A very brief and broad search on a scientific database threw up 1,776 results when I searched “obesity covid19”. Wow. I’m used to seeing about five results when I first go and research something (admittedly, the search terms typically a lot narrower, but still). Furthermore, pretty much every article I clicked on, was freely available for everyone to read and digest. So I guess Covid19 has done something for us – that is fund a heck of a lot of science and make it a heck of a lot easier to find!
But why did I make the search?
Scrolling through the Apple News app recently, a tabloid article caught my eye – something to do with obesity being shown to be a risk factor for covid19. The gist was, research had now shown in Europe, that people categorised by their BMI as obese, were much more likely to suffer severe symptoms from Covid19. I was a bit perplexed at first; why did we need a study to confirm this? To me, the cases I’d come across in the media of people “with no underlying health conditions” came accompanied with photographs which sadly painted a very different picture. No, this is not fat shaming, this is being able to identify a disease when you see it. So why were we pretending these people didn’t have underlying risk factors if clearly, they did?
We have normalised obesity.
Our world is getting fatter. You’ve heard it all before, how pictures of our family show the gradually expanding waistlines over the generations, how we’re moving less but have more access than ever to fast food now. And because more and more of us are putting on weight, we’ve decided it’s okay. The movement for positive body image has gotten increasingly entangled with the arguments against “fat shaming”, so much so, we now can’t identify what is purely about aesthetics and what is about health. If you feel happy and confident at 40% body fat, good for you, but don’t ever try and kid yourself that that’s healthy. If you disagree with that fact and you feel that me being honest about the clear and well documented effects of obesity, stop reading now.
Of course, one of my aims as a coach, is to help people feel good in their own skin. I WANT people to look in the mirror and do a little happy dance – heck , I watched one of my clients get up in front of twenty people on a Zoom call last night and do the Time Warp in a bowler hat and some Ronhill leggings AND I HAVE NEVER FELT PROUDER AS A COACH – of course I want everyone to feel confident about their body and recognise we shouldn’t be airbrushing everyone and promoting clearly underweight supermodels as the picture of health. But we shouldn’t go too far the other way. We shouldn’t be marketing pictures of clearly overweight unhealthy models as “big is beautiful”. Why is it, we’re allowed to kick up a stink about size zero runway stars, but we’re “fat shaming” if we say the same about someone who is promoting obesity as a way to live?
We should be embracing all shapes and sizes in the media – love handles, saddle bags and cellulite are all allowed – but what we shouldn’t be doing is arguing that anyone who is overweight should be proud of their figure but anyone who is underweight shouldn’t be. We should be making a point that health is the key and there is a happy medium which should be celebrated – YES, PLEASE FOR ONCE CAN WE CELEBRATE MEDIOCRITY…I will literally never say that again…
We’ve lost the ability to take responsibility for our own actions.
The doctor says you have high blood pressure. Take this beta blocker, this will help bring your blood pressure down – you should probably eat a bit less salt and go for more walks. The doctor says you have type II diabetes. Take this tablet and it will help with your blood sugar – you should probably eat a bit less sugar and go for more walks.
That’s it. When we have a symptom, we go to the doctor. They give us a tablet and some brief sentences of advice from the NHS website. Off you go. But nobody really got to the root of the problem. You’re now taking a pill for the symptom of another disease – your excess body fat. And you’re happy, because at your prescription reviews, your condition will be managed, your signs and symptoms will have diminished and you’ll think you’re “healthy”. People so often wobble into my dental surgery and joke about the pills are “okay because at least they’re keeping me alive!” But what are their long-term expectations? Has anyone told them this could literally be the death of them? Did anyone tell them earlier on in life that this disease was entirely preventable if they’d taken control of their own destination and got the right guidance BEFORE the symptom arose? No.
The truth is that we expect the world to take care of us. We see it as our right to have children, but we don’t see it as our responsibility to look after ourselves so we don’t become dependent on them. The population is only expanding. The resources are becoming more and more stretched as we all become less independent and our population health declines. We should be doing the opposite, we should be focusing on how we can put less strain on our health services through our own choices in PREVENTING disease. What is the easiest way we can do that? Eating healthfully and staying physically fit. We all need to have less expectation on the rest of the world to look after us when we develop preventable disease, by committing to doing all that we can to avoid it in the first place.