DEBUNKED- 3 Myths about Weight and Health

Lately, I find that I hear three things a WHOLE lot, when it comes to weight and health. Because they are garbage, lol, but pervasive, I thought I’d break them down, and offer some good news instead, so here we go: Myth #1:Thinness=Health Fact: Lots of thin fools are metabolically unhealthy, and lots of fat folks are metabolically healthy! We just can’t tell someone’s health by their size! Oh, and while there is some research that shows that initial weight loss can improve health risk factors short term (6-18 months), there is no long-term research that suggests that weight loss is sustained beyond the 3-5 year mark for 95%-98% of people. AND bio-markers of health like insulin resistance, cholesterol levels and blood pressure all return to pre-weight loss levels within that same time frame, whereas if people adopt healthy lifestyle behaviors like stress reduction, mindful movement and intuitive eating, those biomarkers remain in healthier ranges. The good news: Adopting a Health at Every Size approach to health promotion has been shown to improve those same bio-markers in the long-term and the healthy habits like increasing dietary quality and mindful movement are sustained- a claim that the weight-loss industry can’t make. 

Myth #2: Eat Less + Move More = Weigh less Fact: The human body is designed to naturally defend against weight loss at all costs in order to survive- its an evolution-based protective mechanism. Your body interprets efforts to lose weight as a famine. With each ‘mini-famine’ (diet, ‘cleanse’, ‘elimination diet’ or Whole 30), your body learns to adapt for the next time there is a mini-famine’ It does things like increase the production of the stress hormones cortisol, adrenaline, and insulin. This sends signals to the body to slow down metabolism and store fat due to the energy deficit. Mini-famines also can lead to increased urges in bingeing behaviors, making it hard to listen to internal cues. Chronic yo-yo dieting with cycles of weight loss and gain is a predictor of overall weight gain and increased cardiovascular risk. As the metabolism slows the body attempts to resist weight loss. With each diet, the rate of weight loss will slow, until no matter how much you restrict, you’ll still gain weight.  The good news: Our bodies are so smart, and like it or not there is no fooling biology. These mechanisms are trying desperately to keep you alive and functioning. The great news is that in most cases, with enough food and rest, you can heal your metabolism and your weight will eventually find it’s natural happy place. The best news of all is that weight stability, at ANY weight, leads to better health outcomes.  Myth #3: Weighing less will prolong life expectancy: As Linda Bacon, PhD writes in her book “Health at Every Size” NO ONE has proved that losing weight will prolong life expectancy.  Fact: People in the “overweight’ and “obese I “categories (words that are stigmatizing and pathologizing) actually have the lowest rates of early mortality and lower rates of morbidity than the other BMI bands, so the claim of early morbidity just doesn’t hold up under scrutiny.  The good news: Evidence from 6 Systematic Reviews- just about the highest level of scientific research, suggests that lifestyle changes independent of weight loss can correlate to improved life expectancy. So focusing on overall wellbeing and all aspects of health instead of weight loss will help you to live to a full life expectancy.