Australian academic defuses "Australia's Future Fat Bomb"

University of the Sunshine Coast professor Lily O'Hara, a lecturer in public health, has a great article online critiquing recent claims that Australia has bypassed America to become "the fattest country in the world."

Statistics from the World Health Organisation demonstrate that this is far from true, with Australian coming in at number 35 on the list of fattest countries, but why let the facts get in the way of a good story?

O'Hara also critiques the Weight-Centered Health Paradigm, in which

fat bodies are not only regarded as undesirable to look at; they are labeled as medically compromised or diseased. Weight is now presented to the public as an independent cause of disease and death, and terms such as "epidemic" and "obesity," once the sole domain of public health and medical discourse, are now in common every day use in the community....

The problem with being so focused on weight in relation to health is that it has done nothing to address the rise in average body weight in the past twenty years or so....The narrowly defined ideal that we are all aiming for is also causing serious harm to people who don't fit in. The reality is that a lot of these fat people are healthy and are making themselves sicker trying to conform to some slender stereotype. It is estimated that 95% if diets fail, and people actually end up putting on more weight after the diet is broken.

Then there are the bigger social harms that have resulted from this narrowly defined ideal -- the rapid escalation in size-based prejudice, harassment and discrimination.

O'Hara goes on to present the Health At Every Size (HAES) paradigm as a move away from the weight-centered paradigm.

Developed in the United States and increasingly embraced by the fat acceptance movement, HAES argues that a person's ideal weight cannot be measured by the scales or mathematical equations such as body mass index. It teaches that we should respect and appreciate the rich diversities of body shapes and sizes.

It also encourages people to eat for pleasure and nourishment, and rejects dieting or any other weight loss strategy. People are encouraged to engage in physical activity that is joyful and fun, rather than some specific, regimented routine with the sole purpose of losing weight.

HAES is known as "the new peace movement" because it helps people "make peace with their bodies."

Here in Australia we need to realize there are different ways to look at the body and health. People have been battered and bruised by our obsession with avoiding fatness. They are struggling with their bodies and the weight-based messages about what is good and bad, right and wrong, acceptable and unacceptable

Being fat does not necessarily mean that you are bad or unacceptable or unhealthy, and this is a lesson that everyone in society needs to learn.

Ditto to that, Dr. O'Hara -- in America as well as Australia.

Comments

[La di Da]

Whoa, Sanity Watchers warning on the comments there!

It's amazing how defensive people get when you suggest that weight loss might not be the answer.

[Peggy Elam]

Thanks for mentioning that -- I meant to, but forgot. Comments about any weight-related article should have a "Read At Your Own Risk" warning -- or better yet, not read at all.