At the beginning of each New Year, we can count on numerous newspaper, magazine and TV segments about dieting and “overweight” (as well as ads for various potions and formulas in the pursuit of what we have been conditioned to call “weight loss” but should call “fat loss").
We are not to be disappointed this year. With the “assistance” of a Centers For Disease Control and Prevention meta-analysis published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, a Wall Street Journal headline tells us: “A Few Extra Pounds Won’t Kill You — Really.”
How comforting to the millions of already confused consumers who may well embrace this headline as permission not to reduce their caloric intake and, more important, to forgo a real commitment to get off their butts and exercise regularly.
According to Melinda Beck’s opening sentence, “… a new government study shows people who are overweight are less likely to die in any given period than people of normal weight. Even those who are moderately obese don’t have a higher-than-normal risk of dying.”
Note the emphasis on dying here. And all the time I thought the goal was optimal health and well-being.
Ms. Beck eventually does point out “health experts said that Americans shouldn't treat the new study as a license to eat more” and that “the study underscores that [Body Mass Index] is an inexact measure of health.” But the headline and first few paragraphs may be all many people read, and the government-funded review and analysis of 97 other studies has led to countless misleading radio and TV comments.
Since Da Coach believes that drilling on fundamental skills and principles eventually leads to success, I’ll give it another go. After all, that’s what winning coaches do: repetition, repetition, and more repetition. And, “winning” in this context means you are living well and independent for however long you are able to do so.
First, freedom from obesity-related chronic disease is not just about a few extra pounds and, for many, not even about total body weight. This report misleads the public because the Body Mass Index (BMI), the primary tool researchers use in this study, is not a good measure of adiposity (fatness).
Then why was it used and the result publicized so widely? Good question. It’s just a guess, but Da Coach thinks it was a year-end project (government agencies have to spend your money before the end of each year or their budgets will be influenced in next year’s allocation).
The wide publicity accorded these findings result from our annual obsession with fat-loss resolutions the first of each year, otherwise I doubt if anyone would have heard of it.
If one is really interested in the relationship between their total body weight and risk for chronic disease, they should consider a far more significant factor: an individual’s duration, frequency, intensity and type of regular exercise. Exercise behavior is a far more reliable factor in determining one’s morbidity and mortality risk for chronic disease than total body weight alone.
Furthermore, the study’s particular conclusions cannot be applied to individuals whose regular exercise routine includes sufficient and regular resistance training. Resistance training is what maintains a healthy percent of lean muscle tissue.
Muscle tissue burns calories both during exercise and enhances calorie burn even during periods of rest by enhancing resting metabolism. This is basic Health Education 101. What? You didn’t know? Blame your health and physical education program. No, excuse me. Blame your board of education and school administrators for not demanding that health and physical education were accorded the same importance as math and science.
Which raises another question in Da Coach’s mind: Why is the government funding a flawed research design and the American Medical Association giving it such public recognition? Is it possible they don’t know the science either?
Most bathroom scales measure only your total number of pounds. Total body weight does not tell your percent body fat. Body Mass Index is a very crude measurement tool that was long ago discredited for accurate scientific investigation. It might work for a YMCA adult health promotion project because it’s inexpensive and can be applied by anyone in the 6th grade. But it hardly qualifies as a serious scientific measurement tool worthy of such gross application as a public health recommendation.
Percent body fat is a key factor in a variety of chronic diseases that plague all advanced industrial populations. It should not be trivialized in phony articles written by people who don’t understand the concept and then passed to the general public as documented, government-sponsored information.
There is a very real public health concern when authoritative groups publicize flawed research designs such as this. Especially when conclusions are disseminated
at a time of the year when people are focused on their battle with their bulges and re-committing to self-responsibility, regular exercise and healthy eating choices.
If you’re fat, you know it. If you’re not sure that you’re fat, you probably are. Why take a chance, even if you’re not technically fat? The more important question, by far, is what are you doing each day to take care of yourself? It’s a choice. Your choice. Not your doctor’s, your spouse’s, your friends’ or anyone else.
Bottom line: You and Da Coach are blessed to live in a historic time. The choices we make with respect to regular exercise and healthy eating have more to do with our quality of life and independent living than anything else. Perhaps a few extra pounds won’t kill you, but did you really need some government funded study and a public health bureaucrat spend your tax dollars to tell you that?
And my guess is that you don’t need Da Coach telling you that sitting on your butt day in and day out and hour by hour may not kill you. But, sooner or later, it sure is going to make your life miserable . . . and you can count on that.
One of the things any good coach eventually learns is this: You can teach fundamentals and drill on skills, but it all comes down eventually to a player’s decisions and choices in the heat of the game.
Winners stick to proven fundamentals. And the there is nothing more fundamental to assure your joy of living than the choices you make each and every day to manage your life’s quality control. And that means regular, daily exercise.
Decades of research have uniformly established regular appropriate exercise as the key to fat-loss, body shaping and reduction in risk of the chronic diseases that most plague all advanced industrial populations. Combine these fundamentals with healthy eating and positive leisure activities. Then throw in a heaping dollop of family and friends for the winning formula not only to live as long as you want but also to want to as long as you live.
Happy New Year!
Da Coach