper balance in my health goals? What are my goals and how do I meet them in a healthy way that doesn’t mean I starve myself or eat too much thus sabotaging myself?

There was a study a man pointed to saying that overweight people aren’t prone to health problems because of their size. However, I wonder about the activity level they had and how they lived day to day. 9 times out of 10 if you’re not taking control of your health in a balanced way, the same participants may come back years later with obesity related illnesses.

A doctor writes on their blog: Weighty Matters dated December of 2013 My concerns are simple. While I'm a strong supporter of the notion that scales don't measure the presence or absence of health, it seems to me that HAES proponents often takes this concept further than it ought - both in terms of cherry picking and promoting confirmation bias tweaking data, and in terms of reacting aggressively when anyone suggests weight may be a valid source of concern to an individual or a physician. Yesterday I received an email from someone who has had some struggles with HAES and I asked if I might post their email anonymously so as to see if their experiences were unique and unfortunate for them, or par for the course and unfortunate for HAES.

The "community" has become less about health at any size. It has become "Only healthy at larger sizes". It was noted that people who gained weight for health reasons were OK (that intentional weight change is acceptable). People who benefited from weight loss, however, were villains, lying, or anomalies. (Their intentional weight change is bad, offensive, and "dangerous") Health concerns for people at smaller sizes were/are irrelevant.

Another person stated and I don’t see how they could say this with a straight face

"-  Stable fat is blown out of proportion as a health risk (even dreaded "tummy fat"), but yo-yoing weights common to dieters do harm health.

-  The "ironclad" notion that obesity leads to early death is wrong: Mortality data show "overweight" people, on average, live longest, and moderately "obese" people have similar longevity to those at weights deemed "normal" and advisable.

-  Life spans have lengthened almost in lockstep with waistlines over the last few decades, which should make you wonder about the supposed deadliness of fat."

So I ran over the risks of being overweight and underweight. They pose unique risks that now are not so unique because we’re living in an overweight society. Unfortunately, health at every size has been used to take something that is good…body positivity and saying that you shouldn’t look at the observable consequences for the sake of feelings. People are dying of obesity related diseases more than tobacco, car accidents and guns most likely combined. Yet because peoples’ feelings will be hurt we tend to couch the terms we use to talk about it for fear of offense. Like I continue to say there is a huge difference between being mean spirited and frank talk about obesity. Health At Every Size is rubbish and I can’t endorse it because on average, obese people have a greater energy expenditure than their thin counterparts due to the energy required to maintain an increased body mass. On average, an underweight person must rely on sweets and other energy pick me ups because they’re not getting the amount of calories they need. Most people in Western society who don’t eat in a balanced way will notice that they need that afternoon pick me up…which is why energy drinks are so popular today.

Thorific Thursday Fitness as a Mental Game