Skinny People can still be Obese?
The medical advisers and the media can make even getting healthy complicated. Media outlets picked up the story from the Mayo Clinic with blaring headlines that skinny people are now falling victim to obesity.
Reading the fine print you can decipher that the problem here is body fat content and the study followed people who were correct weight, but still had high body fat percentages. In short, people who managed to maintain what the government says is a healthy weight, but they didn’t maintain muscle. Hmmmm…can we conclude they were not living a healthy lifestyle but an American lifestyle?
A lot has been said about the American couch potato lifestyle. We like our TV, computers and sedentary lifestyle. That leads to obesity and it doesn’t matter whether you’ve managed to control your weight or not at that point. A sedentary lifestyle doesn’t promote muscle growth and allows an excess of body fat to accumulate.
The big problem with this “excessive body fat” number is that this is the key to the increased heart disease, diabetes and obesity related diseases. In short, thin people can be obese but not be overweight. Does that mean an overweight person could be “fat” but not obese? Technically yes. Some of our finest athletes are not weight proportionate because of their high muscle mass. This makes them overweight but their muscle mass versus body fat ratio keeps them from being labeled obese.
Not one of the news stories I read made the observation that obesity is then related to exercise. It would seem to me that while diet is going to remain a big issue in the “overweight” spectrum, exercise is the biggest factor in the effort to cure to obesity.
America, put on your walking shoes! I just did!
P.S. Do you think we can get the Mayo Clinic to change its name? I realize it isn’t named after Helman’s mayonnaise, but in my obese head I connect sandwich spread to every article the clinic releases. I probably just need to get over that, but I’m just saying….
