How the Scale Lies About Your Health
I was out to lunch with some friends and the topic of exercise came up.
“You don’t need to exercise, you’re skinny!” said Jenny* to our lean friend Abbie*.
“Well, I exercise so that I can eat!” Abbie fired back, shoveling more chips and queso into her mouth. The discussion of calories, exercise, and body weight ensued.
It became clear to me that my friends, like most people, believed the sole purpose of exercise is for weight loss and body weight regulation. As I listened to this conversation, the results of recent epidemiological studies began to race through my mind. I felt a growing urgency to share this research.
However, I’ve learned that no one likes a know it all … or to hear about research at lunch with their friends. So, I managed to take off my glasses, tame the nerd inside of me, and save these words for my subscribers and interested readers.:)
How the Scale Lies
This conversation reflects the common wrong belief in our society that exercise is only for weight loss and weight maintenance. Sadly, it prevents people from reaping the many benefits of exercise. For example, people who are overweight often start exercising– to lose weight. When they don’t see weight loss very quickly, they conclude it’s not working, and stop exercising.
What they don’t know- is that it is working, but that the scale lies. Exercise produces a range of benefits that extend well beyond the scale. Health is not solely body weight and weight loss is not the sole measure of progress. Furthermore, if your body weight is in a healthy range, but you don’t exercise, it is highly likely that your heart health is poor.
The scale may say that your body weight is healthy, but what it can’t tell you is that your arteries are clogged and your heart is strained.
What does the research say?
Recent research in epidemiology shows that one factor rises to the top as the most important predictor of chronic diseases like cardiovascular disease (CVD) and mortality from CVD. Cardiorespiratory fitness (CRF), a measure of person’s cardiovascular ability and is a product of regular exercise, is the leading predictor of all-cause deaths in men and women.
This study followed over 50,000 men and women for more than 15 years. They measured risk factors including CRF, obesity, smoking, hypertension (high blood pressure), high cholesterol, and diabetes. Then… they waited to see who died. The results showed that low CRF contributed to more deaths (> 3500) than any other measured risk factor (see Figure 1). In fact, low CRF was eight times a greater risk factor than obesity.
From a health and longevity perspective, focusing more on living an active lifestyle is eight times more effective than fixating on the number on the scale.
Furthermore, a similar study examined risk of CVD mortality by fitness and body weight. As you can see in Figure 2, fitness is a much stronger risk factor for death from CVD than whether a person is normal, over weight, or obese. In fact, people who were fit, but obese had a lower risk for CVD mortality than people who were at a normal weight but unfit!
What the scale can’t tell you about your heath is the condition of your cardiovascular profile.
Conclusion
It’s not bad or wrong to weigh yourself or make efforts to maintain or achieve a healthy weight. However, the research is clear that prioritizing exercise and fitness above body weight is more valuable from a cardiovascular and longevity perspective. Thus, as long as we exercise, let’s not be so discouraged if the scale doesn’t say what we want it to!
Thanks for reading! 🙂
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Reference:
Blair, S. N. (2009). Physical inactivity: the biggest public health problem of the 21st century. Br J Sports Med, 43. Retrieved from: http://bjsm.bmj.com/content/bjsports/43/1/1.full.pdf
*Names were changed changed.
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