Weighty issues
Sep. 10th, 2004 12:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
teleribWhat a nice article.
You get a lot of the back-and-forth between health experts on weight: how much genetics determines it, how much learned behaviors; how we need to be accepting of our bodies, but how we can't be complacent about obesity.
That's a good message, I think. Genes or no genes, they say that being too overweight may soon replace smoking as the leading preventable cause of death in this country. But the recognition that being overweight doesn't mean we're weak-willed, or gluttons, or slobs, or have "let ourselves go" - that's important. It helps put fitness back as a health goal to be worked toward and achieved without stigma rather than make it a moral imperative.
You get a lot of the back-and-forth between health experts on weight: how much genetics determines it, how much learned behaviors; how we need to be accepting of our bodies, but how we can't be complacent about obesity.
"At the end of the day, we have to tell people to try harder," Froguel said. "But we have to recognize that things are more difficult for some people than for others and it's not because they are weaker by definition."
That's a good message, I think. Genes or no genes, they say that being too overweight may soon replace smoking as the leading preventable cause of death in this country. But the recognition that being overweight doesn't mean we're weak-willed, or gluttons, or slobs, or have "let ourselves go" - that's important. It helps put fitness back as a health goal to be worked toward and achieved without stigma rather than make it a moral imperative.
