Weight Disorder
Weight Disorder: A Question Of Averages
Weight Disorder: What is ‘average weight’ and does it matter?
‘Lies, damned lies and statistics’ was coined by Benjamin Disraeli (Lord Beaconsfield), and popularized by Mark Twain. ‘I haven’t put any weight on’, might be a lie. ‘I’m just big-boned’, might be a damned lie. Average weight is a matter of statistics. Study enough people to represent a given population, analyze (in this case) their weight, and statisticians can give us a weight-for-age (to use a horse racing term) for any group. They can also give us weight for sex, weight for height and body-fat ratios. Any significant deviation from the average may be explained as a Weight Disorder. A non-statistical definition of overweight, or pre-obesity, might be ‘having more body fat than is healthy’, but even then how do you quantify ‘more’ or ‘healthy’? It seems inevitable that we return to statistics.
We have probably all seen the approved average weight charts beloved of the medical profession. In America we can find charts for men, women and children further sub-divided into white, black, Hispanic and other. Less benign, perhaps, are the charts described as ‘Ideal’ weight charts. Whose ideal? Who says?
So does average weight matter? In short, it does when other parameters or indicators of ‘fitness’ or ‘healthiness’ are compromised. If a man or woman were say, 30 years old and 10 pounds above average weight, we might not be too concerned, but if that same person had high blood pressure, or elevated cholesterol, or insulin resistance syndrome, or shortness of breath climbing stairs, our concern would be heightened and appropriate. We might be concerned about how the extra weight was distributed. We might be concerned if weight was increasing year by year and so on. Significant overweight (pre-obesity) is a Weight Disorder, so too, obesity and morbid obesity. Contrary to what was once a popular belief, gluttony is not the only explanation for a Weight Disorder.
Some argue that overweight results from our historical body makeup, i.e., we were designed as hunter-gatherers, needing certain levels of body fat for normal functionality, insulation and energy storage for a lifestyle of mobility, exercise, and labor unaided by machinery.
Overweight is a common condition, notably in the West, where food is abundant and work and play are conducted from a sitting position. More than 60% of American adults may be pre-obese or obese. The current level is at the head of a trend rising since the 1960s. Americans are not alone in their acquisition of avoirdupois. Overweight is by way of being a global epidemic, affecting all ages.
The obverse of above-average weight is self-evidently under-average weight and the same considerations of compromised fitness and healthiness apply. Anorexia nervosa and bulimia are nowadays part of everyone’s vocabulary, each recognized as a Weight Disorder. We would be very concerned about deliberate under-eating and self-induced vomiting. We would worry about the general appearance and health of underweight people. We would be very concerned by signs of a stressed endocrine system.
In cases of over- and under- weight we should be very aware of the role of self-perception and self-respect, often self-loathing. Whether over- or under-, our perception of ourselves is often distorted. People frequently perceive themselves to be bigger that they really are. This can be a factor leading to ’sensible’ dieting or to willful starvation. Binge dieting and binge eating together constitute another bipolar disease of modern Western society.
In these pages we discuss a number of issues in this fascinating area of Weight Disorder.
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