This is one of the most frustrating things about how we, as a society, talk about obesity - we act like you can know something meaningful about a person's lifestyle and health from a single glance. Not to mention the related assumption that a thin body is inherently desirable and worth striving for.
A measurement like BMI, which is a great way of looking at a population, is a terrible way of understanding an individual, and the use of weight and BMI as a stand-in for health is infuriatingly wrongheaded.
I'd argue that most people - other than knowing they're overweight - know little about their lifestyle as well (or at least they don't know it as well as they'd like to think).
The prevalence of quantified self & self-tracking is starting to change this & when you're able to measure & track inputs better, you're better able to correlate the results with them as well.
Comments
This is one of the most frustrating things about how we, as a society, talk about obesity - we act like you can know something meaningful about a person's lifestyle and health from a single glance. Not to mention the related assumption that a thin body is inherently desirable and worth striving for.
A measurement like BMI, which is a great way of looking at a population, is a terrible way of understanding an individual, and the use of weight and BMI as a stand-in for health is infuriatingly wrongheaded.
I'd argue that most people - other than knowing they're overweight - know little about their lifestyle as well (or at least they don't know it as well as they'd like to think).
The prevalence of quantified self & self-tracking is starting to change this & when you're able to measure & track inputs better, you're better able to correlate the results with them as well.
Based on your sibling comments (which as of this moment consist of "you're still eating too much food and not exercising enough"), I agree.