NationStates Jolt Archive

http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2007/06/07/obesity/

The above Salon article recently took on "booty-licious" ideas of beauty among black Americans. A few snippets: It's fairly common knowledge that many black (and Hispanic) men prefer their women larger than do other groups, a reality that launched Buffie on her path to glory. It is perhaps less well known that that preference has contributed to extremely high levels of obesity among black women.

Obesity is killing us, and our obesity is in part cultural

But a friend of mine directed my attention to a rebuttal (pardon the pun) that intrigued me:
http://www.amptoons.com/blog/#footnote-3-3472

In particular, this table (from the New England Journal of Medicine, 2006) caught my eye:
http://www.amptoons.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2006/09/rr_by_bmi_large.png

As the blogger notes, "...if we look at the details, we see that only for the very fattest black women — the outliers — is being overweight associated with higher mortality. What the statistics actually show is that black women, more than anyone else, have an elevated risk of death if they’re in the “normal weight” category, and live longest if they’re in the “overweight” category."

The table also appears to show that most American men have lower risk of death if they are "overweight" than if they are "normal" weight, and that most American women have a lower risk of death if they are slightly "overweight."

What do folks think about this? How does this gel with our notions of health and fat?

Do they count the rings when they're dead?

I love it when they use statements like "lower risk of death" :p

To be honest i'm very surprised by this. I've had countless health risk factors brought up in lectures this year and they have led me to think of anything over the ideal BMI of 22 (for everyone but asians) as leading to progressive declines in health. This is probably more due to my own misinterpretation though which makes me very interested to learn from this. Thanks
Ouch, the ideal BMI is 22 now? It was 25 when I was taking health class!

What do folks think about this? How does this gel with our notions of health and fat?

To be honest i'm very surprised by this. I've had countless health risk factors brought up in lectures this year and they have led me to think of anything over the ideal BMI of 22 (for everyone but asians) as leading to progressive declines in health. This is probably more due to my own misinterpretation though which makes me very interested to learn from this. Thanks

Edit : I was always led to believe that the classifications of BMI levels were different for asians but this isn't shown in the table you have provided

Ouch, the ideal BMI is 22 now? It was 25 when I was taking health class!

25 is still the upper limit of good but 22 is just the best of the best

The blogger is right that it does matter where the fat is located but they should also understand that an increased BMI isn't necessarily due to fat as well and there are increased risks for different diseases

Edit : Looks like they spotted this

"In addition to premature death, she also mentions higher rates of diabetes, hypertension, cardiovascular disease and cancer in black women. These are legitimate concerns, but there are better ways to help women with these problems than by saying that “overweight” women should become “normal” weight, a course of treatment that will in practice not be possible for the vast majority of “overweight” people."

Now, I'm not really part of the study, but a doctor out and out told me to reject the BMI scale because of my body shape. Maintaining a healthy-ish BMI was wrecking my bone and muscle density and destroying my ability to heal properly. I am a male, 23 years old, and stand 5'2" (157cm) tall. I come from a family of people who have very wide frames and very dense bones. I'm not big boned, they're just heavy.

Anyway, I weighed in at a whopping 107 lbs (49kg) and three doctors told me that I was starving to death. I was emaciated. A normal weight for a person of my build was no lighter than 140 lbs (64kg).

So, folks, don't take the whole BMI thing too seriously. It's a load of rubbish unless you have a very-specific body frame.

So, folks, don't take the whole BMI thing too seriously. It's a load of rubbish unless you have a very-specific body frame.

that's very true, I weigh more than I "should" and my BMI is in the overweight range, but when my doctor tested my body fat percentage it was in the "normal" range, funny thing is, I have a LOT of really heavy muscle........weird how that is.

although right now I am actually overweight, but I am working on that.

that's very true, I weigh more than I "should" and my BMI is in the overweight range, but when my doctor tested my body fat percentage it was in the "normal" range, funny thing is, I have a LOT of really heavy muscle........weird how that is.

although right now I am actually overweight, but I am working on that.

Yeah personally I would prefer that body fat and BMI were tested together to give a more accurate description of a persons body composition. It always seems strange to think of bodybuilders as being in the obese category

Muscle Mass.

Thread over.

Just black women? I thought the latest 'poly-unsaturated-fat craze' was that higher BMIs were in vogue. Something to do with reducing heart disease or something (just so long as you weren't getting on for obese).

Muscle Mass.

Thread over.

I'd like to see studies showing how often an "unhealthy" BMI is due to this.

I'd like to see studies showing how often an "unhealthy" BMI is due to this.

Considering that muscle mass isn't even a consideration, probably fairly often.

Black women tend to have more muscle mass than women of other races, so their BMI is generally going to be greater than the "healthy" BMI and they will be perfectly healthy.

As for the findings on men, men who weight train tend to have healthier hearts than those that don't (excluding steroid users), and considering that heart disease is the number on killer of Americans, it only makes sense that the men with healthier hearts would be more likely to live longer.

Being fat is still horrible for you. All the science shows that.

Generally, the BMI scale has been shown to have gross inaccuracies when dealing with its actual relation to health issues, not least because of the difficulties with causation and correlation. Many people like to claim a causational relationship between weight/BMI and health, when there's actually a correlational relationship. My somewhat educated guess would be that overweight black women may have a number of other factors in favor of their health, ranging from body shape differences to lifestyle differences that set them apart from the norm for other women.

Underlying point? Take everything with a grain of salt when reading health journals/studies, and read between the lines wherever possible.

"Elevated risk of death"

Isn't that an oxymoron?

Fat people are jolly, and jolly people have less stress-related health problems?

OR...bootylicious women get more action, and more sexual endorphins running through their bodies?

Bah, who knows. But you've got to love those big asses.

Being fat is still horrible for you. All the science shows that.

O rly (http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/world/2006-06/27/xin_470603271620460107016.jpg)?

The table also appears to show that most American men have lower risk of death if they are "overweight" than if they are "normal" weight, and that most American women have a lower risk of death if they are slightly "overweight."


lol! They have a lower risk of death, because they stay at home all day eating fried chicken and colla'd greens.

Wu tang!

I have no idea what my BMI is, but I know I'm fat. I see it in the mirror every day and I feel it in my knees, and it's had an effect on my health--but not a massive one. I get a physical every year and my blood pressure, my pulse rate, my cholesterol levels are all well within normal limits. I'm 5'10" and 250 lbs, and I'd like to drop some of that, but I'm healthy because I don't eat crap, and because I'm active. I walk 3 miles about 4-5 days a week, and I do stretching exercises every day. So there's a lot to it, but from looking at me, you'd think I was a heart attack about to happen.

The person who wrote the blog makes an awful lot of sense.

But a person's BMI is a pretty flexible thing. I mean, muscle weighs more than fat so a woman with an athletic physique will probably have a higher BMI than somebody the same height that is overweight.

And according to the whole BMI thing I'm apparently not overweight while I can tell just by looking in the mirror that I am at least a stone (14 pounds) overweight.

I have no idea what my BMI is, but I know I'm fat. I see it in the mirror every day and I feel it in my knees, and it's had an effect on my health--but not a massive one. I get a physical every year and my blood pressure, my pulse rate, my cholesterol levels are all well within normal limits. I'm 5'10" and 250 lbs, and I'd like to drop some of that, but I'm healthy because I don't eat crap, and because I'm active. I walk 3 miles about 4-5 days a week, and I do stretching exercises every day. So there's a lot to it, but from looking at me, you'd think I was a heart attack about to happen.

You need to push yourself. Walking simply doesn't cut it.

I'm 5'3" at 120 pounds, and I lift weights and bike. I bike a lot.

However I've started using one of these (http://www.healthstylesexercise.com/catalog/images/Cybex-Home-Arc-Cross-Trainer.png)thingies at my friend's apartment gym, and after just 10 minutes it's already hammered the crap out of me and leaves me really exhausted.

You should find a gym with one of these thingies and start going every day.

You need to push yourself. Walking simply doesn't cut it.

I'm 5'3" at 120 pounds, and I lift weights and bike. I bike a lot.

However I've started using one of these (http://www.healthstylesexercise.com/catalog/images/Cybex-Home-Arc-Cross-Trainer.png)thingies at my friend's apartment gym, and after just 10 minutes it's already hammered the crap out of me and leaves me really exhausted.

You should find a gym with one of these thingies and start going every day.
Here's the thing--I'm not worried about it. My weight has been fairly steady for the last 10 years, and I'm 38 now. I'm not going to get rock hard--I just don't want it enough. And as long as my blood pressure, etc. is okay, I don't see the need to stress about it. I'm healthy--just big.

I'd like to see studies showing how often an "unhealthy" BMI is due to this.

I know President Bush is unhealthy unless you factor in muscle mass. Then he's in great shape.

Well, physically in great shape, anyway. Not politically.

You need to push yourself. Walking simply doesn't cut it.

I'm 5'3" at 120 pounds, and I lift weights and bike. I bike a lot.

However I've started using one of these (http://www.healthstylesexercise.com/catalog/images/Cybex-Home-Arc-Cross-Trainer.png)thingies at my friend's apartment gym, and after just 10 minutes it's already hammered the crap out of me and leaves me really exhausted.

You should find a gym with one of these thingies and start going every day.
I have one of those thingies!

only mine looks like this
http://dyn-images.hsn.com/is/image/HomeShoppingNetwork/906055?$pd300$

it's really easy, I can do it while I watch TV, I don't get tired out much, but then the next day my whole freaking body hurts. :p

I have one of those thingies!

only mine looks like this
http://dyn-images.hsn.com/is/image/HomeShoppingNetwork/906055?$pd300$

it's really easy, I can do it while I watch TV, I don't get tired out much, but then the next day my whole freaking body hurts. :p

God I hate cardio workouts. It just hurts too much. Weights are much more relaxing

God I hate cardio workouts. It just hurts too much. Weights are much more relaxing

I hate cardio too, but it's the easiest way to loose weight so that's what I am doing right now, the toning feels better but the cardio gets me more results. ;)

I have one of those thingies!

only mine looks like this
http://dyn-images.hsn.com/is/image/HomeShoppingNetwork/906055?$pd300$

it's really easy, I can do it while I watch TV, I don't get tired out much, but then the next day my whole freaking body hurts. :p

Ooooh, a gazelle!!

Those are so much fun.

I think I get a better workout on the one I'm using since it put resistance on it, but the gazelle is so much fun!

Ooooh, a gazelle!!

Those are so much fun.

I think I get a better workout on the one I'm using since it put resistance on it, but the gazelle is so much fun!

mine has this little knob thing that adds a little resistance, I know because when I get on it and I can hardly move it means hubby has been on it and didn't change it back to "fairly easy"

I hate cardio too, but it's the easiest way to loose weight so that's what I am doing right now, the toning feels better but the cardio gets me more results. ;)

If I have to do the whole cardio thing i'm a big fan of swimming. Find it very easy to shut off and swim on autopilot. Its great especially since I don't have a job at the moment so I can swim for two hours at a time and barely notice the time

http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2007/06/07/obesity/

The above Salon article recently took on "booty-licious" ideas of beauty among black Americans. A few snippets:


But a friend of mine directed my attention to a rebuttal (pardon the pun) that intrigued me:
http://www.amptoons.com/blog/#footnote-3-3472

In particular, this table (from the New England Journal of Medicine, 2006) caught my eye:
http://www.amptoons.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2006/09/rr_by_bmi_large.png

As the blogger notes, "...if we look at the details, we see that only for the very fattest black women — the outliers — is being overweight associated with higher mortality. What the statistics actually show is that black women, more than anyone else, have an elevated risk of death if they’re in the “normal weight” category, and live longest if they’re in the “overweight” category."

The table also appears to show that most American men have lower risk of death if they are "overweight" than if they are "normal" weight, and that most American women have a lower risk of death if they are slightly "overweight."

What do folks think about this? How does this gel with our notions of health and fat?

Interesting. My immediate thought is that there may be a different causal relationship between the demographics and their death rates other than weight, but which is also divided by chance or some other reason along weight-lines. No ideas as to what it may be though. Hell, there probably isn't... But that just strikes me as weird, obviously.

I think a reason for this is probably because or society has a somewhat absurd definition of what is the "right weight". The right weight portrayed by the media is probably slightly unhealthy, and it's constant bombardment leads to extremely unhealthy weights in some people.

I may have gained a bit of weight recently, but I'm not sure if the scale was accurate or not and I don't have an accurate scale at my house. Last time I went to the doctor they said I weighed about 108 pounds, but when I went to that scale it said 110. It made me feel too heavy. Anyway, my BMI is like 17.8 or something like that. One of my brothers has a BMI of around 16, but he's only 14 years old and he's been growing much taller, so I guess his weight just hasn't caught up or something. His weight is around the same as mine, which makes me feel heavy because he's taller than I am. I'm 5'6", and he's around 5'8" or 5'9". I don't really excercise at all during the school year, but now that it's summer I take a 30 minute walk with my mom five or six days per week.

I hated it in my psychology class last year when we talked about BMI and the teacher showed us a chart that showed how risk of death changed over different BMI's, and mine was too low to appear on the chart (it stopped at 18:mad:). So I asked about it and he said, "Well, your risk of death would be higher because then you'd be anorexic." That upset me.:(

I eat as much as I'm hungry for, which usually ends up being between 1400 and 1600 calories. I don't see any reason for me to eat much more than that.

I was coincidentally reading about this earlier when StumbleUpon randomly threw up a fat-acceptance website that had pounced on these finding as some sort of justification for being grossly overweight. That entire movement is fundamentally stupid - they campaign for the acceptance of the overweight but then do little to combat the highly prevalent notion within their ranks that being overweight is a good thing. There is a big difference between accepting fat people and accepting fat.

What do folks think about this? How does this gel with our notions of health and fat?

Gel? notions? If being a certain weight makes someone live longer, surely by definition, they're not overweight? I don't know what else to say.

Of course, it's worth keeping in mind that there are all kinds of factors in these things and statistics can be misleading.

Gel? notions? If being a certain weight makes someone live longer, surely by definition, they're not overweight? I don't know what else to say.

Of course, it's worth keeping in mind that there are all kinds of factors in these things and statistics can be misleading.

Statistics are almost always misleading unless correlated by other statistics or directly observable evidence. Maybe the sample size was too low or the data collection methods flawed. Perhaps it's a localised anomaly; the same results may not apply in Europe, for example, in which case other factors would need to be investigated other than weight alone.

Being fat is still horrible for you. All the science shows that.
Depends on the type of fat. Visceral fat is awful, but subcutaneous fat has little impact on health either way. That's why sumo wrestlers don't commonly have heart problems.

Maybe because being a bit to somewhat overweight means they must have a steady lifestyle, a schedule. Steady income, steady calorie intake, and steady sleep/rest. In other words, they are comfortable. And being comfortable lessens stress etc.

I may have gained a bit of weight recently, but I'm not sure if the scale was accurate or not and I don't have an accurate scale at my house. Last time I went to the doctor they said I weighed about 108 pounds, but when I went to that scale it said 110. It made me feel too heavy. Anyway, my BMI is like 17.8 or something like that. One of my brothers has a BMI of around 16, but he's only 14 years old and he's been growing much taller, so I guess his weight just hasn't caught up or something. His weight is around the same as mine, which makes me feel heavy because he's taller than I am. I'm 5'6", and he's around 5'8" or 5'9". I don't really excercise at all during the school year, but now that it's summer I take a 30 minute walk with my mom five or six days per week.

I hated it in my psychology class last year when we talked about BMI and the teacher showed us a chart that showed how risk of death changed over different BMI's, and mine was too low to appear on the chart (it stopped at 18:mad:). So I asked about it and he said, "Well, your risk of death would be higher because then you'd be anorexic." That upset me.:(

I eat as much as I'm hungry for, which usually ends up being between 1400 and 1600 calories. I don't see any reason for me to eat much more than that.

1. You're not fat. I'm 5'3" and 120.

2. If you do want to loose weight, going on walks won't do much. You need to bike, run, swim or get a hold of one of these (http://www.shoppersbrand.com/tonylittlesgazelle/gazelle.jpg).

1. You're not fat. I'm 5'3" and 120.

2. If you do want to loose weight, going on walks won't do much. You need to bike, run, swim or get a hold of one of these (http://www.shoppersbrand.com/tonylittlesgazelle/gazelle.jpg).

I don't really want to lose weight. I basically just don't want to gain weight.

I don't know how to ride a bike or swim though. :(

I basically just don't want to gain weight.

I don't know how to ride a bike or swim though. :(

How is that possible? :confused:

Wow. Slightly overweight people live longer.
How terribly unsurprising.
What research institute found this: The Research Institute into Stating the Bleeding Obvious?

I'm 98 pounds, and 5'4. Obviously, I need to gain a few pounds. My BMI is, I believe 17.2. I'm skinny enough to look like a model (only if I could just get rid of that pesky acne and those ugly braces!) which kind of scares me, since models tend to be at extremely unhealthy weights and look scary.

About the article though... it's not very reliable. "lower risks of death." How much lower? 30%? There's no numbers. And we're all goign to die at some point, so does this mean that overweight black women have a higher chance of being immortal?

I have one of those thingies!

only mine looks like this
http://dyn-images.hsn.com/is/image/HomeShoppingNetwork/906055?$pd300$

it's really easy, I can do it while I watch TV, I don't get tired out much, but then the next day my whole freaking body hurts. :p
Naw. Get yoursefl one of these:
http://www.powerhouse-fitness.co.uk/store/product_info/rowers/concept/concept2_rower.jpg
The pain is exquisite.
I have one and try for ~100km a month (though admittedly I've been very slack lately cause I was extremely ill for a week and lost all energy [and 7kg]), along with outrigger canoeing twice a week and 3-4 gym sessions.

How is that possible? :confused:

I don't have the balance to ride a bicycle without training wheels, and I never learned how to swim underwater. I can kind of float or dog-paddle, though.

So I asked about it and he said, "Well, your risk of death would be higher because then you'd be anorexic." That upset me.:(


She sounds like one of those bitchy teachers who likes to make kids feel bad about themselves.

My favorite health class story of all time is where a teacher yelled at one of the person "DO YOU WANT STDS?"

I'm sorry I only heard about that one, instead of actually being there.


I eat as much as I'm hungry for, which usually ends up being between 1400 and 1600 calories. I don't see any reason for me to eat much more than that.

I'm guessing I eat significantly more than 2,000 calories a day on some days. Then again, I also jog 1-2 miles on those days, and some of the time lift weights for about forty five minutes and tend to be famished upon finishing this. So I feel I'm excused.

Naw. Get yoursefl one of these:
http://www.powerhouse-fitness.co.uk/store/product_info/rowers/concept/concept2_rower.jpg
The pain is exquisite.


Umm...Forgive my ignorance, but is that an exercise machine or a device meant for hardcore bondage?

Umm...Forgive my ignorance, but is that an exercise machine or a device meant for hardcore bondage?
It's a concept II rowing machine. (http://www.concept2.com/us/default.asp) It's as close as you can get to rowing without getting wet. It's a sport in itself now - and the only sport where the officials carry buckets with them for the competitors to puke into.