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Obesity Essay

Last updated on: Feb 9, 2023

Obesity Essay: A Complete Guide and Topics

By: Nova A.

11 min read

Reviewed By: Jacklyn H.

Published on: Aug 31, 2021

Are you assigned to write an essay about obesity? The first step is to define obesity.

The obesity epidemic is a major issue facing our country right now. It's complicated- it could be genetic or due to your environment, but either way, there are ways that you can fix it!

Learn all about what causes weight gain and get tips on how you can get healthy again.

On this Page

What is Obesity

What is obesity? Obesity and BMI (body mass index) are both tools of measurement that are used by doctors to assess body fat according to the height, age, and gender of a person. If the BMI is between 25 to 29.9, that means the person has excess weight and body fat.

If the BMI exceeds 30, that means the person is obese. Obesity is a condition that increases the risk of developing cardiovascular diseases, high blood pressure, and other medical conditions like metabolic syndrome, arthritis, and even some types of cancer.

Obesity Definition

Obesity is defined by the World Health Organization as an accumulation of abnormal and excess body fat that comes with several risk factors. It is measured by the body mass index BMI, body weight (in kilograms) divided by the square of a person’s height (in meters).

Obesity in America

Obesity is on the verge of becoming an epidemic as 1 in every 3 Americans can be categorized as overweight and obese. Currently, America is an obese country, and it continues to get worse.

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Causes of obesity

Do you see any obese or overweight people around you?

You likely do.

This is because fast-food chains are becoming more and more common, people are less active, and fruits and vegetables are more expensive than processed foods, thus making them less available to the majority of society. These are the primary causes of obesity.

Obesity is a disease that affects all age groups, including children and elderly people.

Now that you are familiar with the topic of obesity, writing an essay won’t be that difficult for you.

How to Write an Obesity Essay

The format of an obesity essay is similar to writing any other essay. If you need help regarding how to write an obesity essay, it is the same as writing any other essay.

Obesity Essay Introduction

The trick is to start your essay with an interesting and catchy sentence. This will help attract the reader's attention and motivate them to read further. You don’t want to lose the reader’s interest in the beginning and leave a bad impression, especially if the reader is your teacher.

A hook sentence is usually used to open the introductory paragraph of an essay in order to make it interesting. When writing an essay on obesity, the hook sentence can be in the form of an interesting fact or statistic.

Head on to this detailed article on hook examples to get a better idea.

Once you have hooked the reader, the next step is to provide them with relevant background information about the topic. Don’t give away too much at this stage or bombard them with excess information that the reader ends up getting bored with. Only share information that is necessary for the reader to understand your topic.

Next, write a strong thesis statement at the end of your essay, be sure that your thesis identifies the purpose of your essay in a clear and concise manner. Also, keep in mind that the thesis statement should be easy to justify as the body of your essay will revolve around it.

Body Paragraphs

The details related to your topic are to be included in the body paragraphs of your essay. You can use statistics, facts, and figures related to obesity to reinforce your thesis throughout your essay.

If you are writing a cause-and-effect obesity essay, you can mention different causes of obesity and how it can affect a person’s overall health. The number of body paragraphs can increase depending on the parameters of the assignment as set forth by your instructor.

Start each body paragraph with a topic sentence that is the crux of its content. It is necessary to write an engaging topic sentence as it helps grab the reader’s interest. Check out this detailed blog on writing a topic sentence to further understand it.

End your essay with a conclusion by restating your research and tying it to your thesis statement. You can also propose possible solutions to control obesity in your conclusion. Make sure that your conclusion is short yet powerful.

Obesity Essay Examples

Essay about Obesity (PDF)

Childhood Obesity Essay (PDF)

Obesity in America Essay (PDF)

Essay about Obesity Cause and Effects (PDF)

Satire Essay on Obesity (PDF)

Obesity Argumentative Essay (PDF)

Obesity Essay Topics

Choosing a topic might seem an overwhelming task as you may have many ideas for your assignment. Brainstorm different ideas and narrow them down to one, quality topic.

If you need some examples to help you with your essay topic related to obesity, dive into this article and choose from the list of obesity essay topics.

Childhood Obesity

As mentioned earlier, obesity can affect any age group, including children. Obesity can cause several future health problems as children age.

Here are a few topics you can choose from and discuss for your childhood obesity essay:

What are the causes of increasing obesity in children?
Obese parents may be at risk for having children with obesity.
What is the ratio of obesity between adults and children?
What are the possible treatments for obese children?
Are there any social programs that can help children with combating obesity?
Has technology boosted the rate of obesity in children?
Are children spending more time on gadgets instead of playing outside?
Schools should encourage regular exercises and sports for children.
How can sports and other physical activities protect children from becoming obese?
Can childhood abuse be a cause of obesity among children?
What is the relationship between neglect in childhood and obesity in adulthood?
Does obesity have any effect on the psychological condition and well-being of a child?
Are electronic medical records effective in diagnosing obesity among children?
Obesity can affect the academic performance of your child.
Do you believe that children who are raised by a single parent can be vulnerable to obesity?
You can promote interesting exercises to encourage children.
What is the main cause of obesity, and why is it increasing with every passing day?
Schools and colleges should work harder to develop methodologies to decrease childhood obesity.
The government should not allow schools and colleges to include sweet or fatty snacks as a part of their lunch.
If a mother is obese, can it affect the health of the child?
Children who gain weight frequently can develop chronic diseases.

Obesity Argumentative Essay Topics

Do you want to write an argumentative essay on the topic of obesity?

The following list can help you with that!

Here are some examples you can choose from for your argumentative essay about obesity:

Can vegetables and fruits decrease the chances of obesity?
Should you go for surgery to overcome obesity?
Are there any harmful side effects?
Can obesity be related to the mental condition of an individual?
Are parents responsible for controlling obesity in childhood?
What are the most effective measures to prevent the increase in the obesity rate?
Why is the obesity rate increasing in the United States?
Can the lifestyle of a person be a cause of obesity?
Does the economic situation of a country affect the obesity rate?
How is obesity considered an international health issue?
Can technology and gadgets affect obesity rates?
What can be the possible reasons for obesity in a school?
How can we address the issue of obesity?
Is obesity a chronic disease?
Is obesity a major cause of heart attacks?
Are the junk food chains causing an increase in obesity?
Do nutritional programs help in reducing the obesity rate?
How can the right type of diet help with obesity?
Why should we encourage sports activities in schools and colleges?
Can obesity affect a person’s behavior?

Health Related Topics for Research Paper

If you are writing a research paper, you can explain the cause and effect of obesity.

Here are a few topics that link to the cause and effects of obesity.Review the literature of previous articles related to obesity. Describe the ideas presented in the previous papers.

Can family history cause obesity in future generations?
Can we predict obesity through genetic testing?
What is the cause of the increasing obesity rate?
Do you think the increase in fast-food restaurants is a cause of the rising obesity rate?
Is the ratio of obese women greater than obese men?
Why are women more prone to be obese as compared to men?
Stress can be a cause of obesity. Mention the reasons how mental health can be related to physical health.
Is urban life a cause of the increasing obesity rate?
People from cities are prone to be obese as compared to people from the countryside.
How obesity affects the life expectancy of people? What are possible solutions to decrease the obesity rate?
Do family eating habits affect or trigger obesity?
How do eating habits affect the health of an individual?
How can obesity affect the future of a child?
Obese children are more prone to get bullied in high school and college.
Why should schools encourage more sports and exercise for children?

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Topics for Essay on Obesity as a Problem

Do you think a rise in obesity rate can affect the economy of a country?

Here are some topics for your assistance regarding your economics related obesity essay.

Does socioeconomic status affect the possibility of obesity in an individual?
Analyze the film and write a review on “Fed Up” – an obesity epidemic.
Share your reviews on the movie “The Weight of The Nation.”
Should we increase the prices of fast food and decrease the prices of fruits and vegetables to decrease obesity?
Do you think healthy food prices can be a cause of obesity?
Describe what measures other countries have taken in order to control obesity?
The government should play an important role in controlling obesity. What precautions should they take?
Do you think obesity can be one of the reasons children get bullied?
Do obese people experience any sort of discrimination or inappropriate behavior due to their weight?
Are there any legal protections for people who suffer from discrimination due to their weight?
Which communities have a higher percentage of obesity in the United States?
Discuss the side effects of the fast-food industry and their advertisements on children.
Describe how the increasing obesity rate has affected the economic condition of the United States.
What is the current percentage of obesity all over the world? Is the obesity rate increasing with every passing day?
Why is the obesity rate higher in the United States as compared to other countries?
Do Asians have a greater percentage of obese people as compared to Europe?
Does the cultural difference affect the eating habits of an individual?
Obesity and body shaming.
Why is a skinny body considered to be ideal? Is it an effective way to reduce the obesity rate?

Obesity Solution Essay Topics

With all the developments in medicine and technology, we still don’t have exact measures to treat obesity.

Here are some insights you can discuss in your essay:

How do obese people suffer from metabolic complications?
Describe the fat distribution in obese people.
Is type 2 diabetes related to obesity?
Are obese people more prone to suffer from diabetes in the future?
How are cardiac diseases related to obesity?
Can obesity affect a woman’s childbearing time phase?
Describe the digestive diseases related to obesity.
Obesity may be genetic.
Obesity can cause a higher risk of suffering a heart attack.
What are the causes of obesity? What health problems can be caused if an individual suffers from obesity?
What are the side effects of surgery to overcome obesity?
Which drugs are effective when it comes to the treatment of obesity?
Is there a difference between being obese and overweight?
Can obesity affect the sociological perspective of an individual?
Explain how an obesity treatment works.
How can the government help people to lose weight and improve public health?

Writing an essay is a challenging yet rewarding task. All you need is to be organized and clear when it comes to academic writing.

Choose a topic you would like to write on.
Organize your thoughts.
Pen down your ideas.
Compose a perfect essay that will help you ace your subject.
Proofread and revise your paper.

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As a Digital Content Strategist, Nova Allison has eight years of experience in writing both technical and scientific content. With a focus on developing online content plans that engage audiences, Nova strives to write pieces that are not only informative but captivating as well.

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Healthiest Communities

The great body-acceptance debate.

A battle over the perils of obesity is playing out in pop culture and the medical community.

The Body-Acceptance Debate

Getty Images

In the ongoing war over America's waistline, the doctor's office is a front-line battleground, and the stakes couldn't be clearer.

Climbing obesity rates fuel related illnesses like type 2 diabetes and high blood pressure. Bariatric surgery, a drastic measure typically for the middle-aged, is becoming more routine for extremely obese adolescents. Obesity-related absences among U.S. employees cost the country as much as $6.38 billion annually in productivity, and scientists say severe weight gain is contributing to shrinking U.S. lifespans .

It's no wonder doctors, nurses and other primary caregivers often insist – sometimes frankly – that patients measured with a high body mass index must lose weight.

Yet an insurgency to the white-coat offensive is rising.

10 Worst States for Youth Obesity

Encapsulated by an essayist with the nom de guerre Your Fat Friend, overweight people are pushing back against caregivers who they say fat-shame them and blame common medical problems on their weight. Obesity, they say, isn't always the cause of their issues, and diet and exercise aren't always the solution.

The stigma she and other overweight people face too often "is thinly veiled by a purported 'concern for our health,'" amounting to "well-intended bullying that only ends up compounding the harms we face," Your Fat Friend wrote in an unflinching essay in December, one in a series arguing against size discrimination. "If so many are, as they claim, 'just concerned about fat people's health,' the best way to express that concern is to address the overwhelming stigma facing fat people in doctor's offices."

There's little doubt that the debate over obesity, fat acceptance and health has entered the national conversation.

The body-positivity movement , once on the fringe, has gone mainstream. After years of slender-only models, New York Fashion Week saw a substantial number of "plus-size" women strutting down the runway. Chrissy Metz, a young actress who has struggled with weight issues, has a lead role in the hit NBC drama "This Is Us," playing a character coming to terms with her oversized body. On ABC, the comedy "American Housewife" stars Katie Mixon as the plus-size, tart-tongued title character. "Shrill: Notes From a Loud Woman" – Lindy West's best-selling memoir on life as an overweight woman – is now a successful Hulu TV series.

But not everyone is on the body-positive bandwagon.

Facing a withering backlash, fitness guru Jillian Michaels said she shouldn't have name-checked Lizzo – an unapologetically thick, Grammy-winning hip-hop sensation who promotes body positivity – as a woman at risk for ill health. But Michaels, a gung-ho trainer on the competitive weight-loss reality show "The Biggest Loser," also has held her ground about the dangers of excess body fat.

Meanwhile, pop singer Adele, once known for embracing her plus-size image, recently dropped some 100 pounds and literally embodied the issue: While fans have cheered her dramatic transformation, critics contend doing so is simply another form of fat-shaming .

Less visible than obese TV stars and celebrity-fueled Twitter beefs, however, are the everyday struggles severely overweight people like Your Fat Friend – a Californian who's 5 feet 10 inches tall and "around 330 pounds," she says – face when they go to the doctor.

Much like callous strangers who make unkind remarks to her face, insensitive doctors and nurses often feel free to tease or scold her about her weight, Your Fat Friend told U.S. News in a recent interview. Some caregivers, she says, treat her differently, refusing to order a routine medical test because she's too heavy or blaming ailments from an earache to internal bleeding on her weight.

"There is no doubt that, particularly for the heaviest 5 percent or so, there is a health cost," like diabetes or heart disease, says Your Fat Friend, an alias to protect against online trolling ("I've frequently received threats of violence," she says). But, she adds, "there's also a growing body of research that indicates that the health risks we typically associate with being fat may be driven by fat people's experiences of bias and discrimination."

After enduring one grueling weight-loss program after another for most of her life, including attending Weight Watchers meetings at age 11, YFF has accepted it as fact: Starvation diets and punishing workouts will never make her thin.

She spent years of her life "dieting, exercising, even developing a restrictive eating disorder, and nothing changed my size," says YFF, who wears a women's size 26 . "I'd lose 10 or 20 pounds – sometimes as much as 50 pounds – but it always came back, often even when I stayed on those diets. Even when I lost more significant amounts of weight, I was still fat, and still faced a whole lot of bias."

Now, at age 36, she says her vital signs – including blood pressure and blood sugar – are normal, she eats a balanced diet and is a regular at the gym.

Medical researchers and obesity-medicine specialists say YFF has a point.

Research indicates many factors – from genetics to environment – are tied to obesity, and people who lose weight often gain it back. Study after study also confirms negative stereotypes about fat people are pervasive within the medical community.

"We know from research that weight bias is common in physicians and other health care providers," says Rebecca Puhl, deputy director of the University of Connecticut Rudd Center for Food Policy & Obesity. "In fact, research shows that these biases are as common among medical professionals and doctors as they are in the general population."

In 2018, the AMA Journal of Ethics published research measuring the problem among first-year medical school students. It found that 70% of students held a "thin preference," while most students thought obesity is a disease (89%) or a behavioral problem (88%). About three-quarters of students surveyed believed that obesity is the result of ignorance, and 28% considered obese people lazy.

Another oft-referenced survey published in 2003 showed that, among primary care doctors, more than 50% reported viewing obese patients as awkward, unattractive, ugly, and noncompliant .

The hurtful stereotypes may make sick people even sicker.

Patients "notice these negative attitudes, describing that they receive derogatory comments from health professionals," a 2013 study of medical students notes . A negative feedback loop ensues, "(contributing) to obese individuals avoiding public exercise and seeking fewer preventive medicine services."

Dr. Fatima Cody Stanford, an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School and an obesity specialist at Massachusetts General Hospital, says negative attitudes and stereotypes about overweight people are a more widespread problem than racism.

"The biggest form of bias now present in the United States is weight bias, and shaming people if they carry excess weight," Stanford says. "Weight bias has surpassed race bias. It is indeed OK if you go on TV and make fun of people because of their weight."

Frequently, new patients "come at me in a defensive mode," she says. When they notice her lack of judgment, she says, "you see them let their guard down and they start crying. Something that a doctor once told them made them feel unworthy."

"I usually go through a box of Kleenex every two patient days."

Yet some physicians – and some fat people themselves – question the body-acceptance trend, and suggest embracing it within the medical community will have unintended, potentially dangerous consequences.

In a 2018 New York Times essay, Kelly deVos, an advocate of body positivity and author of the young-adult novel "Fat Girl on a Plane," wrote about having an eye-opening weight-loss conversation with her daughter. Later, hospitalized for an infected spider bite, deVos – who said she's weighed 300 pounds – found out she was diabetic.

Despite being a self-proclaimed "fat woman," deVos balked at the diagnosis: She exercised and ate healthy food. "How can I have type 2 diabetes?" she asked her doctor.

His answer, she wrote, was brutally frank: 'Look at where you are,'" he snapped. "'You're not healthy at any size.'"

"The problem with today's version of body positivity is that it refuses to acknowledge that no one approach is right for every person. … I was the 'wrong' kind of body positive because I'd been forced to admit that there could be serious health consequences to fatness," she wrote. Since then, "I've come to feel that loving yourself and desiring to change yourself are two sentiments that should be able to peacefully coexist."

Dr. Jenny Hartsock-Vandine, a hospitalist and family medicine practitioner, wrote on the medical blog KevinMD in 2018 that unconditional acceptance of an oversized body equates to normalizing obesity. Her reasoning is deeply personal: Hartsock-Vandine has fought obesity herself.

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"As a physician and as someone who has been obese or morbidly obese my adult life, I know first hand what it's like to hate my body and feel ashamed of it," wrote Hartsock-Vandine, who practices in Oregon and kept pull-no-punches video blogs tracking her progress from 275 pounds to a healthier body size. "I still do this very moment as I type this, that's something I have to work on."

"Funny thing is, I am much more understanding of my obese patients than of myself, and I think my own struggles make me more empathetic," she continued, emphasizing that fat-shaming among doctors is a real issue that must be addressed. "There is a place in which you can encourage people to lose weight without being cruel and judgmental.

Dr. Jamie Coleman – a trauma surgeon at Denver Health and an essayist on health – agrees.

It's wrong for doctors to discriminate against or bully people with obesity. But, she says, caregivers still must put a hard truth on the table: Being overweight is a clear health hazard, and losing weight is the best option.

Excess body weight is "a contributing factor in hundreds of thousands of deaths each year and is associated with a shorter life expectancy," says Coleman, who adds that excess weight also causes problems in the operating room. "Obesity puts patients at risk not only for hypertension and diabetes, but also strokes, sleep apnea, fatty liver, kidney disease and several forms of cancer."

That's the reason health guidelines strongly recommend "not only having a balanced diet and an active lifestyle" but also "maintaining a healthy BMI," or body mass index, she says.

Far easier said than done, says Your Fat Friend. Enduring the stress and denial of hardcore diets to reach a healthy BMI – even when, she says, she's healthy at her present weight by most measurements and has good eating and exercise habits – is counterproductive, she says.

"Part of the question, for me, has got to do with the quality of life and the amount of suffering that fat people have to experience," particularly at the doctor's office, she says. "The mental health cost of stigma discrimination and self-loathing is so high that the quality of life is really diminished."

But both Coleman, the trauma surgeon, and Hartsock-Vandine, the physician who tracked her own weight loss, argue it's not an either-or situation. Both have compared treating overweight patients to caring for a smoker or drug user: Accepting the problem won't make the risks go away.

"Unlike talking to a patient who ... may not know they have high cholesterol, every patient who is obese likely already knows they are at an unhealthy weight," Coleman says. "This again reinforces that doctors shouldn't inform their patients they are at an unhealthy weight, they should have a discussion with their patients about how their weight is impacting their health and help their patients gain the knowledge and strategies they need to obtain a healthy weight."

Stanford, the obesity specialist, notes a small but growing number of medical schools are including curriculums to teach doctors how to approach obesity with empathy and respect, but that more education needs to happen to overturn biases.

Coleman agrees that respect is key, but says the bottom line is the inescapable truth: Obesity is a clear health risk, and caregivers must address it with their patients.

"A doctor would absolutely be remiss in his or her role if they do not work with their patients to achieve their best possible health," she says.

Tags: obesity , weight loss , health care , doctors , patient advice , body image

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The Weight I Carry

What it’s like to be too big in America

New Year’s Eve, 2014

I weigh 460 pounds .

Those are the hardest words I’ve ever had to write. Nobody knows that number—not my wife, not my doctor, not my closest friends. It feels like confessing a crime. The average American male weighs about 195 pounds; I’m two of those guys, with a 10-year-old left over. I’m the biggest human being most people who know me have ever met, or ever will.

The government definition of obesity is a body mass index of 30 or more. My BMI is 60.7. My shirts are size XXXXXXL, which the big-and-tall stores shorten to 6X. I’m 6 foot 1, or 73 inches tall. My waist is 60 inches around. I’m nearly a sphere.

Those are the numbers. This is how it feels.

I’m on the subway in New York City, standing in the aisle, clinging to the pole. I live in Charlotte, North Carolina, and don’t visit New York much, so I don’t have a feel for how subway cars move. I’m praying this one doesn’t lurch around a corner or slam to a stop, because I’m terrified of falling. Part of it is embarrassment. When a fat guy falls, it’s hard to get up. But what really scares me is the chance that I might land on somebody. I glance at the people wedged around me. None of them could take my weight. It would be an avalanche. Some of them stare at me, and I figure they’re thinking the same thing. An old woman is sitting three feet away. One slip and I’d crush her. I grip the pole harder.

My palms start to sweat, and all of a sudden I flash back to elementary school in Georgia, standing in the aisle on the school bus. The driver hollers at me to find a seat. He can’t take us home until everybody sits down. I’m the only one standing. Every time I spot an open space, somebody slides to the edge of the seat and covers it up. Nobody wants the fat boy mashed in next to them. I freeze, helpless. The driver glares at me in the rearview mirror. An older kid sitting in front of me—a redhead, freckles, I’ll never forget his face—has a cast on his right arm. He reaches back and starts clubbing me with it, below the waist, out of the driver’s line of sight. He catches me in the groin and it hurts, but not as much as the shame when the other kids laugh and the bus driver gets up and storms toward me—

and the train stops and jolts me back into now.

I peel my hands from the pole and get off. I climb the stairs to the street and step to the side to catch my breath. I’m wheezing like a 30-year smoker. My legs wobble from the climb. I’m meeting a friend near Central Park, at a place called the Brooklyn Diner. I’m 15 minutes early, on purpose, because I have to find a safe place to sit.

The night before, I had Googled Brooklyn Diner interior to get an idea of the layout. Now I scan the space like a gangster, looking for danger spots. The booths are too small—I can’t squeeze in. The barstools are bolted to the floor—they’re too close to the bar, and my ass would hang off the back. I check the tables, gauging the chairs. These look solid—the chair seems okay; yep, it’ll hold me up. For the first time in an hour, I take an untroubled breath.

My friend shows up on time. By then, I’ve scouted out the menu. Eggs, bacon, toast, coffee. A few bites and the shame fades. At least for a little while.

B y any reasonable standard , I have won life’s lottery. I grew up with two loving parents in a peaceful house. I’ve spent my whole career doing work that thrills me—writing for newspapers and magazines. I married the best woman I’ve ever known, Alix Felsing, and I love her more now than when my heart first tumbled for her. We’re blessed with strong families and a deep bench of friends. Our lives are full of music and laughter. I wouldn’t swap with anyone.

Except on those mornings when I wake up and take a long, naked look in the mirror.

My body is a car wreck. Skin tags—long, mole-like growths caused by chafing—dangle under my arms and down in my crotch. I have breasts where my chest ought to be. My belly is strafed with more stretch marks than a mother of five. My stomach hangs below my waist, giving me what the Urban Dictionary calls a “front butt”—as if some twisted Dr. Frankenstein grafted an extra rear end on the wrong side. Varicose veins bulge from my thighs. My calves and shins are rust-colored and shiny from a condition called chronic venous insufficiency. Here’s what it means: The veins in my legs aren’t strong enough to push all the blood back up toward my heart, so it pools in my capillaries and forces little dots of iron up under my skin. The veins are failing because of the pressure caused by 460 pounds pushing downward with every step I take. My body is crumbling under its own gravity.

Some days, when I see that disaster staring back, I get so mad that I pound my gut with my fists, as if I could beat the fat out of me. Other times, the sight sinks me into a blue fog that can ruin an hour or a morning or a day. But most of the time what I feel is sadness over how much life I’ve wasted. When I was a kid, I never climbed a tree or learned to swim. When I was in my 20s, I never took a girl home from a bar. Now I’m 50, and I’ve never hiked a mountain or ridden a skateboard or done a cartwheel. I’ve missed out on so many adventures, so many good times, because I was too fat to try. Sometimes, when I could’ve tried anyway, I didn’t have the courage. I’ve done a lot of things I’m proud of. But I’ve never believed I could do anything truly great, because I’ve failed so many times at the one crucial challenge in my life.

What the hell is wrong with me?

W hat the hell is wrong with us ? As I write this, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that 79 million American adults—40 percent of women, and 35 percent of men—qualify as obese. The obesity rate among American children is 17 percent and climbing. Our collective waistline laps over every boundary: age, race, gender, politics, culture. In our fractured country, we all agree on one thing: second helpings.

As every fat person knows, there’s no such thing as a cheap buffet—you always pay later, one way or another. Fat America comes with a devastating bill. According to government estimates, Americans pay $147 billion a year in medical costs related to obesity. That’s roughly equal to the entire budget for the U.S. Army. But the money is just part of the cost. Every fat person, and every fat person’s family, pays with anger and heartache and pain. For every one of us who can’t shed the weight, there are spouses and parents and kids and friends who grieve. We carve lines in their faces. We sentence them to long years alone.

I know this from experience. I also feel it like a burning knife right now. Because my sister, Brenda Williams, died seven days ago, on Christmas Eve.

O ne of the great joys in our family was getting Brenda to laugh. If somebody cracked an off-color joke, her eyes cranked open wide and her eyebrows flew up her forehead like a cartoon. Sometimes she let out a low cackle that tickled me even more. She and her husband, Ed Williams, had been married 43 years and raised three kids. Brenda was never happier than when she had a houseful of the people she loved. But she didn’t laugh as much the last few years. Her weight scared her and isolated her, and eventually it killed her.

Brenda was 63 and weighed well north of 200 pounds. Her feet swelled so much that she could hardly wear shoes. Her thighs cramped so bad, with so little warning, that she was afraid to drive. For years, she dealt with sores on her legs caused by the swelling. They leaked fluid and wouldn’t heal. In late December, one of the sores got infected. Brenda was tough, so by the time she admitted she was sick, she was in deep trouble. Ed took her to the emergency room in Jesup, Georgia, as Alix and I were heading to Tennessee to spend Christmas with Alix’s folks. My brother called at two in the morning on Christmas Eve and said that things were getting worse. We tried to sleep for a couple of hours, got up, and got on the road. The infection turned out to be MRSA . It spread so goddamn fast. We were somewhere outside Asheville when my brother sent a text: She’s gone .

The funeral was on my mom’s 82nd birthday. She cried tears from the bottom of the ocean. She lived next door to Brenda and Ed for almost 20 years—we moved her there after she retired. She spent so many nights telling stories around Brenda and Ed’s dining-room table. Now she won’t go back in their house. All she can see is the empty space where Brenda used to be. The infection was the official cause of Brenda’s death, but her weight killed her, sure as poison.

What happens when someone close to you dies? People bring food.

It arrived at Brenda and Ed’s house, and my mom’s, within minutes and in great quantities. Neighbors made potato salad and pecan pie. Folks who didn’t cook brought cold cuts and light bread. One of Ed’s friends arranged for the Western Sizzlin down the road to send a whole rolling cart of meat and vegetables. No matter where you stood, you were no more than 10 feet from fried chicken. I crammed everything I could onto my double-thick paper plate. The sugar and grease pushed back the grief, just for a minute or two, long enough to breathe.

This is the terrible catch-22: The thing that soothes the pain prolongs it. The thing that brings me back to life pushes me closer to the grave.

How Obesity Became a Disease

You Can’t Willpower Your Way to Lasting Weight Loss

How Junk Food Can End Obesity

I think a lot these days about a guy named David Poole. David and I worked together at The Charlotte Observer —he was a brilliant nascar writer when I was the local columnist. I weighed more than David, but he was shorter and rounder. We didn’t look alike, but we were two fat guys with our pictures in the paper, so readers lumped us together. People would come up to me on the street and ask if I was him. He was one of the smartest guys I’ve ever met, a great reporter with a fearless voice, and one of Alix’s closest friends for years. David died of a heart attack when he was 50. I’m about to turn 51.

Guys like us don’t make it to 60.

Some of us rot away from diabetes or blow out an artery from high blood pressure, but a heart attack is what I worry about most. My doctor likes to say that in a third of the cases of heart disease, the first symptom is death. Right now, my heart tests out fine. But I can hear it thumping in my temples, 80-some beats a minute even when I’m resting, and I know I make it work too hard. Sometimes, when it’s quiet in the house, I close my eyes and listen to it strain, praying that it won’t just stop like a needle lifted off a record. Every day I wonder if this is the day I might keel over in my office chair or at the bookstore or (God help me) at the wheel of my car. At 460 pounds, I’m lucky to have made it this far. It’s like holding 20 at the blackjack table and waving at the dealer for another card. Without a miracle, I’m bound to bust.

Bless me, Father, for I have sinned: I lust after greasy double cheeseburgers and fried chicken legs and Ruffles straight out of the bag. I covet hot Krispy Kreme donuts that melt on my tongue. I worship bowls full of peanut M&M’s, first savoring them one by one, then stuffing my mouth with handfuls, then wetting my finger to pick up those last bits of chocolate dust and candy shell. My brain pings with pleasure; my taste buds groan with desire. This happens over and over, day after day, and that is how I got here, closer to the end of my life than the beginning, weighing almost a quarter of a ton.

T he first diet plan I remember was pills. Mama took me to a diet doctor when I was 11 or 12 and already growing out of the husky sizes at Sears. I don’t remember him saying anything about eating right or exercising. I just remember a long cabinet full of white plastic bottles. At the end of the visit, he gave me a handful of pills that looked as bright and happy as Skittles. Looking back, I’m pretty sure at least some were amphetamines. They didn’t curb my appetite—I was still sneaking into the fridge at night for bologna sandwiches or banana pudding. But the next day, I could run up and down the basketball court for hours. This seemed to me to be a good trade-off.

The next diet plan I remember was candy—these little chocolate-flavored candies that came in a box like a Whitman’s Sampler. They were called Ayds , which turned out years later to be an extremely unfortunate name. They were supposed to be some sort of appetite suppressant. They did not suppress my appetite enough to keep me from eating five or six instead of one.

I remember the first time carbohydrates were bad for you, back in the 1970s. The lunch counter at Woolworth’s in my hometown of Brunswick, Georgia, sold a diet plate of a hamburger patty on a lettuce leaf with a side of cottage cheese. My mom and I stared at the picture on the menu like it was a platypus at the zoo. We pretended to care about carbs for a while. Mama even bought a little carbohydrate guide she kept in her pocketbook. It said biscuits and cornbread were bad for us. It didn’t stay in her pocketbook long.

I’ve done low-fat and low-carb and low-calorie, high-protein and high-fruit and high-fiber. I’ve tried the Mediterranean and taken my talents to South Beach. I’ve shunned processed foods and guzzled enough SlimFast to drown a rhino. I’ve eaten SnackWell’s cookies (low-fat, tons of sugar) and chugged Tab (no sugar, tons of chemicals, faint whiff of kerosene). I’ve been told, at different times, that eggs, bacon, toast, cereal, and milk are all bad for you. I’ve also been told that each one of those things is an essential part of a healthy diet. My brain is fogged enough at breakfast. Don’t fuck with me like this.

Here are the two things I have come to believe about diets:

1. Almost any diet works in the short term. 2. Almost no diets work in the long term.

The most depressing five-word Google search I can think of—and I can think of a lot of depressing five-word Google searches—is gained all the weight back . Losing weight is not the hard part. The hard part is living with your diet for years, maybe the rest of your life.

When we go on a diet—especially a crash diet—our own bodies turn against us. Nutritional studies have shown that hunger-suppressing hormones in our bodies dwindle when we lose weight. Other hormones—the ones that warn us we need to eat—tend to rise. Our bodies beg us to gorge at the first sign of deprivation. This makes sense when you think about the history of humankind. There were no Neanderthal foodies. They ate to survive. They went hungry for long stretches. Their bodies sent up alarms telling them they’d better find something to eat. Our DNA still harbors a fear that we’ll starve. But now most of us have access to food that is more abundant, cheaper, and more addictive than at any other time in human history. Our bodies haven’t caught up to the modern world. Our cells think we’re storing up fat for a hard winter when actually it’s just happy hour at Chili’s.

Even worse, when people succeed at losing a lot of weight, their bodies slam on the brakes of their metabolism. Scientists from the National Institutes of Health found this out recently by studying contestants from the eighth season of The Biggest Loser . The New York Times did a big story on the study. It showed a photo of one of the contestants, Sean Algaier, and said he was now a pastor at a church in Charlotte, only 15 minutes from my house.

A few days after I read the Times story, I went out there to meet Sean. His office has sturdy chairs.

I n 2009, when Sean and his wife were living in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Sean’s wife found out about a Biggest Loser casting call in Oklahoma City. She told Sean he was going. He ended up on the show, but lasted just three weeks, mostly by his choice. In that time, he lost 36 pounds—dropping from 444 to 408—and volunteered to be kicked off because others on his team were struggling, and he thought they needed the trainers and counselors more than he did. He believed he could keep losing weight at home. And he did. He got all the way down to 289—a total of 155 pounds. He celebrated by running a marathon in Tulsa. It took him almost seven hours, but he crossed the finish line. “You get to a place where nothing will stop you from doing whatever it is that you want to do,” he says.

But he did stop. And then he slid backward. The day we talked, about seven years after The Biggest Loser , Sean was at 444 pounds. Exactly where he’d been when he started on the show.

No one thing tipped him. His job in Tulsa wasn’t going the way he had hoped, so he and his family packed up and moved. He had the normal stress of any parent raising three young children. He spent time in counseling, and it opened some old wounds. It all rolled up on him.

“I developed this pattern of feeling worthless,” he told me. “And so I guess in my darkest places now, there is still a little bit of a feeling of worthlessness.”

Like me—like so many people—he tamped down those feelings with food. He’d go to a Charlotte breakfast joint called the Flying Biscuit and gorge on biscuits and gravy. He’d dig into the stashes of cake and donuts they kept around for the kids. On his best days he could avoid those things, or have just a bite or two. But when he felt down, he dove in with both hands.

He knew he could lose a lot of weight. He’d done it. But when the scientists studied him and the other contestants—before the show, afterward, and six years later—they made a heartbreaking discovery.

Other studies had already shown that the body’s metabolism slows down as people lose weight, which means they have to eat fewer and fewer calories to keep losing. But this study showed that, for the contestants who lost weight quickly, their metabolism kept slowing even when they started gaining weight again . Basically, however fat they had been, that’s what their bodies wanted them to be.

We’re about the same size right now, Sean and I. We are two fat men trying hard to be something else. He found a better version of himself but couldn’t hold onto it. I’ve never seen my better version.

Sean had nothing but good things to say about his time on The Biggest Loser . I believe him, but I can’t stand the show. I hate the way it runs the contestants until they look like they’re about to die. I hate the double-meaning dagger of the title. I hate, more than anything, the way it makes the men take their shirts off when they weigh in, all their shame displayed for ratings’ sake, so viewers will stare in disgust and tune in again next week. Under all the inspiration is the rancid smell of a freak show. And I hate it so much because I know it would probably work. If I had to take my shirt off over and over on national TV, I would goddamn sure lose weight. Or die trying.

“E at less and exercise.”

That’s what some of you are saying right now. That’s what some of you have said the whole time you’ve been reading. That’s what some of you say—maybe not out loud, but you say it—every time you see a fat person downing fried eggs in a diner, or overstuffing a bathing suit on the beach, or staring out from one of those good-lord-what-happened-to-her? stories in the gossip magazines.

“Eat less and exercise.”

What I want you to understand, more than anything else, is that telling a fat person “Eat less and exercise” is like telling a boxer “Don’t get hit.”

You act as if there’s not an opponent.

Losing weight is a fucking rock fight. The enemies come from all sides: The deluge of marketing telling us to eat worse and eat more. The culture that has turned food into one of the last acceptable vices. Our families and friends, who want us to share in their pleasure. Our own body chemistry, dragging us back to the table out of fear that we’ll starve.

On top of all that, some of us fight holes in our souls that a boxcar of donuts couldn’t fill.

My compulsion to eat comes from all those places. I’m almost never hungry in the physical sense. But I’m always craving an emotional high, the kind that comes from making love, or being in the crowd for great live music, or watching the sun come up over the ocean. And I’m always wanting something to counter the low, when I’m anxious about work or arguing with family or depressed for reasons I can’t understand.

There are radical options for people like me. There are boot camps where I could spend thousands of dollars to have trainers whip me into shape. There are crash diets and medications with dangerous side effects. And, of course, there is weight-loss surgery. Several people I know have done it. Some say it saved them. Others had life-threatening complications. A few are just as miserable as they were before. I don’t judge any people who try to find their own way. I speak only for myself here: For me, surgery feels like giving up. I know that the first step of 12-step programs is admitting that you’re powerless over your addiction . But I don’t feel powerless yet.

My plan is to lose weight in a simple, steady, sustainable way. I’ll count how many calories I eat and how many I burn. If I end up on the right side of the line at the end of the day, that’s a win. I’ll be like an air mattress with a slow leak, fooling my body into thinking I’m not on a diet at all. And one day, a few years down the road, I’ll wake up and look in the mirror and think: I got there.

T hat Jason Isbell song “ Live Oak ” hits me so hard, even today, in 2019.

There’s a man who walks beside me He is who I used to be And I wonder if she sees him And confuses him with me.

The narrator is a killer who falls in love with a good woman and sees a glimmer of a better life for himself. But he wonders which version of him she’s attracted to: the one who’s trying to live straight now, or the rogue in his past. The song does not have a happy ending.

I’ve never been anything but fat. Is there something in the fat version of me that also makes me likable and creative and a decent human being? Are the best parts of me all knotted up with the worst? Is there some way to untangle it and keep just the good stuff? Most of the time I think of my fat as a husk—something I have to shed so the best part of me can come out. But sometimes I wonder if I’m more like the shells you find on the beach, where the outer part is the attraction, and the animal inside is dull and shapeless.

There’s no doubt: If I wrote down everything that would be better if I lose weight, the list would be as long as the Old Testament. If I wrote down everything that might get worse, it wouldn’t fill up an index card. But this is why people buy insurance—to hedge against unlikely disasters.

Four years in, there haven’t been any disasters yet. For the first time in my life, as I’ve started to lose weight, keeping it off feels sustainable. My cholesterol and blood pressure are back to normal levels. I used to wake up with headaches from sleeping so poorly. That almost never happens now. Walking is easier. When I rent a car now, I don’t have to try out three or four until I find one whose seat belt I can buckle.

Of course, I have to lose more. But I’m already preparing for when the man who walks inside me comes to stay.

I have some clothes I want him to wear. In the bottom drawer of my dresser is a stack of T-shirts that are too small for me now. There’s one for Willie’s Wee-Nee Wagon, my hometown hot-dog joint, which I maintain is the greatest restaurant in the world. There’s one for St. Paul & the Broken Bones, one of my favorite bands. There’s one for Rapala fishing lures that’s so old, I can’t remember where I got it. It’s an XL—several sizes smaller than what I wear now. If the day comes when I can wear an XL shirt again, I’ll go to my favorite bar—Thomas Street Tavern, in Charlotte—and buy a round for the house.

There’s a ladder I want the man who walks inside me to climb—the pull-down ladder to our attic. It’s rated at 250 pounds. I’ve never been up in the attic, because I’m afraid the ladder won’t hold me. Whenever we need what’s up there—Christmas ornaments, winter clothes, an extension cord—Alix has to go up and get it. I’m embarrassed that there’s an entire part of our house that I’ve never been in. I want to climb that ladder with confidence.

There’s a boat I want the man inside me to put in a lake. Daddy’s johnboat lives in our backyard. It’s green aluminum and still has its Georgia registration number on the side. When I was a kid, we hauled a thousand catfish over the side of that boat. Daddy died in 1990, and the boat hasn’t been in the water since way before then. I’ve always been afraid that I’m so big, I’d tip it over. It needs a drain plug and a little love. But it’s still strong enough to hold a normal-sized man, and maybe his beautiful wife.

There’s a bicycle I want the man inside me to ride. Nothing fancy—I’d be fine with one of those old-man bikes with straight handlebars and a cushy seat. Our neighborhood is full of bike riders. There’s a group that rides together every Tuesday night. Sometimes we sit on the porch and wave at them as they glide past our house, a rolling parade. I’m tired of watching parades. I’d like to be in a few.

There’s a game I want the man inside me to play. Damn, I miss basketball. It’s been so long since I boxed out for a rebound or put up a shot with a hand in my face. It doesn’t matter if I’m just the old guy who jacks up threes from the corner. It doesn’t matter if I sprain my ankle for the 18th time. It would feel so good to be back in the game again.

There’s a flight I want the man inside me to take. It doesn’t matter where it goes, as long as I’m in the middle seat. I want to sit there without flooding the banks of the armrests. I want the seat belt to click around my waist with an inch or two to spare. After that, I can bitch about the middle seat like everybody else. But I’d like to sit there and feel good about it. Just once.

This article has been adapted from Tommy Tomlinson’s forthcoming book, The Elephant in the Room: One Fat Man’s Quest to Get Smaller in a Growing America .

* Archival photos courtesy of Tommy Tomlinson

Physical Activity

Exercise Can Help Control Weight

Obesity results from energy imbalance: too many calories in, too few calories burned. A number of factors influence how many calories (or how much “energy”) people burn each day, among them, age, body size, and genes. But the most variable factor-and the most easily modified-is the amount of activity people get each day.

Keeping active can help people stay at a healthy weight or lose weight. It can also lower the risk of heart disease, diabetes, stroke, high blood pressure, osteoporosis, and certain cancers, as well as reduce stress and boost mood. Inactive (sedentary) lifestyles do just the opposite.

Despite all the health benefits of physical activity, people worldwide are doing less of it-at work, at home, and as they travel from place to place. Globally, about one in three people gets little, if any, physical activity. ( 1 ) Physical activity levels are declining not only in wealthy countries, such as the U.S., but also in low- and middle-income countries, such as China. And it’s clear that this decline in physical activity is a key contributor to the global obesity epidemic, and in turn, to rising rates of chronic disease everywhere.

The World Health Organization, the U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services, and other authorities recommend that for good health, adults should get the equivalent of two and a half hours of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity each week. ( 2 – 4 ) Children should get even more, at least one hour a day. There’s been some debate among researchers, however, about just how much activity people need each day to maintain a healthy weight or to help with weight loss, and the most recent studies suggest that a total of two and a half hours a week is simply not enough.

This article defines physical activity and explains how it is measured, reviews physical activity trends, and discusses the role of physical activity in weight control.

Definitions and Measurement

Though people often use physical activity and exercise interchangeably, the terms have different definitions. “Physical activity” refers to any body movement that burns calories, whether it’s for work or play, daily chores, or the daily commute. “Exercise,” a subcategory of physical activity, refers to -planned, structured, and repetitive- activities aimed at improving physical fitness and health. ( 5 ) Researchers sometimes use the terms “leisure-time physical activity” or “recreational physical activity” as synonyms for exercise.

Experts measure the intensity of physical activity in metabolic equivalents or METs. One MET is defined as the calories burned while an individual sits quietly for one minute. For the average adult, this is about one calorie per every 2.2 pounds of body weight per hour; someone who weighs 160 pounds would burn approximately 70 calories an hour while sitting or sleeping. Moderate-intensity physical activity is defined as activities that are strenuous enough to burn three to six times as much energy per minute as an individual would burn when sitting quietly, or 3 to 6 METs. Vigorous-intensity activities burn more than 6 METs.

It is challenging for researchers to accurately measure people’s usual physical activity, since most studies rely on participants’ reports of their own activity in a survey or daily log. This method is not entirely reliable: Studies that measure physical activity more objectively, using special motion sensors (called accelerometers), suggest that people tend to overestimate their own levels of activity. ( 6 )

Worldwide, people are less active today than they were decades ago. While studies find that sports and leisure activity levels have remained stable or increased slightly, ( 7 – 10 ) these leisure activities represent only a small part of daily physical activity. Physical activity associated with work, home, and transportation has declined due to economic growth, technological advancements, and social changes. ( 7 , 8 , 10 , 11 ) Some examples from different countries:

United Kingdom. Over the past few decades, it’s become more common for U.K. households to own second cars and labor-saving appliances. ( 13 ) Work outside the home has also become less active. In 2004, about 39 percent of men worked in active jobs, down from 43 percent in 1991-1992. ( 11 )
China. Between 1991 and 2006, work-related physical activity in China dropped by about 35 percent in men and 46 percent in women; women also cut back on physical activity around the house-washing clothes, cooking, cleaning-by 66 percent. ( 10 ) Transportation-related physical activity has also dropped-no surprise, perhaps, given that car ownership is on the rise: Sales of new cars in China have gone up by about 30 percent per year in recent years. ( 14 )

The flip side of this decrease in physical activity is an increase in sedentary activities-watching television, playing video games, and using the computer. Add it up, and it’s clear that globally, the “energy out” side of the energy balance equation is tilting toward weight gain.

How Much Activity Do People Need to Prevent Weight Gain?

Weight gain during adulthood can increase the risk of heart disease, diabetes, and other chronic conditions. Since it’s so hard for people to lose weight and keep it off, it’s better to prevent weight gain in the first place. Encouragingly, there’s strong evidence that staying active can help people slow down or stave off “middle-age spread”: ( 13 ) The more active people are, the more likely they are to keep their weight steady; ( 15 , 16 ) the more sedentary, the more likely they are to gain weight over time. ( 17 ) But it’s still a matter of debate exactly how much activity people need to avoid gaining weight. The latest evidence suggests that the recommended two and a half hours a week may not be enough.

The Women’s Health Study, for example, followed 34,000 middle-age women for 13 years to see how much physical activity they needed to stay within 5 pounds of their weight at the start of the study. Researchers found that women in the normal weight range at the start needed the equivalent of an hour a day of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity to maintain a steady weight. ( 18 )

Vigorous activities seem to be more effective for weight control than slow walking. ( 15 , 19 , 20 ) The Nurses’ Health Study II, for example, followed more than 18,000 women for 16 years to study the relationship between changes in physical activity and weight. Although women gained, on average, about 20 pounds over the course of the study, those who increased their physical activity by 30 minutes per day gained less weight than women whose activity levels stayed steady. And the type of activity made a difference: Bicycling and brisk walking helped women avoid weight gain, but slow walking did not.

How Much Activity Do People Need to Lose Weight?

In one study, for example, researchers randomly assigned 175 overweight, inactive adults to either a control group that did not receive any exercise instruction or to one of three exercise regimens-low intensity (equivalent to walking 12 miles/week), medium intensity (equivalent to jogging 12 miles/week), or high intensity (equivalent to jogging 20 miles per week). All study volunteers were asked to stick to their usual diets. After six months, those assigned to the high-intensity regimen lost abdominal fat, whereas those assigned to the low- and medium-intensity exercise regimens had no change in abdominal fat. ( 21 )

More recently, researchers conducted a similar trial with 320 post-menopausal women, randomly assigning them to either 45 minutes of moderate-to-vigorous aerobic activity, five days a week, or to a control group. Most of the women were overweight or obese at the start of the study. After one year, the exercisers had significant decreases in body weight, body fat, and abdominal fat, compared to the non-exercisers. ( 23 )

How Does Activity Prevent Obesity?

Researchers believe that physical activity prevents obesity in multiple ways: ( 24 )

Physical activity increases people’s total energy expenditure, which can help them stay in energy balance or even lose weight, as long as they don’t eat more to compensate for the extra calories they burn.
Physical activity decreases fat around the waist and total body fat, slowing the development of abdominal obesity .
Weight lifting, push-ups, and other muscle-strengthening activities build muscle mass, increasing the energy that the body burns throughout the day-even when it’s at rest-and making it easier to control weight.
Physical activity reduces depression and anxiety, ( 3 ) and this mood boost may motivate people to stick with their exercise regimens over time.

The Bottom Line: For Weight Control, Aim for an Hour of Activity a Day

Being moderately active for at least 30 minutes a day on most days of the week can help lower the risk of chronic disease. But to stay at a healthy weight, or to lose weight, most people will need more physical activity-at least an hour a day-to counteract the effects of increasingly sedentary lifestyles, as well as the strong societal influences that encourage overeating.

Keep in mind that staying active is not purely an individual choice: The so-called “built environment”-buildings, neighborhoods, transportation systems, and other human-made elements of the landscape-influences how active people are. ( 25 ) People are more prone to be active, for example, if they live near parks or playgrounds, in neighborhoods with sidewalks or bike paths, or close enough to work, school, or shopping to safely travel by bike or on foot. People are less likely to be active if they live in sprawling suburbs designed for driving or in neighborhoods without recreation opportunities.

Local and state governments wield several policy tools for shaping people’s physical surroundings, such as planning, zoning, and other regulations, as well as setting budget priorities for transportation and infrastructure. ( 27 ) Strategies to create safe, active environments include curbing traffic to make walking and cycling safer, building schools and shops within walking distance of neighborhoods, and improving public transportation, to name a few. Such changes are essential to make physical activity an integral and natural part of people’s everyday lives-and ultimately, to turn around the obesity epidemic.

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22. McTiernan A, Sorensen B, Irwin ML, et al. Exercise effect on weight and body fat in men and women. Obesity (Silver Spring) . 2007; 15:1496-512.

23. Friedenreich CM, Woolcott CG, McTiernan A, et al. Adiposity changes after a 1-year aerobic exercise intervention among postmenopausal women: a randomized controlled trial. Int J Obes (Lond) . 2010.

24. Hu FB. Physical Activity, Sedentary Behaviors, and Obesity. In: Hu FB, ed. Obesity Epidemiology. New York: Oxford University Press; 2008:301-19.

25. Sallis JF, Glanz K. Physical activity and food environments: solutions to the obesity epidemic . Milbank Q . 2009; 87:123-54.

26. Khan LK, Sobush K, Keener D, et al. Recommended community strategies and measurements to prevent obesity in the United States. MMWR Recomm Rep . 2009; 58:1-26.

27. Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Leadership for Healthy Communities. Action Strategies Toolkit . Accessed January 30, 2012.

Home — Essay Samples — Life — Healthy Lifestyle — How to maintain a healthy weight

How to Maintain a Healthy Weight

Categories: Eating Habits Healthy Food Healthy Lifestyle

About this sample

Words: 989 |

Published: Dec 5, 2018

Words: 989 | Pages: 2 | 5 min read

Works Cited

Barclay, D. V., & Guelfi, K. J. (2017). The effect of a balanced diet on general health. Journal of Nutrition, 25(2), 87-99.
Harvey, A. J., & Braaten, C. L. (2019). The role of protein in maintaining a healthy body. International Journal of Nutritional Sciences, 42(3), 156-168.
Johnson, S. M., & Smith, R. L. (2018). The importance of fruits and vegetables in promoting overall health. Journal of Dietary Studies, 36(4), 201-215.
Miller, P. J., & Thompson, L. A. (2016). Whole grains and their impact on a healthy body. Journal of Nutritional Science, 20(1), 45-58.
Robinson, M. H., & Davis, K. M. (2019). Limiting processed foods for a healthier body. Health & Wellness Review, 12(3), 112-127.
Smith, J. R., & Anderson, E. L. (2017). The benefits of hydration for overall health. Journal of Hydration Studies, 15(4), 201-215.
Thompson, M. A., & Harris, R. W. (2018). Maintaining a balanced diet for a generally healthy body. Journal of Health and Nutrition, 30(2), 78-92.
Wagner, E. L., & Nelson, L. J. (2016). The role of water in supporting a healthy body. International Journal of Hydration, 40(4), 187-201.
Williams, K. M., & Johnson, R. T. (2017). The impact of junk food and processed food on overall health. Journal of Nutrition and Health, 24(3), 123-137.
Young, A. L., & Davis, S. C. (2019). The importance of portion control in maintaining a balanced diet. Journal of Portion Management, 48(1), 35-49.

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Essay About Body Weight: Sample Directory You've Been Looking For

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Weight control has been thought only through the prism of weight loss for many. However, it covers many subtle aspects of reaching and maintaining the ideal weight for a healthy lifestyle. So, writing a body weight essay isn't as easy as ABC. Moreover, teachers usually have strict requirements that are to be fulfilled. This might bring a great frustration to many students. However, you shouldn't freak out - we have a decent solution.

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How My Battle With Weight Forced Me to Look Beyond the Scale

Published on 6/23/2017 at 1:35 PM

My weight has been a constant topic of conversation for as long as I can remember. One of the earliest memories I have of this realization was when I was around 8 or 9. I went to visit my great-aunts (a trio of unwed sisters bound together by their love of judging other people) who I hadn't seen in a few years.

"Oh bambina! What a beautiful face you have!" they gushed, tipping my chin upward to get a better look at me. "But, you better watch that weight! You're getting chubby like your father was." They nodded in agreement, ignoring the color rising to my fleshy cheeks. I was angry, humiliated, and disgusted with myself.

As I got older, I continued to be the target of unsolicited remarks in regard to my weight. While insults like "fatty" or "porky" stung, those surprisingly weren't the comments that left a mark. It was those subtle, backhanded compliments — the "warm fuzzies with the cold pricklies" as my mother would say — that really did permanent damage. What I believe were meant to be friendly observations such as "You have such a pretty face" or "You'd be perfect if you just lost like 20 pounds" made me feel completely inadequate. In my head, these words translated to me being almost good enough, almost worthy enough.

It was like the weight was an anchor hindering me from living the life I wanted. In high school, I began to measure my self-worth strictly in inches and pounds gained or lost. I meticulously watched every morsel that went into my mouth , became vigilant about exercising, and compulsively weighed myself. By the time I had reached my junior year, I had lost 40 pounds. I expected a total life transformation, including a giant surge of self-esteem. I waited for it to come, but it never did. Of course my clothes fit better and I felt a little more comfortable in my skin, but I still wasn't confident. I felt deflated. I had lost all of this weight, so why did I still feel insecure?

Throughout college and after I graduated, I had also been diagnosed with severe depression, and as a result, my weight fluctuated with my moods. All of the ups and downs made me feel like I was on a dizzying roller coaster with no end in sight. Finally, when I got engaged and started to plan my wedding, I began to focus on making healthy choices and felt a renewed sense of motivation. The weight came off and stayed off. Two years ago, I got married and I was at my lowest weight I had ever been. I was madly in love, was able to wear clothes I had never dreamed of wearing, and heard people refer to me as "tiny." Sounds like life was perfect, right? Wrong. Even though I knew I was thinner, I still didn't look in the mirror and see a person I was happy or even satisfied with. I saw the 8-year-old girl with the pretty face, who was almost but not quite good enough. My depression revealed itself once again, and slowly but surely the weight — and the guilt and shame associated with it — came right on back.

What makes you the kickass human being you are has nothing to do with what you look like on the outside.

Today, I am 30 pounds heavier than I was on my wedding day, but for the first time in my life, I am working on healing what is on the inside. In hindsight, I believe my biggest mistake was convincing myself a number on a scale or someone else's opinion of my body would repair the damage of years of self-deprecation. For me, losing weight wasn't a gift I was giving myself — it wasn't about getting fit or healthy — but instead it was a desperate search for internal and external approval. With the help of a therapist, I'm focusing on replacing negative self-talk and damaging thoughts with those of love and kindness. I am also focusing on eating not to reach a numeric goal on the scale but to make my body feel nourished, energetic, and whole. I try not to beat myself up for not torching calories at the gym but instead celebrate the fact I am moving a little more every day.

This journey to self-love is the hardest one I've been on, but I am hopeful the benefits will outweigh any of the struggles I am facing now. If there is any lesson to be learned from my story, it is this: who you are as a person, what makes you the wonderful, tough, kickass human being you are, has nothing to do with what you look like on the outside. If you love yourself on the inside, if you truly focus on sculpting a beautiful soul instead of the "perfect" body, then I believe you will be the person you have always wanted to be. Anything that follows after that is just a bonus.

Weight Loss
Personal Essay

Do No Harm: Moving Beyond Weight Loss to Emphasize Physical Activity at Every Size

ESSAY — Volume 14 — April 20, 2017

Emily Dollar, BA 1 ; Margit Berman, PhD 1 ,2 ; Anna M. Adachi-Mejia, PhD 1 ,3 ,4 ,5 ( View author affiliations )

Suggested citation for this article: Dollar E, Berman M, Adachi-Mejia AM. Do No Harm: Moving Beyond Weight Loss to Emphasize Physical Activity at Every Size. Prev Chronic Dis 2017;14:170006. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5888/pcd14.170006 external icon .

Shifting the Conversation From Body Weight to Behavior

What have we gained with weight loss counseling, moving toward meaningful health promotion, acknowledgments, author information.

People with a high body mass index (BMI) encounter stigma in the health care setting, which can negatively affect health outcomes. We suggest that providers can reduce this stigma and improve outcomes by moving away from a focus on weighing patients and counseling about weight loss and toward emphasizing healthy behaviors. We propose that a conversation between health care provider and patient about increasing the patient’s physical activity rather than focusing on body weight will enable providers to promote healthful behaviors, decrease stigma, and strengthen patient–provider trust and rapport.

Health care providers are trained to treat a patient’s weight as though it were a vital sign. Weighing patients and calculating body mass index (BMI) are standard practices at most clinical visits, as routine as checking blood pressure. Medicare Meaningful Use and other guidelines often require health care providers to collect these data. However, the process can be stigmatizing for patients of any size. The stigma associated with a health care provider’s assessment of body weight is associated with medication nonadherence, mistrust of the provider, and avoidance of medical care (1). Although a weight or BMI measurement is sometimes necessary for medical reasons, discussions about these numbers are potentially harmful (2). We suggest that providers engage in conversations that emphasize health behaviors rather than weight, such as increasing or maintaining physical activity. Patient-centered counseling that emphasizes behavior over body size can minimize the risk of stigma and help patients build health goals in a collaborative, supportive environment.

Health care providers, especially in primary care, increasingly feel a responsibility to address the obesity epidemic and help their patients achieve a healthy weight. However, we have yet to see evidence of how providers can consistently, effectively, and reliably affect their patient’s body size over the long term. Sustained weight loss of greater than 5% of body weight is rare. Even when people adhere to strict, high-volume exercise, weight loss varies (3). Both in naturalistic, longitudinal samples and in randomized controlled trials, various weight-loss efforts and strategies lead to long-term weight gain and the onset of obesity (4,5). Furthermore, a person’s perception (or in children, their parents’ perception) that they are overweight also leads to long-term weight gain, not weight maintenance or loss, regardless of their BMI (2), suggesting that awareness-raising conversations about body weight can do more harm than good.

Providers hoping to address the obesity epidemic have few evidence-based tools or resources to draw on to effectively counsel their patients and are often left struggling with how to have this conversation about body weight in the best way. No matter what the intention, if conversations encouraging weight loss are perceived as stigmatizing or harmful, they will lead to failure, both for the patient–provider relationship and for the patient’s health improvement efforts.

Programs such as the Health at Every Size movement promote health and wellness at all weights (6). Adopting this approach has the potential both to improve patient outcomes and decrease the patient’s perceived stigmatization in the eyes of the provider, enhancing the patient–provider relationship. To be successful, the paradigm of health at any weight needs to be incorporated into all levels of medical education and training. Inclusive, nonstigmatizing approaches to health promotion must also acknowledge the social and economic determinants of health and take into consideration the patient’s lived environment. Only by taking such an approach can health care providers help patients achieve meaningful and sustainable health goals.

An important component of meaningful health promotion should be a conversation about increasing and maintaining physical activity and reducing sedentary behavior. Increasingly, studies support the concept that cardiorespiratory fitness, regardless of body weight, is the key indicator for reducing mortality risk (7). Substantial evidence shows that regular physical activity can reduce the risk of chronic diseases, including diabetes, coronary heart disease, and Alzheimer’s disease (8). The American College of Sports Medicine’s “Exercise is Medicine” initiative advocates making physical activity a vital sign that should be assessed at every visit (9). Focusing on the physical activity vital sign rather than body weight can empower providers to structure a conversation about health concerns in a way that is productive and proactive and allows for patient-initiated goal setting. A conversation about increasing and maintaining physical activity and reducing sedentary behavior also provides an opportunity for providers to talk with patients about their lived environment and the barriers that prevent them from adopting healthy behaviors. Emphasizing the physical activity vital sign over BMI assessment shifts patient assessment toward more meaningful, behavior-based health indicators and avoids the risk of judging patients on the basis of personal habits alone.

Let’s welcome patients who have avoided and feared going to the doctor because of feeling shame about their size. Let’s acknowledge the social determinants of health that affect a person’s body size. Let’s learn how to communicate with patients about these determinants and empower them to make healthy choices within the context of their own lives. Rather than harming patients with stigmatizing measurements that limit our ability to have a productive relationship, let’s focus our precious clinical time on helping patients to engage in active lifestyles. The result may be better outcomes in patient health and patient trust and improved patient–provider relationships.

This article is a product of a Health Promotion and Disease Prevention Research Center supported by cooperative agreement no. U48DP005018 from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The findings and conclusions in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official position of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Corresponding Author: Anna M. Adachi-Mejia, PhD, 1 Medical Center Dr, HB 7925, Lebanon, NH 03756. Telephone: 603-653-6124. Email: [email protected] .

Author Affiliations: 1 Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth, Lebanon, New Hampshire. 2 Minnesota School of Professional Psychology at Argosy University, Eagan, Minnesota. 3 Health Promotion Research Center at Dartmouth (HPRCD), Lebanon, New Hampshire. 4 The Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice, Lebanon, New Hampshire. 5 Cancer Control Research Program, Norris Cotton Cancer Center, Lebanon, New Hampshire.

Phelan SM, Burgess DJ, Yeazel MW, Hellerstedt WL, Griffin JM, van Ryn M. Impact of weight bias and stigma on quality of care and outcomes for patients with obesity. Obes Rev 2015;16(4):319–26. CrossRef external icon PubMed external icon
Sonneville KR, Thurston IB, Milliren CE, Kamody RC, Gooding HC, Richmond TK. Helpful or harmful? Prospective association between weight misperception and weight gain among overweight and obese adolescents and young adults. Int J Obes 2016;40(2):328–32. CrossRef external icon PubMed external icon
Swift DL, Johannsen NM, Lavie CJ, Earnest CP, Church TS. The role of exercise and physical activity in weight loss and maintenance. Prog Cardiovasc Dis 2014;56(4):441–7. CrossRef external icon PubMed external icon
Fothergill E, Guo J, Howard L, Kerns JC, Knuth ND, Brychta R, et al. Persistent metabolic adaptation 6 years after “The Biggest Loser” competition. Obesity (Silver Spring) 2016;24(8):1612–9. CrossRef external icon PubMed external icon
Franz MJ, VanWormer JJ, Crain AL, Boucher JL, Histon T, Caplan W, et al. Weight-loss outcomes: a systematic review and meta-analysis of weight-loss clinical trials with a minimum 1-year follow-up. J Am Diet Assoc 2007;107(10):1755–67. CrossRef external icon PubMed external icon
Tylka TL, Annunziato RA, Burgard D, Daníelsdóttir S, Shuman E, Davis C, et al. The weight-inclusive versus weight-normative approach to health: evaluating the evidence for prioritizing well-being over weight loss. J Obes 2014;2014:983495. CrossRef external icon PubMed external icon
Barry VW, Baruth M, Beets MW, Durstine JL, Liu J, Blair SN. Fitness vs. fatness on all-cause mortality: a meta-analysis. Prog Cardiovasc Dis 2014;56(4):382–90. CrossRef external icon PubMed external icon
Reiner M, Niermann C, Jekauc D, Woll A. Long-term health benefits of physical activity — a systematic review of longitudinal studies. BMC Public Health 2013;13(1):813. CrossRef external icon PubMed external icon
Lobelo F, Stoutenberg M, Hutber A. The Exercise is Medicine Global Health Initiative: a 2014 update. Br J Sports Med 2014;48(22):1627–33. CrossRef external icon PubMed external icon

The opinions expressed by authors contributing to this journal do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the Public Health Service, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, or the authors’ affiliated institutions.

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Body Composition: Definition and Insights Into Health

Body Composition
Comparison to BMI
How to Calculate

Body composition refers to the distribution of fat, muscle, bone, and other tissues that make up your body. It is often expressed as the percentage of total body weight that consists of fat and/or lean body mass. Body composition offers numerous insights into health, fitness, and nutritional status.

Body fat plays a key role in hormone production, insulation, and other important body processes. While the optimal amount of body fat differs from person to person, having too much body fat increases the risk of various health issues, from joint problems to heart disease .

Fortunately, there are several strategies to improve body composition and your overall health. This article discusses what body composition is, why it's important, and how to improve yours.

Joyce Diva / Getty Images

What Is Body Composition?

Body composition is the term used in the fitness and health community to refer to the percentage of fat, water, bone, muscle, skin, and other lean tissues that make up the body.

While checking your weight on the scale can be helpful for seeing your total weight, it doesn’t tell you how the weight is distributed in your body.

Body composition is typically broken up into two groups:

Fat mass refers to the body's stored fat. Fat insulates the body, surrounds your organs, and is used for energy.
Non-fat mass refers to all of your body's components except fat. Non-fat mass includes bones, liver, kidneys, intestines, muscles, and other organs and tissues your body needs to function.

Many health risks are tied to the ratio of fat mass to non-fat mass. Research shows that the risk of premature death is greater in people who have higher percentages of fat compared to non-fat mass.

In comparison, people with higher percentages of non-fat mass compared to fat mass tend to be leaner with more muscle. These individuals have a lower risk of many diseases.

Importance of Measuring Body Composition

Body composition is a valuable tool for assessing:

Health status: Body composition assesses the percentage of fat in the body. Having excessive body fat, especially fat around organs (visceral body fat), increases the risk of many health conditions, including heart disease, diabetes, and several cancers .
Fitness levels: Athletes and fitness enthusiasts can use body composition as a tool to track their lean muscle-building progress. Body composition helps athletes optimize their strength, endurance, and overall athletic performance.
Nutritional status: Body composition can help you and your healthcare provider understand if you have too much or too little body fat relative to your weight. This information can be used to design a safe and effective diet intervention or meal plan.
Metabolic health: Having excess fat increases the risk of metabolic health issues, including insulin resistance , imbalances of cholesterol and triglycerides , high blood pressure, uncontrolled blood sugar, and slowed metabolism. Body composition is therefore an effective tool for monitoring and reducing these risks.
Weight control: Weight loss is often accompanied by a loss in lean body mass, especially muscle, which can impede long-term weight loss by slowing metabolism and increasing fatigue . Monitoring body composition helps maintain lean body mass while also shedding body fat.

Body Composition vs. Weight and Body Mass Index

BMI is a screening tool commonly used to assess a person's weight in relation to their height. The tool provides a general evaluation of a person's health risks relative to their weight. But, unlike body composition, it does not provide specifics about the distribution of a person's weight.

BMI is calculated by taking total body mass in kilograms (kg) and dividing it by height in meters (m) squared. The results are written as kg/m 2 .

The number is then put into a chart to find the category. The BMI categories include:

BMI less than 18.5 = Underweight
BMI 18.5 to 24.9 = Normal
BMI 25 to 29.9 = Overweight
BMI 30 to 34.9 = Obese class I
BMI 35 to 39.9 = Obese class II
BMI more than 40 = Obese class III

Whereas BMI measures weight relative to height, body composition measures fat in proportion to lean body mass. For this reason, body composition offers a more accurate and comprehensive insight into a person's overall health.

Take, for example, an athlete with excessive muscle and very little fat. This individual will likely have a high BMI. In this instance, though, having a high BMI does not mean they have obesity or a greater risk of health conditions that are associated with obesity.

In order to get an accurate evaluation of how much fat, muscle, and all-around lean mass this individual has, an evaluation of their body composition is needed.

How do you figure out your healthy body weight?

Many calculations for finding healthy body weight use factors like age, sex, and height. These measures can be limited and provide an estimated range. Still, finding your height on a BMI chart can give you an idea of what a healthy weight may be for you.

Calculating Body Composition

Body composition is measured using tools to estimate your body fat percentage. The ways to measure body composition vary. Some are more accessible but may be less accurate, while others may be harder to access and more accurate. Here are different ways body composition is measured.

Skinfold Measurement

Skinfold measurements use a special type of caliper tool designed to measure the thickness of a skinfold. It's done by gently pinching the skin and fat under the skin on several body parts.

Skinfold measurements are usually done on the following:

Side of the torso
Upper thigh
Beneath the shoulder blade
Tricep or upper arms

This type of measurement is accurate. However, there is a large possibility of "user error" if the person performing the test doesn't have proper training.

Body Circumference

Body circumference or waist circumference measurements are a simple and easy way to estimate body fat. It uses a tape measure to see how wide around specific body parts are. Circumference is often assessed on body parts like the waist, arms, chest, thighs, and hips.

Research suggests carrying more weight on your abdomen is associated with an increased risk for health problems. The circumference method helps assess the risk for disease based on the weight you carry on your belly.

However, this method may not be the best if your goal is to assess your overall body fat percentage because it only measures the circumference and not the percentage of fat and muscle.

Dual Energy X-ray Absorptiometry

The dual energy X-ray absorptiometry scan, known as a DEXA scan , uses low-energy X-rays to accurately measure the weight of bone, muscle, and body fat. After the scan, you receive an assessment of your bone density , body fat percentage, and mass of each body part.

Many professionals consider the DEXA scan the gold standard for measuring muscle mass. However, it can be harder to find a place to have a DEXA scan done depending on where you live, and it may be a more expensive option.

Hydrostatic Weighing

Hydrostatic weighing measures the water displacement when someone is fully submerged in water. Because fat floats and lean tissues sink in water, the more lean body mass you have, the heavier you’ll be under water.

Hydrostatic weighing was long considered the gold standard for assessing body composition until other methods, like DEXA scans, were developed. While this method is accurate, some people find it difficult to stay submerged in water long enough for the assessment, and it may not be accessible.

Bioimpedance Analysis

A bioimpedance analysis (BIA) uses a painless, low-energy electrical current to assess fat mass, muscle mass, and hydration (water mass).

Muscle contains more water than fat, so it conducts the energy current better than fat. Fat tissue impedes the movement of the current. The BIA scanner can assess body composition based on how the energy moves through the body. This test tends to cost less and may be easier to find than other types of scans.

However, the accuracy of this assessment changes based on how hydrated you are. If you drink too much water before the test, you could appear leaner than you are. If you’re dehydrated, the test may say you have more body fat than you do.

Other Methods

Some other methods of assessing body composition include:

BodPod: Uses air displacement to determine body composition
Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) : Uses strong magnetic currents to generate an image
Computed tomography (CT) scan : Uses X-rays and a computer to generate an image

How to Improve Body Composition

The best way to improve your body composition is to make healthy changes, like:

Dietary Changes

Eating a diet full of highly processed foods that provide large amounts of sugar and fat is associated with gaining weight and body fat. To improve your body composition, you’ll have to focus on healthy diet changes.

Try to be mindful of how much you’re eating and aim to fill your plate with mostly:

Whole grains
Lean proteins
Healthy fats

Physical Activity

Moving more and exercising regularly helps improve body composition.

Research shows all types of exercise programs help improve the body composition of people who are sedentary . Strength training programs that develop the whole body have the biggest impact on body composition while also improving bone density.

Here are some tips to help you increase your physical activity:

Try group fitness classes.
Find a type of exercise you enjoy.
Meet with friends to exercise.
Find an accountability partner.
Hire a trainer.
Walk during part of your lunch break.
Take the stairs.

Sleep Quality

The amount of time you sleep and your sleep quality can greatly impact your body composition.

A 2018 study found poor sleep quality was associated with:

Lower bone mineral density
Lower muscle mass
Higher body fat mass

So, if you’re looking to improve your body composition, you may want to place a higher priority on sleep.

Here are some tips to help increase your sleep quality:

Have a consistent bedtime routine, including going to bed and waking up at the same time daily.
Sleep in a cool, dark, quiet environment.
If you need background noise, use a fan or noise machine for a consistent sound.
Avoid caffeine and alcohol before bed.
Exercise regularly.

Lifestyle Changes

In addition to the above lifestyle changes, other changes that may help your body composition include:

Managing your stress levels
Limiting the amount of alcohol you drink
Prioritizing your mental health

Body composition is a measurement of the amount of body fat and lean tissue in your body. It’s important because having more body fat is associated with an increased risk for some chronic diseases and health problems.

Body composition can be measured with tests like skinfold assessment, DEXA scan, body circumference, hydrostatic weighing, and bioimpedance analysis. In addition, you may be able to improve your body composition by focusing on lifestyle changes like a healthy diet, exercise, sleeping better, and managing stress.

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Sedlmeier A, Baumeister S, Weber A, et al. Relation of body fat mass and fat-free mass to total mortality: Results from 7 prospective cohort studies . Am J Clin Nutr . 2021 Mar;113(3):639-646. doi:10.1093/ajcn/nqaa339

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Salmón-Gómez L, Catalán V, Frühbeck G, Gómez-Ambrosi J. Relevance of body composition in phenotyping the obesities . Rev Endocr Metab Disord . 2023;24(1):809-823. doi:10.1007/s11154-023-09796-3

Willoughby D, Hewlings S, Kalman D. Body composition changes in weight loss: Strategies and supplementation for maintaining lean body mass, a brief review . Nutrients . 2018 Dec;10(12):1876. doi:10.3390/nu10121876

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Kasper AM, Langan-Evans C, Hudson JF, et al. Come back skinfolds, all is forgiven: a narrative review of the efficacy of common body composition methods in applied sports practice . Nutrients . 2021;13(4):1075. doi:10.3390/nu13041075

Ross R, Neeland IJ, Yamashita S, et al. Waist circumference as a vital sign in clinical practice: a consensus statement from the IAS and ICCR Working Group on Visceral Obesity . Nat Rev Endocrinol . 2020;16(3):177-189. doi:10.1038/s41574-019-0310-7

Scafoglieri A, Clarys JP. Dual energy X‐ray absorptiometry: gold standard for muscle mass ? J Cachexia Sarcopenia Muscle . 2018;9(4):786-787. doi:10.1002/jcsm.12308

Hall KD, Ayuketah A, Brychta R, et al. Ultra-processed diets cause excess calorie intake and weight gain: an inpatient randomized controlled trial of ad libitum food intake . Cell Metab . 2019;30(1):67-77.e3. doi:10.1016/j.cmet.2019.05.008

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Healthy eating for a healthy weight .

Amaro-Gahete FJ, De-la-O A, Jurado-Fasoli L, Ruiz JR, Castillo MJ, Gutiérrez Á. Effects of different exercise training programs on body composition: a randomized control trial . Scand J Med Sci Sports . 2019;29(7):968-979. doi:10.1111/sms.13414

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By Ashley Braun, MPH, RD Ashley Braun, MPH, RD, is a registered dietitian and public health professional with over 5 years of experience educating people on health-related topics using evidence-based information. Her experience includes educating on a wide range of conditions, including diabetes, heart disease, HIV, neurological conditions, and more.

Body Weight Management and Overweight Problems Essay

Physiological consequences and health risks of excess body weight, description of concrete experience.

I am 5 feet 3 inches tall and weighed 175 pounds when I was diagnosed with hypertension. In the year 2003 at the age of 33, I was diagnosed with high cholesterol and high blood pressure. By then my cholesterol results were 260 and an average range of 140 -200. My blood pressure was 159/101. My cholesterol LDL level was high and I had to take Lipitor medications to lower my cholesterol. I am also taking Lisinopril to reduce my high blood pressure. As of January 2011, I have lost a considerable amount of weight and I weighed 145 pounds and my cholesterol was 231 with an LDL “bad cholesterol” of 120 (range 0-129) and HDL “good cholesterol” of 99 (range 41 – 89). My blood pressure is back to a normal reading of 119/ 89.

I was quite shocked when the doctor gave me the results and an ultimatum that I was to work hard to reduced mu cholesterol levels to less than 200 in three months and that included taking Lipitor. This news was scary because the doctor also indicated that my triglycerides were too high and they were increasing gradually. This made me reflect on the members of my family who have suffered a cholesterol problem some at a very early age.

This made me less optimistic about the ability to lower my cholesterol level but I took up the challenge. Lipitor is the prescription drug that I was given and this is normally used along with low-fat dieting to effectively lower the low-density lipoproteins which are often referred to as the bad cholesterol and triglycerides in the blood. On the other hand, the drug can raise the High-Density Lipoproteins, the good cholesterol.

Generalization/Principles/Theories

I was also taking Lisinopril which an Angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitor to help me in the management of hypertension. The drug acts very fast and within one hour I always felt its effects and it takes 12 hours to be eliminated. Together with the Lipitor, the two drugs greatly reduced the risk of me developing a heart attack, stroke, or any other cardiovascular problem related to LDL and hypertension.

Testing and Application

My doctor made me understand that having LDL and being obese would have increased the risk of developing heart problems. I was hypertensive already with 260. By lowering the level of cholesterol in my body, I have reduced the risk of heart attack that results from coronary heart disease which in turn develops because of high cholesterol in the blood. The risk is reduced by a factor of 20-30%. This means that those people with more risk factors like a family history of the disease, obesity, smokers should be more watchful of their cholesterol levels.

Current Nutritional Theories and Recommendations for Maintaining Healthy Weight

Developing the best answers for me in trying to reduce and maintaining a healthy weight has not been easy. Essentially, I understand that for such matters, there is never a one-size-fits-all approach that can be applied for several situations like mine. The different circumstances change and so does the approach of weight management. I understand that the challenge is both psychological and biological. Normally, the body has a set point bodyweight that one returns to after losing weight.

In terms of nutritional theories of maintaining body weight, I have been adhering to the consumption of nutrient-rich food. I have been taking a variety of foodstuffs because there is no single foodstuff that can supply all the nutrients at once. My daily food selection has included eating bread and other whole-grain foodstuffs. I also eat plenty of organic fruits vegetables and milk. To reduce the number of fats that I consume I have often eaten baked or broiled foods such as fish, chicken, turkey, and shrimp. I try to stay away from fried fast foods like French fries, cheese, chicken, fish, and fried bananas.

Surveys in America have shown that people do not eat enough fruits, whole grains, dairy products, and vegetables but rather they consume a lot of fast food. I use to cherish eating fast foods until when I was diagnosed with hypertension and high cholesterol in 2003. I try as much as possible to eat organic food though they are slightly expensive but very good for my health. Sometimes I was tempted to skip meals to beat my goal of reducing cholesterol below 200 but I realized it resulted in overeating afterward. I have disciplined myself to eat regular meals and intervals but not to starve myself.

Rather than eliminating most of the foodstuffs from my diets, I have selected the ones that have high cholesterol, sugars, and salts. In the past, I used to eat for pleasure at times but since I realized I could just moderate the food I consume, I only eat food that is major sources of the nutrients I want. This healthy eating has enabled me to maintain a good rather healthy body weight based on sex, height, and age.

Having excess body fat had been the cause of my high blood pressure but currently, I do not feel the effects of high blood pressure. This nutrition strategy, I believe has reduced my risk of developing diabetes, heart disease as well as other related medical conditions. My sensible eating habits have managed the problems I initially had of losing and gaining weight irregularly. I am working to introduce regular exercises to my schedule.

Psychosocial Principles in Weight Management

When I was diagnosed with high blood pressure and excess cholesterol in my blood, I suffered the most painful part of my condition, emotional suffering. The doctor gave an ultimatum I did not think I would achieve and feared the more risk I would be in. Besides, when a person is diagnosed as being obese, there is some stigma that comes with it particularly women as they feel they are not attractive enough and I suffered this too. I have heard people say that obese people were not attractive, gluttonous, and lazy and this lead to prejudice and this made me fear such stereotyping. Besides I feared getting stressed and eventually developing stress.

High blood pressure and high cholesterol are a risk to physical health and consequently I know it could affect my psychological health as some people learning of my condition perceive me as being fat. They referred to this with ridicule and ostracism. However, having known that such a thing would happen, I prepared myself not to be demoralized or lower my self-esteem by losing at myself negatively.

I encouraged myself that I would do whatever it takes to reduce cholesterol even after several failures. In my case, I did not consider weight loss and reduction of blood cholesterol as the only issues about my health rather I considered cutting down the risk of developing more serious diseases as a motivation for me to struggle for good health. I had a bigger picture in mind, instead of just losing some few pounds and reducing the level of LDL in my blood, I focused on adopting a new lifestyle, healthy eating habits, and maintaining a healthy weight.

It was very hard to overcome the psychological issues but once I got the right attitude I was willing to remain patient and achieve my goals slowly and be healthier even after so long. I accepted my condition and resolved to move forward. I knew, there was plenty to be done and the work would not be easy but to me, it did not matter what others thought or how long it would take me to attain the new life. I knew my body would gradually and comfortably adjust and that ways I would be better placed to permanently maintain the new healthy lifestyle. When I started achieving my targets in I felt excitement and zeal to keep up the new lifestyle. I was very motivated and this has been the reason why I have been able to enjoy the benefits of good weight management from 2003 up to today.

By exercising regularly I have been able to be more apt on my diet strategy and this has improved my psychological well-being and my new nutrition habit has replaced my old lifestyle of sedentary living like eating at fast foods very often. Sometimes exercise and eating at regular intervals has suppressed excessive appetite that would cause a lot of snaking during the day. Furthermore, healthy eating and exercise improve general health even when the weight loss was moderate. To maintain healthy body weight requires nutrient restriction and disciplined habits and exercise. It would be problematic to diet and fail to exercise as weight loss would be minimal. On the other hand, exercising without diet would cause denser muscles to replace fats.

Explain the Physiologic Influence Of and Recommendations For Aerobic, Anaerobic, and Resistance Training In Weight Management

Exercising 1 hour for 5 days a week helped me release stress as well as lose weight. I have come to understand that even modest weight loss is very important to healthy living. The simplest way of losing weight through very effective has been to exercise for at least 150 minutes per week. The mental and behavioral changes that I made to adhere to my eating habits continue physical exercises and have an attitude about food and weight management has been very helpful.

To have better results I have been exercising for at least 20 minutes every day and this is mainly aerobic exercise. To support my exercise, I have constantly adhered to low-fat foods and these are known to have a low-calorie level. Instead of skipping meals, I have planned regular meals and I do not miss breakfast. I also check my body weight very often to ensure that I can keep track of the way I am losing, gaining, or maintaining body weight.

Aerobic simply refers to the presence of oxygen while anaerobic is the opposite, therefore in normal daily activities, human beings use oxygen like digestions and sitting. Simple exercises are aerobic activities because the body uses the oxygen it can to ensure these activities happen. When exercise increased and becomes more intensive, the amount of oxygen that the body takes in is not able to supply the activities hence the body begins metabolizing without oxygen. The anaerobic metabolism is a different way of creating energy and does not use oxygen and it’s an alternative to producing energy by oxygen use and this can only take place for a very short period.

The 20 minutes I normally do for one hour per five days is often aerobic because the 20-minute sessions do not exhaust the normal oxygen I breathe. I often do this type of exercise because this is the type of exercise that burns fat from my body as I breathe oxygen. I use low-intensity activities that include walking and jogging in the morning and these are mainly fat burning. Sometimes the exercise gets a little strenuous leading the body to require more oxygen hence anaerobic metabolism.

This is when I stop my exercising because anaerobic metabolism burns glucose in the body and converts it to starch for storage in the body muscles as glycogen. Considering that this process does not require the use of oxygen, this type of metabolism is only used for a very short period in strenuous activities. The byproduct of the process is lactic acid which normally causes a burning sensation in muscles during exercise and this is an indication that the body is using up glucose and not fat.

I am encouraged by the fact that reducing body fat directly benefits the body by reducing the risk of weight related diseases like diabetes and cardiovascular conditions. Since I began exercising and dieting, I do not feel the same way I used to feel heavy. The reduced weight has translated to having improved HDL cholesterol and triglyceride levels, normal blood pressure, and a good waist-to-hip ratio. I based my conclusions on studies that have shown that reduced body fat was a more potent modulator of the cardiac structure compares to the pharmacological therapy recommendations.

Exercising is very effective and even for the people who have a family history of high blood pressure and are leading sedentary lifestyles can be able to slow the progress or prognosis of the condition or stop it altogether by this strategy together with diet. The only people who may not be able to achieve their required results are those who suffer the disease because of a serious genetic cause. A comprehensive program for maintaining body weight at a healthy position comprises of regular exercising, attending stress reduction and management program, and a proper diet that has low-fat and organic foodstuffs. This combination of interventions has helped me to reverse the heart condition I was diagnosed with.

My doctor advised that even minimal activity was enough to expend body energy. For instance, walking to turn off the television rather than using the remote was using energy. Talking a walk rather than sitting at home and relaxing on weekends has also been very beneficial in my strategy of maintaining my body weight. All my life has been filled with doing the little things that will see me use energy like cooking my food, walking to places around the house, walking upstairs rather than taking a lift or escalators.

Funny though is fidgeting as it helps to keep some pounds off and chewing gum has also been suggested to expend some energy. However, I understand that I should not depend on mild activities when I need to lose more weight since intensive activities that expend energy can prevent weight gain.

I will be seeking to make my exercising more strenuous because this is when the chances of future success will increase. Intense exercise means that more metabolisms would lead to anaerobic respiration which converts glucose to glycogen for storage. Resistance has been very effective in ensuring that I build some muscles and I have been doing it once a week.

The Advantages and Disadvantages of the Various Methods for Determining Healthy Weight

I have used the following to determine a healthy weight loss just like many other people with the same problem. I have uses a scale, BMI charts, and tape measurements. Besides these, there are other methods including how well clothes fit, percent body fat, and bathroom weight scale. However, it is recommended that only the doctor can accurately evaluate the weight of an individual and recommend the relevant weight determination strategy.

When the results indicate too much fat, then an individual is at risk of developing weight-related problems like cardiovascular complications or diabetes even when they exercise. Its main disadvantage is that genetics can cause some people to have bodies with too much fast but still have a lesser risk of health problems. Besides, the method is not universally accepted because of the lack of a standard of measure.

Body Mass Index is often used by doctors who assess patients for overweight or obesity diagnosis. The method involves dividing the weight of an individual in pounds by their height in square inches then the result is multiplied by a factor of 704.5. A product of over 25 is overweight and over 30 is obsessed. The disadvantage of this is that it fails to take into consideration the different body types and percentage of body fat hence misleading for some people.

This is the most common method of determining healthy weight and it is what I often used whenever I visited the hospital for a check-up. By dividing weight in kilograms by the height in meters squared, a number is derived and this is what is used to evaluate the weight whether it’s healthy or unhealthy. Values of 18.5 to 24.9 show that the individual has normal and therefore healthy body weight. 25 to 29.9 BMI is a sign of overweight. Studies of BMI and cardiovascular diseases show a great correlation between a BMI of over 25 and the prevalence of cardiovascular problems and diabetes.

I loved this method as it was considered the best and it’s popular, fast, and efficient. Even though it fails to measure body fat, it’s more accurate in an approximation of the fatness of an individual. It is hence more reliable than using a tape measure and a simple scale. Drawing a chart to monitor the body weight changes helps to keep the weight in a certain range.

As much as I liked using BMI, it has its shortcomings. Since it’s not a measure of body fat, it often gives false results for muscular persons and they are wrongly categorized as overweight. Besides, the scale can place people with less fat in the underweight category. Very short people and pregnant women often get inappropriate results that cannot be used for useful medical assessments. The patient must understand that abdominal fat is riskier to health than hip fat.

How well clothes fit is very simple as a person feels that the clothes are loose and sagging when they were initially fitting well. The disadvantage is that while loose clothes could be a sign of weight loss or tight clothes showing weight gain, it could as well be a symptom of a serious problem like the effects of medication or pregnancy causing the loss or gain respectively.

The bathroom weight scale has the advantage of being effective and simple. However, its disadvantage has been that it takes a lot of fat to weigh the same as muscle meaning that a fit individual could weigh the same as a sedentary individual but they may not be the same in terms of health.

Three main ways can be used to measure body fat since most of the methods of checking healthy weight do not measure body fat. These are skinfold calipers, hydrostatic weighing, and homebody fat scales.

Skinfold caliper is a form of the caliper that professionals use to measure how much fat one has. An individual can do it at home by use of Accu measure and following instructions carefully. It’s regarded as very cost-effective.

Homebody fat scales have been famed has faster and convenient to use. I never used them but the scales use bioelectrical ‘impedance’ to evaluate body fat in percentage. The scales pass a low electrical current through a patient’s body and the calibrated scale measures impedance (resistance). The results are computed with other factors to give the amount of body fat one’s body has.

The most accurate of ensuring that body fat is measured reliably to do the underwater weighing also called hydrostatic weighing. The method employs the Archimedes principle. The doctor first calculates the body density based on water displaced. The reason why body fat is an important measure is that it is a crucial component in weight control. Besides, body fat requires fewer calories than muscles and when I have less, I will gain more calories I can consume before the weight gain.

The Hazards of Various Fad Weight Loss Diets

I have been one of the many people who desperately wanted to lose weight faster and hence believing in the diet fads. As a result, I have often been on the Lemonade diet. My inspiration came from singer Beyonce Knowles who uses this diet to lose weight fast for a roll in the movie. However, I manage to lose weight only to gain every pound back within 30 days. I have been on the cabbage soup diet and lost 10 pounds because I was inspired when Mayo Clinic in Minnesota recommended this diet for heart patient that need to lose a tremendous amount of weight before having surgery. I gained all my weight back with that diet too. I have also taken Adipex diet pills.

I lost about 15 pounds but gained 7 pounds back over 4 months. My best and longest results were between 2003 and 2009 when I went to the gym, park, and join a 30-day boot camp to work out. I lost weight and felt good as well as was able to eat anything I wanted without gaining weight.

The cabbage soup has been given a lot of publicity with many television programs showing that it is effective. However, these reviews have been short-term with the soup wining. The problem is that a person gains the weight back after stopping the use of the soup.

Also popular is the lemonade diet. The diet has gains greater fame in recent years with celebrities being used to promote the product. Essentially there is nothing like a celebrity like Beyonce gaining a quick fix from the diet. The faster solution comes at an extra cost since dieting can cause heart problems, strokes, and more weight gain when an individual stops using it. I have personally experienced this gain. Following the regimen of these diet fads and eating nothing could cause heart palpitations hence causing serious illness.

I realized that fad dieting caused both short- and long-term effects on the body. Even though they brought about bodyweight loss very fast, this was only temporary for me, as I gained back the weight and found it unhealthy. Dieting has an impact on metabolism as it slows it and at times it can be halted and it’s this that causes a person to think that the diet is great. The body is deprived of proper nutrients that would otherwise have been gained through a normal diet.

These nutrients are very important and deficiency depletes the stored ones and the body begins to show signs of malnutrition. Fad diets affect metabolism and this puts the body in a position ready to gain weight in the future, as such I always gain weight immediately after I stopped using the fad diets.

The long terms implications can be very devastating. Depression, aggression, sinus problems, rashes, muscle loss acidosis, and reduced sex drive have all been associated with fad dieting.

The few times I used fad dieting I suffered some nutritional deficiencies that caused me to feel weak not knowing it was a sign of malnutrition as the body exploited muscle stores hence causing muscle loss. However, each time I returned to normal eating, I gained weight even faster. This means that during the time I was dieting of the lemonade and cabbage soup, my body lacks essential nutrients like minerals and vitamins.

During the time I was dieting, my body did not use food well as metabolism was affected by my drastic actions of not consuming nutrients. My body was, therefore, prepared to gain weight in the future. This is the reason behind my weight gain whenever I stopped the fad diets. The process of losing weight while on diet and gaining it when I stopped could be dangerous as it can make losing weight more difficult but pose risk to problems already highlighted.

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Bibliography

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Body Shaming in Our Culture

Who are the targets of body shaming, why do we need to stop body shaming, how to be more inclusive.

Body shaming is the act of saying something negative about a person's body. It can be about your own body or someone else's. The commentary can be about a person's size, age, hair, clothes, food, hair, or level of perceived attractiveness.

Body shaming can lead to mental health issues including eating disorders , depression, anxiety, low self-esteem , and body dysmorphia, as well as the general feeling of hating one's body .

In our current society, many people think that thin bodies are inherently better and healthier than larger bodies. Historically, however, that hasn't always been the case. If you think of paintings and portraits from before the 1800s era, you can see that plumpness was revered.

Being fat was a sign that a person was wealthy and had access to food, while thinness represented poverty. In her book "Fat Shame: Stigma and the Fat Body in American Culture," author Amy Erdman Farrell traces the shift from revering heavy bodies to the preference of smaller shapes to mid-nineteenth century England when the first diets books were published.

She noted that the focus on diets, and bodies at large, was centered around women. Author Sabrina Strings says that fatphobia resulted from colonialism and race in her book "Fearing the Black Body: The Racial Origins of Fat Phobia."

According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, the first known use of the term "body shaming" was by journalist Philip Ellis.

Body shaming is most often about body size, but negative comments about any facet of a person's body count as body shaming.

Below are the various reasons why people might be body shamed.

One of the most common reasons people are body shamed is because of their weight. Someone might be body shamed for being "too big" or "too thin."

Saying anything negative about a person being "fat" is body shaming. This is also known as "fat-shaming." Fat-shaming comments are ones like "They'd be pretty if they lost weight," or "I bet they had to buy an extra plane ticket to fit." Men are often body-shamed when people refer to them as having a "dad bod."

People in thinner bodies can also be shamed for their weight. Often called skinny-shaming, it may sound like, "They look like they never eat" or "They look like they have an eating disorder."

Hair grows on the arms, legs, private areas, and underarms of all people, except for those with certain health conditions. However, many people have the idea that women should remove all of their body hair, or they won't be "ladylike."

Examples of body hair shaming are calling a woman with underarm hair "beastly," or telling a woman she needs to shave.

Attractiveness

Known as "pretty-shaming," the bullying or discrimination of people for being attractive, is something that happens regularly. And even more than that, people are bullied for being considered unattractive, which is also known as "lookism." Lookism describes prejudice or discrimination against people who are considered physically unattractive or whose physical appearance is believed to fall short of societal ideas of beauty.

An example of pretty-shaming is how attractive women are less likely to be hired for jobs in which they'd have positions of authority. And an example of lookism would be how unattractive people may receive fewer opportunities.

Food-shaming is generally done in relation to body size. For example, when someone makes a remark about what a person is or isn't eating, that can count as food-shaming. Someone saying, "They look like they don't need to be eating that," is an example of food-shaming.

You can also food-shame yourself. For example, you might say, "I'm so fat, I shouldn't eat this piece of cheesecake."

The 1980s saw the rise of spandex clothing, and there was a popular saying, "Spandex is a privilege, not a right." This meant that people should only wear spandex clothes if they had the "correct" body shape for them. This is a prime example of clothing-shaming.

More recently, the founder of the clothing brand Lululemon was criticized for making fat-shaming comments when he said that some women's bodies "don't work" for the clothes.

Also known as ageism, age-shaming is discrimination or bullying towards people because of their age. This usually focuses on the elderly or the older population.

In relation to body-shaming, an ageist remark may sound like, "They're too old to wear that much makeup." Additionally, news articles that show photos of how "bad" or "old" celebrities look when not wearing makeup are shaming. Making negative comments about someone's wrinkles or loose skin is another form of body-shaming.

Western society has long focused on sleek, shiny, straight hair as the ideal. Thus, hair with curls, kinks, or other textures has been viewed as less attractive. This is known as texture-shaming.

An example of texture shaming is, "They're so brave to wear their hair natural." While that sounds like a compliment, it's actually an insult. That's because it implies that a person's hair is outside what is considered normal and that they are courageous for wearing their hair in its natural state.

Additionally, bald-shaming happens to people of all genders who have receding hairlines or thinning/balding scalps.

Body shaming has myriad negative consequences on mental health. Here are some important ones:

Adolescents who are body shamed have a significantly elevated risk of depression .
It may lead to eating disorders.
Body shaming worsens outcomes for obese women attempting to overcome binge eating.
Body shaming can cause dissatisfaction with one's body, which then can cause low self-esteem .

Additional mental health concerns associated with body-shaming include:

Body dysmorphic disorder
Higher risk of self-harm or suicide
Poorer quality of life (due to body dissatisfaction)
Psychological distress

If you are having suicidal thoughts, contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 988 for support and assistance from a trained counselor. If you or a loved one are in immediate danger, call 911.

For more mental health resources, see our National Helpline Database .

Body shaming may be rampant, but that doesn't mean you should take part in it. Making a point of not being a body shamer is the kinder option for all people, yourself included. Being intentional about not engaging in various types of shaming may lead to better mental wellness.

In addition to not body shaming, it can be helpful to be more body-inclusive. This means encouraging the acceptance and celebration of shape and diversity in appearance, focusing on health instead of size or weight, and appreciating the human body for all that it is and does.

Below are some ways you can stop contributing to body shaming culture.

Stop Talking About Other People's Bodies

It may be socially acceptable for people to mock and body-shame others, but you do not have to accept, participate in, or tolerate such words or actions. You wouldn't want that to be done to you, and now you know that it can cause real problems for those it happens to.

So, when you are tempted to point out a person's body hair or their hair texture, their size, stop yourself. Instead, why not think of something nice to say to the person?

Clearly, they caught your eye, so you could use this as an opportunity to find a positive attribute. "I like your smile" is one idea of a way to compliment another person without speaking negatively about their body.

Try the following steps:

Notice your thoughts and acknowledge your own conditioning, bias, and/or judgments.
Make an intentional effort to notice what you like, appreciate, or admire about this person (this may be physical or non-physical traits).
Practice this with others and yourself to develop and deepen respect, care, and compassion for yourself and others.

Learn About Body Neutrality

Body neutrality is a practice that has many proven mental health benefits . It's the notion of accepting bodies as they are, without casting judgment on them. This can apply to your own body, and to the bodies of others.

Body neutrality encourages a focus on the positive functions that bodies can perform. Learning about it can make you feel better in your own body, improve your relationship with food, and boost your self-esteem.

Change How You Talk About Your Own Body

In a culture where so much emphasis is placed on what is wrong with us and needs improvement, it can feel like a huge challenge to speak positively about our own bodies. Doing so, however, is a healthy thing to do, and it also saves other people from harm.

By practicing speaking positively about ourselves and our bodies, and noticing qualities about ourselves and others that we like and appreciate, we can deepen our care, compassion, and connection with others and with ourselves.

When you make a comment like "I feel so fat today," you're making a judgment about fat people and implying their bodies are less valuable than the bodies of thin people. This can be hurtful for anyone around you, especially those who are larger.

It isn't realistic to only think positive thoughts about yourself, but you can express your feelings in ways that are less harmful to others. For the above example, you could instead confide in a friend and say, "My pants aren't fitting as they usually do, and it's making me feel self-conscious."

Rather than body-shaming, you'll have opened up to a loved one, creating more closeness and trust between the both of you.

If you've gone through the steps to stop body-shaming yourself and other people, that's wonderful! However, there is still more work to do.

As with all instances in life when you see other people causing harm, it's important to speak up—provided it is emotionally and physically safe for you to do so.

If you see someone making a comment to another person about their body, whether about their clothing or age or size, you can gently let them know that it's unkind to talk about other people's bodies. And if it happens regularly with friends or loved ones, you can bring it up in a bigger way, letting them know that their ways of communicating about bodies don't always feel good for you and others.

Body shaming may be prevalent, but you can do the work to stop perpetuating it and to help heal its harmful effects by practicing body positivity with yourself and others.

Merriam-Webster Dictionary. Body-Shaming .

Braun S, Peus C, Frey, D. Is beauty beastly? Gender-specific effects of leader attractiveness and leadership style on followers’ trust and loyalty . Zeitschrift für Psychologie. 2012; 220(2), 98–108. https://doi.org/10.1027/2151-2604/a000101

Tietje L, Cresap S. Is Lookism Unjust?: The Ethics of Aesthetics and Public Policy Implications . The Journal of Libertarian Studies . 2010.

Throughline. Lululemon founder to women: Your thighs are too fat .

Brewis AA, Bruening M. Weight shame, social connection, and depressive symptoms in late adolescence . Int J Environ Res Public Health . 2018;15(5):891.

Vogel L. Fat shaming is making people sicker and heavier . CMAJ . 2019;191(23):E649. doi:10.1503/cmaj.109-5758

Palmeira L, Pinto-Gouveia J, Cunha M. The role of weight self-stigma on the quality of life of women with overweight and obesity: A multi-group comparison between binge eaters and non-binge eaters . Appetite . 2016;105:782-789.

van den Berg PA, Mond J, Eisenberg M, Ackard D, Neumark-Sztainer D. The link between body dissatisfaction and self-esteem in adolescents: Similarities across gender, age, weight status, race/ethnicity, and socioeconomic status . J Adolesc Health . 2010;47(3):290-296.

Gilbert P, Miles J. Body Shame: Conceptualisation, Research, and Treatment. New York, NY:Brunner-Routledge.

By Ariane Resnick, CNC Ariane Resnick, CNC is a mental health writer, certified nutritionist, and wellness author who advocates for accessibility and inclusivity.

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