Bacon wrote, “Let’s face facts: We’ve lost the war on obesity. Fighting fat hasn’t made the fat go away. And being thinner, even if we knew how to successfully accomplish it, will not necessarily make us healthier or happier.”
The demons of Bacon’s premise include the national preoccupation with food and body size, eating disorders, self-hatred, poor health, and fat discrimination. “Few of us are at peace with our bodies,” said Bacon, “whether because we’re fat or because we fear becoming fat.”
Of course, since billions of dollars in the food, diet, medical and physical fitness industries were at peril, her critics quickly got out the torches and pitchforks as they stumbled over each other to condemn her.
There’s just one thing her critics neglected: studies by the United States government and some members of the medical community seemed to back her premise.
SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE
A 2006 study by the United States Department of Agriculture did a study on Bacon’s “Health at Every Size” program. In the study, 78 obese women were divided in half, with one group doing a traditional weight-loss program and the other following Bacon’s edicts. All women in the traditional weight-loss program were instructed in the standard way, to count calories, eat less, and do more exercise.
The Bacon followers were told to eat when hungry and to embrace feelings of fullness. They were also instructed on making healthy food choices and to find some physical activity that they could enjoy on a regular basis. There were no forbidden foods, nor were they forced to exercise. The program also had self-esteem boosters and emphasized confidence-building in their existing bodies.
At the two-year mark, both groups weighed approximately the same. The traditional weight-loss group had lost weight after six months, but then regained it over the following two years. The Health at Every Size group exhibited healthier blood pressure, lower cholesterol, and had been doing more regular physical activity than their traditionally dieting sisters. Bacon was not surprised when apprised of the results. “Saying everybody needs to be the same weight is like saying all people should be the same height,” she said.
THE OTHER SIDE OF THE ARGUMENT
Those who support a more traditional evaluation of health had ammunition to back them up as well. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention provided statistics to the revered Journal of the American Medical Association for a 2004 report. That data claimed that 400,000 obese and overweight Americans died each year.
It was only later that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had a sheepish confession: the methodology used to obtain that information was faulty. When it re-calculated with new data and a different method, it discovered that 26,000 overweight or obese people a year died from their condition, most of them with a body mass index (BMI) well over 35. Most overweight people are in the lower range of 30 to 35, the CDC admitted.
To put it in perspective, the 26,000 obese people dying were less than those who fell victim to car accidents, gunshots or alcohol abuse.
More to the point, the recalculated Centers for Disease Control and Prevention numbers suggested that overweight people actually live longer than people in the normal weight category, with 86,000 fewer deaths among overweights than normal weights. Additionally, the CDC said underweight people died more often than the overweight or obese, and it pointed out that life expectancy in the nation is increasing even as the rates of obesity climb. In other words, the thinnest people in the United States may be at the greatest health risk.
THE DIET INDUSTRY
What Bacon has discovered runs counter to the messages that are being processed in society via every form of media, which emphasizes youth, vigor and particularly slimness (after all, the legend has it that the camera adds 20 pounds).
The number of Americans who claim they are dieting is the highest in history, with 20 percent to 24 percent of men and 33 percent to 40 percent of women actively dieting (the number of women allegedly dieting may be much higher – one telephone survey claimed just under 60% percent of women were dieting).
The $60 billion diet industry is partly responsible for this fascination. While the intentions are good, it’s also spawned a lot of unhealthy rogue behaviors, including skipping meals, smoking to kill appetites, binging, purging, and taking laxatives to induce weight loss. The message being pumped out is that everyone must lose weight to be healthy, and all large people are in poor health. They also insinuate that anyone can lose weight if he or she only tries to eat right and exercise more.
DIETS AND HEALTH
The truth, as promulgated by Bacon and an increasing number of doctors, is that diets don’t work for the long-term. Body weight is largely (pardon the pun) determined by genetics, and each person’s normal weight range is different.
The hypothalamus is the part of the brain that determines the normal range of weight. It controls hunger and satiety, and its job is to keep its owner in the set-point range of weight. Unfortunately, a diet tells the hypothalamus that there’s a problem somewhere in the body, so it releases hormones to increase appetite, slow metabolism and can make you feel more sluggish in an attempt to stop you from exercising.
Even successful dieting can fool the hypothalamus. It may re-set your weight to a higher point in order to off-set any problems in future diets. That can lead to the yo-yo dieting seen in people who constantly go up and down. Stable weights are the goal, claim Bacon and her supporters.
And there are an increasing number of doctors who agree that someone’s health is not necessarily related to the numbers on a scale.