"Skinny" vs. "Healthy"

I've noticed how heavier people are often associated with laziness, poor nutrition, and lack of exercise, often by medical professionals themselves. Then I think about the personal trainers I know who are a bit "heavier" than the otherwise legion of extremely thin and toned. Do you have to be under a certain weight in order to eat well, exercise regularly, or really, be HEALTHY? What is this obsession with correlating weight and nutrition?

Let's start off with a spectrum of people ranging from size small to size large; with the effects of genetics, environmental factors, exercise habits, and daily nutrition, every individual will weigh differently even if you hold almost every factor constant.

I think the problem is how we treat these individuals and negatively enforce the perception of "skinnier" as healthier as the ultimate preference. Blaming a person and then shaming him/her as fat is counterproductive as this study demonstrates.

On a professional level, you can't deny proper treatment of a patient due to his/her weight and then neglect to address other aspects of care by dismissing the problem as a weight problem. In dentistry, I'm sure many dentists get frustrated by people with poor oral hygiene, but that doesn't mean you can stop at "do you regularly floss/brush?" You have to tell your patients what they should be doing, but DO NOT chastise them. You are not his/her parent, but a provider with that person's best interest at heart, so yes, tell the person to do these things but don't scold them for not doing them, be attentive, and treat them like you would treat every other patient. If your patient decides to avoid going to the doctor period because of your treatment, then what is really being done about the problem?

This is not to say that it's not important for people to change their lifestyles, as obesity and other associated diseases like diabetes, heart disease, and cancer are on the rise. But tell them what they can do or what changes they should be making, step-by-step, instead of saying that they are this, this, and this.

Negatively informing this notion on another person is damaging. On a personal level, I felt overwhelming pressure from my family to lose around 8 pounds during my freshman year of college. What followed was an awful period of stress exercising and calorie counting, resulting in me resenting every part of my body that seemed to have grown with fat. I am not the type of person to feel insecure, which is not to say I'm arrogant or cocky about my appearances or demeanor, but I don't hate myself. I accept myself for who I am and how I look - trust me, growing up in a family that encouraged me to get plastic surgery since I was around eight, this a pretty grand feat to me. I grew up with negative reinforcement, and it was extremely toxic for me, catalyzing a lot of self esteem issues and identity qualms. Now that I can differentiate between my family's misappropriation of love and growing comfortable under my own skin, I can gladly say that I enjoy being healthy rather than skinny. I still run everyday, eat balanced meals, rise at 5:30 am, and sleep (kind of) and am healthier, even if I'm not ideal size 00000 that I was growing up. What matters is not my weight in number but my overall health and happiness.


"In our rush to cure the obesity epidemic, we are not only ignoring but may be worsening anti-fat prejudice and size profiling. If medical professionals want to improve public health, they might start by renewing their pledge to “first, do no harm” by treating patients of all sizes with dignity and respect."
* Though this seems contradictory to my "So, why should I floss?" post, I never shame people who don't floss. I simply tell them this is what they should be doing in order to have good oral health!