You may be familiar with “experts” discussing BMI. This is the body mass index, a height-to-weight ratio that is supposedly the best way to determine your target weight. According to experts, a healthy BMI for a woman is between 18.5-24.9. There are many calculators and charts on the Internet where you can calculate your BMI. At first, this seemed like a good tool. It focuses on a range, and doesn’t rely completely on weight, which we know is affected by muscle.
BMI is often used in obesity studies and research, so when we talk about the “obesity epidemic” in America, we’re talking about people whose BMI makes them “obese.” Personally, I believe that the “obesity epidemic” is a lot of politically-charged judgmental Puritanical good-old-fashioned American bullshit. Poor nutrition and lack of exercise do cause health problems. News flash: these problems happen to thin and fat people alike.
Personally, I think you should take your BMI (and others’ BMI, if you concern yourself with that sort of thing) with a grain of salt. Sure, it can be a good starting point if you don’t know what you “should” weigh—it can stop you from focusing on a number that’s unrealistic. Many women have a number in their heads of what their ideal weight is, and a BMI calculator can provide some insight into how accurate or “healthy” that number is.
But your “healthy” BMI might be unrealistic and unhealthy for you. If you’re considered underweight, yet you eat a balanced diet and get a safe amount of exercise that makes you feel good, should you eat McDonald’s every day to make an effort to gain? If you have lost 20 pounds and feel great and strong, should you obsess over the last ten that are going to make you officially “normal?” To both of these questions the answer is…of course not.
We all have a thin friends who eats like crap and smokes a pack a day and a friend who carries an extra 30 pounds and can outrun us any day of the week.
If you want to lose weight, that’s fine—but please, please focus on your healthy weight, and not any standard that is unrealistic or makes you feel bad. And if you’re just interested in being healthier or more active and not giving a damn that you’re “scary skinny,” “morbidly obese” or “almost obese so put down that donut, fatty” according to the he BMI scale, that’s fine too.
If you’re striving to be fitter and healthier, that’s amazing — and I think it’s OK if your BMI doesn’t officially reflect that. This is illustrated in the BMI Project, a slideshow of women with different BMIs. You can see how women of all shapes and sizes — women with beautiful bodies, healthy women who have completed marathons, who do yoga, who grow their own food, who have birthed children, who climb mountains — are judged by this calculator and are part of the “obesity epidemic.”
I worry that by blogging about diet and exercise, I’m part of the problem, not the solution. When I talk to my friends who want to lose weight, we often come to the same point: Why does our culture think focusing on the outside will improve upon the inside?
So many women believe that reaching their goal weight will provide them the life they’ve always dreamed of having. They’ll be more successful, they’ll have a boyfriend. But women of all sizes have careers, great social lives, and happy relationships. And…women of all sizes are single and have failures and disappointments. Your weight is not the deciding factor. Why is it so hard to remember this?
Most women admit that it’s not so much being thinner that makes them more “successful”…it’s the confidence associated with it. I couldn’t agree more! But the lower weight/better life mentality seems to be a self-fulfilling prophecy…you think you deserve more, so you act as if you deserve more, so therefore you get more. And I am all about getting more! But when it comes to losing weight, let treating your body well be your guide.
Because you can get more out of life at any weight. Treat your body well. The rest will follow.
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Amen, my friend, amen.
Wonderfully put! My sister thought her life would be perfect once she got her weight down (she gained and lost over 80 lbs for years). She finally divorced a man she never loved, and has been looking for the knight on a white horse ever since. She still doesn’t consider herself worthy of love (IMHO) and constantly berates herself over a 5 lb weight gain. I wish she could “get it”: she is beautiful and deserving of happiness!
.-= Melissa (It’s a Veggieful Life)´s last blog ..I Like Meat. There, I’ve Said It! =-.