iStock_000002159921XSmallI read this article on CNN.com last week and wanted to comment on it here but I’m just now getting around to it (I am really super-lazy when pregnant, what can I say?)  The title is “As Nation gains, ‘overweight’ is relative”.  Basically it talks about a) the fact that stores are changing sizes–what was once a 14 is now a 10, and so on (depending on where you shop it can vary widely, of course, as I know from experience) and b) people are less likely to describe themselves as overweight, even if they are (and we all know the average American is getting fatter all the time).

It’s great if people who are a so-called “normal” weight are getting more realistic about themselves and not seeing themselves as fat–that’s great news.  But of course there’s the flip side of people who are heavy but in denial about it.  The danger of that is they won’t be so motivated to lose the weight.  They talk about this issue in the article, but I don’t know who those people are, because everyone I know who is overweight is well aware of it, and plenty of people I know who aren’t overweight seem to think they are.

One thing that bothers me about the study mentioned in the article is the reliance on the BMI measurement, which I think has serious drawbacks–and they do admit in the article that “it does not reflect the whole story of a person’s health”.  Here’s a little excerpt from a book about the problems with BMI, but basically it just seems a little simplistic to me that we can just decide someone is overweight by their height and weight measurements.  It means lots of fit athletes would be considered overweight according to BMI charts because they’re packed with dense muscle tissue, for one thing.  Anyway, from what I understand holding a lot of fat around the middle is a much better indicator for being in poor health than a straight up BMI result.

Regardless of the reliability of BMI calculations, it’s an interesting article and it makes me curious to meet these people who actually don’t realize they’re fat just because they found some pants to fit in with a smaller number on the tag.


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