YOUR HEALTH: The Obesity Myth exposed again

I have long and often criticized the BMI and its definitions for ‘healthy’, ‘overweight’ and ‘obese’ weight.  Without going into details again, the BMI used for its calculation a sample population of predominantly white adult males. This is now recognized even by the United Nation’s WHO (which stilled used it for its  recent world health report) as a major ‘limitation’ when applied to other ethnic and racial groups, and children under 18.

I have long argued that an even more important flaw is the assumption that ‘lean’ bodies are healthier and will live longer.

Insurance actuarial studies for some 40 years have disproved this.

They have found that people who have an extra 10 lbs of weight or even 10% above BMI adult ‘ideals’ simply live longer.

Why?  Because when severe illness or surgery cause major weight loss, people with extra weight have ‘room to spare’ and do not fall below the body’s innate ‘tipping point’ and die.

Now, as reported in York University Magazine, fall 2018, “How obesity measures up as a global crisis”, longitudinal studies in the U.S.A., Denmark, Japan and Asia -- involving well over 1.8 million people -- refute the obesity epidemic mania; a mania that has become doctrine in North American and UN medical circles, and which has inundated our mass media and culture.

The results of the above studies have been summarized by York University’s Professor Dennis Raphael in Critical Public Health (2017).

“People considered overweight – measured by body mass index (BMI) – had the highest life expectancy, followed by those considered obese. The most short-lived were those with the least fat.”[i]                     [My bold and italics.]

Any health issues: from heart disease to diabetes, are not usually due to extra ‘fat’ but the stresses of personal life and the workplace. 

Consequently, both Professors Raphael and Professor Angela Alberga of Concordia University in her article in the Journal of Obersity (2018) have gone further and argued the BMI and obesity mania are not only wrong
but, in fact, endanger human life.

The physical stresses of repeat, failed dieting and the low self-esteem of overweight and so-called obese individuals is threatening their well being!

They therefore recommend our physicians and governments cease their false fixation on weight and ‘fat’.

So, as I have long suggested, ditch the BMI and similar methods.

Ditch your household weighing scale and daily weigh ins.

Unless your body's bulk is a problem when trying to move or breath, stop stressing out on your body image and weight.

Let your body tell you what is ‘normal’ for you.

We must also stand up and repudiate the current medical profession mindset and government policies that have gotten it all wrong.

For example:

The Ontario government’s 2012 “No Time to Wait” strategy projected that without major intervention as many as 70% of today’s children will be “overweight or obese by 2040, with severe impact on health”[ii].

What garbage!!!

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[i] Cited in York University Magazine, Fall 2018,  page 15.

[ii] Ibid.