Fit, Healthy... and Thin?

Greetings,

Weight-loss seems to be a big topic no matter where we go these days. I can understand the urge to get fit and also the urge to get healthy, the urge to get thin, on the other hand, I don't understand. Being fit and healthy extends and improves your life simply because your body is able to work better. Simply as a result of getting fit and healthy there will be an aspect of weight-loss, but the obsession with weight-loss is not so great. Sure it is advertised for our the female counter-part as fashionable and necessary to be fashionable, but is it really healthy?

In general, the upper scales of fitness require some level of muscle, and muscle is heavy. One of the issues that every person who embarks upon weight-loss in the traditional manner encounters is that they change their diet and exercise and actually put on weight rather than take it off to begin with. This is because muscle is more dense, and thus heavier than fat, as you exercise you build muscle, which is going to make you heavier, but is necessary to burn fat. It is also necessary to move your limbs and other parts of your body. If you do not have some muscle mass you cannot be counted as fit.

Further can you be counted as healthy if your body is not getting the necessary nutrition that it requires? Fad diets and pills do not teach you how to eat properly. They may get you to lose weight, and lose weight fast, but what happens once you are off them? Will the same eating habits return? Yes, changes in diet are often necessary, but this must be combined with exercise, and the exercise must have somewhere to draw its fuel from. This means eating healthy. Often we must train ourselves to eat healthy and then stick to the training, this is a harder and longer process, but it is far more effective in the long run.

What needs to be noted is that we are not all meant to be shaped like super-athletes or supermodels. This is a good thing. There is variety in body shape, and people are not all the same shape, nor will they ever be. Aiming for these images and becoming obsessed with these shapes results in depression and obsession. The most important thing is loving the skin that you are in. This is in two ways, it is accepting what your body-shape is, and also treating it right.

There are ways of measuring what shape we should be and many graphs including the Body Mass Index, or BMI, the question is whether these graphs take into account all body-shapes and peculiarities. It is known that the BMI does not take into account bodies which are carrying large amounts of muscle. So, it is important that your shape is measured properly to get the correct measurements.

Are you happy with your current state of fitness? Are you happy with your current state of health? If you want to do something about these two then you really should. Focussing on aspects like simply losing weight is too focussed as it does not take into account the bigger picture. Losing weight must accompany a bigger picture for it to be a healthy process with a healthy end. Give yourself a realistic goal, give yourself a real reason and it is more likely that you will make it.

Remember, dieting yourself to thinness is not necessarily dieting yourself to health. Thinness is not health. Health is health.

Cheers,

Henry.

Expectations of Body Shape: Early Images

Greetings,

This is an entry which I have been putting off and putting off and putting off. I will admit that this is going to be a little bit rantish but it is something which I think needs to be addressed. This goes to the heart of what children are going to grow up thinking is "normal" and "healthy". More to the point it goes to what they are going to look at as ideal for body shape.

Children, well those with any sort of access to a television, on average have no problems sitting down for hours watching cartoons and other animated productions. I know this one for myself as I used to sit down and watch all the Saturday morning cartoons and as many as I could during the afternoon. This blog actually came about as I managed to catch about five minutes of a cartoon and noticed the shape of the female heroine. I was taken aback I can tell you, she was not an athletic looking sort of lead that you would expect, no, she was a thin body shape with pretty much impossible shaping. I got to thinking, if little girls and boys are sitting down watching this, are they going to think that her shape is normal? I hope not.

So, we all know about the BMI (Body Mass Index). We understand that there is a particular number, or range of numbers, which corresponds to the "ideal" weight for our height. Importantly this does not take into account various body effects which can change our overall weight. So we have a number, do you actually know what this would look like? I sure as hell did not until I found a chart.

As you can see this is for a woman of 5'5" (165-cm) and it clearly demonstrates what the BMI chart means by the "normal" weight range. I am going to ignore the numbers and look at the shape of the women which are presented here. Now going by all that is rational we should be aiming for the "Normal Weight" range. She is shaped like a woman with curves where they should be and so forth. So why, I ask, are so many modern cartoon heroines based on the figure in red? The one which is underweight? Let me demonstrate what I mean.

One of my favourite cartoons growing up was the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (TMNT). They had sass, they had comedy, and the whole doing good thing thrown in. Of course they had the violence that any teenage male craves in such a show. Aside from the mutant animals and crazy villains, and some of the heroes they also had the required heroine in this case April O'Neil. In the old series she was  a well-shaped woman, not unlike the yellow one above.

     

As you can see she has a generous figure, with a decent bust and hips, with muscular legs and thinner arms as would be expected. This is the female figure that my eyes were presented with on a regular basis and as can be seen, she would fit within the "Normal" range in the BMI chart above. What is of concern is that they released a new animated movie of the TMNT relatively recently, and I can tell you April does not have this figure anymore.

   

Compare the two shapes of April. The hips have pretty much disappeared, the legs have gotten a lot thinner, the bust has shrunk, and the body has been squeezed . She is much thinner than she was in her previous incarnation. Now, if you compare this shape to the BMI char you will find that this April will fall under the "Underweight" range. Is this what we want our children to think is normal? Think about what sort of impact this will have on their image of others. If this is now "normal" the old April would be seen as overweight, think about that for a second, and be afraid. I can say that ladies such as Marilyn Monroe would be turning in her grave.

As a final word I think I need to clear something up. I believe in a healthy body image. I also believe in taking people for who they are and as they are. Sure diet and exercise should be an important part of life and being healthy should be the aim of this. But, to aim for the modern April as normal is just plain unhealthy. People need to be proportional to their height and we need to imprint this image on our children. We should encourage them to aim for a healthy weight range, not some outlandish, ridiculous ideal.

Cheers,

Henry.