In this newsletter edition, I will attempt to challenge your view of fat as being equal to unhealthy.
It wasn't until recently that I realized that all the information I had been fed about weight research was only one side of the coin. I didn't even recognize that the coin fell on the side of the diet industry. I ate all that I was fed and only felt bad about myself when I wasn't their "ideal weight".
No longer; I now see the other side of the coin. To start to reveal the other side of the coin, I will allow the words of Katherine Flegal to help me (thus, I will not be the only one preaching here):
Katherine M. Flegal, PhD, Senior Research Scientist at the National Center for Health Statistics, CDC, explains, "Although people think there's all this evidence out there showing a high mortality risk associated with (being) overweight, in fact the literature doesn't show it." Far from it. Flegal's research, analyzing 30 years of actual deaths in the US, corrected an earlier CDC report that indicated severe risks related to (being) overweight. She showed instead that being clinically 'overweight' is associated with a lower death rate than so-called 'normal' or 'healthy' weight. (JAMA 2005;293:1861-1867). It confirmed much earlier research that had been studiously ignored.
Further, I would like to point out that research telling us to lose weight isn't even working! Instead, the more we diet, the more we become more and more obsessed with food, our bodies and our failures. So, even if you do believe that being fat is unhealthy, is dieting really working for you?
It wasn't until recently that I realized that all the information I had been fed about weight research was only one side of the coin. I didn't even recognize that the coin fell on the side of the diet industry. I ate all that I was fed and only felt bad about myself when I wasn't their "ideal weight".
No longer; I now see the other side of the coin. To start to reveal the other side of the coin, I will allow the words of Katherine Flegal to help me (thus, I will not be the only one preaching here):
Katherine M. Flegal, PhD, Senior Research Scientist at the National Center for Health Statistics, CDC, explains, "Although people think there's all this evidence out there showing a high mortality risk associated with (being) overweight, in fact the literature doesn't show it." Far from it. Flegal's research, analyzing 30 years of actual deaths in the US, corrected an earlier CDC report that indicated severe risks related to (being) overweight. She showed instead that being clinically 'overweight' is associated with a lower death rate than so-called 'normal' or 'healthy' weight. (JAMA 2005;293:1861-1867). It confirmed much earlier research that had been studiously ignored.
Further, I would like to point out that research telling us to lose weight isn't even working! Instead, the more we diet, the more we become more and more obsessed with food, our bodies and our failures. So, even if you do believe that being fat is unhealthy, is dieting really working for you?