Warning: Your Body Shouldn't Be Too Fat or Too Skinny

Some people associate good health with weight gain.

I've heard people say things like "Oh, you're putting on some weight. It looks good on you."

It's nice to pay a compliment to someone.

And even nicer when you're not the one carrying around an extra twenty or thirty pounds.

To be too skinny is not good. Nor is carrying too much weight.

But I digress...

In fairness, normalized weight gain that balances with height and frame does look good. But who has that?


The subject of being anorexic or obese is particularly sensitive for women.

On the one hand, you have Hollywood and fashion houses showcasing female stick figures as the symbol of beauty and feminism.

On the other end of that, we have full-figured women who hate themselves for wearing a 12 twelve, after seeing their barely visible counterpart in a size zero. Feeling hopeless and ugly, they binge their way into a size twenty-two--allegedly.

The human body shouldn't be too fat or too skinny.

After the shock of seeing an extremely skinny model on the catwalk, conversation spins around it until the fright of it wears off. Then passing of blame commences.

Health organizations blame Hollywood, Hollywood blames the designers, the designers blame the model and the model gets the guilty verdict. Rightly or wrongly, it becomes the model's cross to bear.

The human anatomy, as complex and capable as it is, does not respond well to radical weight gain or extreme loss of if.

For instance, with extreme weight loss, the body's system undergoes shock each time an unnatural event forces food from it before it can extract the benefits.

Anorexia nervosa affects the whole body. Brain and nerves are affected so that the person can't think clearly, experiencing changes in brain chemistry. Also, the hair thins and becomes brittle for lack of nutrients.

Other maladies include blood, muscles, joints and bones, intestines, hormones, and skin.  These individuals also experience heart and kidney failure if not treated in time to prevent organ failure.

According to the CDC (Center for Disease Control and Prevention), the body mass index (BMI) of an individual who is 5'9 is evaluated as follows:

Height	Weight Range	BMI	Considered
5’9	124 lbs or less	Below 18.5	Underweight
	125 lbs to 168 lbs	18.5 to 24.9	Healthy weight
	169 lbs to 202 lbs	25.0 to 29.9	Overweight
	203 lbs or more	30 or higher	Obese

Based on the table contents, a 5'9 person is overweight at 169 pounds and scientifically obese at 203 pounds, when calculating body mass index.

Clearly, not many of us govern our weight by a BMI scale. What's more, not many of us understand the concept.

Nevertheless, there are other factors at work like preservatives and food additives that the body has no idea how to assimilate.

As a result, we have pounds of preservative and food additives stored in our bodies as fat. The body is unfamiliar with the compound and therefore, tucks it away as if for safe keeping, contributing to obesity, which is equally dangerous to one's health.

We're all familiar with the many ailments caused by obesity. They about it on the TV specials, health-consciousness is taught in schools, jobs hand out pamphlets for insurance companies. A sure gauge of obesity is clothing no longer fits and it's difficult to function apart from becoming short-winded.

Nobody talks about obesity or anorexia.  Like talking about other delicate subjects, it's easy to be misread and labeled anti-something--when the aim is to simply discuss serious health issues.

Not talking about weight in terms of too fat or too skinny doesn't diminish the health threat of either extreme. In fact, the subject of weight abnormality gets talked about anyway, in the unfortunate instance of resulting death.

The important common denominator in both instances is food.

Article was written by Peggy Hatchet James
Copyright © 2015