In a nutshell (and the main point of my long-winded post below), health and weight are not synonomous. Even if you're incredibly and very unhealthily obese, you can improve your health without losing weight and you can lose weight without improving your health.
Weight is only one factor of health. It is important, but it's not the only important factor (despite it being generally perceived as the most important).
If your weight is ideal, but your other behaviors are all unhealthy, being of normal weight probably isn't helping you much - and you're probably not as healthy as someone who is doing everything else right but is a few pounds overweight.
We have to stop seeing weight as the most important (and sadly often the only important) factor. You have to do it all, not just manage your weight.
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Originally Posted by owlsteazombies
This. I have to question the reason for even bringing this to the public. I mean, would you want your computer to run ok, or optimal? Most people want optimal. Would you want your internet to be ok? Or optimal?
But what if your numbers are optimal? Or what if you lose those 5 lbs and the numbers go the wrong direction for you, would you be willing to regain those 5 lbs, or would you assume that thinner is always optimal, regardless of the numbers?
And to me that's why to bring this study to the public - because it's suggesting that maybe "ideal weight" isn't so ideal for everyone. Maybe for some individuals a little more weight might actually BE OPTIMAL.
No one should assume anything about what is and isn't optimal, because we just don't knw enough yet to say what all the factors are that goes into "optimal".
More research needs to be done (and some of it has been). No single study proves or even suggests anything - it's just one tiny piece of a big puzzle.
Also, the researchers DON'T bring it to the public. They write a journal article, submit it to a professional journal, and if it gets published - journalists (not usually scientists themselves) bring it to the public, often misinterpreting and misrepresenting the actual research and what can be assumed from it.
You can't assume that "it's ok to be a little overweight," from this study. However, you also can't assume that an "ideal weight" is ideal for everyone. This study at best suggests that more information is needed. It doesn't mean that anyone should assume or do anything, it's just one study. At best, it suggests that weight shouldn't be the only measure of health (but duh, we already knew that).
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Originally Posted by owlsteazombies
My cousin was a healthy, normal BMI 25 year old young man that just dropped dead in the middle of the street while he was jogging on a 72 degree day because of a massive heart attack. If that could happen to him, why wouldn't it happen to someone who had 5% more of a BMI?
And why wouldn't it happen to someone who has 5% less of a BMI?
And that's why we need more information, because we don't know all of the factors that go into optimal. We've assumed for many years that the ideal weight and height charts mean something - but they weren't developed by doctors, they were developed by insurance actuarials.
All I'm saying is that weight isn't the only piece of the puzzle. It's not even the most important piece.
There's some research for example that shows that for many conditions, weight is a very important piece. If you have arthritis for example, you probably want and need to be thinner than someone who doesn't. Every pound on your frame adds pressure to your joints, so the smaller you are, the less pain you'll have. Good argument for being not only of a healthy weight, but maybe even a little bit under.
I'm not advocating ignoring weight, I'm advocating seeing it as only one piece of the puzzle. I'm saying what you eat, how you exercise and how often, how much sleep you're getting, how much stress you're under, what illnesses run in your family, how much muscle and fat you have, where you carry that fat, how often you get a check-up, what your blood pressure, blood sugar, lipid profile and other blood tests reveal....
But most of us don't even know half of that stuff. Some people never see a doctor and just assume everything is fine because they don't feel sick. That's a dangerous assumption for anyone of any weight.
If weight is all you know about your health status, anything could be going on. How do you even know that you're at optimal health if you're not aware of all the factors that go into optimal health.
The fact is most of us have no idea what even is optimal health. And oddly, for most of us, weight is the only factor we're remotely concerned about, and studies such as this (and others) are indicating that it's not so simple. Weight is not the only important health factor. In fact, there's quite a bit of research that suggests it's not even the most important one.
If you randomly select a morbidly obese person and a person of ideal weight - the morbidly obese person isn't necessarily less healthy than the thin person. You could have chosen the one morbidly obese person who does everything else right - is eating a wide and varied high-veggie diet. Who walks and swims daily. Who gets good sleep and manages stress well...
And you might have unluckily picked a drug-abusing, junk-eating, couch potato who doesn't sleep.
Very few of us are reaching for optimal in any way BUT weight. And you know, if you're only going to look at your weight - and you refuse to look at anything else, then I suppose you probably should make sure that you're not in the overweight category.
And if you are reaching for optimal, you better know what that is, so that if YOUR optimal weight is overweight or underweight according to averages - you should know what those are. So if your blood pressure or any other health indicator declines, you do something about it. If that means gaining or losing weight, then that's what you do.
Optimal for an individual shouldn't be decided by any study that looks at dozens, hundreds, or thousands of people. It should be decided by health indicators.
I think that's what this study actually reinforces - the idea that we don't trust what we ASSUME about various health indicators. We can't assume that we can trust any table to tell us what "optimal" is. We need to find it for ourselves.
Just as some folks may need 6 hours of sleep for optimal health and others may need 9, I think weight likewise is going to vary from individual to individual. The research can give us clues as to the range of optimal (for example this study and many, many others do reinforce our understanding that morbid obesity is unlikely to be optimal for anyone).
I think weight is actually a red herring. Too many people see it as the only important indicator of health, or at least the most important one.
I don't think weight is number one or even number two. Oh, I do believe it's in the top ten, and maybe even in the top five - but it isn't the only factor or even the most important.
I think if we're going to be stressing the importance of BMI and body-fat range, we need to be championing the equally (and perhaps more) important health factors for optimal health.
I suspect from my own experience, and that of the huge amount of research I've studied (going directly to the research journal publications themselves, or at least the abstracts) that stress, sleep, diet, and exercise are more important than weight.
Of course, that's "all things being equal" and they never are. It's much more likely that for some people sleep is going to be number one, for another weight, and for another stress levels.
And for everyone, they can't focus on "just one" because there is no "just one" that will provide adequate (let alone optimal) health.
And that's what I think everyone needs to walk away with, from this article. That weight is only one indicator of health, and it may not even be the most important one. And even if it were the most important one (and it's not) but even if it were, it can't be the only factor a person addresses.
When I stopped seeing weight as the only measure of success and health, I started succeeding not only at weight loss, but at regaining my health. In the first two years of a healthy lifestyle, I managed only to "not gain." I didn't lose an ounce, but the most dramatic of my health improvements occurred doing those two years.
And that's what people need to walk away with. That if you're eating better and exercising more, your health is improving, even if the weight isn't coming off as quickly as you'd like (and even if it's not coming off at all).
Instead, when someone is struggling to lose weight, they often give up if the weight loss isn't rapid or steady. When the weight stalls they think "what's the use?" Well the use is that not just weight is at stake.
Yes, weight loss is important, but the rest is just important. And if you're controlling your weight, but not paying attention to nutrition, cardiovascular health, exercise, stress levels and stress management, sleep and all the rest, you're also not in "optimal" health.
If it really was about optimal health, why is weight the main and only focus?
