Shortly after I woke up this morning, I started
thinking that the last year was a major win for me. Over the past year, scientific evidence revealed that
two major habits of mine, coffee and dark chocolate, were no longer vices to be
avoided but are, in fact, healthy; a win-win situation if there ever was
one. But this morning, I hit the
trifecta. As reported in the New
York Times, a “study
by Katherine M. Flegal and her associates at the C.D.C. and the National
Institutes of Health, found that all adults categorized as overweight and most
of those categorized as obese have a lower mortality risk than so-called
normal-weight individuals. If the government were to redefine normal weight as
one that doesn’t increase the risk of death, then about 130 million of the 165
million American adults currently categorized as overweight and obese would be
re-categorized as normal weight instead.
To put some flesh on these statistical bones, the study found a 6
percent decrease in mortality
risk among people classified as overweight and a 5 percent decrease in people
classified as Grade 1 obese, the lowest level (most of the obese fall in this
category). This means that average-height women — 5 feet 4 inches — who weigh
between 108 and 145 pounds have a higher mortality risk than average-height
women who weigh between 146 and 203 pounds. For average-height men — 5 feet 10
inches — those who weigh between 129 and 174 pounds have a higher mortality
risk than those who weigh between 175 and 243 pounds.”
Wow. As
I read these words, I stand up from my computer and strut to the closest
mirror where I proudly examine the girth of my abdomen while I take my first
complete breath in years without a conscious attempt to hold my stomach
in. My substance, my soul, my
essence is changed overnight from a sniveling, struggling, overweight, old
(putting aside the baldness for a moment) guy to a higher level. Will my body shape now become the new
standard for all those skinny types around me to worship? Am I destined for Hollywood where
millions of theater-goers will flock to the silver screen to admire and scream
as my portliness (forgetting still the baldness) as I create a new standard for
action figures, i.e. walking rather than running?
Such good news, this trifecta. I pause in my reverie of the moment to
briefly reflect what caused our society to make such a big deal about weight in
the first place. Paul Campos, a professor of law at the University of
Colorado, Boulder, in an editorial in this mornings NYTimes writes “categorizing at least 130 million
Americans — and hundreds of millions in the rest of the world — as people in
need of “treatment” for their [overweight] “condition” serves the economic interests of,
among others, the multibillion-dollar weight-loss industry and large
pharmaceutical companies, which have invested a great deal of money in winning
the good will of those who will determine the regulatory fate of the next
generation of diet drugs.”
Gee, there others who also realize that big Pharma, in feeding the beast of corporate profits, will say
and do just about anything to sell stuff to “treat” conditions that we didn’t
even know need treating; e.g., Viagra and Cialis (ED) and Rogaine and Propecia
(baldness).
Just saying.
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