Sitting on the bus the other day I overhead a conversation between two women. They were discussing a female friend of theirs who had died suddenly from a heart attack. “Such a shock!”, one of them declared. “How could that happen, she was always so slim, not an ounce of fat on her”. In today’s body-and-diet obsessed world, many view being slim as the aim, the target, the holy grail of happiness. But is slimness or lean-ness also an indicator of being in good physical condition?
I’m not going to beat around the bush. Being overweight or obese can have a serious impact on health, for sure. The World Health Organisation’s (WHO) website says “carrying extra fat leads to serious health consequences such as cardiovascular disease (mainly heart disease and stroke), type 2 diabetes, musculoskeletal disorders like osteoarthritis and some cancers“. It goes on to say this “can cause premature death and substantial disability”. Sobering, eh?
So does that mean then that all slim people have got it good? That they have the right to be complacent? Let’s select one of our fictional friends. Janet is slim and has no medical issues to speak of (or that she knows of). Her job involves sitting at a desk for much of the day and only punctuated by visits to the snack machine. She lives alone, doesn’t really like cooking so stocks up with ready meals. Janet avoids vegetables, especially green ones and has a raging sweet tooth which she succumbs to each evening with an astonishing assortment of confectionary. Janet feels lucky that she can ‘eat what she likes’ and concurs that, as she’s not putting on weight, all must be fine and dandy. On the outside, maybe, yes.
What really is physical health? It’s a state of well-being when all internal and external body parts, organs, tissues and cells can function as they’re supposed to. To reach that bar, we must nourish our body, via the food we eat, with enough micronutrients (vitamins and minerals) and macronutrients (carbohydrates, protein and fat) so that we can manufacture hormones (those vital chemical messengers), build muscle, protect bones, joints, teeth, help our gut microbiome flourish, boost our immunity and keep cholesterol down. And then top it all off with regular restful sleep and, at the very least, 30 minutes of moderately intense exercise per day. THAT is good health.
The problem is that Janet views her current size 10 fit as the only label of good health worth paying attention to. Neither she (nor we) have any idea when exactly her poor diet and lack of exercise will come to bite her in the rear-end, but come it most certainly will. The WHO says that deaths from noncommunicable diseases (mainly heart and lung diseases, cancers and diabetes) now total an estimated 41 million worldwide annually. 17 million of those are premature (below the age of 70). The major risk factors are … you listening Janet?…physical inactivity, unhealthy diet, tobacco use and harmful use of alcohol.
(originally written for Woman&Home magazine July 2024 issue)
