Is Losing Weight an Important Health Goal?
Accepting your body as it is and stopping all the dieting may sound great, but would doing so hurt your health? Advertisements, pop culture and even doctors can talk about health and weight as if they are one and the same: smaller bodies are healthier, and larger bodies must be unhealthy. But neither health nor bodies are that simple and uniform, and health can vary from person to person said Jeanette Thompson-Wessen, a nutritionist in the United Kingdom whose approach doesn’t focus on weight loss.
A higher body mass index (BMI) is associated with conditions like diabetes and heart disease, said Philipp Scherer, professor of internal medicine and director of the Touchstone Diabetes Center at University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center. However, BMI is a controversial way to measure health, and it’s just one of many factors associated with changes in a person’s well-being, said Dr. Asher Larmie, a UK-based general practitioner and activist.
Medical care, environment, social circumstances and biology make up the majority of the factors that determine our health, according to the Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion’s Healthy People 2020. Still, we often place a lot of importance on a person’s appearance when assessing their health, said Shana Minei Spence, a registered dietitian in New York. And even if we learn to shed the burden of societal beauty standards, it can be difficult to feel confident in your body if you view your size as unhealthy.
Excerpted from CNN
