There are those who advocate that you can be healthy at any size and being overweight isn’t really that bad for you. There are doctors who agree and some doctors who state that this is a very irresponsible point of view. Each side has valid points, but the ultimate health determination is your own doctor, your physical shape and mental attitude.
Pro Weight
Plus-size women or those that are a size 14 are the average sized American women and some experts agree that this size is a healthy size. This growing attitude is endorsed by Regina Benjamin, M.D., the surgeon general. This is awesome news for the 33 percent of American women who are overweight, but not exactly obese. Or is it?
One model feels that bulking up has been great for her new lifestyle. This former 95-pound model was depressed and lived on little besides vegetables and diet soda. Now her life is filled with runway gigs and photo shoots. She says, “The caliber of work I do is much higher now that I have energy.” At 5’9″ and 170 pounds she is considered overweight according to her body mass index or BMI. Yet she looks great and feels even better.
Doctors use BMI to measure whether a patient is carrying a healthy weight or obese. Those who score above normal are potentially unwell according to last year”s myths. Research is now proving that the correlation between weight and health is exaggerated. Studies have found that people with an overweight BMI have lower incidences of lung cancers, bronchitis, osteoporosis and anemia than their normal BMI friends. Those with overweight BMI scores also have a lower risk of dying early.
Love to eat? Keep it up and be a pear shaped woman or a man with an overlapping tummy. It’s okay. Thigh, butt and hip fat are chemically stable and stable fat keeps harmful compounds from destroying your digestive system. Thigh fat secretes adiponectin that helps the body metabolize sugar and uses the chemical leptin as an appetite regulator.
More positives to being overweight? Extra weight may not be great, but it beats fad dieting. Research proves that yo-yo dieting can slow metabolisms and cause cardiac stress. These types of diets actually lead to long term weight problems.
Pros for Weight Loss
Doctors and fitness experts cry that there is no chance dieting is worse than being fat. Weigh loss is definitely difficult but you should still pursue weight loss in the name of health. Extra weight can increase your risk of developing breast cancers, and women with normal cholesterol and blood pressure and weight still develop heart disease at higher rates then weight managed women. If you are overweight you may look “healthy” but you probably are not all that healthy.
Fat placement is definitely a problem. Gaining weight through overeating does not give you an option of where the pounds end up on your body. Thigh fat might be beneficial but abdomen al fat is definitely not. Visceral fat is interior fat, is very dangerous and can coat your organs and release inflammatory acids that are linked to coronary diseases and cancers.
Weight gain is definitely not good looking. There are those who have love handles that escalate into a heaviness that is almost obscene. You might want to realize that your forbearers who had to hunt and gather to eat actually evolved into a lean species and that is where we should strive to land. Not unhealthy skinny, but BMI lean.
To put things into perspective, your heart is only as big as your fist. How can it possibly power a huge body with rolls of fat and miles of visceral interior fat? States one researcher, asking a small muscle to power an overweight frame is like putting a little engine in an SUV.”
The average woman is beautiful but she is also more than 20 pounds overweight and verging on the edge of obesity. This may be great news for those American women who are in the 33 percentile and not quite obese, but with just a few more French fries you might just tip into the obese range.
Agreements
Both pro-fat and pro-lean agree that fitness is the key and pounds are much less important than the type of body fat you carry. BMI is becoming more out of date as a measurement, but still serves a purpose and it does give a benchmark where to start with weight loss.
There is no disagreement on exercise as being crucial to health. Exercise reduces mortality risk by almost 50 percent regardless of weight issues. Aerobic exercise and resistance training trim waistlines and that includes the padding you see and feel as well as the visceral fat that lies on the inside overtaking your precious organs. If you workout you will find that visceral fat will stop forming and start disappearing.
One interesting study found that the plus-size person who regularly exercises at the gym is by far healthier than the thin couch potato. Movement equals health.
Healthy fat might be fun since you may feel free to eat what you want, but there is nothing fun about being so far overweight that you cannot bend over to tie your shoes. What is fun is having energy to throw around a ball, run and walk up stairs or play baseball with a bunch of kids.
If you equate being overweight and being healthy, that is a definite irresponsible idea. Look around you are realize that we have heath care costs that are rising on a minute by minute basis and these costs are related to adding on excess pounds. You may never be or should never be rail thin. Be heavier and healthy but make sure you are eating right, exercising and moving; that’s the way to be healthy at any size.
