"It embarrasses"

Every once in a while I attempt, against the tide of public gloating and self-loathing, to speak up against our society's weight problem.

Not a problem of weighing too much, mind you, the problem of weighing too heavily the issue of heavy.

One sign of my success in at the very least getting my friends and family on message is that everyone I know sent me this: Top 10 Reasons Why The BMI Is Bogus.

One friend said "I knew you would have seen it already. It was about BMI and was on NPR -- all your favorite initials."

Comments

  1. I'm getting increasingly frustrated with the public hysteria about weight. It is getting so scary, it really is.

    I'm so glad I'm not the only one who feels this way. I try to talk to anyone who will listen about how ludicrous this obsession with weight is, but people really don't get it. Yet. I'm not giving up.

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  2. I saw this awhile ago. One of my friends that's a body builder in the military is labelled as "Moderately obese" according to BMI, which is a problem as the military uses that as a way of measuring fitness... It makes sense that a higher percentage of females in the military exhibit eating disordered behaviors than the general population.

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  3. I think that the current obsession with weight/overweight/obesity is a part/result of our culture's overall obsession with physical appearance. As I muse about this, I think about the ubiquity of images - both the commercial photos of famous people and the personal photos of everyone else. There has been an explosion of capability to record images, with digital cameras that almost everyone can afford. These images are easily transportable to social networking sites, and virtually everyone who has a facebook or myspace site has pictures of themselves available for viewing by enormous numbers of people. There is a much greater pressure these days to look "perfect", to look like the size 0 - 2 movie and TV stars.

    And the health bandwagon has been running amok, with dire warnings of the negative consequences of overweight. This comes with absolutely NO evidence-based way of making it possible for people to actually lose and keep off the weight. No wonder so many people are hysterical about this. Their perception is that there is this huge problem, with no way to fix it. That is a perfect recipe for anxiety.

    I was reading an article in the New York Times the other day in which they mention a database of 6,000 people who have lost weight and kept it off. That's right, a grand total of 6,000 people in our population of 300 million. I know there are more than that, but that is a pretty pathetic number.

    The article is "For a Frugal Dieter, Weight Loss on a Sliding Scale" http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/04/health/04patient.html?scp=4&sq=weight&st=cse. It has a picture of the guy who makes the following quote “What matters most is your level of motivation and your willingness to change,” says Kelly D. Brownell, a psychologist and director of the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at Yale. The guy clearly lacks the "motivation" to lose weight, just like most of the rest of us.

    At my age, it is very easy for me to completely ignore the cultural directives to try to fit the accepted mold of good looks. It is very difficult for younger people to ignore it, since everyone wants to "fit in" their culture and have mates and close friends. Humans require this, and the threat of not being able to have it because you don't look acceptable is a scary thing.

    Thanks for letting me air this long comment.

    ReplyDelete
  4. I think that the current obsession with weight/overweight/obesity is a result of our culture's overall obsession with physical appearance. As I muse about this, I think about the ubiquity of images - both the commercial photos of famous people and the personal photos of everyone else. There has been an explosion of capability to record images, with digital cameras that almost everyone can afford. These images are easily transportable to social networking sites, and virtually everyone who has a facebook or myspace site has pictures of themselves available for viewing by enormous numbers of people. There is a much greater pressure these days to look "perfect", to look like the size 0 - 2 movie and TV stars.

    And the health bandwagon has been running amok, with dire warnings of the negative consequences of overweight. This comes with absolutely NO evidence-based way of making it possible for people to actually lose and keep off the weight. No wonder so many people are hysterical about this. Their perception is that there is this huge problem, with no way to fix it. That is a perfect recipe for anxiety.

    I was reading an article in the New York Times the other day in which they mention a database of 6,000 people who have lost weight and kept it off. That's right, a grand total of 6,000 people in our population of 300 million. I know there are more than that, but that is a pretty pathetic number.

    The article is "For a Frugal Dieter, Weight Loss on a Sliding Scale" http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/04/health/04patient.html?scp=4&sq=weight&st=cse. It has a picture of the guy who makes the following quote “What matters most is your level of motivation and your willingness to change,” says Kelly D. Brownell, a psychologist and director of the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at Yale. Clearly, it looks like he doesn't have the "motivation", just like most of the rest of us.

    At my age, it is easy for me to ignore the cultural imperative to fit into the mold, but it is much harder for young people to do so. Humans are social, and people need to find mates, have close friends and social circles. Many younger people feel that if they don’t fit that mold, they won’t be able to have the relationships that they need, and that is scary.

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  5. This has nothing to do with EDs, but I thought of you when I saw this blog post on Wired:

    Most Awesomely Bad Military Acronym Ever

    Don't think BMI or NPR is in there, though.

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  6. Nothing to do with anything really, i just thought you might find this interesting... or rather appalling...

    Contributing to the whole self loathing concept that is rampant in today's society.

    A Canadian men's website has come up with a top ten list of ways to subtly tell your girlfriend she's getting fat...

    The fact that it's subtly is what irks me the most... instead of acknowledging it's the men's concept that the female in question is getting fat... they're planting the notion and allowing the female to believe she came up with the thought that she is indeed fat, which in fact, it was planted.

    http://ca.askmen.com/top_10/dating/top-10-subtle-ways-to-tell-her-shes-getting-fat_10.html

    ReplyDelete

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