Interesting (and horrifying) article on weight loss, fitness, etc.

[hwango]

Found the link to this on Neil Gaiman's journal: http://www.guardian.co.uk/weekend/story/0,3605,1200549,00.html

My favorite part:

Consider this: from the perspective of a profit-maximising medical and pharmaceutical industry, the ideal disease would be one that never killed those who suffered from it, that could not be treated effectively, and that doctors and their patients would nevertheless insist on treating anyway. Luckily for it, the American health care industry has discovered (or rather invented) just such a disease. It is called "obesity".

Of course, I have no problem at all with people wanting to lose weight so that they can feel better about themselves, as long as they don't lose so much weight that it becomes a serious health risk. Mostly, I have a problem with the unattainable standards for physical appearance that we hold each other to, so I firmly agree with the article in parts such as:

This is a culture whose need to control the world and the people in it is so intense that it has been driven to the preposterous conclusion that millions of unique individuals should all weigh within 10lb of an imaginary ideal weight.

Comments

[qedrakmar.livejournal.com]

I disagree only insofar as Obesity has been shown to cause severe health problems, such as diabetes, liver disease, heart disease, kidney disorder, etc... The problem is that people think being 5'10" and 185 is obese, when really that number should have another 100-200 pounds on it before health problems become a factor.

The problem with things like ideal weight is that they do not stem from a beauty or even a health perspective, but much like the RDI of your vitamins, it is military in definition. Ideal weight (in fact much of the standards for food consumption and body index) are based on the minimum required to keep a soldier able to pick up a gun and fight. When they labelled the minimum amount of nutrition the RDA, people latched onto the word "allowance" and figured they shouldn't have any more, hence the change to RDI (intake) after lo so many years. Eventually people will figure out that there are many more health problems associated with being thin than there are with instead being simply "in shape". And by then, voracious eaters will RULE THE WORLD!!!

[hwango.livejournal.com]

I think that's one of the points that the article tries to make - that while it's true to being seriously overweight DOES cause health problems, many people who are currently told that they are overweight (and thus at risk) are perfectly fine the way they are. It was also interesting to see that many of the health problems suffered by those who are overweight are actually caused by them trying to lose weight.

"The problem with things like ideal weight is that they do not stem from a beauty or even a health perspective, but much like the RDI of your vitamins, it is military in definition."

That's interesting - I hadn't heard that before. Still, even if that's where it originated, the current perception by many is that the extra pounds are unattractive, and people are made to feel that they can't be attractive unless they are thin.