Day 61 – Is Michelle Obama Wrong?

“A successful person is one who can lay a firm foundation with the bricks that others throw at him or her”

~ David Brinkley

195.2 lbs.

On May 11th, 2010, Michelle Obama unveiled the White House task force report on solving childhood obesity. The goal defined in the 120-page document is to roll back the rate of childhood obesity in the United States to 5% by 2030, the same as it was in the late 1970s.

I see this as a noble goal; when I was a kid we’d play outside, but more and more kids turn to video game consoles and television for amusement. Obesity has skyrocketed, not in a vacuum, but as our activity and fitness levels have dropped.

On the diet side of the equation we’re eating more hydrogenated oils and high fructose corn syrup now than ever before – things that were barely available in the 1970s – and it wasn’t until 1982 that they started with the “eat a high carb, low fat diet” stuff. Unfortunately they oversimplified; making fat a boogeyman meant most of us made an effort to cut out all fats, including heart disease fighting omega-3 fatty acids,while devouring way more carbs – ignoring, or unaware of, the fact that simple and even some complex carbs can lead to heart disease and certainly leads to obesity.

On the fitness side – well, yeah. There we sit, not moving as much. Even I, writing this blog and starving myself to raise eating disorder and body image awareness, spend much of my day in a chair.

So on first pass Michelle’s idea is a good one. Get kids eating right, and get them moving. But it is a White House initiative, and unless you’ve been living under a rock, in a cave, on Mars, you know that anything that comes out of the White House soon becomes a political football, good intentions or not. And Americans love football.

Side note: Not the football where you kick with your feet and only the goalie can use his hands – the other one where you throw the ball with your hands, catch it with your hands, and hold the ball in your hands while running. That football.

Some critics pointed out that drilling into kids “don’t be fat” could lead to an epidemic of anorexia. Certainly some have seen first-hand evidence of what they perceive as such a path; and not in a “we know where the weapons of mass destruction” thinking-out-loud-as-though-it’s-fact way. Harriet Brown, over at the left-leaning blog The Huffington Post draws a parallel between her own daughter’s descent into anorexia and Michelle Obama’s plans for America’s youth.

Brown allows “Many of its recommendations are far-sighted and positive: Support breastfeeding. Encourage physical activity and limit screen time for kids. Allocate more money for the school lunch program. Support farm-to-school initiatives. Get more grocery stores into low-income neighborhoods. Teach kids how marketing affects their food choices. Create more sidewalks and bike lanes.”

But then she goes on to say “The trouble is, these ideas are all presented in the service of a single goal: to make kids thinner. The report, “Solving the Problem of Childhood Obesity Within a Generation,” assumes that thin is synonymous with healthy, and that we can (and should) make kids thinner.”

I take issue with this. Making kids not be obese isn’t the same as simply making them thinner; the goal is to make kids healthier. The thinness is a byproduct.

If it were as simple as the message “be thin” being the key trigger for anorexia, we’d already be up to our bony elbows in a wafer thin citizenry. In one breath people complain about the pressure on young girls (and boys – let’s not deny it) to look like the airbrushed and manipulated photos on the covers of fashion and fitness magazines. Then they complain that an anti-obesity program is a new “be thin” edict that will be the tipping point to turn us all anorexic?

It’s my humble opinion that people like Mrs. Brown are insulting Mrs. Obama by giving her far too much credit.

I do agree with Harriet Brown’s difficulties with the Body Mass Index charts. A big boned, muscular person often shows as ‘overweight’ according to the BMI, which typically calculates your ‘healthy weight’ based on height – and height alone. And I fully agree that focusing on weight is completely wrong. It’s your body’s composition that matters.

We (myself included) should really avoid talking about reducing obesity as ‘weight loss’. What obese people, kids or adults, need is body fat loss.

I had a woman write to me complaining that she’s going to the gym 5 days a week, doing 45 minutes of cardio and 30 minutes of weights each time, that she’s given up pop, sugars, etc. and eating proper meals like brown rice, fish, and so on… but to her dismay she’s only lost 5 lbs. in 6 months.

It’s not the weight that matters! Yes, if you’re not seeing your waist getting slimmer that can be as frustrating as Sisyphus helping you pick rocks out of your garden. But if you’re solely concentrating on those numbers on the scale, you may be replacing fat with muscle, getting healthier, but too focused on your “weight” to notice. A person weighing 160lbs with 19% body fat will look slimmer and healthier than a person weighing 160 lbs with 36% body fat. Not only does the muscle weigh more by volume, meaning they’re more compact for the same weight, but the toned muscle will support the outer body fat better (such as a flatter belly or less wobbly thighs) and there’ll be less intramuscular fat.

Just as when the ADA presented the oversimplified food pyramid, and had us avoiding good fats and eating bad carbs, oversimplification of reducing obesity to “lose weight” or “be thin” or “don’t be fat” is misleading, whether it comes from Obama’s program or how certain people choose to interpret her program.

We do see thin models all around us. Heck, even our TVs are far thinner than when I was a kid (okay, bad joke). But even as we’re surrounded by “eat low fat” and “isn’t kate Moss beautiful?” 33% of us are obese. So with all due respect to Brown and the tragedy her daughter endured, I think the causal link has been misinterpreted.

Brown goes on to argue that we should redefine societal ideas of acceptable body types. The problem I have with that is the more we celebrate obese as ‘okay’ the more people with real health problems are going to ignore it because everyone tells them they’re fine.

I live in the fattest city in Western Canada. When I blimped up to 240 lbs at the start of this project I had people telling me I didn’t look fat. Why? No doubt some, like my ex military brethren, were just being polite… but to many I didn’t look fat, because in a fat society it appears normal.

To be fair, just as BMI isn’t a measure of health neither is how visibly pudgy someone is (those who live off the Mediterranean diet, like Italians, can sometimes be quite rotund yet have a very healthy ticker) but we in North America don’t eat like Italians do. We eat far more refined sugars in far more sweets, drink larger pops and more often, and eat a lot more junk food. one can safely generalize that if you’re noticeably obese on this continent, odds are you’re in for some real health problems down the road if you’ve not reached that point already.

Judging by appearance is bad, but we all do it… and have done for thousands of years. What we judge may change, but that we judge won’t. Body image issues are real, and should be reduced or eliminated where realistically possible, but when we focus on political correctness of “readjusting society’s values” by telling everyone that it should be okay to be obese we’re literally killing them with kindness.

Remember how 10-15 years ago someone decided that all kids should get medals just for trying? Now studies show that resulted in a generation of overconfident, self-entitled new workers who think they should be at least VP of their company right out of school. Imagine that, but with fatal consequences. That’s what we’re in for if we focus on accepting obesity so people’s feelings don’t get hurt.

I for one applaud Michelle Obama’s initiative and wish her well, because I see it as an effort to make kids healthier, not just thinner.

Oh, and Mrs. Brown, you’ve got a lovely daughter. I sincerely hope she has recovered.