It’s not good to obsess about your weight. We all know that. We all also know that we live in a weight-obsessed culture where being fat is wrongly equated with being lazy, stupid, lacking self control, and even dishonesty. Where fat people are villified, skinny celebs can do no wrong despite being caught on camera boozing it up, neglecting their children, and saying outrageous things. The fact is that your weight does not determine your character. We know this and yet we still believe the popular media myth if we were thin, then everything else would be right. We’d be smart, have glamorous jobs, make witty conversation at black-tie cocktail parties and, natch, be having all of the sex.
What is the price of all these mental go-rounds? According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (you know, the folk who remind you to get your flu shot every year? Which, btw, I totally did. And I still got the flu.), people who worry about their weight are more likely to feel physically and/or mentally unhealthy, even causing them to take more sick days. Although both genders were affected, unsurprisingly, the results were more pronounced in women.
Hollywood Lies
Why would we worry so much about being skinny, even at the expense of our health? Here’s one answer from Personal Trainer to the Stars, Gunnar Peterson:
“I had one actress who trained with me and took six Spin classes a week. And all she ate was lettuce and Swedish Fish. When the press asked her how she’d “transformed” her body, she said, “Oh, I do yoga and hike with my puppy.” That made me laugh. Don’t lie about how much you work out, because other women are going to think, I walk my dog, why don’t I look like that?”
Another gem from Gunnar:
“One client I had would stave off eating as long as she could — it was just coffee, coffee, coffee all day. She’d have a practically zero-calorie salad in the afternoon, skip dinner then go booze with her friends. Her organs were so stressed that when we trained together, I could literally hear her heart pounding away in her chest. Working out was a waste because she was so exhausted.”
Skinny Does Not Equal Healthy
Just like skinny does not automatically make someone more loveable, more honest, or more intelligent, it does not equate to health either. The New York Times sums it up nicely:
“We need to re-engineer what public health agencies are telling people,” said Dr. Peter Muennig, the lead author and an assistant professor at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia. “The ‘diet and exercise’ part is good, but the ‘get thin’ part may be dangerous.”
so true.
I used to tell my clients:
you dont wanna be skinny. skinny is SMALL.
you wanna have muscles. be big. TAKE UP SPACE.
hollywood is *CRAZY* huh? I think Ill take TX.
🙂
M.
“The ‘get thin’ part may be dangerous.”
Hallelujah! FINALLY, they are starting to realize that it’s better to be bigger, eat healthy, and work out, than to go on a series of yo-yo diets that ultimately end in obesity.
I LOVE Gunnar Peterson. He has a great sense of humor, and uses common sense.
Hollywood IS crazy. I lived there for 9 years, and I was considered one of the more well-adjusted ones. Scary.
Thanks Charlotte, and right on. Mizfit, I love your comment – GREAT ADVICE. Why would we want to be smaller in this world? Seriously???
But even the scientific studies are confusing. I think it was in your last post where you mentioned a study that links skinniness (i.e. only eating 50% of your daily recommended calories) with longevity and improved health for life. I know the study was on mice, but still – it seems that even the scientific community would want us to be waifs and starving all the time. 🙁
It’s difficult for most of us to find a balance between a healthy lifestyle, eating for pleasure, and not going overboard with diet, exercise, or too much food.
Having said that, I must admit it is somehow comforting to know that many celebs are actually starving themselves and miserable, even as they’re quoted as saying things like “i eat a lot of hamburgers, I never exercise,” etc. 🙂
Okay, the yoga-doing, puppy-walking actress makes me mad … why is it not okay to say I work REALLY hard for this body? Seems like she’s got deep, deep issues.
I agree with mizfit about skinny … I’ve often thought slender was a nice word … or sleek or svelte. I like the word strong quite a bit, too. But, skinny and thin are kind of negative words at the core.
To Sarah’s question, it’s because people want celebrities to be perfect. And that means being genetically lucky enough to look perfect without really trying. Of course, we’re all smart enough to know that when a celebrity claims to eat all they want and never exercise, they aren’t telling the entire truth.
I’d rather be healthy, strong, and have the energy to participate in life than to be waif thin and unable to walk up the stairs on the way to work.
MizFit – Hah! I never thought of it that way. I’m already thinking of ways I can use your quote;)
Rachel – you make an excellent point. you are right about the study pointing to rats being 30% underweight having increased longevity. There is SO much contradictory advice out there, even among scientists, that’s hard to make head or tails of it all.
Sarah – right on about the words we use:)
Gena – AMEN, girl!