22 November, 2007
BBC takes small pause in the relentless anti-obesity onslaught
Someone at the BBC has actually gotten half a clue. The mind boggles.
Admittedly, not many clues have been obtained, and certainly not enough to stop the editors putting the usual headless torsos and burger porn shots on the story. But someone has actually noticed the facts don't prop up the relentless anti-obesity rhetoric:
"There is very little evidence to say that being overweight is a signifier of a person or a population's health," he says.
This may sound like heresy but there is good science to back it up. Only this month a study, led by Katherine Flegal of the USA Centre for Disease Control, reported that those who are overweight had no higher risk dying of cancer or heart disease and overall lived longer than those of "normal" weight. You might be surprised at her finding but she was not. "There is actually a large amount of evidence that suggests that the overweight live the longest," she says.
It's certainly not the public health message you normally hear.
05 November, 2007
Calories IN Calories OUT
I have been reading with interest the post over at Shapely Prose about debunking the myth that anyone can become thin and stay thin.
There's another way to address this view that Kate counters:
The way to make fat people permanently thin is for those fat people to incorporate lifestyle changes such that they can take in fewer calories than their bodies need, such that they burn fat until they’ve lost weight to whatever the fuck ‘thin’ equates to, and then continue to maintain a diet and exercise regimen to maintain that weight, hopefully without making themselves so miserable that they freak out and kill themselves from the stress.
Take me for an instance. Past history suggests that there is a way to make myself thinner (yeah, yeah, one of the rare few). I don't have any eating issues, nor can I cope with starving myself, but exercise will do the trick. I'm not sure how much weight I'd lose overall, but I'd still be fat. But here's the kick. It would need to be a LOT of exercise. 2 hours a day isn't enough. 4 hours a day is more like it. That amount of exercise would still leave me fat, but I'd certainly get some weight off.
Now here's my point: remember that thing called a JOB that you need to do? To earn money and make a living? Turns out that that's rather in conflict - the only things I can make money by doing are ones that don't allow for exercise. A job that pays sufficient money to live on simply doesn't allow for 4hours of exercise per day. So, sure, I could lose weight, IF I HAD A SUGAR DADDY, or a LONG-LOST RICH UNCLE DIED, or I WON THE LOTTERY.
Yeah RIGHT. SURE I could lose weight.
Further on the subject of making impossible things sound trivial, I love the analogy from Fillyjonk:
Maybe poor people should try to be richer. It’s a simple money in -money out scenario.
I have one of my own, too:
All you need to do to levitate is to keep both legs off the floor. Simple!
Anyone want to add more to make a collection?
