BMI mislabels 54 million Americans as 'overweight' or 'obese' study says
http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-bmi-does-not-measure-health-20160204-story.html
Well there is such a thing called Normal Weight Obesity that the BMI totally misses. A person who is overweight or considered obese could actually have much better blood pressure and cholesterol than someone who is of a normal weight. Another scenario I've heard is how a model can't make it up a flight of stairs without losing her breath and yet a woman who is 5'8" and let's say she's 240 lbs can go up two flights of stairs with no problems. I remember hearing about this on NPR. I think it was All Things Considered.
And not that I want to start a fire storm but this article was thought provoking.
http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/medical_examiner/2015/03/diets_do_not_work_the_thin_evidence_that_losing_weight_makes_you_healthier.html I yo-yo weight wise. I try very hard to make permanent lifestyle changes, but fear that it's more compulsive dieting than anything else. This article really hit a raw spot for me about how food is a pre-occupation and no matter how much you lose, you're always working on trying to maintain that loss and to keep losing. I'm not going to talk about my actual weight, because I have enough judgement in my own life from myself. Always have and always will have horrific body image issues (thanks to the assholes I grew up with), and will probably live for the rest of my life feeling guilty over eating anything including a fucking *salad. (*okay maybe not over a salad, but it's gotten real close to that, and by salad, I do mean a legit greens, tomato, onion, no bullshit aside from fat free dressing kind of salad).
I love to cook. I love gardening (I can drive you all crazy by posting photos of my seedlings, gardens and crops haha) and going to farmers markets. I am very much about getting a lot of stuff locally, and here in Western Maryland we got lots of farms and award winning goat cheese. I'm pretty awesome with food preservation (I go harvest my own strawberries from a local farm, my mom and I make a low sugar jam with balsamic vinegar, and in the fall, I make all sorts of stuff to can and freeze), and yeah I do enjoy going to a cool restaurant whenever I'm in the city (I avoid chains like the plague). Unfortunately, that doesn't mean I don't have a fucked up relationship with food. I know there's reasons why I do, and trust me, I work hard on this stuff. I'm always terrified over losing control, and yeah I've fallen off the wagon and have paid dearly for it. I try hard not to restrict and have binge behaviors, but it happens and when it does, I try not to get upset. I have a gym membership and am working towards making it a healthy habit via being mindful with my movement. The temptation to go overboard to the point of getting sick is always there.
Mindfulness and moderate in my experience is what's key. And it's a struggle. A struggle worth fighting for, but it makes me sad that my appearance doesn't tell that struggle whatsoever.
And for the record, per doctors and therapists, I don't have an eating disorder. Just disordered eating, which could always turn into the worse case scenario but hopefully that won't happen to me, especially since I see a wonderful psychologist who keeps me in check. She made me really think a few weeks ago when she pointed out that one of her anorexic patients seriously has the thought of "Am I a piece of shit for eating a few apple slices?" Which then made me remark "Is it worth being terrified over 50 calories? I feel like an asshole being terrified about something being 200 calories."
Physically, sure I have asthma and allergies, but it's for the most part well under control. I do have a slight bad knee and back issues - both genetic (I try very hard to make them the reasons why I lose weight), but aside from that I'm in very good physical health. And I'm sure Julian is just dying to know this...so here goes...I'm nowhere near a BMI of 25 even though I'm not fucking huge (Dan Savage said I wasn't huge. I got that on video! And believe me, I work with huge people at my office and if I ever got like that I'd kill myself), so I doubt you'd want to bone me, but please know that I have always had very low bad cholestrol (which is a great thing) and my blood pressure is typically excellent. And shockingly enough to my primary care and ob-gyn practitioners, my blood sugars and A1C are pretty damn good. They're in the basic normal range, not even high normal range.
As for that Dan Savage video, here is the clip...all the way back from 2009
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yTKb0k7W6po (We can discuss the video in a thread of it's own haha)
