[rachael]

http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/OnCall/peo...ory?id=9671590

I am on the cusp of a normal bmi. My body fat percentage has gone from 50 to 35. However, it is disheartening to read that I am still sort of obese. Hopefully that will change by the time I get to goal.

[foodmasochist]

Not to be too conspiracy theorist, but i know in the past several years many of the "standards" have been changed, including, obesity, and blood pressure. The reason is that if you have more people falling into "unhealthY" categories then you can peddle them drugs! So while i do agree we all need to strive for the healthiest we can be, we have to realize, there is *some* motivation for the industry to continually raise the bar on what is "healthy"-unhealthy peopel need medicine and weight loss products, which cost them money and bring in profits.

i didn't read the whole article, but i did read some.

Please don't be down on yourself!

-fm

[RoseRodent]

If there is a page 2 to this article I can't get in it! It says page 1 of 2 but there is no "next" or anything..?

I think it does make some sense, not everyone who is thin is healthy and not everyone with a high BMI is fat. Before things started to go wrong for me I was doing gymnastics 3 times a week and training at home, I cycled everywhere, walked for miles pushing a stroller, swam every week, went hiking and lifted weights, but my BMI was 32 because I was big and strong with a tiny fat layer over the top. To look at me you'd think there's a fat person. Now I'm almost the same size but it's all flab instead and my BMI is actually lower. Doctors are often stunned how high my weight is to my size because they don't expect girls to be so well built underneath it all.

I have many thin friends who eat a combination of drive-thru, soda, instant noodles and candy bars, but I'm the one who gets constantly lectured about my health because nobody thinks to ask a skinny person about their diet. Remember that you have done and are doing much more for your health than those people.

I agree somewhat with the PP too, again not to sound like a conspiracy theory, but when I was a young adult there used to be more categories of weight - normal, fat, very fat, obese. Now you go straight from overweight to obese. Doesn't take a genius to work out that there will magically be more obese people, does it? Of course rates of type 2 diabetes have increased if you go looking for it! It's essentially a symptomless illness in the early stages and it did not come to light in many people who in fact had it. If you go actively looking you will find more diabetics. Specially if you lower the threshold at which you diagnose diabetes so that you can "catch people earlier" - well if diabetic used to start at 8mmol/l and now it's down to 7 then that's more diabetics even among the original cohort, isn't it?

You will also find more obese people if you weigh anyone who comes into the doctor or hospital for anything at all as this did not used to happen. If you came in for something that didn't require your weight (pelvic exam for example) then nobody used to weigh you, now they try to get your weight while you are there so they can lecture you about being obese. I'll bet there were almost as many people who'd meet the 2010 definition of obese back in 1995 but back then they were either not weighed at all or they were "very fat".

They have run out of the numbers of people who are chronically really sick so they have to move onto people who are potentially a little bit borderline of maybe getting ill in the future so they can be given drugs to lower their potential risk of developing things they may never develop, but that's thousands per year into the pocket of the drug company for a person who was healthy.

If anything I think it's a good thing to shine the light on thin people too, they've been getting an easy ride sitting back and saying how disgusting fat people are and how we should just have more willpower, now it's their turn.

[stellarosa27]

It sounds like this article (page 1, anyway) is talking about those who are "skinny fat."

I'm still about 20 lbs over weight, but my bf% is in the "normal" range, where as I have a friend who is at the lower limit of normal weight for her height and she has a very high bf%. The difference between the two of us - I exercise on a regular basis and eat healthy, where as she does not.

I think as long as you continue to eat good things and exercise, there will be nothing to fear

[Leonor]

I could not access any page beyond 1. But the correct way to assess your risk is the waist to hip ratio. My BMI is over 25 but my waist to hip ratio is now under .8, the threshold (in women) for increased risk to get cardiovascular disease or insulin resistance.