Do you live longer if you are overweight?

Science Daily has a release HERE describing a German study into the risks of being overweight or obese

“According to the authors’ analysis, overall mortality is unchanged by overweight, but increased by 20% by obesity, while extreme obesity raises it by up to 200%.”

Apart from the fact that the study was done using Body Mass Index (BMI) as the indicator with all its attendant problems as a measurement system including the fact that it was developed in the 19th century (read more at Wikipedia) the study raises some interesting issues.

Paul Campos wrote The Obesity Myth (Why America’s Obsession with Weight is Hazardous to your Health) in 2004 where he suggested that the media and public attention on obesity issues is driven in part by self interest from diet companies and researchers. He also suggested that going up and down in weight is more hazardous to your health than being at a stable overweight level and it is obvious that many people who struggle with their weight experience fluctuations if they try to lose weight.

The real issue for our society is that if being in the overweight category is not generally hazardous to your health then we should stop obsessing about it because it wastes a lot of time , and energy and clearly has negative effects on our self image.

More widely it raises issues that are constantly coming up in our work when we are assisting organisations to look at what they believe to be true and why. For example:

• Do we only look at information that confirms our view (confirmation bias).
• Are we overly influenced by our own situation as compared to “facts”. For example When I left University my body mass index would would have been in the overweight category and yet pictures from that time (sigh) would show someone who was fit and skinny with a low body fat percentage (and had hair) . If I had a BMI of 23 at that time instead of 25.5 would I be less concerned about these issues?
• How are we influenced by the herd and prevailing views that are reinforced because they are sensational or driven by self interested groups with money and power to push their view?

All questions we should be constantly asking when we are thinking of forward strategy

Paul Higgins

October 17th 2009

PS  – my own biased view for what is worth is that regular exercise and a reasonable diet (as opposed to dieting) with all things in moderation is a perfectly sensible approach for most people to adopt. It is a lot hard to measure by doctors and the health system in general so an easy index is used as a measure instead. It is clear that severe obesity is a very high risk factor.

PPS – my partner runs a weight loss clinic that I will not name for reasons of this not being an advertisement.

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