"If you put a crack in someone's 'normal' way of thinking what comes up in it's place is common sense" - Roger Mills and Jack Pransky, pg 259 Originally written December 15, 2017 I ended my last rant with a promise to delve into Body Mass Index, more popularly known as BMI. There is an extensive bit of research debunking this topic as it does not provide one with a guideline for appropriate cutoff values associated with an "ideal weight" but yet this tool is still heavily utilized within the medical and weight loss industry. If you're unfamiliar with BMI, Body Mass Index is a well known “medical” form of measuring health by dividing individuals into categories: underweight, optimal weight, overweight, obese and now morbidly obese. These are determined by a calculation based off the individual’s height and weight ratio. A quick pause for a story: years and years ago, shortly after my weight loss journey began and found that I was making visible progress, I decided to get a routine check up with my doctor. I think I may have already dropped 10 or so pounds - I was feeling great! I had a kick in my step from knowing that I was lighter, I could feel my high spirits continuously lifted from being healthier, I could not be knocked down. I’m checked in, a nurse takes my vitals, weight, blood pressure, standard questions. He asked about my weight and I beam as I tell him I recently lost 10 pounds and he beams back! He congratulates my efforts, he tells me to keep the progress going and he tells me the doctor will be with me shortly. This is always a small fib, but it’s okay because I am glowing with all this positivity. I’m like a small child, swinging my short legs off the examination table, not a care in the world. In comes my doctor, who solely makes eye contact with my chart, and asks why I came in. After explaining I just came in for a standard check up, the doctor blatantly tells me “Well, you’re morbidly obese.” Still no eye contact, let alone a physical examination. This is of course based off of the famous BMI chart he barely glanced at. He pointed where “my category” was, based off of my height (5’1’’) and what weight I needed to be at (100 lbs). This doctor monotonously explains how being at this ideal and healthy weight will normalize my blood pressure as well as many other health aspects, which is true. But then I meekly interrupt him to ask him what my current blood pressure was again. It has been years, so I don’t remember the exact number but I do know that it has never strayed far from the standard healthy 120/80, even at my heaviest. He searches for my blood pressure on his precious chart and falls silent, stunted by his own overbearing attitude. He awkwardly asks if I required anything else from him and makes his way to his next patient. My once concrete easy-breezy happiness from progression of my well-being, of my whole self, sent me into a whirlwind of anxiety, depression and helplessness. Maybe this doctor was having a bad day, maybe this is just the way he is, no matter. What deflated my happiness was in his ease of putting me into a box that I, previously to this moment, did not relate to. Leading to this moment, I knew I had weight to lose, I knew I wanted to be healthy, but I had no idea I was obese, let alone MORBIDLY OBESE. I considered all of my recent hard work that resulted in me losing weight - what was that for if I am morbidly obese?? But then I thought of all the power pump classes I had recently attended, how visibly strong I have become since the beginning of my journey and something did not seem quite kosher. How can this chart tell the difference between muscle and fat? And does it know that muscle weighs more than fat? Does it know if I am a male or female? Does it know my build - because I may be petite but my Latina butt will never be 100 lbs!! Let's calculate an example, shall we? Our example's name will be Johnson. We do not know the examples gender, build, race/ethnicity, sexuality, or their desires/goals for their body. This person weighs in at 260 lbs - based off of this number alone we can already stereo-typically assess that Johnson is heavy set, even though we are unaware of other factors previously mentioned above. We find out Johnson is 6 feet and 5 inches tall.. whoa now.. we have a hefty person on our hands!! Given these numbers, lets check what category Johnson ranks at. According to the Body Mass Index (image above) he is a whooping 31! Riiiiiiiiight over that obesity line. So our assumption was correct.... Johnson is obese. Tsk, Tsk... someone should inform Dwayne "the Rock" Johnson, our example, of this. (Shout out to Google for providing the intimate details) Posing the real question: How did this index with it's many, many flaws become the most popular form of measuring body fat within so many fields? In the 1830’s, Adolphe Quetelet, a Belgian astronomer and mathematician, invented this calculation due of his keen interest in observing human norms as determined by a bell curve. “His pioneering cross-sectional studies of human growth led him to conclude that other than the spurts of growth after birth and during puberty, ‘the weight increases as the square of the height"[7]. This was then known as the Quetelet Index. Essentially, this theory has more to do with the mathematical laws of probability than body fat, disease or mortality [11]. A thought to consider: what are the chances that Quetelet's sample population included those of diverse races? Hmm.. Come the 1940’s: Metropolitan Life Insurance Company implemented this theory as a measurement to determine how much to charge their customers for insurance, without having scientific evidence showing a correlation in weight and health. Soon after, noticing the ease of having generalized categories for their patients, the Quetelet Index was adopted by doctors, epidemiologists and the U.S. Government as a way to determine health based off of weight due to forceful lobbying of a Metropolitan Life statistician [11] named of Louis Dublin [10]. By the early 1970’s, Ancel Keys, an astute scientist who studied starvation in men and author of The Biology of Human Starvation (1950) continued practicing Quetelet Index, officially coining the term as Body Mass Index (BMI) in his article Indices of relative weight and obesity. However, Keys made a point to emphasize that BMI was only relevant for macro studies (large populations) and “completely inappropriate for use in individual diagnosis” [6]. This fell on deaf ears as physicians had a more convenient, non-invasive form of measuring patients health and nutritional standing that simply could rely on a handy dandy calculator. By 1998, BMI took a turn for the worst when the National Health, Lung, and Blood Institute lowered the BMI numbers for all weight categories, making those who were originally at optimal weight to become now overweight [11]. Not only does this measurement have no history of taking into account such control measures as gender, age, race, and cultural background, but also does not distinguish between the weight orienting from fat tissue versus muscle tissue. Therefore given this information based on historical and empirical data, the Body Mass Index is an inefficient form of determining health as its lacking major components such as diversity as well as the distinguishing factor of its inability to determine weight from muscle mass or actual body fat; society is basing a major form of health measurement and categorization off of false information. We can hypothesize that there is no reason for society to have such terms like ‘overweight’ and ‘obese’ then. Granted, yes, there is a childhood obesity epidemic in modern-day America - according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in 2011-2014 “the prevalence of obesity remains at about 17% and affects about 12.7 million children and adolescents”[4]. But these determinants are based off of BMI, a proven false measurement of health! The concern here is the labeling of children into categories based off of a false calculation. Entitling children will undoubtedly have an affect on them, but to be labeled in such a manner at an early onset would have a massive impact on a child as they are now determined to be something that is more often viewed as a negative feature within America’s society - not being thin and we all know that thinness equals beauty, right? (See last post on rants on society’s harsh view on beauty and its impacts on men, women and children) I will end here to give you time to mull this over. Next time…. Let’s talk about the healthy alternatives to measure your health! (Yes, they indeed exist!) If you have questions, comments or concerns, I encourage and welcome you to reach out to me!
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“Imagine us shaping that new woman, dream of the future, out of the transformed obsessions that presently rule our lives.” - Kim Chernin, author, The Hungry Self Originally written on November 29, 2017
To complete my masters in social work, I had to perform a full presentation on how I could change an aspect of the world, i.e. a certain population, a specific occurrence, etc. using the core values and competencies that WSU taught us.... in 10 to 15 minutes. Piece o' Cake. (Note: I should say/warn you on my first post that I am a sarcastic writer, but you'll catch on) I was very proud of my research, I thought it wrong to let it sit on my hard drive for years until it magically gets lost over time. I chose to write about how our modern society demands a world where one must meet the impossible standards of beauty and flawlessness. Because of this, I believe that body positivity and self-care are much needed within everyone's lives, but especially here in America. We've grown far too comfortable with our go, go, go mantra that we have lost sight on silly little things like our character. What can't be posted to our timelines and feeds no longer has importance within our lives. We're no longer concerned with others' well being but more focused on how our lives must appear to others on their screens. Now throw youth into the mix and consider what message they can receive from our normal behavior and surroundings. On that note, let's just dive right in... What is Body Positivity? A movement that first emerged in the early 1990's that challenged society's negative view on beauty and thus invites people to live fully and intuitively in their lives without a focus on the waistline. This movement mirrors Strengths-Based theories practices of evaluating one's strengths to use as a tool for empowerment, in this case seeing your strengths as beauty. This movement also encourages connection with others to motivate empowerment. This movement shifted from attempting to "fix what's wrong" to practicing improving and maintaining self-care behaviors motivated by positive forces. I want to stress that this movement does not encourage unhealthy practices but rather encourages the practice loving yourself. Through self-care and through self-awareness we can unleash the natural creative energy we all possess! How's that now? By finding a balance between food, exercise, and rest (adequate self-care) we can find our genetically determined set point weight, our natural weight. How so? By not having our appearance be an obsession or on a pedestal we can focus on other aspects of ourselves. This new ideology of health is based on balancing self-care and self-love, inhabiting your body to life FULLY. How do I know this works? Why am I such a believer? Because I walked this path, I walk it every day. Read more about my journey here. Is This Indeed a Social Issue? Let's look at some major studies...'The Real Truth About Beauty' campaign by Dove in 2004 where 3,200 women, aged 18 to 64 were asked how they defined beauty, how satisfied they were with their beauty and how it affects their well-being. Of these women, "2% considered themselves beautiful. 68% of these women agreed that the media sets unrealistic standards of beauty that most women cannot attain" [2]. 76% of the global respondents (ages 18-29) of Dove’s Real Beauty Campaign agreed in wishing female beauty depicted in media would be defined more than physical attractiveness and 75% agreed with wishing the media included more diverse physical attractiveness such as shape, age and size. When including all ages and asking only respondents in the United States, there is an increase to 85% in wishing female beauty depicted in media would be defined more than physical attractiveness and 80% who wished physical attractiveness being represented as more diverse. According to Body Image, Second Edition: A Handbook of Science, Practice, and Prevention, girls, by age 6 begin to express worries about their weight or shape. In fact, "40-60% of elementary aged girls (ages 6-12) are concerned about their weight or about becoming too fat. This concern endures through life" [1]. The National Eating Disorder Association (NEDA), found that 40% of teenagers who were found as heavier than average experience teasing and bullying in school by peers and/or family members at home. Such teasing has direct correlation to weight gain, binge eating, and extreme weight-control behaviors. “The best-known contributor to the development of anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa is body dissatisfaction” [6]. According to The Body Project: An Intimate History of American Girls, in discussing a study performed, they found that over half of the females interviewed (ages 18-25) would “prefer to be run over by a truck than to be fat, and two-thirds would choose to be mean or stupid rather than fat” [4]. This is a real statistic, I have even attached a link for your viewing. Have we indeed created a world where females would suggest these extremes just for beauty? Females would rather attain negative features than to attain negative physical features. There is a clear need for change....why not body positivity? Call it proper self-care if you'd rather; but to answer the initial question, who cares? I hope for our future sake YOU do! Next time.... Let's get real about BMI. |