Or, as Kate Harding put it, The Duh Truck Rides Again. What a shock. It turns out thin people die, too:
You can look great in a swimsuit and still be a heart attack waiting to happen.
This shouldn't be news to anyone -- the drug companies pushing Lipitor, Crestor, and the zillion other "ors" all designed to fight the evils of high cholesterol use models intended to look like "average" people -- but apparently it is.
I've said it for years -- you can't tell how fit or healthy someone is just by looking at them.
(And exercise will kill you -- just ask Isaac Hayes.)
Update: I thought I'd add one of my personal pet peeves: the American obsession with weight as a number. What the numbers say when people step on scales often don't have a whole lot to do with whether they look thin, fat, or somewhere in between. Two people can weigh the same thing and look radically different, even if other variables (age, height, and gender) are similar. I'm always annoyed when various celebrities will get raked over the coals for weighing X amount of pounds. A few years ago, back when she was playing Xena, the actress Lucy Lawless made the mistake of admitting to weighing over 150 pounds. It was like, WTF, the woman's a whale if she weighs that much! Well, she's also 6 feet tall. Would anyone flip out if a man who was 6 feet tall said he weighed 150 pounds? No, it would be like, "dude, what's wrong with you. Why are you so thin?" For some screwy (undoubtedly deeply woman-hating) reason, if you're female your weight is supposed to hover down there around 100, maybe 110, regardless of height or bone structure.
I could go on. Suffice to say that back in my younger days I looked forward to the day when I could relax, kick back, look matronly (I've got my grandmother's nose; I might as well accept her body type, too), never step on a scale again, and enjoy my cronehood. No longer an option -- well padded grandmothers have become an endangered species, and crones are expected to spend their free time in pilates class.
Until fairly recently I was one of those thin people waiting for a heart attack, or more accurately waiting for a stroke. I have had high blood pressure and high cholesterol since I was in my late teens. It's genetic for me. Doesn't seem to matter how much or how little or what I eat. I used to be not only thin but fit, as in exercised fit, but still had all those risk factors of the genetically destined to die of stroke or heart attack. I've been on high blood pressure meds since my late teens and on statins since their invention. I'm not pretty sure exercise would kill me.
ReplyDeleteMeant to say, I'm now pretty sure exercise would kill me.
ReplyDeleteLucy Lawless... sigh.
ReplyDeleteI'm the classic yo yo. That is probably the most unhealthy thing to do to my body.
ReplyDeleteAnd body image issues are on my mind a lot lately. I don't like being the size I am now, but I don't want to be all sinewy and hard looking either.
Im in better health now than I have been in years, eating better, losing weight, and yet, I have diabetes, high blod pressure and high cholesterol...I feel better than I have in 30 years...I hope when I do croak, I have a dr pepper in one hand and a dingdong in the other.
ReplyDelete