Health is really bloody complex, but what we do know is that being healthy is more than just being physically well. Health is made up of our physical, mental, spiritual, environmental & social wellbeing. All of equal importance but not all always prioritised.
In diet culture, there tends to be a focus on our physical health and improving only that as a goal. Usually by convincing you that you’re in a body that is too big and calorie restriction/intense exercise = weight loss is the only way in which it can be improved. This really narrow view of health doesn’t set us up to succeed. As firstly it ignores all other areas that make up a person’s health and secondly, it is scientifically possible to experience health and ill health, in ANY body size. Thin people still develop diabetes, high blood cholesterol, heart disease and cancers!
We’ve been taught that Body Mass Index (BMI) is an excellent measure of health and hence only people in smaller bodies (smaller BMI) are healthy. Wait for it, the BMI calculation was actually developed by a mathematician, not a health professional!! It was intended to measure population health at a population level not to diagnose individual health status. Yet here we are, almost 100 years on and still using it incorrectly in practice. Not only this, but we now know that prescribing weight loss as a goal to improve health doesn’t work in the long run. Strong evidence in this area shows that 95% of people who successfully lose weight will re-gain it after 5 years. So even if other measures of physical health improve during that time they are also lost after 5 years. [MHMRC, Clinical Practice Guidelines for the Management of Overweight and Obesity N 57].
Let’s try something new, something different, it’s time we change things up for good! We’ve got a tool that can guide you through this new way of thinking. Launching December 2019. Watch this space!
