Study Shows Fat is Better Than Thin

Yes, I'm back to this same topic. Sorry. It's just been on my mind a lot. I've hit a breaking point as you probably saw with my original post about skinny jeans. . . .

It's just that I'm sooooo tired of people talking about their weight like they can't allow themselves to be happy until they're the perfect size or shape. Or that they can't be a contributing member of society and be taken seriously if they don't look like a poverty stricken, malnourished human being from a country in famine. I'm frustrated that a baby is being refused medical insurance because he's "too fat"! Seriously? Who can't understand that fat is purposely stored by a child's body to supplement his/her nutrition as his/her body doubles and triples in size within the first year of life? I'm ticked that, because of model obsession, my friend believes a common acquantaince of ours, who is painfully anorexic, is "naturally thin" and has a great body!

I'm done letting the lies soak into our generation. I'm done with the media reeling us in: hook, line and sinker. I'm just done.

So here I am again, tossing out another train of thought. You can take it or leave it, but I'm throwing it out anyway.

Here it is.

A Japanese study took 44,000 adults between ages 40-79 over the course of 11 years and estimated the expected life span in relation to that person's BMI level because they say "the relation between body mass index (BMI) and mortality is not well established."

NOTE: 44,000 is a LARGE sample size. For those of you wanting to know the comparison . . . most obesity=death studies usually have samples from 500-2000 and, frustratingly, are poorly pooled . . . like groups from convalescent homes (who probably already have health conditions and are inactive . . . duh). The other issue is that a lot of these articles compare factors that say things like, "since it's already been proven that fat=death and disease, we looked at other things in this study and didn't bother to study that". I have not seen a well done article proving the reverse of this study, and believe you me, I've looked up a lot.

So anyway . . . you know what these guys found? Here, I'll let them tell you:

"Result: During 11 years of follow-up, 1,121 men and 567 women had died. Compared with the referent BMI category (23.0-24.9), women in the highest BMI category (BMI>30.0) had a RR of death of 1.64 (95% confidence interval (CI), 1.09-2.49) and men and women in the lowest BMI categories (BMI<18.5) class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">confounders and after exclusion of deaths occurring in the first three years of follow-up. We did not observe significant differences in mortality for subjects with wide range of BMI (18.5 or higher in men and 18.5 to 29.9 in women)."

Ok, what is this telling us? . . . It says that there is a greater health risk associated with being underweight than there is in being overweight . . . in fact, it says that those who were overweight in their BMI category had the longest rate of mortality of all groups.

The UK's Telegraph reported on this study. They said that:

The study found that among those aged 40, the overweight category topped the polls in terms of the longest life expectancy, with expectations of an average of 40.5 extra years for men and 47 years for women.

Those classed as "normal" weight followed closely behind, with 38.7 additional years expected among men and 46.3 among women, the study showed.

However, researchers found that those defined as slim were bottom in terms of life expectancy, with 33.8 further years predicted among men and 41.1 among women.

Health concerns surrounding the slimmest eclipsed those of the overweight, with higher risks of heart disease and other illnesses as they age, according to Masato Nagai, a graduate student involved in the research.

'Those who are too slim are reportedly said to be at higher risk of cardiovascular disease and are more likely to develop pneumonia as nutritional deficiency lowers their resistive force,' he said.

So there you have it. Skinny does not equal healthy, and that's extra sad because it probably means they haven't been getting to eat dessert either. :(

My advice stays the same. Eat healthy, exercise and DO NOT STRESS about your weight . . . that's probably the part that's gonna kill you anyway.

And, as one last side note . . . even the studies that say fat will kill you also say that small amounts of weight loss can change your health. In fact, despite our huge focus on BMI in our country, everyone seems to forget to tell the doctors that losing only 10 lbs in an obese adult can do wonders, not losing 50 . . . so who's duped us into believing we have to be in our BMI normal weight range to be healthy? Because, believe you me, 10 lbs in my life is easy . . . it's a drop in the bucket and wouldn't even put me over the line between obese and overweight . . . but according to obesity researchers, keeping that 10 lbs off will keep me healthier.

Think about it . . . obesity.org (who say fat will kill you) says that losing small amounts of fat, around 10 lbs, can potentially reverse the effects of diabetes and sometimes put it completely into remission . . . so who's telling you that more is better when it hasn't been proven . . . and where did your doctor get the idea to recommend losing 50 lbs instead of 10? . . . Do you think your doctor takes time (or even has the time) to critically review the statistical information of articles they choose to peruse during their free time (when they also have to keep up on their CME credits to keep their license and usually do so through a 3rd party education firm that chooses materials for them) . . . or maybe, if they have time, they read the articles someone else chose to put in certain magazines and news journals who happen to make most of their money in weight loss advertisements between the pages . . .

In fact, when is the last time you saw a magazine, newspaper, commercial block or website that didn't have one weight loss ad in the mix? . . . Do you realize how big of an industry this is? It's an industry that makes more money with a higher recidivism rate (or in other words, they do better the more times you fail and have to try again) . . . an industry that increases sales the more you're convinced to hate yourself and your body . . . an industry that can convince you to eat nothing but juice, processed diet bars and/or even take diet pills that act as glorified laxatives . . . turns out people are desperate enough to lose weight that they were willing to risk pooping their pants in public! . . . no foolin'!

I'm just saying, think about it.