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How Unhealthy Is Fat?

Dr. Andres, the clinical director of the National Institute on Aging, reports the results of extensive studies: the longest life expectancy exists for people who are 24% to 37% "overweight" by present standards (as defined by doctor’s charts). Most other studies have been based on actuarial statistics that are not normed against the general population.

Dr. George Mann of the National Heart and Lung Institute states that caloric restriction is not a useful treatment for chronic diseases, and fat per se has not been proved to cause hypertension, cancer or heart disease (most fat people with these diseases have other influences on their health that are not controlled for in typical studies: high stress, middle-age, and smoking). He sites a cross-cultural study that controlled for stress caused by the social stigma of being fat showed that very obese people in cultures where fatness is admired have lower incidence of high blood pressure and heart disease...).

Caloric Restriction = Thin = Health?

According to the World Health Organization, any diet below 2,000 calories per day is considered starvation level. For growing teens the number is closer to 2,500. Caloric restriction has been shown to cause many serious health problems -- both physical and emotional, including, of course, death. Because of various diet programs, diet and weight-loss pills, and surgical treatments (such as stomach stapling), people have suffered from malnutrition, electrolyte imbalances, cancer, heart failure, eating disorders, depression, and suicide. According to William Bennett and Joel Gurin, authors of The Dieter's Dilemma (1982) "the body reacts to stringent dieting as if famine had set in... the metabolic rate drops to conserve calories and maintain a stable amount of fat...[this also occurs with] fat people on diets, even though they still have an ample energy reserve... because of this innate biological response, dieting becomes progressively less effective ..." Though large amounts of weight loss due to calorie restricting diets are common, 90% of people regain all or more of the weight they originally lost. In most cases, caloric restriction below starvation level (2,000 calories) cannot be maintained for a lifetime, and so we see the yo-yo effect with chronic dieters gaining and losing weight again and again, getting larger and larger over time.

Who Gains from Our Thin Obsession?

$33 billion per year are spent on the diet industry today (in 1980 that number was $10 billion). Diet foods, surgery, programs, books, resorts, doctors, drugs... the diet industry is getting very fat off the unsuccessful attempts of millions of people to get thin.

What’s Happening to Us and Our Children?

A recent national health study, that studied 2,379 nine and ten year-old girls (approximately half White and half Black) found that 40 % of them reported that they were trying to lose weight (Striegel-Moore et al, 1996). A study of 36,000 students in Minnesota found that negative body image is associated with suicide risk for girls, not for boys. Another study found that "the way I look" was the most important determinant of self-worth for White middle school girls. Parental messages about body image and teasing by others (e.g. peers and/or family) have been highly correlated with body image dissatisfaction and eating disorder symptoms. (Thelen & Cormier, 1995).

Our thin obsession currently means that the 33% of American women who wear a size 16 or larger are stigmatized and pushed onto diets, that 50% of all American women are on a diet at any one time, and that 80% of women have dieted at some time. Most ominous is how this is being passed on to our children. 50% of all nine year old girls have dieted, according to Naomi Wolf, author of The Beauty Myth, 1992, and 1% - 4% of high school and college girls have Anorexia and/or Bulimia according to author Mary Pipher of Reviving Ophelia 1994.

So, What Size Should I Be?

One of the medical criteria of anorexia nervosa: body weight 15 % below a weight that is considered "normal" , is met by the majority of models and beauty contestants.

Since there are no clear markers for healthy body weight that are free from highly questionable social standards, I would maintain that healthy body weight is the size a person naturally returns to after a long period of both non--compulsive eating and consistent exercise commensurate with the person' s physical health and condition. We must learn to advocate for ourselves and our children to aspire to a naturally determined size, even though that will often mean confronting misinformed family, friends, and media advertising again and again.

What is Non-Compulsive Eating?

Simply stated, non-compulsive eating means eating when you are hungry and stopping when you are satisfied. This involves being able to distinguish emotional hunger from physical hunger, and satiation from overfullness.