Eating books will make you thinner. I better hide my library

Obesity and fake numbers

I don't understand the insistence on BMI. I think we know when someone's body fat has reached dangerous levels. And it isn't at 30 or whatever BMI number they're using. For example, I'm pretty sure most people who know me would think I'm at least reasonably healthy (I myself do not consider myself in good health, but this is because I've existed in a state where I was probably in excellent health before and have since grown more lazy and indolent without enough people around with which I exercised regularly). Yet I have a BMI just under 25 (the cut-off point for being considered "overweight"). Most elite athletes have their body's dimensions publicly available (sometimes they are distorted of course, Kevin Garnett's reported height is famously shorter than his actual height). And even they often have what would be termed either a high normal or an overweight BMI. Really? That defensive end with 2% body fat is overweight or isn't in excellent health physically? This is simply a idiotic way to attempt to calculate or measure physical health. It is an equation or a statistic masquerading as a scientific way to measure body fat. Body mass is a totally different figure than its physical health, the stability of that health, and the rate of socially undesired body fat. It's about as useful as the sizes on women's clothing as a measure of overall health (especially considering the US has much lower sizes than say Europeans).

I do think something that is overlooked is the opposite conception. That is to say, if we used to be a thinner society (it does seem sensible to ignore any supposition that thinner is necessarily healthier), why? What caused us to get heavier, wider, or fatter? It might indeed be sensible to ask if any of those things that caused this change are bad from a moral standpoint, and certainly from a medical perspective as well. I certainly would agree that a decreasing amount of physical activity should be considered bad. Or a significant change in diet might be worth examining.

It doesn't make sense to agree that obesity is an epidemic once you study it however. If anything, it seems more like an invented one that dietary products or exercise gyms and equipment manufacturers can profit from at unreasonably high levels from people who won't get any thinner and soon discover this "problem". Only to buy back into the program at the behest of others or because of continuous social pressures.

We also have a inverse problem that we are told about 500 different ways to eat healthy, or to lose weight, or to live longer, many of these are conflicting with each other. Or, if rendered into a sensible plan of personal health, near impossible to consider for the average person doing given time or budgetary concerns. As usual, it seems best to refer to the wisdom of comedians. "is milk good or bad?".. and "I think everyone's health is different". If we could live in a world that doesn't enforce some social means to reflect that what you look like on the outside is as important as your actual physical health, maybe we would have a world that people's individual health could be measured in a mathematical equation, something like HDI or happiness indices. Until then, it seems better to just ignore any numbers on health and eat what I want.

And maybe do some more running.