10 Photos That Show Why This Size 22 Woman Just Landed a Major Modeling Contract

[Ms. Toad]

92. There are correlations between weight and some diseases,

but there are also many very healthy obese people. I am one of them. I have NO health problems associated with weight - and, as noted in my earlier post, I am more physically fit than most people whose weight falls within the normal BMI range. My office is on the 3rd floor - I climb the stairs daily (several times) to reach it without getting winded. My student assistants, decades younger with normal BMI, are panting more frequently than not when they pop through my doorway.

All too often, the assumption is made that weight is the source of everything else that is wrong - and rather than diagnose and treat the condition, the overweight person is told to lose weight. And when a person whose BMI is in the normal range has conditions presumed to be connected with weight - because of the strong mental link between the two - doctors often have no options to offer short of dumping massive quantities of medication at the problem.

My spouse - normal BMI - has Type II diabetes. The counseling session our insurance company required following her diagnosis focused almost entirely on losing weight. She received little information about how to eat properly aside from minimizing calories. While it is likely she would need metformin to maintain her blood sugar in the appropriate range, because the entire focus of the dietary counseling was on losing weight - which differs from eating to maintain weight but control blood sugar. And losing weight would not have been a healthy option for her.

She also has high cholesterol (managed by medication) and high blood pressure (managed by medication). Both strongly linked in doctors minds to weight - so the options are diets which are designed to cause weight loss or pharmaceutical management.

While some - perhaps even many - overweight people are also unhealthy, many of us are not. And the assumption that we would be healthier doing yo-yo dieting (the nearly inevitable result of trying to lose weight) is incorrect.