Many people worry about their weight, believing that normal weight equals health and that overweight people are automatically unhealthy. This is not true.
Body weight is not an indicator of health. There are many people who are normal weight and quite unhealthy. An alternative view is that you can be healthy at the size you are right now. The fact is that as body weight increases, there is an increased risk of chronic conditions such as diabetes, hypertension, and heart disease. That means you are more likely to develop such medical problems, not that it guarantees you will.
People are often motivated to diet to lose weight. We know that in most instances, dieting does not work to change body weight and stay changed. It is estimated that 80-85% of people who lose weight by dieting will regain that weight and often gain more. This means there is a 15-20% chance that dieting to lose weight will work overtime.
Where else in medicine would we accept such a low possibility that a treatment would work? If you have a sore throat and the doctor says, Take this antibiotic, there’s a 15-20% chance it will work. Would you feel confident?
When you often lose weight and regain it, also called weight cycling, you increase your risk of the very chronic diseases you may have been trying to avoid. The weight that is regained is often fat weight, increasing your body fat percentage and leaving you potentially less healthy than when you started.
