February 21, 2008 – It is not the extra pounds, but the desire to lose weight that would be bad for your health, concludes an American study1. According to the results, people who are satisfied with their weight, whether or not they are overweight, would be sick less often than others.
Researchers at Columbia University measured the body mass index of the participants, which is 170,577 American adults from several ethnic groups. They also asked them about their desire to lose weight and the number of days during which they were ill, physically and psychologically (stress and depression, for example), each month.
It is in women that the correlation between the desire to lose weight and the number of sick days was the strongest. Those who wanted to lose 1%, 10% and 20% of their weight had accumulated respectively 0.1, 1.6 and 4.3 more sick days than those who were satisfied with their weight, regardless of their index body mass and their age.
The researchers observed the same trend in men, but to a lesser extent. Participants who wanted to lose 20% of their weight had accumulated 2.7 more sick days than those who did not want to lose weight. For both women and men, the association between the desire to lose weight and the number of sick days was more pronounced among whites than among blacks and Hispanics.
These results tell researchers that the gap between a person’s actual weight and the ideal weight they want to achieve is a better predictor of health than body mass index.
Researchers believe that the health problems that obese people suffer from are due in part to their negative self-image. The bodily ideal conveyed in society is a source of stress that harms their physical and mental health, they say.
Emmanuelle Bergeron – PasseportSanté.net
1. Muennig P, Jia H, et al.I Think Therefore I Am: Perceived Ideal Weight as a Determinant of Health,. Am J Public Health. 2008 Jan 30.
