The Obesity Myth: Is Overweight Healthy?
The Obesity Myth challenges widely held beliefs regarding healthy weight. Written by Paul Campos, a Columbia Law professor and newspaper columnist, this book takes on the diet industry, respected medical journals and even the US Surgeon General.
Campos begins this expose with a thorough examination of "obesity research" and concludes:
- Overweight to moderately obese people have a longer average life span when activity levels and a balanced diet are accounted for.
- It is more harmful to your health to lose and then regain weight than it is to remain overweight.
- Most dieters are unsuccessful; therefore advocating weight loss for health is irresponsible.
Frankly, the amount of information presented in the beginning is overwhelming but necessary as the book takes on such giants.
In later chapters, Campos examines how society's views about weight influence our culture. His book is filled with sad and sometimes humorous anecdotes, including Campos' own story.
This book raises new doubts about relying on other's interpretation of data. It also confronts the destructive attitude that our country has about size.
Many thanks to Jill Gray who submitted this review.
Editor's Note: A new article in the Scientific American challenges this viewpoint. It claims that research showing overweight people have slightly better mortality than normal weight is flawed. - Jim
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You have to remember that I'm coming at this from a "it is time to STOP counting, STOP watching intake, and STOP feeling constantly guilty" point of view. There's a part of me that LOVES the idea of CRON, of keeping spreadsheets and being "perfect." But I'm trying to remove the moral element from food and trying to stop feeling like the less I eat the better until I spend most of the day hungry.
Maybe that stuff does lead to life extension - though from what I've seen, it does that by shutting off reproduction, which is very hard on the body. But for me, it's not just an issue of being hungry and uncomfortable. I don't function when not eating enough. I can't concentrate or think about anything BUT food.
There's a few different levels here. There's eating so much of foods that don't provide nutrition that your body doesn't function very well, there's eating a flexible diet where you have the energy to be active and intellegent, and there's eating so little that you're hungry, but maybe living more years at the end for it.
I don't see a point in glorfying the latter category. If I'm flailing and dizzy and useless (which happens to me at a FAR higher level of intake than most women my size... must be the muscles and running), why would I care if I'm healthy from 80-90 if I'm listless and unhappy for 90 years? Plus, I'd like to be able to get it on. :P
ReplyHiya :-) I'm not an advocate of CR. I agree with you totally, especially from where you're coming from. To me, you're talking a lot of sense--it's just that the post is about obesity and myths and we talked about the connection to longevity.
There's a line between obesity and CR. For me it about attaining a low body fat % naturally and simply maintaining.
We don't want neuroses around food, I totally agree with that, that's just adding to the problem. I don't think CR is something should worry about or even attempt but the fact remains that obesity is the wrong end of that line.
I'm a big fan of planning a model day of healthy food to overcome this constant thinking and worrying about food.
To be honest, although I write a hell of a lot about food, I never think about it on a personal level from day to day. I know what I'm having for breakfast, lunch and dinner because it's the same everyday but with different foods. I don't have to worry about nutrition or what I'm going to eat on a day to day basis.
I guess I'm obsessed with food in a different way--having overcome 13 years of hell via a radical diet, I see the massive potential for good and bad outcomes in nutrition.
We need answers because the answers have amazing power to affect our lives on all levels.
The future is raw food--it's going to take a little while to smooth out the edges but it's definately the future and it will transform everything--watch this space... :-)
~Mike
ReplyI didn't mean that I plan on running marathons every day or anything, but I haven't had anything but good impacts on my health from being physically fit. I eat a diet that is mostly raw, but I do eat some cooked foods as well. I eat a lot of raw veggies, raw fruits, berries, yogurt, lean proteins, and whole nuts. I don't really have to watch my calorie intake too rigidly, but I think that by eating a diet that is rich in antioxidants and low in processed foods, I'm doing something good for my body.
ReplyYou'd think eating healthfully and exercise would bring it off but it sure isn't that easy for me. I am about the size I was entering into my teenage years (ie, since I started making my own food choices instead of my parents). Last time I brought any real weight off was when I had an eating disorder. Not healthy.
I've been running 8 years. Bicycling for a few. Ran a marathon last year, will again this year--- and in 2008--- and thinking about adding a century to credentials as well.
ReplyI'm a certified personal trainer.
Still 20 lb over the weight I want to be... which even then would be 140 lb for 5'3.5 (20% body fat)
Thanks for responding to my point. :) I agree that a diet based in processed foods and a lifestyle without any exercise are not good for one's health. But if someone else has habits that are leading them to high risk of chronic disease, it's not really my problem. And since I'm pretty sure it's the habits that are the issue, not the weight, it's a bit presumptive to assume on sight alone that they are going to die a long, drawn-out death and REALLY presumptive to care when I don't care about any other stranger's health.
I do think about food on a personal level all the time, and it's kind of ridiculous. I used to eat about 2500-3000 calories a day on a five foot frame (that's a guess... I never counted back then, but I ate as much as the football player on my hall). For YEARS. And in the end, I ended up with a BMI of about 25.5. Now I eat significantly less, and run far more, and am down to a bit under 23. Yet every time I see someone crimizalizing people for being overweight, I criticize myself for eating more than a woman my size should, for not being 105 lbs. Every time I eat a serving of processed grains (which are less than half of my grains even on a bad day) or not getting 6+ servings of vegetables, I feel horrified by myself.
I think we've become too obsessed with weight and the health correlated with it as a barometer of morality, and as something worth judging in strangers. I know I have. Yes, I think that for any one person, healthy habits will do them a lot better than unhealthy ones. I'm not arguing that it's good to be overweight.
I just don't think it should matter to me what someone else weights. What matters to them is their health and their habits, which I can maybe guess at from first glance, but I certainly can't know with such certainty that it gives me a right to judge them.
ReplyMy mother-in-law, my father-in-law, my aunt, my grandmother ... in fact, the only under-80 deaths in my family were workaholic thin people who smoked.
Diabetes is not caused by obesity. Fat people do die from heart disease more often, but they live longer when diagnosed from cancer (substantially longer). The fattest woman still outlives the thinnest man.
ReplyThanks stand up doctor, this is what I was about to point out. Older people often have body fat percentages that can be considered to be obese, yet with low bone density and lack of muscle mass, this fact is obscured by BMI.
I find BMI very inaccurate. For example, I watched a weight loss programme where two sisters had their body fat tested. One was considered normal weight and the other was considered borderline obese according to body mass index. Well it turned out that even though there was a 40lb difference in weight between them, their body fat percentages were 28% and 31% respectively and so there was not a huge difference in body composition regardless of the extreme weight difference.
ReplyI guess I also should have pointed out that the sister with the normal BMI was not very active, pretty skinny but no muscle mass and the sister with the borderline obese BMI was very active, into sports and strength training.
ReplySpectra:
I plan on staying active as long as I possibly can. I don't plan on being an 80 year old that's stuck in a bed...I'm going to be out there running marathons! :)
---------------
Amen to that. :D
ReplyHave you considered what the term 'obesity' actually means? It's the condition where fat in the human body is increased to a point where it is associated with certain health conditions or increased mortality. It's typically evaluated by measuring BMI, which is, as you all know, the body mass index, the widely used method for estimating body fat.
This method doesn't take into account differing ratios of fat to muscle. Muscle is heavier than fat, as you all know also.
Lee Haney, a professional body builder with a world record for winning the most Mr. Olympia titles, is 180m tall and 111kg. His BMI would be 34.3... and that would be considered obese. But you could hardly say he was unfit.
ReplyI hope that you've figured this out with your "bodybuilder" example, but the BMI DOES NOT estimate body fat. That is not what it was ever intended for, and it's not what it does. I would be very surprised to meet someone whose BMI and BF% actually matched up.
Reply