Are they really unhealthy?

A friend just told me that Ebony Magazine had written an article on how unhealthy black women have become. In this article it stated that 80% of black women were very obese and the trend was getting worse every year. When he text me this, at first, I felt like texting back, “Why are the percentages so low that they quoted?” But then I gave it some real thought and my mind went back to my African trip and I remember all those beautiful black women I met and conversed with. I can actually say that each one of them was, according to our BMI chart, obese. But the question I had for myself was, as heavy as they looked, these women would walk miles every day. These women are much more active than I will ever be and it is all out of necessity. Are they really unhealthy? When I look at African Black women and compare them to American Black women I see many comparisons and one of them is body type. This need to be taken into consideration. We need to consider people groups and not make blanket statements.

Let’s look at another people group, Germans. These women are robust and hard working. They are very strong and in some cases all the ones I know are much stronger than some of the men I have at the gym. If you looked at them and did their BMI you would think “obese”. Then look at the Chinese, when they are young and middle aged they are thin and frail, does that make them healthy because their BMI says that they are under 25%?

If you recall I wrote a blog on the Barbie and Ken doll syndrome and how we try and put people in a box and tell them that for them to be really healthy they need to look like this, eat like this, walk like this and sound like that. Every women needs to have a 36-24-36 figure and each man has to have a 45 inch chest and washboard abs and a 28 inch waist. The health industry wants us to feel as though we need to look like that and if we fall short of it, well then, we need to be fixed to get healthy and they have the magic pills for us to take.

I have never followed the BMI because it is very faulty. Did you know that according to their BMI I am Obese, yea me. I have 6% body fat and my lean muscle mass is, well let’s not even go there. Am I unhealthy? I think not. Now I know that the BMI was originally designed by actuaries to show Insurance companies the statistical probability of a certain person at a certain weight, height and age and weight the probability of sickness or even death. For years it has worked for them, but can we look at a whole population of people and just blanket say that they are mostly all out of shape? I think not. I hope not!

Are the majority of black women out of shape and obese? I don’t know but what I do know is that we, as Americans, need to begin to take responsibility for our own health situation and make it much better than it is. We need to hold each other accountable because in the end… our country depends on it.