It’s no surprise America is getting fatter. In the last decade, America has ballooned into the world’s fattest nation, and the obesity percentage is growing, even leaking into childhood obesity. According to the Center of Disease Control, Oregon alone hosts a 23.0 percent obesity rate. In light of the University’s “All Sizes Fit” week, I thought it would be a perfect time to talk about these issues.
There’s no doubt that being morbidly obese (defined as 100 pounds overweight by the CDC) does come with some serious health risks, including heart problems and type 2 diabetes, but is the U.S. too obsessed with weight? Aren’t some people just naturally smaller, and some people just naturally bigger? Can a person be overweight and healthy?
It turns out there is some debate about the health risks of being overweight. For instance, I know people who aren’t skinny but eat healthier than I do. Are overweight people really at a risk of dropping dead at any given moment?
The leading procedure in determining obesity, according to the CDC, is the Body Mass Index. It’s a simple equation that divides your weight by the square of your height and then multiplies that number by a conversion factor. The index runs from 18.5 (underweight) to 30.0 and above (obese). According to the CDC’s BMI index, I’m in the 25-29.9 range, which means I’m overweight.
To me, this doesn’t seem right. I’ll admit that I don’t have the healthiest diet in the world, and I don’t exercise as much as I should, but improving health doesn’t have to mean losing weight (although they can come together). Everyone is different. Does the BMI take into account frame, muscle mass or lifestyle? No. I have a bigger frame than some of my friends — there’s no way I could weigh anything under 120 and still be healthy. On the other side of the scale (pun intended), I have friends who are itty-bitty but stuff their faces with candy night and day which proves that just because you’re skinny, doesn’t mean you’re healthy.
Thankfully, the CDC includes information about how to interpret your BMI number. It does admit that BMI alone is not a good indicator for disease risk and that factors can sway the BMI. For instance, women generally have more body fat than men, (at the same BMI) and athletes have more muscle (which weighs more than fat). To further assess a risk for disease, the CDC recommends measuring waist circumference, analyzing diet and lifestyle, and checking other health indicators such as blood pressure.
Even more interesting was a study published in 2009 by the National Institute for Health showing it is possible to be overweight and fit. While it did say that decreased body fat also contributed to increased health, the study also found that it was perfectly possible for an overweight person to be healthy. It all comes to down to movement or activity levels. The study found an inverse trend between fitness level and mortality rate in obese adults. The more they moved, the healthier they were. Even thin men and women had a higher mortality rate if they were sedentary compared to overweight individuals who exercised.
Another important aspect about America’s obsession with weight is mental health. Everyone in the western world is bombarded by images of artificial perfection — the skinny model on the runway, the buff dude on magazine covers, the perfectly toned and flat bellies in Victoria’s Secret commercials. These images plague both young boys and girls, who end up creating completely unreachable goals, which can lead to a myriad of health risks. One of the ways the media pressures people into losing weight is claiming that being thin automatically means being healthy.
But that’s just not the case. Being thin can mean being unhealthy, just like being obese can mean being unhealthy. But it turns out it’s possible to be overweight and relatively healthy — it’s not usually the size that matters as much as fitness levels. If you exercise, you’re probably more healthy than you think. And exercise doesn’t just mean using a treadmill or an elliptical trainer. It means doing a couple of jumping jacks during study breaks, walking or biking instead of driving, doing dishes, cleaning or even playing Wii Sports. It doesn’t matter what size or shape you are — petite, thin, lean, overweight, curvy, soft, flabby, muscular — the more you move, the healthier you are. Equations like the Body Mass Index can’t really tell you anything about your health and neither can the media.
 
 
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