According to a new movement known as Health At Every Size (HAES), it is possible and even appropriate to carry a little extra weight as long as you exercise regularly and keep your eating habits within reason.
This seems good news for the countless folks who struggle, often for their entire lives, to keep the pounds from piling on. Most HAES followers have had prior experiences with dieting and exercise for weight loss usually bad ones. Diets dont work, is the consensus in the groups that meet all over the country at workshops and in summer camps where participants stop caring about their body size and just have fun being active and eating the foods they like without getting paranoid over the consequences. Decades of yo-yo dieting have left me each time heavier than I was before, said one HAES fan. Eventually, I lost the will to exercise or watch my diet.
The central idea behind the program is that not all health-promoting behavior has to result in weight loss. Besides physical fitness through exercise that is fun and not forced, much emphasis is placed on intuitive eating, which means paying close attention to personal tendencies like eating habits, cravings and emotional responses to food. Intuitive eating is trusting in the wisdom of the body to know and choose what is good and avoid what isnt, said one HAES camp participant.
Love and respect for ones body just as it is, no matter what shape, form or size, is at the core of the movements philosophy. Adherence to societys ideals of physical health and beauty is not only seen as unsustainable but also as a bad idea.
By now, the HAES movement has gained both popular and scientific credence. For instance, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) sponsored a study where 80 women were assigned to different diet programs, one of which was HAES. The members of the HAES group were given general instructions how to adopt healthy eating patterns, be physically active and make a few other health-promoting lifestyle choices. Besides that, they were not subjected to specific rules or restrictions. They were also encouraged to join support groups to discuss issues of body image and self-acceptance. By the end of the study, almost all of the women in the HAES group showed improvements in blood pressure, cholesterol levels, physical fitness and emotional health. Unlike many of the participants in the other diet plans, the HAES followers also maintained or further improved these results over a period of at least two years.
Dr. Steven Blair, P.E.D. of the Cooper Institute, which is renowned for its aerobics research, is convinced that the HAES philosophy is on the right track. Weve studied this from many perspectives in women and men and we get the same answer: Its not the obesity [that is the problem] its the fitness, he said. If the height/weight charts say you are five pounds too heavy, or even 50 pounds or more too heavy, it is of little or no consequence healthwise as long as you are physically fit.
One study that was published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition goes even further. It concluded that unfit, lean men had twice the risk of all-cause mortality as did fit, lean men and also had higher risk of all-cause mortality when compared to fit, obese men. The all-cause mortality rate of fit, obese men was not significantly different from that of fit, lean men. The study report recommended that for long-term health benefits, we should focus on improving fitness by increasing physical activity rather than relying only on diet for weight control.
Not so fast, said Dr. Johan Arnlov, M.D., the lead author of a study recently completed in Sweden. He and his fellow-researchers examined the medical records of some 1,700 middle-aged men. The participants were measured and tested periodically between the ages of 50 to 80. They were divided into several groups based on their body-mass indexes and metabolic profiles, which is a commonly used marker for physical health and fitness. Some were within their healthy weight range, some were overweight, some were obese. In each category, there were men who had normal metabolic profiles, while others were afflicted with a variety of health conditions known as metabolic syndrome. A diagnosis of metabolic syndrome means that a person suffers from three or more health conditions, such as diabetes, hypertension, high LDL (bad) cholesterol and low HDL (good) cholesterol, elevated triglycerides and large waist circumference.
The Swedish team found that having metabolic syndrome was quite serious for the overweight and obese men. Those who were overweight had a 74 percent higher risk of developing cardiovascular disease by the time they turned 80. Those who were obese with metabolic syndrome had a 155 percent higher risk. And the men who were within a healthy weight range but had high cholesterol and blood pressure readings had still a 63 percent higher risk of heart disease than those with normal weight and no metabolic problems.
The study also showed that those who were overweight but were otherwise healthy had nevertheless a significantly higher potential for developing heart disease. Men who were overweight (not obese) with healthy blood pressures, cholesterol readings, blood glucose levels and so on, still had a 52 percent higher risk of developing heart disease within 30 years than men who were of normal weight and had similar metabolic profiles. A fat burning review can help you establish a clear outline of what you demand to focus on to achieve your fat loss objective if you're a rookie; or serve as a reminder for the ones who are at an intermediate or more boost step of their weight loss plan. Applying are seven steps that can serve as suggestions for your special weight loss program. The first thing that one must understand is that losing weight and losing fat is not the same thing. Many weight loss applications have misled people into wondering that it is the same, but most diets and weight loss programs only work by causing a person's body to lose more muscle cells and water than actual body fat, more help please visit The Fat Loss Factor. That risk rose to 95 percent among obese men who didnt suffer from metabolic syndrome, according to the report. In other words, those who had weight problems but were otherwise healthy based on their blood work readings were still left with a 50 percent greater chance of developing heart disease than those who managed to control their weight.
A much larger womens health study in the U.S. that involved 40,000 participants concluded that women with a higher BMI faced a greater risk of coronary heart disease than those of normal weight, even if they were active and physically fit. Being fit lessened but did not fully mitigate the health problems associated with being fat, said the authors of that study report.
So, whats the takeaway from all these contradictory messages? The bottom line, I think, is that it would be a mistake to underestimate the seriousness of health risks that come from weight problems. Those are real issues and cant be ignored simply by hitting the gym a little more often. If you are overweight or obese, you eat (or have eaten) more than your body can burn off. The only logical conclusion is to reduce your food intake, improve the quality of your nutrition and exercise as much as necessary until you find a healthy balance. Once you achieve all that, weight loss should result almost automatically.
Timi Gustafson R.D. is a clinical dietitian and author of The Healthy Diner How to Eat Right and Still Have Fun, which is available on her blog http://www.timigustafson.com and at amazon.com. Her latest book, "Kids Love Healthy Foods" is now available in e-book format, also at www.amazon.com
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