Trust The Science!

[seer]

All these years we were told, by the science, that the BMI was a good indicator concerning possible health issues. Now we find it was racist and pretty much useless!

BMI measurement deemed ‘racist’ in new medical report: ‘This is politics, not medicine'

Dr. Marc Siegel says cancel culture fueled AMA guidance: 'Moving in the wrong direction’

The American Medical Association (AMA) is now discouraging the use of body mass index (BMI), calling it an "imperfect" and "problematic" means of assessing body fat and claiming it has been used for "racist exclusion."

The comments were included in a report presented at the 2023 AMA Annual Meeting inChicago, Illinois earlier this month.

"BMI cutoffs are based on the imagined ideal Caucasian and [do] not consider a person’s gender or ethnicity," the report stated.

https://www.foxnews.com/health/bmi-m...litics-not-med

[Machinist]

"Weight Diversity"? Good grief!!!!

[Mountain Man]

The "experts" have been saying for a while that promoting good diet and exercise is somehow "racist".

https://nypost.com/2022/12/30/time-m...acist-origins/

Is there anything that isn't considered racist these days?

[tabibito]

"Weight Diversity"? Good grief!!!!

There have been documented problems with BMI as far back as I can remember, though none so serious as to indicate the concept is useless: just things that indicate it needed re-calibrating with a wider range of variables taken into consideration. The problem now is that everything is viewed through a PC lens.

[rogue06]

From the end of last year

Less than a month after being enlightened that the Discovery Channel's Shark Week is both sexist and racist (as evidenced by the number of guys named "Mike" that have been on ), I have now learned that exercise is a part of some sort of kind of white supremacist plot thanks to this piece in Time magazine

Source: The White Supremacist Origins of Exercise, and 6 Other Surprising Facts About the History of U.S. Physical Fitness

ow did U.S. exercise trends go from reinforcing white supremacy to celebrating Richard Simmons? That evolution is explored in a new book by a historian of exercise, Natalia Mehlman Petrzela, author of the book Fit Nation: The Gains and Pains of America’s Exercise Obsession, out Jan. 2023.

Nowadays, at the beginning of every New Year, many Americans hit the gym to work off their holiday feasts. This momentum usually starts to fade in mid-January, according to a 2019 analysis of data on fitness tracking apps by Bloomberg. But such new year’s resolutions are pretty new—as is the concept of exercise as a way to improve bodily health.

“It’s really not until the 1980s that you start to have a consensus that everybody should be doing some form of exercise,” says Mehlman Petrzela, a professor at the New School in New York City. That’s partly the result of the women’s movement of the 1960s and 1970s, which fought for Title IX, allowing girls to play school sports. That pushed back on notions that girls and women aren’t capable of doing vigorous exercise because they’re fragile.

Perfect for reading on the treadmill or stationary bike, the below conversation with Mehlman Petrzela outlines the earliest ideas on exercise, delves into the history of various popular workouts, and the outsize influence of Richard Simmons.

Your book Fit Nation starts out by talking about how fat was something to aspire to and that was a sign of wealth and healthiness. How did Americans go from a mentality of “fat is good” to “skinny is better?”

One of the things I set out to do in this book is to look at the change in how we think about our bodies and what’s considered attractive. Until the 1920s or so, to be what would be considered today fat or bigger, was actually desirable and actually signified affluence—which is like the polar opposite of today, when so much of the obesity epidemic discourse is connected to socio-economic inequality and to be fat is often to be seen as to be poor.

How did that happen? Well, in a moment when actually there wasn’t a lot of access to caloric foods, to be fat showed that you could afford these things that were out of the reach of most people and also you could afford to rest, like you weren’t out there doing manual labor all day. As that caloric food became more accessible, and as more people were doing sedentary white-collar work and had access to cars and leisure, somebody who could resist those caloric foods, exercise, and have a thin body, was seen as more desirable.

What’s the most surprising thing you learned in your research?

It was super interesting reading the reflections of fitness enthusiasts in the early 20th century. They said we should get rid of corsets, corsets are an assault on women’s form, and that women should be lifting weights and gaining strength. At first, you feel like this is so progressive.

Then you keep reading, and they’re saying white women should start building up their strength because we need more white babies. They’re writing during an incredible amount of immigration, soon after enslaved people have been emancipated. This is totally part of a white supremacy project. So that was a real “holy crap” moment as a historian, where deep archival research really reveals the contradictions of this moment.

Your book talks about how, at one point, America’s focus was on exercising so we could have a population that was ready to go to war. What is health and fitness culture training us to do? How has that expectation evolved over time?

During the New Deal [of the 1930s], the Civilian Conservation Corps would recruit out-of-work or impoverished, scrawny men to go work in the forest and on public works projects. One of the ways that they marketed this was “it puts muscles on your bones.”

That really picked up during the Cold War. Right after World War II, you start to have more concern about Americans getting soft, this idea that the things that made America great—like cars and TV sets—were actually taking a toll on Americans’ bodies. Presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy went on a mission to make exercise look wholesome and patriotic and focus on shifting the purpose of exercise to being a good citizen and defending your country.

In the 1980s, there’s a huge boom in the fitness industry, connected to this “work hard, play hard” mentality. I was also really moved speaking to gay men who had lived through HIV/AIDS and talked about how they exercised to display that they had a healthy body at a moment when there was so much homophobia. Some gyms became like community centers, sharing medical information, almost like mutual aid societies.

Another big turning point is 9/11. You see a boom in the CrossFit mentality of almost like militarized fitness and girding yourself and your body for a fight—not necessarily, by the way, in the 1950s/1960s way of fighting for the U.S. Army—but more like “you need to know how to perform functional fitness to protect yourself if things go wrong.” At the same time, you see [an emphasis on] wellness, self care and healing and being meditative in an increasingly traumatic and unpredictable world.

What era of fitness are we in now?

Gym usage is rebounding rapidly since the pandemic [lockdown ordinances], but now it’s also really efficient for a lot of people to exercise at home. What’s so unfortunate about the pandemic is how much it accelerated fitness inequality. You can go home and be on your Peloton if you can afford it, if you have the space for it, but not everyone can.

I was meeting with somebody who’s very active in the New York City pickleball world, and you have all of these adults who want to do this inclusive recreational thing, and they’re competing with children who want to go out and skateboard and do basketball. Those are wonderful things, and we don’t have the public space to accommodate them.

Did you find an exercise that people don’t do now, but they did do in a certain period of history, that’s just comical to think about?

“Reducing machines” are a really good example of an exercise machine that just went away. Well into the 1960s, women were not encouraged to do any kind of strenuous exercise, but they were of course encouraged to do whatever it took to be beautiful and slim.

So you would either lie down like on a bed or stand with a belt around you, and the machines would shake your fat. They were meant to enhance circulation but also to shake away cellulite. Reducing machines were everywhere; people would buy them for their houses. There was one called the “magic couch” that every woman wanted for Christmas.

The idea that all bodies can exert themselves and work hard—including women’s bodies— is a really positive development, and it’s one of the reasons that you don’t see those passive exercise machines anymore.

How did running become a popular exercise in the 1970s? It’s often hailed as a great equalizer, an exercise everyone can do with hardly any gear required? Did you find that to be the case?

It became popular among environmentalists, people who were imagining what it would be like to be in a culture that was not centered around cars. The sneakers back then were pretty rudimentary—old work shoes with rubber soles.

But it’s important to point out that access was never totally equal, if you lived in a neighborhood that didn’t have safe streets or streets that were not well lit. Women were catcalled. People of color were thought to be committing a crime.

The “running is for everybody” discourse still quite often leaves out the fact that depending on where you live and the body that you live in, it can be a very different kind of experience.

Your book has so many interesting stories about the origins of various workouts. I learned that Pilates can be traced all the way back to World War I, when its founder, Joseph Pilates was detained on the Isle of Man and created resistance contraptions out of hospital beds to help prisoners of war keep up their muscle strength. How can the influence of Pilates be seen in today’s fitness culture?

That sets the foundation for the idea that exercise isn’t an indulgent little hobby some people have; it’s actually something that can keep you healthy. Joseph Pilates came to the United States, developing this system that he first called “Contrology,” and he became really an important part of the dance and performance community. And that did a lot to raise the bar on what fitness represented because, as I talk about at length, a lot of the cultural associations with fitness were like dank gymnasiums and big muscular men heaving weights.

It sounds like Pilates made exercise seem like something that could be graceful too.

Yes, Pilates’ studio on Eighth Avenue in Manhattan was [patronized by] opera stars and ballet dancers who are working on their bodily strength, so that did a lot to sanitize and upgrade the reputation of fitness. A lot of people embraced exercise as something that could make them look like a dancer.

Going into this book, the only famous fitness instructor I had heard of was Richard Simmons. How influential was he?

He’s really important in terms of shifting who was welcome in gyms. One of the reasons that he ended up starting his own studio is that he went to this very famous studio Gilda Marx, and he absolutely loved aerobics, but he was asked not to come back because women didn’t feel comfortable working out with a man who was singing and so emotive during his workout. And I think he opened a studio where everybody felt welcomed there, including fat people, who felt like they couldn’t step foot into a health club or a studio to take an aerobics class because no one looked like them there.

Today, you see quite a few fat people in the fitness industry, who are operating from a better perspective, which is that your body size does not necessarily dictate your fitness level. We should not presume that because you are fat, that you are not fit or that you want to lose weight. And I think that we probably couldn’t have had that without Richard Simmons.

What’s the future of fitness?

I would love for the future of fitness not only to be about [WiFi] connected treadmills and luxury clubs where people can go hang out and drink green juice after their workout, but rather for a collective public investment in making fitness and recreation available to everybody and much more accessible than it currently is. We do agree as a culture, for the most part, that exercise is good for you, but our policy environment has not caught up with that. We should acknowledge that that’s one of the few things that we can agree on in our culture, and then have a kind of bipartisan shared investment in better physical education, better recreation [spaces] for kids and adults.


Source

© Copyright Original Source

No. That wasn't a piece put out by the Babylon Bee. Or even the Onion.

Nothing about the boom of exercising in the 80s being inspired by a dawning realization of the health dangers of a sedentary lifestyle -- going into work and sitting behind a desk all day, driving home, eating, watching some TV and sleeping. Rinse and repeat for a few decades.

Yes "plumpness" was once considered desirable back in the time when actual starvation was a real thing and having a little extra meat on the bones was regarded as a sign of healthiness. Now, when extremely few in the U.S. or other western nations, are in danger of starving through lack of food, that is no longer the case.

And, FWIW, "reducing machines" went away because of one simple reason. They didn't work.

A number of blacks have ripped the whole concept of exercise being a white supremacist plot of some kind. The New York Post notes a few

“First math was a tool of white supremacy. Now it’s exercise. Pretty soon, food is gonna be a tool to continue systemic racism oppression,” former heavyweight boxer Ed Latimore wrote while sharing the article.


820eed28-7324-45ba-8d5a-d3532f324cf7.jpg

British rapper Zuby, who wrote a book about fitness called “Strong Advice,” said it would “eviscerate every remaining shred of [Time’s] credibility and perceived legitimacy.”

“It doesn’t anger me at all. It’s so goofy I consider it satire,” he wrote.
“We all know that only Nazis work out of course.”

If exercise was some sort of "white supremacist project" then looking at most professional competitive sports, it didn't work out too well.

Then, seeming to double up on this, someone juxtaposed the Time story with another in Scientific American proclaiming that higher rates of obesity among blacks is the result of -- what else? -- racism.



04c840c0-637a-4ae3-9a37-66926bec9a83.jpg

Still, I think my favorite response has to be



cc351caf-76fb-45b9-8b46-573eb39abcb5.jpg

Just say no to exercise unless you're a racist #NoExercise

[Gondwanaland]

There have been documented problems with BMI as far back as I can remember, though none so serious as to indicate the concept is useless: just things that indicate it needed re-calibrating with a wider range of variables taken into consideration. The problem now is that everything is viewed through a PC lens.

Yep the very basic "weight versus height" calculation had a number of problems as it didn't account for muscle versus fat and a bodybuilder could be getting an "obese" BMI, people could be "skinnyfat", etc..

IIRC they made a number of adjustments in recent years to how to more accurately calculate, including visceral fat measurements, muscle mass, etc.
But yeah, all they can do these days is see race everywhere.

[Gondwanaland]

All these years we were told, by the science, that the BMI was a good indicator concerning possible health issues. Now we find it was racist and pretty much useless!

Interesting, so basically they want black people (who suffer more obesity) to have as many health problems and early deaths as possible it sounds like....

[Ronson]

All these years we were told, by the science, that the BMI was a good indicator concerning possible health issues. Now we find it was racist and pretty much useless!

My biggest complaint with BMI is that "the establishment" often used the weight/height of the population in the 1960s as target templates. But in the 60s, there was far more tobacco and alcohol consumption that would keep the average weight down. It's not like they were all going to health clubs back then. Less smoking and alcohol consumption to take the place of meals is going to result is a slightly heavier population.*

* Of course, I'm not talking about fast-food super-sizers.

[Machinist]

But fat people can't run races that well.

[Stoic]

As a white male who is not a body builder, it works for me!

[firstfloor]

Demand real food. Read Ultra-Processed People by Chris van Tulleken.

[Diogenes]

Demand real food.

So don't demand fake or lab grown meat?

Of course, it's the processing that makes food transportable. "Real" food also costs more to produce.

[Diogenes]

My biggest complaint with BMI is that "the establishment" often used the weight/height of the population in the 1960s as target templates. But in the 60s, there was far more tobacco and alcohol consumption that would keep the average weight down. It's not like they were all going to health clubs back then. Less smoking and alcohol consumption to take the place of meals is going to result is a slightly heavier population.*

* Of course, I'm not talking about fast-food super-sizers.

Also they had manufacturing jobs, not service or office jobs. They also let kids play till dark and probably had better food. That gets into the boom of soy, corn syrup, canola oil, and other additives.

[firstfloor]

So don't demand fake or lab grown meat?

Of course, it's the processing that makes food transportable. "Real" food also costs more to produce.

Highly processed food causes large, population scale, and very expensive, health issues. It is a false economy to buy cheap processed food. Check the labels and reject anything with long lists of weird sounding ingredients.

And by your purchasing decisions, food producers will find a way to deliver a healthy product.

[CivilDiscourse]

Highly processed food causes large, population scale, and very expensive, health issues. It is a false economy to buy cheap processed food. Check the labels and reject anything with long lists of weird sounding ingredients.

And by your purchasing decisions, food producers will find a way to deliver a healthy product.

FF, I believe you should cut out dihydrogen monoxide from your diet completely.