Health vs "Fat"

One of the major controversies in field of “healthy weight” is - Is it OK to be Fat?

Lots of researches proof that overweight is associated with health diseases. However, there are also lots of studies shows that the overweight people are not living shorter than the people who are in the category that we deem normal. In my opinion, I agree with the latter. As long as you are eating healthfully, exercising regularly and taking care of your own personal health, you are a healthy person despite you are listed as “overweight”.

First of all, we have to know what is BMI. “Adult Body Mass Index(BMI) is a way to determine whether your weight is a healthy one. For most people, BMI is a reliable indicator of body fatness. It is calculated based on your height and weight.”¹

• If your BMI is less than 18.5, it falls within the "underweight" range.
  
• If your BMI is 18.5 to 24.9, it falls within the "normal" or Healthy Weight range.
• If your BMI is 25.0 to 29.9, it falls within the "overweight" range.
• If your BMI is 30.0 or higher, it falls within the "obese" range.
  
  
  －CDCP (U.S.), Assessing Your Weight

According to a report done by the National Health Lung and Blood Institute (NHLBI), Clinical Guidelines on the Identification, Evaluation, and Treatment of Overweight and Obesity in Adults: The Evidence Report, "overweight" and "obese" increases the risks of getting coronary heart disease, diabetes, cancers(endometrial, breast, and colon), hypertension, dyslipidemiavels of triglycerides, stroke, liver and gallbladder disease, sleep apnea and respiratory problems, osteoarthritis, gynecological problems, etc.² In addition, there are dozen of researches and studies proofs that “obese” and “underweight” are associated with higher mortality rate.

On the other hand, "overwieght" doesn't equal to the enhancement of mortality; indeed, there are certain numbers of health specialists claim that the BMI standard have been set too low. From the 1950s to the recent time, there are lots of researches and studies showing that "overwieght" doesn't increase the mortality rate. According to a landmark report, The International Journal of Obesity, done by the researchers at the Cornell University and the National Center for Health Statistic in 1996, the relationship between BMI and mortality among both non-smoked men and women were U-shpaed; males in the BMI range of 23-29 are actually living the longest lives, and the females in the category of both normal and overweight shared the same death rate.³

In fact, all of us can be healthy, even though we are in the category of "overweight". It is all depends on our lifestyle. A healthy weight is about a lifestyle that includes healthy eating, regular exercises, and balancing the number of calories you consume.⁴ If we are eating healthfully and taking care of our own physical and mental health, each of us can be a healthy person. Although BMI is only a measurement, but we should still pay attention to it because we should keep in our mind that "obese" and "underweight" are equal to unhealthy.

Finally, I would like to share a Youtube video about the debate of this topic.

Direct Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZrY2wkIl4Iw&feature=relmfu

References:

¹Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Healthy Weight - it's not a diet, it's a lifestyle: Assessing Your Weight:

http://www.cdc.gov/healthyweight/assessing/index.html

²NIH, NHLBI Obesity Education Initiative. Clinical Guidelines on the Identification, Evaluation, and Treatment of Overweight and Obesity in Adults. Available online:
http://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/guidelines/obesity/ob_gdlns.pdf

³Gaesser GA. Thinner May Not Be Healthier. Big fat lies: The truth about your weight and your health, 2002, p97-98. Carlsbad, CA: Gurze Books.

⁴Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Healthy Weight - it's not a diet, it's a lifestyle: Introduction:

http://www.cdc.gov/healthyweight/index.html

About Credibility and What is a Healthy Weight Losing Style

Every time doing academic researches or acquiring general information, we have to ask ourselves a few questions. For example, What is the source? What is the date? Who is saying it? What evidences are provided? Is there any potential bias? Does it make sense? In this blog post, I will provide an instance that lacks credibility to answer those questions. As I stated before, the topic of my blog is related to healthy weight; therefore, I have found a website that devoted to my topic as an example.

HCGAnywhere.com (http://hcganywhere.com/) is a website that promotes and sells its product, which calls HCG (Human Chorionic Gonadotropin). However, if you take a look of the website, you will see there are several problems on this website.

The first problem you can find is on the introduction paragraph, What Is HCG?. According to the paragraph, HCG helps the body mobilize and burns its fat stores.¹; moreover, we can even see there is an image of a male doctor next to the paragraph. Now we have to ask a few questions: Who is saying it? Is he/she a doctor or scientist? The man who appears on the picture, is he a certificated doctor? If yes, why don't the website provide certain personal information about him such as name, educated level and job position?

 

Picture1: What Is HCG?

Secondly, in the short paragraph, The Science Behind HCG, it used a scientific evidence to guarantee that the use of HCG injections in the treatment of obesity is safe. However, the detail of the practice is missing, such as the numbers of patients and how many years Dr. Simeons dedicated to the research.

The third problem is that Dr. Simeons's study was done in 1954, and the website doesn't provide any current experimental result of it. Therefore, we should keep a question in mind: has Dr. Simeons's study stood the test of time?

 

 
Picture2: The Science Behind HCG

 
In addition, the website highlights that if we kept a low calories diet and used the injectable HCG, we could lose 30 pounds in 40 days with no exercise. Dose it make sense to you? If yes, would it be a healthy way to lose weight? Later, in this blog post I will discuss what is a healthy weight losing method by providing several credible sources.

 Picture3: Our Complete System Includes, Why HCG

The last problem is about the success story of Kevin Trudeau. The website claims that Kevin Trudeau lost 60 lbs in 90 days. As we saw on the top of the web page, Kevin Trudeau is the author of The Weight Loss Cure THEY Don't Want You To Know About. If we bought the HCG system, we can get his book for free. Obviously, there is a potential bias. The website uses Kevin Trudeau as a successful example because they are business partner.

 Picture4: Free Book With Purchase of HCG System

Picture5: The "success story" of Kevin Trudeau

In fact, "a healthy way to achieve and maintain a healthy weight isn't about short-term dietary changes. It's about a lifestyle that includes healthy eating, regular physical activity, and balancing the number of calories you consume with the number of calories your body uses."² A reasonable and healthy weight loss is 1–2 pounds per week.³ Even though it may take as long as 6 months to lose the weight, it will make it easier to keep the weight off. The HCG website says we could lose 30 pounds in 40 days with HCG injection and low calories diet, and no need of physical activities; however, it doesn't make any sense to me. Such HCG diet and medicine limit the nutritional intake, is unhealthy, and may fail in a long term.

In addition , I want to talk about what is a proper case study. The use of Kevin Trudeau's personal experience is a failure because there is a financial aim between HCG AnywhereTM and Kevin Trudeau. In the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (U.S.) official website, it provides a few success stories about healthy weight losing. The CDCP website provides the person's personal information, name, highest and current weight, height, time it took to lose the weight, years that has kept it off for. Indeed, in each case study, it is divided to certain parts: Strategies That Work For Me, How I Did It, Biggest Challenge, Maintaining the Weight Loss, The Biggest Thrill.⁴ The web page gives lots of the details on how they lose and how they maintain their weight. Even though they were in different weight losing situation, they were still quite similar to each other; they changed to new healthy lifestyle such as eating a healthy diet and increasing their physical activities level. Moreover, we can all see that there are no financial aim between CDCP and the case study objects. CDCP is a non-profit organization, so they won't gain profit by providing those success stories.

While doing research or browsing websites, we have to be skeptical because it is very important to distinguish between trustworthy sources and deceitful sources. Finally, I would like to share a Youtube video, which uploaded by Dr. Vincent Bellonzi. He is a chiropractor and a Certified Clinical Nutritionist. In his video, he suggested that having breakfast, lunch and dinner, getting enough sleep and doing physical activities regularly, are the only ways to stay at a healthy weight. He also emphasized that diet don't work because it fails in a long run; the only strategy is to find a lifestyle that would allow you to stay at a weight that is healthy for you.

Direct Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wubyw2Wq4x4

References:

¹HCG AnywhereTM:
http://hcganywhere.com/

²Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Healthy Weight - it's not a diet, it's a lifestyle: Introduction:

http://www.cdc.gov/healthyweight/index.html

³U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, AIM for a Healthy Weight, page 5. Available online:
http://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/health/public/heart/obesity/aim_hwt.pdf

⁴Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Healthy Weight - it's not a diet, it's a lifestyle: Success Stories:

http://www.cdc.gov/healthyweight/success/index.html