Full disclosure: I’m a guy who weighs under 120 pounds at 5’5", so I have absolutely no idea what people who weigh more than that go through.
My question was inspired by this thread, specifically by comments made there. I’m not agreeing or disagreeing with those comments, but they did make me think.
The media likes to hype the “fact” that America is getting much much fatter. I have no idea if this is true. In reaction to this and many other factors, overweight and obese people are campaigning hard on various levels for them to be treated like normal human beings. I say, more power to them.
However, this brings up a specific question: if this country’s average weight is (or has been) going up, has it affected what people see as “normal” weight? If it used to be, say, 150 pounds, is it now 180? 200? Or, to take it out of the perils of specific weights, is yesterday’s “normal” today’s “way too skinny”? Or perhaps it’s only counterbalancing the really thin folks held up as attractive by today’s media (although, in the linked thread, I think the point DigitalC makes about the needs and intent of the fashion world is a valid one)? Or maybe if there is a shift, it has nothing to do with the stuff I’ve been talking about at all?
Doctors have a pretty good idea of what’s a typical healthy weight and what’s not. If everyone was 400 pounds, we would all still know that we were fat and ought to lose some weight.
That said . . . When I go to Europe, it doesn’t take me long to realize how many really hot people are around me, contrasting with the American tourists (myself included). But it’s not that Europeans are especially hot, for whatever reason; it’s that they are normal. They are what we used to look like, before we started supersizing everything. Our entire concept of “normal” weight has been so skewed by what we see around us in the U.S., that we have to go to another continent to reacquaint ourselves with what should have been considered normal, all along.
Of course, none of this should affect what “normal weight” means to a medical professional.
I think more than just what an “average” weight appears to be, we’ve lost our sense of what normal bodily proportions are.
If a young woman is at or just below a healthy BMI, there’s an overwhelming likelihood that her breasts will be on the small side - say A or B cups. However, with the advent of breast enhancement surgery and the overwhelming popularity of women with larger breast sizes, there’s a sizable minority of women who have a relatively low BMI and disproportionately large breasts.
Add to that the media’s habit of airbrushing even the most attractive celebrity to make them appear “sexier”, and you have a seriously skewed idea of what the human ideal is.
However, I think most of us still retain the ability to recognize whether a person is within the boundaries of a healthy body weight and appearance and can discount the oddities of surgical change and photo alteration. Certainly, it’s a skill acquired as we get a little older. Of the elementary students I’ve taught, most of them had no awareness of this phenomenon, though a few of them compared themselves to what they saw. It got much worse among middle schoolers, but then improved with high school. I imagine by their early twenties, most people are aware that there is a distinct mismatch between the healthy normal of fifty years ago, the skewed percentages of body shape and type today, and the grotesque imagery of what we’re supposed to look like via the media.
As just mentioned - the media and the artificial people it is populated with.
People, especially teens and young adults, compare themselves to these absurd standards and are upset that they come up short. So upset that they eat more and take up unhealthy weight control habits that often end up making them gain more.
panache I see an awful lot of unattractive and fat people in Europe too. Maybe I’m going to the wrong places.
I would personally like to de-emphasize the scale and more strongly emphasize the lifestyle choices. If a person is exercising regularly, eats a breakfast daily, eats slowly enough that their brain can get the message that they are full, avoids fast food in particular and tries to have real meals at home most nights, gets their 5 daily servings a day of veggies and fruits, eats whole grain, avoids sweetened beverages as a general rule, and keeps the treats as just that- treats, not every day items, then their weight is a healthy weight for them no matter if the BMI is 22 or 31.
I think there’s 2 issues here. We’ve got perceptions of:
what the ‘ideal’ weight is, which may be influenced by the media.
what the normal/typical weight is, which is influenced by people around them.
So in a small town in Kansas, say, you might get the worst of both worlds. Some people have eating disorders and whatnot, trying to reach the ideal weight. Others are overweight, because they are mistaken about what’s ideal/healthy.
One thing I notice, more among my female friends, is that many women, even the overweight ones, can be on a ‘permanent diet’. This weird cognitive dissonance seems to be at work: they eat a pile of junk food, and drive everywhere, because that’s ‘normal’. But they also go to the gym once a week, and turn down e.g. chips, because they see themselves as in pursuit of the ideal weight.
So instead of normal people with normal dreams. You get fat people with skinny dreams. Not a recipe (geddit?) for good physical or mental health, I feel.
I see it happening, I’ve been told by a number of people that they think I look skinny. I’m a male, 5’7" and have been hovering around 180 pds for a while now. While I realize that I’m not extremely overweight, I could stand to lose 20-30 pounds. In conversations about diets and such I’ve mentioned that I’d like to lose 20 pounds and people say things “Oh no, you’d be nothing but skin and bones!”. Skin and bones at 160?? I don’t think so.
On the other side, I weighed about 120 with a 26" waist several years ago and WAS too skinny. Then I had people telling me that they wished they could be that size. Come on people, balance!
I think peoples perception of what is healthy and what isn’t is being heavily influenced by the fact that people are heavier now than in the past. Not that we need to go to the other extreme, but some perspective is certainly in order.
The only thing I have to contribute is I remember reading that some airlines are saying they need more fuel because the passengers weigh more and the airlines are having to make wider seats. Anyone have any cites?
I think we’ve found the problem. ultrafilter, if you are representative of the general public and are unfamiliar with the BMI index, the problem appears to be that we’re waddling around without any idea that we’re at unhealthy proportions.
I’m suspicious of that conclusion, however. I get the very clear impression that most folks know they’re overweight and acknowledge that they are putting their health at risk (take the woman in the thread referenced by the OP as a case in point). With the barrage of nutritional information available one would have to be in willful denial to claim that we aren’t aware of our departure from a “healthy norm” as opposed to a “population average.”
I think though, that being around other fat people can inspire two things:
(1) the thought that, yes I’m overweight, but I’m not unusual, so it’s OK, right? and,
(2) misconceptions about what is a sensible portion of food or amount of exercise. Many people are shocked at how little you have to eat-how small that steak should be-to get 2000 calories a day. If everyone else is getting the large size, or if the American small size is absurdly big, it’s hard to internalise that this is actually too much. I usually get the ‘child’ size at American ice cream places and whatnot, and I get about a European ‘medium’.
The BMI tables get a lot of flak in this country, and I suspect it’s a form of what the OP is getting at. They seem to be viewed as some unattainable standard that is out of whack with reality by just about everyone I know.
This comes up when I mention losing weight. I’m right on the edge of the “healthy weight” range for BMI, and I figure that probably doesn’t mean I’m actually healthy (if I had a lot of muscle mass, sure, but I don’t). However, the idea that I need to lose some weight shocks a lot of people. When I tell them I’m borderline, they roll their eyes and say “oh, the BMI is crap anyways, according to those tables everyone is fat”.
That’s the thing, I kind of think everyone is fat around here.
I don’t know for sure if the obesity trend is skewing people’s idea of normal weight, but I think there is a pervasive belief that most overweight people are predisposed due to factors that are beyond their control and normal-sized people are seen as arriving at their size because they are “naturally thin” and that’s all.
I keep finding myself in conversations with people who express disbelief that I work out. It’s like the idea that thin people go to the gym is like Big Foot stuff. But, you with the face, they say, you don’t have to go to the gym. Um, yeah I do. Exercising is the best way to keep from becoming fat. That’s why I go to the gym.
I once hurt a coworker’s feelings when she kept shoving junk food in front of my face, and I protested, telling her that I didn’t want it because it would cause me to gain weight. But you with the face, she said, you can eat anything you want. Um, no I can’t! Eating what I want will lead to me becoming fat, which is why I don’t eat what I want.
I find it worrisome that people don’t seem to understand that prevention is key when it comes to gaining weight. Perhaps the prevalence of obesity is causing thinness to be seen as a condition that people are simply blessed with, not something that comes about through a certain lifestyle. Exercise and good diets are things that only fat people are expected to maintain; the skinny folks are lucky because they can be couch potatoes and eat donuts without worry. This belief is bad not just because it makes it harder for overweight folks to see thinness as an attainable goal, but it also means a lot of thin folks may be deluded into thinking that exercise and a healthy diet are things other people have to worry about but not them. Which means that just as soon as the metabolism slows down with age, they too could fall into the fat trap.
Oh, I want to get ice cream with you! I’m all about kids sizes and have no idea how people can even finish a small.
(I wasn’t allowed sweets until I was 6 or 7 and was never forced to clean my plate - I think that helped train me. I eat regular, small meals and don’t often have sweets. Yay for parents!)
This Flickr photoset provides visuals of different BMI categories. You can guess whether they’re underweight, normal, overweight or obese, and hover your mouse over to find out if you were correct. I was prone to guessing a category down - for instance guessing that obese people were overweight, and overweight people were normal weight. Obviously there are limitations (there’s a guy with giant bodybuilder arms who qualifies as nearly obese) but it was pretty interesting to see how my perception of “overweight” or “obese” matched the reality.
I lost a lot of weight last year (mostly by radically shifting my perspective on portion sizes as **put down the sabre ** mentioned above). My girlfriend is a doc, who works hard to stay at a healthy weight (just as **you with the face ** describes). I thought the BMI tables were ridiculous until I discovered how much better I felt at the recommended proportions.
I remember calling her up the day my BMI finally registered below the “obese” level. "Sweetie, great news! I’m overweight!
During the 96 Olympics in Atlanta a couple from Oregon came to town to run a bicycle taxi service. The club I was in threw a party at the end of the games and they came. I had gotten to know them pretty well. They pulled me aside and asked why there so many fat people, in our bicycle club, they were not being nasty.