Fat Friday! Why Weight Doesn't Matter

It's Fat Friday! Here are quotes from Fat? Who Cares! Why Weight Doesn't Matter By Peter Jaret

“Overweight women who walked more than four hours a week had a significantly lower risk of heart disease than those who didn’t exercise. This says to me that the most important risk factor isn’t being fat; it’s being sedentary.”

“One important study, an analysis of more than 5,000 participants in a national government sample, showed that 35 percent of obese women don’t have the constellation of health problems typically linked to higher weight. Specifically, they showed no more than one sign of these issues: high blood pressure, high triglycerides, low HDL [“good”] cholesterol, elevated glucose levels, insulin resistance and systemic inflammation. And there are some health concerns, such as osteoporosis, that are much less common in people categorized as overweight or obese.”

“There’s something researchers call the “obesity paradox”—that people who are heavier tend to survive longer than thinner people with the same disease…Why isn’t entirely clear. But the findings call into question the widely held belief that being overweight or obese is always dangerous and suggest that it may be protective in some ways.”

“When researchers at the German Institute of Human Nutrition in Potsdam-Rehbrücke looked at more than 12,000 middle-aged men and women for a study published in 2005, they found that obese men and women whose weight fluctuated over a two-year period were four times as likely to develop hypertension as the obese people whose weight remained stable. An earlier Italian study reported that women who had lost weight at least five times in five years were more likely to have high blood pressure than those whose weight remained stable.”

“My colleagues and I did a study, reported in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association, that confirms the usefulness of this approach. We randomly divided 78 obese chronic dieters, all female, into two groups: One followed a conventional weight-loss diet; the other enrolled in the Health at Every Size [HAES] plan, which emphasizes eating in response to hunger cues. Both programs lasted six months, and subjects were evaluated two years after the study’s beginning. By six months, 42 percent of the conventional-diet-program participants had dropped out, but only 8 percent of the HAES members had departed. The dieters did lose weight in the first six months, but two years later they had, on average, regained it all. Women in the HAES group did not lose or gain weight; they stayed the same weight throughout the two years. By the end of the study period, the HAES women showed significant improvements in their LDL [“bad”] cholesterol and systolic [the top number] blood pressure; the dieting group ended up where it had started. In addition, 53 percent of those following a diet reported feeling like failures; none of the HAES women did. So I think our message needs to encourage people to become healthy rather than focus on weight loss.”

“We need to resist the notion that being thin is the path to happiness. It isn’t. Trying to become thin can make people very unhappy. We’ve become so obsessed with weight that it’s a major revolution for people to say, “Hey, I can choose to see myself as attractive.” We’d all be much happier if we honored size diversity and focused on healthy choices, letting our weight fall naturally where it may.”

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