Paradox Lost

If there is one thing people use to justify their fat-hate it’s the concern troll mantra of “fat is so unhealthy”. That way their sneers, mockery, cruelty, and cultural construction of fat people as a disease/illness plaguing the social body is totally reasonable and not asshattery at all!

Too bad it’s a bunch of bullshit, then.

Yet another study has come up with that gosh-darn and puzzling “obesity paradox”, where the fact fat people are healthier and live longer than thin people with the same damn ailment causes doctors to scratch their head and say “WTF?”  The latest is Type II diabetes, which has long been a cudgel to hit fat people with. Fat = Type II diabetes in the public mind and no amount of factual information will shift it. I’m sure that the revelation that overweight and obese people live longer than thin/normal people diagnosed with Type II diabetes will do nothing to alter this entrenched and devoutly believed health myth.

Moreover, the data was collected from studies of heart disease:

“The new findings are based on data from five earlier studies that tracked people over time to identify risk factors for heart disease. More than 2,600 participants developed type 2 diabetes during the studies, and 12 percent of them had a normal weight when they got the diagnosis. The death rate was 1.5 percent per year among overweight and obese people, compared to 2.8 percent per year among their trimmer peers. After accounting for several risk factors for heart disease — including age, blood pressure, high cholesterol and smoking — lean people were more than twice as likely to die at any given point as heavier people. The same held true for deaths caused by heart disease, which is linked to obesity.”

This “obesity paradox” shows up in patients with chronic kidney failure who are on hemodialysis, and for outpatients who had suffered heart failure, as well as military veterans in general even when they had never experienced heart failure, and for people with hypertension and coronary artery disease. You can be a butterball and still live longer than the more “worthy” thin people! How is this possible?!?

It turns out you can be thin – looking all sexy and healthy on the outside – and yet be a hot mess of heart disease on the inside!

Doctors were so horrified by this reality that they tried to tie it back into obesity, declaring that thinner people with unhealthy bodies suffered from normal-weight obesity or were metabolically obese. I shit you not, people who not fat were being called obese based on the fact they were unhealthy.

::: headdesk :::

In the midst of all the health hysteria and excused fat-shaming let us not forget that the so-called ‘obesity epidemic’ is largely based on smoke and mirrors, since the “alarm over body weight is based on current definitions in which anyone with a body mass index (BMI; weight in kilos divided by height in meters squared) over 25 is deemed “overweight” and anyone with a BMI over 30 is labeled “obese.” By these definitions, an average height woman (5′4′′) is “overweight” at 146 pounds and “obese” at 175 pounds, while a man of average height (5′9′′) is “overweight” at 170 pounds and “obese” at 203 pounds. Over one-half of the U.S. population in the 1960s and almost two-thirds of the U.S. population today weigh “too much” by these standards (Flegal et al., 2002, 2005; Kuczmarski et al., 1994).” Furthermore, the ‘obesity epidemic’ may even be a good thing since “A 2005 study by scientists at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) suggested that it is only after BMI reaches 35 that there is a meaningful increase in mortality, and that people in the “overweight” category (BMI between 25 and 30) actually have the lowest rate of mortality (Flegal et al., 2005).”

FYI — the biggest factor in poor health or early death is actually a sedentary lifestyle, whether you are fat or not. You cannot tell by looking at most people if they move around enough, not even if they have a big fat ass.

This whole post begs the question: if “overweight” people live longer than any group, HOW is it a paradox that overweight people with chronic ailments live longer than any group as well? It’s only a paradox if you ignore the facts about health and weight.

The only obesity paradox I’m seeing is the paradox inherent in the term normal-weight obesity.

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