WEIGHT a second…
You can be obese and remain healthy.
Let me say that again for the folks in the back.
You can be obese and remain healthy.
When I tell people what I do, many individuals are instantly confused because weight and health are so inextricably tied together in their minds that they cannot imagine one without the other.
Many people (usually thin) are also sometimes initially defensive, and borderline angry.
We are so conditioned in our culture to believe that if we are heavy and choose to not try and manipulate our weight we are essentially giving up on ourselves and our health. That we are somehow wrong.
This couldn’t be farther from the truth. It is true that weight can be an aspect of our health and can be included in an overall analysis of our health, but to try and achieve health through focusing on our weight is never going to work.
Not only is it not going to work, but it actually causes harm.
The pursuit of weight loss is the main driver of eating disorders/disordered eating patterns, a poor body image, and a preoccupation with food and our bodies that can greatly interfere with the quality of our lives.
Anorexia nervosa carries the highest death rate of any mental illness, with up to 20% of those who die from anorexia dying by suicide.
So if the story goes:
Our cultural obsession with being thin….
is the main contributor to dieting
which is the main contributor to eating disorders
which is one of the main contributors to death from mental illness,
….it makes sense that we could save countless lives if we could change the narrative.
That narrative being that in order to be healthy and worthy of love and belonging, you must be thin.
Because here is the thing, we do not need to be thin to be healthy, and we do not need to be thin to be worthy of love and belonging.
Unfortunately, that is not the story we are told.
Obviously, we don’t need the research to be told that we are just as worthy of love and belonging if we are fat as if we are thin (although we sometimes do need to be convinced), but I know many of us need the research on weight and how it affects our health as we have been conditioned to believe something entirely different than what I am telling you.
Which is why I put together this post here, which is full of the research so you can see for yourself.
The evidence is in folks, and we are pretty dang positive that weight is not a good indicator of health.
Did you know that there exists something called the ‘obesity paradox’, where numerous studies have reported that obesity offers a survival advantage among patients with cardiovascular disease, cancer, diabetes, respiratory disease, and renal disease, among other conditions?
Basically, these studies say that if you have one of these diseases and are obese, your chances of dying are lower than if you are thin.
It’s also been shown that obese individuals in the ICU fare better than individuals with a “normal” or “underweight” BMI in the ICU. Clearly, this “cold hard truth” that being overweight is the most direct route to poor health and dying early simply does not hold up when you look at the body of research.
If the idea that weight needs to be uncoupled from health brings up feelings of discomfort, anger, or judgment, I encourage you to get curious about these reactions.
Especially if you are a thin person.
If you are a thin person, you automatically benefit from believing the lie that people in larger bodies are unhealthy, lazy, (insert whatever other kind of derogatory descriptor you can think of) due to the higher social status it affords you.
This is simply a reality of living in a world where thin people have privileges that fat people do not.
Have you heard of Ignaz Semmelweis?
He was a 19th century Hungarian doctor who hypothesized that washing your hands between patient care prevented infections in hospitals. When he brought this life-saving evidence to the medical community, he was laughed off stage.
The prevalent belief at the time was that doctors’ hands were clean due to their high social status, so to say otherwise was considered blasphemy.
He was told he was crazy. His medical license was revoked. He spent his remaining years in a mental hospital where he eventually died in isolation after being given a severe beating when he tried unsuccessfully to escape.
20 years after his death, his theory was proven. In hindsight, it’s easy to see how wrong the medical community was in not believing the evidence. Obviously washing your hands between surgeries prevents infection!
But, as we continue to see today, this knee-jerk reaction to not believe something that contradicts societal norms (no matter how much evidence is present) continues to exist.
And it’s known as the Semmelweis reflex.
We can see this in climate change, in the eyes of those who die in hospitals from Covid-19 while continuing to believe it doesn’t exist and isn’t a real threat, in folks who still believe the earth is flat.
In the societal belief that obesity is a disease that needs to be cured.
That fat people are lazy, bad, a waste of space.
That weight loss always improves health.
Contrary to the overwhelming lack of evidence that these ideas are true, and the huge amount of evidence that contradicts these ideas, most people continue to believe them. And this causes real harm.
In order to begin to believe something different from the status quo, we have to do the work to uncover what assumptions we have taken on as truth.
We have to understand the story that is told to us, and that we tell ourselves. And finally, we have to understand how that story adversely affects our lives and the lives of those who live in a fat body. Because those effects are real, and do more harm than those of us who live in a thin body can ever fathom.
To begin to confront your own biases and beliefs in regards to fatness, a few questions you might ask yourself are:
What am I feeling when I imagine that weight and health are not dependent on each other? Get as specific as you can.
Why am I experiencing these negative feelings in reaction to this idea?
What have I been told about being fat?
What do I believe about fat people?
When I think about a fat person, what descriptors come to mind?
What do I believe about my own body? What feelings come up?
In Audrey Gordon’s book, “What We Don’t Talk About When We Talk About Fat”, she says:
“Women of all ages report astronomical levels of body dissatisfaction, ranging from a low of 71.9% of women ages 75 and up to a high of 93.2% of women between the ages of 25-34. According to a survey conducted by Yale University’s Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity, nearly half of respondents would rather give up a year of their lives than be fat.
The 4,000 respondents in varying numbers between 15-30% also said they would rather walk away from their marriage, give up the possibility of having children, be depressed, or become alcoholic rather than be obese.”
Basically, we are all willing to sell our souls to be thin. Because, what, then we will finally be happy? This is exactly what diet culture promises us: if we can get skinny, we can be healthy, but even more than that, we can be happy.
What a MF’ing lie.
