So I was mooching through the paper this morning when I saw yet another article about the way in which using BMI as a tool for measuring whether or not someone is at a healthy weight is losing popularity. To be honest I’ve never paid much heed to those numbers anyway – mine’s off the scale, so I’m not going to get hung up on the fact that whatever number it lands on tells me I’m fat…that’s hardly breaking news is it?
I mean, I have mirrors in my house, right? That’s all the proof I need isn’t it? I look in it, I can’t help noticing that I’m fat, job done. I certainly don’t need a boffin in a white coat and an algorithm to confirm it. For people who don’t have a mirror there are a host of other ways to confirm it. Such as.
If you can’t fit behind the wheel of your car and you’re not pregnant, you’re fat. If you can’t fasten the safety harness on a roller coaster, you’re fat (and you might want to think about getting off…just sayin’). If you walk into a clothes shop and walk out with a new scarf because it’s the only thing in their two thousand square feet that fits you, you’re fat. And If you book a camel-riding excursion on holiday in Tunisia and they have to weight the second passenger down with sandbags so you don’t end up underneath the camel, you’re fat.
There are enough clues, right? I’ve personally tested all of the above and confirm that they’re fairly accurate. I could provide more clues to look out for, if you’re still unsure. Thing is though, if you’re fat, you know you’re fat. You don’t need a number to drive the point home.
And (oh God she’s off, up on the soapbox now) I think lots of fat kids could be shielded from unnecessary daggers to the heart if the powers that be took a pragmatic approach to childhood obesity in schools…I’ve seen more than one story in the newspapers where little Johnny’s mum has received a letter home basically saying your child is fat.
The story is usually illustrated by a photo of both little Johnny and his mum looking sadly at the offending letter. And presumably, in order to confirm the diagnosis of fat, little Johnny has had to queue up in the way we used to have to queue up for the nit nurse, and get weighed. Which if you are bigger than the average bear would be traumatic in itself, right? The letter home calling you out as fat would just about finish you off.
I was a fat child. If you read my earliest posts, you’ll remember the way my teacher compared my weight to that of an adult pig, and forty five years later I can still taste the humiliation. I hate that there might be kids out there now feeling hurt and humiliated because somebody with a clipboard has decided their BMI says they are fat. Some of the little Johnny’s I’ve seen in the paper didn’t look fat to me, and labelling them as such could do way more harm than good.
So, if the trend is moving away from giving too much credence to BMI, I for one don’t think it’s a bad thing. Your eyes will give you all the info you need…just my humble opinion 🙂
