I was reading an article in the magazine Nutrition Health Review that was an interesting approach to health. With health food stores and products for weight loss as a multi-billion-dollar industry it was a new viewpoint on weight loss. As a runner, the main idea was that the thinner the runner, the faster they can run. When you watch marathon winners on television, the top finishers are all very thin. One of the first offers of advice to an overweight or obese person is to start running and burn off the extra calories of fat. In most cases, the practice of being active by running does lead to weight loss. The problem with the emphasis on being thin and losing weight is that as a large population of the country is increasing in size.
The article’s approach is called “Health at Every Size” and focuses on being healthy at all sizes and shapes of a person. Instead of doing exercise and activity to run a faster 5K, the person does exercise and activity to improve their health. The idea is to reject the loss of weight and be thin and healthy but promotes the idea that any size and shape can be healthy. The idea is to have acceptance of all body shapes as being a standard and not have the discrimination against a person who is overweight or fat. The idea that all sizes can be healthy has an alternative benefit in that the mental well being of an overweight person is improved as they are now more likely to be accepted by society.
While this is a good approach for an overweight person with regard to being healthy, there is the fact that being obese does lead to many health problems such as diabetes, heart disease, arthritis and cancer. This is one of the reasons the push to lose weight is so prevalent. But even thin people can have these same ailments, so to blame obesity as the cause is misleading.
