What is health?

Welcome to Discovering Balance!  This space is where I plan to share information on how we can live a balanced life.  We will be discussing any number of topics from health information and MISinformation, body positivity and trust, Intuitive Eating, Health at Every Size, ways to manage stress, my favorite things like cooking tools, my favorite ways to incorporate movement, favorite foods, movies, books, art…anything and everything having to do with achieving a more balanced and wonderful life.  My goal is to be able to share not only what helps me achieve balance but hope that you will share, as well.  I’m always appreciative of ideas so if there is something that you’d like to see, let me know!  I hope you enjoy visiting – subscribe to the blog today so that you won’t miss out on any updates.

 

This week I’d like to kick the series off by discussing health.

So I had this entire post ready to go about this topic, and then an exciting moment happened yesterday…Self Magazine featured a plus-size superstar, Tess Holliday, on its Health webpage and the timing could not have been better!

But first, let’s just quickly talk about the definition of health and a little bit about when things began to shift:

In 1948, The World Health Organization adopted its constitution defining health as “a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.”  At the time, this seemed a broad and inclusive approach.  Even today, we can look at this definition and see it as a positive approach to health.

Recently, researchers broadened the definition to include the ability for our bodies to adapt to new threats and sicknesses.

But health includes not only physical but mental well-being.  A person who is physically healthy has a body that functions at peak performance through regular movement, balanced nutrition, and rest.  Mental health refers to our emotional, psychological, and social well-being and is just as important as physical health.

Other factors that come into play are your genes, your environment, your income and education level, and your relationships with friends and family.

Wellness is now a term that is being used to enhance health, promoting a state of optimal well-being centered around maximizing our potential.  It includes physical, intellectual, social, spiritual, environmental and emotional well-being.

When the term “peak” is used, it should be noted that each person’s peak wellness will differ from individual to individual.  My peak health, and how I achieve wellness, will not be the same as yours and vice versa.  READ:  there is no wrong or right way to achieve your healthy balance.

Somehow over the years, weight and body size became synonymous with health.  You can see that the definition, even back in 1946 mentioned nothing about weight or size.  So when did this happen?

From as far back as we have been able to cultivate images of women, different body sizes have been revered.  Up until the 19th century, women were sculpted, painted and portrayed as voluptuous and round.  In the late 19th century, this changed and women with slight builds, corseted waists, and delicate fingers and feet became idealized.  In the 1920’s the beauty ideal was almost strictly focused on slender women, and this was also when ads for weight loss began to materialize.  By the 1940s, slender was in, and increased bust-size became the ideal.  It is interesting to note that it was at this time that researchers began to note some of the first instances of negative body images.

In the 90’s overweight women began to be portratyed on TV as undesireable and unintelligent.  It was also at this time that the media began to report about the “obesity crisis.”  Between 1980 and 2004, news headlines with obesity-related stories increased from 60 to more than 6,500.  Many of these articles have exaggerated the dangers of being overweight and are supported by organizations who are substantially financed by weight-loss and pharmaceutical companies.

Naturally, people began to believe that being of a certain size meant that you were automatically not healthy.  There are numerous studies which contradict this information and as we continue discussing different topics, I will likely share that information, but for today I’ll just share two large scale studies.  The results from these two reports – the first including the largest cohort of US adults, the second involving more than 19 different studies – revealed that people in the “overweight category” or those whose BMIs were between 23-29, had a lower mortality rate than those at either end of the statistical extremes.  What does this mean?  It means that if you “fit” into the overweight category, odds are that you will live as long as someone who is considered “normal weight” and longer than if you were in the underweight category, or the higher end of the obese category.

Additionally, researchers have also discovered what they refer to as the “obesity paradox“.  What they found is that obese individuals who have experienced issues like hypertension, diabetes, chronic kidney disease, and cardiovascular disease, heart attacks, and angioplasty survive these ailments longer than thinner people who have experienced the same ailments.

So, you see that size does NOT always matter when it comes to health.  You shouldn’t fear that carrying around some extra weight will send you to an early grave.  You can’t believe all of the messages that you see in the media.  You cannot look at someone and automatically know what their individual health markers are…and quite honestly, why would you even try?

Which brings me back to the Self Magazine article and Tess Holliday.  The title of her article says simply this:  Tess Holliday’s Health is None of Your Business.

It is her response to people who have seen her on social media and were compelled to chastise her for her health simply due to her size.  We call those people “trolls.”  Quite fitting if you ask me.  I hope you’ll take a moment to read it because it supports what my message is here today.

My message today is about living your life as best as you choose.  Eat some good food, move in ways that make you happy, get some sleep, don’t stress about that which you cannot control, stop worrying about the scale, spend time with people who make you happy.  I know it may be easier said than done for some of those things, but ultimately moving towards these goals will bring you a dose of good health in its most pure form, yours.