Happy New Year! I've had a lot going on these past couple of months, and I'm currently getting down to business on the first big set of edits for my book, but I just had to pop in to share my thoughts on a couple of articles that have been stirring my blood lately.
First, this article from the New York Times, about a new study proving that our bodies actually conspire against us to hold onto fat we desperately want to lose, and that people who have lost weight before actually burn fewer calories doing the exact same activity as they would have burned had they never been overweight (sorry if that didn't make sense, just read the article). I read it while I was on holiday in Rome, stuffing my face and telling myself that all the walking on cobblestones would work off the carbonara and the lasagne and the fried artichokes, and I must say I found it both fascinating and seriously depressing. The description of the lifestyle a person needs to lead just to keep off a significant weight loss is so severe, I basically wanted to give up right then and drown myself in tiramisu.
But then I posted it on Facebook, and got a couple of really thoughtful responses, which allowed me the chance to change my mind a bit (click to enlarge, and please excuse the messy blurring of people's names/faces):
Then one of my good friends added to the conversation, posting a link to this response to the NYT article, which I found really interesting and which, as I said to her, is exactly the kind of response I hadn't even allowed myself to consider, because as a self-titled fat person I didn't feel like it would be taken seriously coming from me.
But now I was starting to shift my view of this new study. Maybe it wasn't depressing, maybe it was liberating: could it be that our bodies resist losing weight precisely because our 'weight goals' are below where our bodies prefer us to level out? Sure, we're probably evolutionarily programmed to hold on to fat in case of famine, and we probably don't need that gene anymore. But could there also be something to be said for being fit at any weight, and trusting our bodies to know what's best for us?
A sort of answer came a couple of days later, when my former teacher sent me a link to another article, this one about why women need fat, from Salon.com. This time, rather than just telling readers that their bodies will resist losing weight more than they expected, the scientists interviewed in the article actually defend extra weight in women! The part I found most interesting:
I was pretty blown away by this. I mean, I've always thought (and said) that we should focus less on the number on the scale and more on real indicators of health, like lifestyle and blood pressure and lung capacity, but I sort of never expected to be backed up so wholeheartedly by scientists.
It's nice to feel like the scientific world is finally starting to get it. And although the aforementioned NYT article does still promote weight loss, even for people who are otherwise super healthy, I feel like maybe it's a step in the right direction. If nothing else, as the comments on that article suggested, people who are naturally thin might look less disdainfully upon heavy people who struggle to lose weight. And lord knows that's a start. Compassion leads to greater understanding, and if we can understand weight and fat better, maybe we can start to change our views on them. And maybe then we won't need the skinnies to have compassion for us, because we'll just be different, rather than worse, or lesser, or contemptible.
Hey, it's a new year – a girl can hope for change, right?
First, this article from the New York Times, about a new study proving that our bodies actually conspire against us to hold onto fat we desperately want to lose, and that people who have lost weight before actually burn fewer calories doing the exact same activity as they would have burned had they never been overweight (sorry if that didn't make sense, just read the article). I read it while I was on holiday in Rome, stuffing my face and telling myself that all the walking on cobblestones would work off the carbonara and the lasagne and the fried artichokes, and I must say I found it both fascinating and seriously depressing. The description of the lifestyle a person needs to lead just to keep off a significant weight loss is so severe, I basically wanted to give up right then and drown myself in tiramisu.
But then I posted it on Facebook, and got a couple of really thoughtful responses, which allowed me the chance to change my mind a bit (click to enlarge, and please excuse the messy blurring of people's names/faces):
Then one of my good friends added to the conversation, posting a link to this response to the NYT article, which I found really interesting and which, as I said to her, is exactly the kind of response I hadn't even allowed myself to consider, because as a self-titled fat person I didn't feel like it would be taken seriously coming from me.
But now I was starting to shift my view of this new study. Maybe it wasn't depressing, maybe it was liberating: could it be that our bodies resist losing weight precisely because our 'weight goals' are below where our bodies prefer us to level out? Sure, we're probably evolutionarily programmed to hold on to fat in case of famine, and we probably don't need that gene anymore. But could there also be something to be said for being fit at any weight, and trusting our bodies to know what's best for us?
A sort of answer came a couple of days later, when my former teacher sent me a link to another article, this one about why women need fat, from Salon.com. This time, rather than just telling readers that their bodies will resist losing weight more than they expected, the scientists interviewed in the article actually defend extra weight in women! The part I found most interesting:
"Many M.D.s have bought this fallacious line that the optimal weight for women in terms of their health is what M.D.s call normal weight, a BMI between 18.5 and 25. And they have thought this to be true because women with higher BMIs exhibit a series of physiological measures that are indeed risk factors for disease in men. But they are not systematically risk factors for disease in women. If you actually look at the data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey and data from studies done in other countries, the optimal weight for women who have had a kid is what doctors currently call “overweight.” I’m not saying that obesity is optimal, but all the findings show that overweight women survive better than normal weight women. We walk a fine line in the book because we argue that being overweight is not nearly as bad as your doctor has been telling you, but on the other hand, Americans are heavier than they need to be. There are diseases that still correlate with heavier weights, like diabetes. But if we ate a more natural diet, by that I simply mean the diet that we evolved to eat, we would all weigh less."Whaaaaat?! I've been saying BMI is bollocks for years, and here it is in black and white: not only is it true that diet and fitness levels are more important indicators for health than weight, but BMI, according to these guys, is a completely skewed indicator for women as a whole!
I was pretty blown away by this. I mean, I've always thought (and said) that we should focus less on the number on the scale and more on real indicators of health, like lifestyle and blood pressure and lung capacity, but I sort of never expected to be backed up so wholeheartedly by scientists.
It's nice to feel like the scientific world is finally starting to get it. And although the aforementioned NYT article does still promote weight loss, even for people who are otherwise super healthy, I feel like maybe it's a step in the right direction. If nothing else, as the comments on that article suggested, people who are naturally thin might look less disdainfully upon heavy people who struggle to lose weight. And lord knows that's a start. Compassion leads to greater understanding, and if we can understand weight and fat better, maybe we can start to change our views on them. And maybe then we won't need the skinnies to have compassion for us, because we'll just be different, rather than worse, or lesser, or contemptible.
Hey, it's a new year – a girl can hope for change, right?
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