The Problem with Numbers and Bodies
Hourly, daily, weekly, and monthly, I have conversations with my clients surrounding bodies and their size, shape, and the personal and public feelings about them. There is more than enough content, good, bad, and fake, created in the health/diet/anti-diet space so I won’t take up too much space here. BUT, I do feel like there is one aspect that is often left out of the conversation… Alllll of the fake numbers that we allow to evaluate and hold power over us as opposed to listening to our bodies.
Let me tell you a little story about the Body Mass Index (BMI):
The individual that came up with body mass index was a mathematician, not a doctor. He created the formula to help assess the “degree of obesity in a general population” which would then help them allocate resources properly, in the 1830s. The formula makes no allowance for the differences in individuals’ proportions of bone, muscle, and fat in the body. FYI, bone, muscle, and fat have different densities. BMI does not take that into account. In addition, the original research was focused on young, white, biological males. Therefore it does not represent biological females or those of different ethnicities. Millions of people have been classified as “overweight” or “obese” using BMI, however when used in conjunction with other (more current) scientific methods, researchers have found that many of these folks were actually “healthy” and some considered “normal” by the scale were “unhealthy.” According to the original BMI calculation, many professional athletes would be considered “overweight” or “obese.” Factors that can give us a better understanding of our health are our bloodwork, our muscle to fat ratio, bone density, genetics, hormone tests, and how we live our day-to-day life.
Let me tell you a little story about calories:
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) allows nutrition labels to be off by as much as 20%. So basically, you have no idea how many calories are in anything. Historically, one of the most common weight loss methods we see is calories in, calories out. Theoretically that works because…math. However, it's not just math is it? It's our bodies. Every human body digest food differently. Some foods will be fully digested, and some will not. (insert thought about poop here) There is even research that says the number of calories will differ due to the species of the food we are eating and how we prepare the food, i.e. boiling, baking, microwaving, etc. If two people eat the same food, they may not intake the same number of calories (I like broccoli tops and my friend likes the stalks, true story), nor will their bodies get to use the same number of calories (even if we both ate broccoli). It’s time to move on…
Lastly, I want to assign an honorable mention to bathroom scales. There are so many articles and studies about this I will just let you google it. Scales are inaccurate, how could they possibly be accurate. At their best they measure in the ballpark of your body weight, which tells you nothing about your overall health. At worst, they cause shame, guilt, and disordered eating after they’ve given you a wildly inaccurate number. Throw them out and listen to your body.
The goal of all this is to encourage everyone to stop looking to false/inaccurate systems and technology to inform us about our own bodies. Each of our bodies are uniquely made and they should not be compared to each other. No one has exactly the same genetics as another person (except for you identical twins). Learning about our bodies takes time, and then it changes (puberty), and then it changes again, and again as we get older. I encourage everyone to listen to your body, eat good food, ask questions and learn. We are on a journey of understanding with our bodies…what foods make it feel good, what clothes make it look its best, how does it likes to move, what does it need when it is sick, who does it react to and how…..That is the beautiful work. Don’t waste your time comparing, calculating, or counting.
Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.
References:
https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/255712#what-is-a-healthy-weight
https://health.clevelandclinic.org/is-bmi-accurate/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6928134/?report=reader
https://time.com/6101041/counting-calories-weight-loss-supersized-lies/
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