Skip to main content

Fitness not Fatness

We want to reduce the stigma of obesity.  And we want to improve health.  So how about focusing on fitness not "fatness"?  

As we head toward the majority of adults with obesity in the coming decades, it is increasingly self-harming for our society to stigmatize large bodies.  Yet as our health worsens, we need to take urgent sustained action to develop healthier habits.  How do we reconcile these two seemingly contradictory issues?

I wouldn't be surprised if a large portion of anxiety & depression among Americans, especially teens, is due to weight & body shape.  The increase in child & adult obesity is spreading the stress, even as it becomes more normal to be obese.  At the same time, as obesity becomes more widespread, some of the stigma is receding--with the potential good-news/bad-news downside of less motivation for people to do something about dangerous extra weight causing metabolic syndrome, diabetes, heart disease, etc.  

One problem with urging folks with obesity to try to be fit is the unrealistic images that go with "fitness."  We equate being fit with being slim--"in shape"--with a healthy low-calorie diet as well as an active lifestyle.  But people with overweight and obesity can be and often are active and quite fit.  And this also improves their physical and mental health--and helps them manage their weight.  

We are finding that just losing 5-7% of one's weight can forestall or even reverse Type-2 diabetes--having less obesity, but without needing to reach normal weight.  

As we enter a new body-shape-and-weight "normal," we should re-focus our health vocabulary--onto achieving healthy reasonable levels of fitness.




Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Is it a “Miracle Drug”?...if it Costs a Fortune and Creates Lifelong Dependency...&...Saggy Faces!?

[It’s been a while since our last blog post.  A lot has happened since– including some “miracles” ! So we’re going to do two posts in a row…] Normally we should all be happy about miracle drugs... shouldn't we ? Yes, there is lots of upside from taking semaglutide (Ozempic, Wegovy), tirzepatide (Montjaro)--and upcoming new, even-more-miraculous drugs TBD:  losing huge amounts of weight quickly, a much lower risk of diabetes–and probably less heart disease and other chronic conditions as well.  But what if the “miracle” requires:   $200-300/week, with a lifetime cost of hundreds of thousands of dollars…  a drug that you can never quit…because if you stop taking it, you gain back all the weight it helped you lose–not to mention the chronic diseases which the drugs kept at bay… and it leaves your face (and the rest of your skin?) sagging …    (plus, it’s so new at such high dosages– who knows what happens after years of use…? ) No doubt, in spit...
4 comments
Read more

Testing Our Patients/ce...

The US Preventive Services Task Force just recommended that people get tested for diabetes at a younger age: 35. Early detection will help prevent complications from untreated diabetes. “The lowered recommended age for screening ‘has really been driven by the obesity epidemic—greater rates of obesity in young people.’” (WSJ, 3/16/2021) If this preliminary draft recommendation is approved, many insurers will provide this testing for free. Actually, with about 20% of teens estimated to have prediabetes & 10% with severe obesity already, & 1/3 lower-income kids & children of color headed for diabetes, testing should start much earlier for at-risk young adults--perhaps @25 years old. The more I think about these statistics, the angrier I get. We should have declared a national child health emergency in the late 1970s, when the child obesity epidemic began. If those kids had been upper-income white children, we would have dealt with it much sooner. Yet in spite of some imp...
Post a Comment
Read more

Will COVID-19 vaccines work for those with obesity?

The disturbing news linking chronic disease with much higher COVID-19 risks continues: any future  COVID-19 vaccine could be much less effective among the >107M Americans who are obese .  >40% of adult Americans are obese, including ~10% of teens & adults with severe obesity. We already know that people of color are at much higher risk of being infected, hospitalized & dying from the novel coronavirus.  Closely related to this, African-, Native-, & Latino-Americans are also much more likely to be obese & have other underlying chronic conditions.   Those hoping that vaccines could help reduce these disparities will be disappointed.  But we should have known better: for example, t he flu vaccine is much less effective among people with obesity. In addition, t hanks to past neglect & abuse of minority populations by those in power, non-whites are distrustful of government & less likely to take a COVID-19 vaccine, even if it is f...
Post a Comment
Read more