Just because you’re slim doesn’t mean you aren’t fat
It’s called “normal weight obesity.”
I came across the term in an article in yesterday’s WSJ titled, “The Scales Can Lie: Hidden Fat.” It quoted a Mayo Clinic study, so I went to the source.
After an earlier 2008 paper, in which the researchers categorized people with a normal body mass index (BMI) but high body fat content as having “normal weight obesity,” they now report on over 6000 subjects.
They categorized the normal-BMI subjects with a body-fat percentage in the highest third of the sample (<23% for men and <33.% for women) as having “normal weight obesity” (NWO). After following them for almost 9 years, they discovered that metabolic syndrome was four times higher in subjects with NWO. They also showed a higher prevalence of lipid disorders, hypertension (in the men), and cardiovascular disease (in the women). In fact, the risk for heart-disease related death in women with NWO was 2.2 times higher than the low body fat group.
Conclusion: even though you may have a normal BMI, you’re not out of the woods. Because if your body-fat is over 23% for men and 33% for women, you’re at risk for all sorts of health problems.
Bummer.
Your own BMI is easily calculated. Go here and enter your numbers. Ideally your BMI should run between 18.5 and 24.9. (I just make the cut at 24.0.)
Calculating your percent body fat is not so easy. It requires special equipment. If you belong to a gym, you can often have it analyzed there. I don’t know my fat percentage, but I’m pretty damn sure it’s above 23%.
Double bummer.
Every time you turn around it’s something else. For a while there it appeared that if you kept your BMI in the healthy range and your waist below 40″ for males and below 36″ for females, you were doing okay. Now these folks come along and add body-fat percentage to the mix.
Ah, well. Never did want to live forever anyway.
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I don’t know much about “metabolic syndrome”. As somebody others regard as “thin” (i.e. “normal” for 1970, only hints of love handles in late winter before I realize swimsuit season is nigh and start going hungry at snack time again), I try to be sympathetic to those who say they “can’t” lose weight, but I’m suspicious.
I wonder what percentage of the overweight have legitimate difficulties keeping it off, and what percentage just aren’t up to going hungry part of the time?
I hate the word “dieting”. “Diet” is a permanent condition, as in “The diet of the black bear is fish and berries”. I use the term “starving” for going through weight loss – more accurate and also more self-flattering.
I’m forced to conclude that earlier generations just got used to going hungry for a few hours each day – the hours before supper and lunch, for instance. Less snacking. I think “hungry” is a natural condition that we’ve pretty much eliminated in our culture. And it wasn’t as smart as eliminating “cold” and “wet” with clothes and houses.
I do recall a few – a FEW – kids in jr. high school that were heavy when quite young and did NOT seem to be always eating. I don’t disbelieve in the cluster of problems tagged “metabolic syndrome”, but I do wonder if it affects even 1% of the population.