We should completely re-evaluate our approach on weight loss. Moving forward, it should not be a part of the conversation about health at all. Telling people to “lose weight” should be banned from the conversation.
Weight Loss Isn’t The Goal, Health Is
Aesthetics is a big reason for exercise. We want to look good. However, looking good is also equated with health. This is a big mistake because it has lead to a false dicotomy. If you look aesthetically pleasing you are described as ‘fit’ and ‘healthy’, but if you do not fit that mold then you are somehow not those things. The reality is you can be technically overweight and otherwise healthy, and you can look like a model and be very unhealthy. This is why looking at other markers for health is so important
Chemistry Is At Issue, Not Weight
Yearly physical exams these days look at a whole host of different markers to establish the health of the individual. A key component is blood work which reveals things like cholesterol and triglyceride levels, vitamin deficiency, and more.
Recently, it has become more clear that what seems to be important with regards to nutrition is how foods effect your body chemistry. For example, the glycemic index is used to predict how drastically a food will cause blood sugar to rise in the body. It is believed that rapid, large spikes in blood sugar cause rapid, large releases of insulin. This pattern is associated with insulin resistance, the precusor to type 2 diabetes which is also linked to increased fat storage.
Similarly, it was once believed that eating fats and cholesterol would lead to all kinds of cardiovascular disasters. We now have come to understand that eating certain fats can actually reduce unhealthy levels of fat in the bloodstream. Eating cholesterol seems to have no effect on cholesterol levels in the blood.
In both cases nutrition does not have to be a conversation about weight. If the Doctor identifies something like high triglycerides, they should recommend nutrition for bringing down triglycerides instead of telling someone to ‘lose weight.’
Exercise Becomes About Weight Loss
As far as a weight loss is concerned, exercise is not a good strategy. The average exerciser just doesn’t burn that many calories per workout, and aren’t doing enough workouts per week for it to add up to a significant difference. If you are reading that and feeling discouraged fear not, exercise is still hugely important and amazingly beneficial. It maintains muscle mass and strength, bone density, coordination, and teaches you functional skills like how to move properly without overloading joints and other structures (such as your spine), or how to effectively pick up and carry heavy objects. Every one of these things is hugely important. None of them are about weight loss.
The Drive To Lose Weight Leads To Mistakes
Hopefully a picture is coming into focus, which is that emphasizing weight loss leads to bad plans that ultimately fail. Things like juice cleanses or crash diets are unsustainable for obvious reasons, but seemingly ‘normal’ methods like low carb diets or running can be equally untenable if they are all about weight.
Excessive cardiovascular training is a prime example. Cardio has long been associated with weight loss, which is part of the reason that many people engage in it excessively, and I would even say, obsessively. A great many of the overuse injuries that I see come from far too much cardio and no real strength, power, mobility, or coordination training. All too often, those who suffer from chronic injury due to their cardio habits refuse to give them up. This leads to endless attempts at patching up injuries in order to get back out there doing more endless cardio in an attempt to stave off or reverse weight gain, and the more it doesn’t work, the more aggressively it is pursued. Cardiovascular training should be one tool in the health and fitness toolbox, not the only one.
Low Body Fat Isn’t Necessarily Normal
There is a lot of evidence out there that seems to be pointing towards the idea that keeping weight off long term may be unrealistic. The recent New York Times article about the Biggest Loser indicates that in the process of losing all that weight, the contestants’ bodies drastically lowered their metabolism and kept it down, even years after the contest. The authors described it as the body literally “fighting” to get the weight back on and keep it on. Other studies on the subject seem to show similar patterns. The best case scenario that I could find (study) showed that over ten years, there were people who maintained weight loss, but not as much as their initial loss. In other words, at least some weight comes back on, like it or not. (More similar findings: Study 2, Study 3)
This is not to say that weight control is impossible or a bad goal, but it is to say that getting a body like we commonly see on the cover of a health magazine is very difficult, and not maintainable over the long term. Our bodies don’t really want that, they want to have some fat. If you delve into the processes that are followed by the fitness role-models that we commonly see – on the covers of magazines, starring in movies, or playing professional sports – you will find that usually the snapshot of their lives that we see are only short lived moments. Fitness models use cutting phases and dehydration to make themselves look “their best” for a photo shoot. After the shoot, the phase ends and they can go back to their real physique which is usually a few percentage points higher in body fat and several more pounds more in water weight. The same is true of body builders and movie stars. Even pro-atheletes have an off season in which they let their body recover from the peak that they hope to maintain during a season. They all have moments of top physical condition, but it is never sustained over long periods of time. Their picture on the cover of a magazine or in action on the field, on the other hand, is immortal and leaves the rest of us feeling like this is how we are supposed to look even though the evidence indicates that, biologically, we probably aren’t.
There is even some suggestion that a little more body fat may be protective. This is a phenomenon known as the obesity paradox and refers to the observation that certain groups such as the elderly or people with certain diseases seem to have better survival rates if they are slightly overweight.
Conclusion: Why Is It Always About Weight?
I’ve tried to outline a few important threads in this post. I can’t thoroughly discuss everything, nor present every study (especially the ones that show opposite findings), or pretend to be a scientific expert, because I’m not. I do hope though, that I have presented a counter to a common narrative, which is that we all need to lose weight. What we should weigh from a biological perspective, or from a social perspective, are all very debatable subjects. What I don’t believe anyone would consider debatable is that we should try to maintain and even improve health, and that can 100% be achieved without making it about weight loss. There are many ways to make a lifestyle a healthier one and if in so doing you happen to lose a few pounds great, but that should not be the whole focus. Weight loss is a distraction. It takes your eye off of the things that you can absolutely control and puts it on something that may be completely out of your control. I think it needs to stop.
RELATED:
Obesity Research Confirms Long-Term Weight Loss Almost Impossible
Why The Biggest Losers Regain Weight
Bibliography:
Study – Weight-Loss Maintenance for 10 Years in the National Weight Control Registry
J. Graham Thomas, PhDcorrespondenceemail, Dale S. Bond, PhD, Suzanne Phelan, PhD, James O. Hill, PhD, Rena R. Wing, PhD
Article has an altmetric score of 127
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.amepre.2013.08.019
Article Info click to expand contents
Study 2 – Weight-loss outcomes: a systematic review and meta-analysis of weight-loss clinical trials with a minimum 1-year follow-up
Publication Details
Franz M J, VanWormer J J, Crain L, Boucher J L, Histon T, Caplan W, Bowman J D, Pronk N P. Weight-loss outcomes: a systematic review and meta-analysis of weight-loss clinical trials with a minimum 1-year follow-up. Journal of the American Dietetic Association 2007; 107(10): 1755-1767. [PubMed]
Study 3 – The effects of exercise and diet on weight loss maintenance in overweight and obese adults: a systematic review
Publication Details
Bibliographic details: Kouvelioti R, Vagenas G, Langley-Evans S. The effects of exercise and diet on weight loss maintenance in overweight and obese adults: a systematic review. Journal of Sports Medicine and Physical Fitness 2014; 54(4): 456-474. [PubMed]
PHOTO – oddharmonic, she covered her ears to yell – License
Weight loss isn't the main goal, true. Otoh, another aspect... changing norms of how people should look. How much fat is acceptable? Years ago you saw few very fat people on the streets, now you see many. And some are very obese. It doesn’t have the same stigma as before. This is both good and bad. The thing is that what's regarded as normal weight (like normal political views) can change and be subject to social pressures. Years ago a well groomed trim appearance was more important for many people. If fat is so common, people may automatically eat more when they want to, feeling less reason to avoid weight gain, since it’s much more acceptable to be obese. For this reason, obesity may keep increasing, as it gets even more common----thus more health problems. Is anyone writing about this aspect, I wonder. And to change social norms back to ‘slim is better’, do we have to make people feel like freaks if they’re fat? How to change norms without making people feel criticized and insulted. A problem.
Obesity and overweight has definitely risen, but I think accepted is the wrong word - common would be more appropriate. I think it's not so much people's attitudes that have changed as it is the realities of daily living. How we eat and how active we are, for example, are two things that have changed quite a bit over the last several decades. I recently read in the book "Paper Or Plastic" by Daniel Imhoff that dinner prep-time went from 2.5 hours in 1930 to 15 minutes in 1990! Fast food, take out, and ready made meals have supplanted home cooking. I think we need to not focus on the bodies we should or shouldn't have, but rather on the habits we should or shouldn't have. What do you think?? Check out the podcast I wrote about in this post for a pretty amazing perspective on this issue! Empathy and Fitness
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[…] is an over-emphasis on the role of calories in fitness – something I have written about often before – and this case is another extension of that. The trouble with this is that it creates false […]