Quick Hits
- Professor Philip James believes the alleged obesity epidemic is tantamount to global warming and isn't a "lifestyle choice" (there's always Weight Watchers!) (Note: headless fattie photo.)
- Mostly positive piece that stresses one not need lose weight to be healthy, except for those "tubby" people over a BMI of 30 (hi!) (Note: fattie pictured with head!)
- Australia has upped its weight limits for postal carriers in an attempt to hire more of them.
- Peggynature is looking for your assistance with a school project portraying positive fat people.
- Kate Harding wants you to submit your photo for the new BMI project, which will be published in a Real Magazine!
- And finally, Rachel at The F Word posted a very interesting experiment. She calculated her waist-to-hip (WTH) ratio and then compared how various sites with WTH calculators portrayed her ratio, which is in the healthy range per, well, almost everyone. Sites with ads for weight loss generally told her she was too fat.
Faith-Based Dieting | Please Help Sara Anderson of F-Words
Posted by paul on March 7, 2008
So, if obesity is like global warming, are they going to start having companies offering "calorie offset credits" and other BS like that?
(Obesity is NOT like global climate change. Not by a long shot. It's not even like smoking. There's no way someone can get "secondhand fat" from sitting next to me. I'm not killing the polar bears because I'm 20 lbs or more overweight.)
I fear that we're heading towards a world where the food we're permitted to eat is going to be decided by someone else - most likely someone who doesn't understand metabolism.
From everything I've read, WHR is even less changeable than weight. My weight has changed a lot over the years, but even when I was thin as a teenager my waist was "thick." Pants have always been too tight in the waist for me when they fit everywhere else. And I seem to remember reading that the cardiovascular risks are higher for those with high WHR even if they're thin! So the dieting advice given to Rachel seems especially misguided and bogus. It's genetic, folks, and weight loss apparently won't change the risks.
Agreed. I'm apple shaped. Bad WHM. When I'm thinner, the ratio is better. It's easier for me to lose weight than it is to change my WHM. I could give you a few numbers. When I started to exercise my waist was 33 inches and my hips 38. .87 unhealthy. Now, that I've been exercising for 6 months, 30/36 . 83 That is a very small difference in ratio although I lost three inches from my waist and two inches from my hips. If I continue to gain muscle and lose fat by exercising, my body fat will fall much faster than my WHM. The only good thing are the small change to me is that my size 10 jeans fit better. They're big in the hips but very comfortable in the waist.