From the "Figure that out all by yourself, Einstein?" file

If Kate Harding did not exist, I would have to invent her, so that I'd have a place to find articles like this one:

Feeling fat may be worse for you than being fat

By Anne Harding

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Obesity's health effects could have more to do with feeling bad about being fat than actually being overweight, a new study shows.

Researchers who looked at a nationally representative group of more than 170,000 US adults found the difference actual weight and perceived ideal weight was a better indicator of mental and physical health than body mass index (BMI).

"The obesity 'epidemic' might have a lot more to do with our collective preoccupation with obesity than obesity itself," the study's lead author, Dr. Peter Muennig of Columbia University in New York City, told Reuters Health. "We still need to focus on healthy diet and exercise as public health officials, but we need to take fatness out of the equation. Were we to stop looking at body fat as a problem, the problem may well disappear."

Some researchers have suggested that stress due to stigmatization could be a factor in the health problems obese people have, such as high blood pressure and diabetes, he and his colleagues note in the March issue of the American Journal of Public Health.

To investigate, they examined data on 170,577 people participating in a study of behavioral risk factors. All had reported their actual weight, perceived ideal weight, and the number of days in the past 30 days when they felt that their physical or mental health was not good.

When the researchers used statistical techniques to control for the influence of age and body mass index, they found that the more dissatisfied a person was with his or her weight, the more "bad days" he or she had. The relationship was strongest in non-Hispanic whites and women.

As I've mentioned before, I have two obese parents in their 80's. I'm overweight by any standard, but I'm preposterously healthy. My blood pressure is good, I'm moderately active, I walk at a good clip (a habit learned long ago when I realized that it takes me at least 1-1/2 steps to equal a taller person's one), I almost never get sick. I've cut way back on sweets, I avoid white flour product and anything with high fructose corn syrup in it, and I've learned that if you want the cookie, you might as well eat it because otherwise you're going to eat everything else in the house -- and then eat the cookie anyway.

I've long believed, a belief reinforced by reading a recent article about the increase in heart disease among Indian call center workers, that the so-called "obesity epidemic" in this country over the last decade is attributable to the stresses caused by fear (fear that has been nurtured by the Bush Administration) and increasing financial insecurity. When people have to work harder and longer in order to make ends meet, or prove their worth to a corporation in order to save their jobs, not only do they have less time for exercise and to eat right, but the constant, nagging stress takes its toll.

Now we have a study indicates that in addition to other stresses, the stress of worrying about one's weight may in fact be a cause of obesity.

And why wouldn't one feel stressed about being fat? Even if you aren't overweight, the terror of being overweight is ever-present. And if you ARE overweight, you're subject to not only social discrimination, but employment discrimination
and appalling treatment by the medical community, and stigmatization if you're brave enough to decide to join a gym. I've often thought that there is a fortune to be made in opening a chain of health clubs for fat people.

I look forward to the day when no one with ovarian cysts is told by a doctor that if she just loses weight, the pain will go away, and no clinical depressive is told by a doctor "...you have a great figure, but you could lose some weight. I look forward to a day when there are Megayoga classes in every town in America. I look forward to a day when our notions of health aren't tied to a specific size but we accept that everyone is different and no one has to be afraid to go to a doctor, or join a gym, or take a dance class, or eat a dessert for fear of being criticized by strangers.

That it took a medical study to figure out that the way our society treats overweight people may result in the stresses that cause obesity is ridiculous all by itself. I don't expect, however, that it's going to make all that much difference. There is just too much money to be made by major corporations in exploiting Fat Fear.