Did you know classes in middle school still have young kids check their BMI to see how healthy they are? A 200 year old chart that only uses basic facts (height and weight) to judge your health. I call bullshit.
According to the chart I am overweight. As are most that look, including young, impressionable girls that take something like that seriously and let it tell them their worth. I refuse to let this chart define me, or anyone I know. I refuse to let it define the worth of developing girls and boys who look to things like this (and classes/teachers that mean well,) but do harm instead.
The BMI chart doesn’t take in exercise level, muscle mass, the build of a person, or other important factors. It makes weight the only important thing, something that can be so deceptive.
It tells me I am overweight, which years ago would have sent me into a tailspin and caused me to to create a lifestyle that was very unhealthy, mentally and physically. I am a 40 year old woman who eats well, moves her body most days, has battled back form years of disordered eating, and yet, I’m too much it says. I’ve done enough work where this doesn’t affect me, but what about our tween and teen girls (or boys?) When they are taught in school to look this up and see how they rate? I hate that for them. Because I know myself, if I had done this at that age I would have been devastated. It would have steered me into a bad direction, and add that into social media now and ads that pop up telling us we need to look a certain way to be perfect? It’s too much.
I don’t have a solution for this, other than to pour my heart out here and to the young girls and women that I have contact with, but I am angry. Angry at a curriculum and society that sets us up for failure when it comes to health and wellness, and feeling whole and worthy. We are more than a number on a scale + an ‘overweight’ diagnosis on an antiquated chart.
