Product Description

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #178646 in Books
• Published on: 2002-07-18
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

Amazon.com
If you've ever looked at height-weight tables in your doctor's office or calculated your body-mass index from a formula in a fitness magazine, and realized that you're technically overweight, this book is for you. Not only does it expose the highly flawed methodology used to calculate those ideals, it also argues that you can be fit at any weight. In fact, the author asserts, being heavier is actually better for you in some ways: statistically, you have a better chance of living a longer life if you're both active and on the heavy side. But there's the rub: being heavy in itself is no virtue. Exercise and healthful eating are still the keys to vitality and longevity. It's just that weight control has been unrealistically foisted upon us by the insurance and fashion industries, making us miserably concerned with girth when there's often no need for worry.

From Booklist
It seems that anything society decides is conventional wisdom sooner or later gets debunked. Happily, such is the case with many of our ideas about body fat; hence, this book exposing the ostensible facts about fat. Gaesser presents a wide range of evidence to make his overall point that much of what Americans think is true about fat and its threat to health is not. Bowing to conventional wisdom, not only do people undertake diets and other therapies to achieve unachievable results, some make themselves less healthy by losing too much weight or become obsessed with what is actually "good fat" --the provocative term Gaesser uses for the subcutaneous fat usually found on the hips and thighs, which is "biochemically better suited to taking fat out of the bloodstream" --where fat is most dangerous--than is the other, "bad" fat. Unfortunately, excess good fat is also harder to get rid of, and, alas, the cosmetic offenses of good fat are harder to overcome. For those wishing an informed, even enlightened approach to controlling body fat, this is essential reading. Mike Tribby

From the Publisher
"Fascinating, witty, informative...Dr. Gaesser makes a valuable contribution that will have to be reckoned with."
-- Reubin Andres, M.D., Clinical Director, National Institute on Aging, National Institutes of Health

"A wonderfully affirming read."
-- The Feminist Bookstore News

Customer Reviews

There's More to Being Fat Than "Obesity Kills"...
What if being overweight could be healthy? Apparently, it's not the pipe dream the majority of the world and researchers would like us to think. In Big Fat Lies, Glenn Gaesser unlocks the myths about obesity specifically the biggest of them all "obesity kills". Glenn is a graduate of the University of California and taught at UCLA and the University of Virginia so he isn't just blowing smoke up our fat butts.

He feels the obsession of a person's weight needs to be dropped mostly because weight loss is no guarantee for improved health. With his book he hopes to reshape your thinking on the various aspects of body weight and health, I think he will. Obviously, some facts are unquestionable if you eat only bad food and don't exercise you're in trouble. But overweight people can be strong and healthy; sometimes stronger and healthier than their slim counterparts.

With simple truths and simple facts Glenn explains how our expectations of body weight have been directed by insurance companies, the diet industry (30 billion plus industry), the fashion industry and of course media appeal. He thinks we should be focusing on metabolic fitness instead of weight. He discusses in great detail his views on metabolic fitness.

Glenn succeeds in taking the focus off weight. Instead he sheds light on the importance of physical activity over "exercise". The purpose of the physical activity is not to lose weight but to be healthy by moving. Lo-Carb-ers will not be impressed with the Nutrition for Metabolic Fitness section but I like how he encourages adding instead of taking away. According to him "No foods are strictly off limits."

A lot of what's discussed are the studies ignored over the last 20+ years showing body fat is not the problem. "Fat in the arteries and fat on the body are different and not necessarily related." Study after study becomes a bit tedious after a while but it is still good to know there's more to the studies than "obesity kills." For sure this book won't appease the die hard skeptic but for those of us who are obese, eat our fruits, veggies and continue a daily bout of physical activity, at least we know for sure it isn't all in our head. We're healthy.

I'm sure when you are finished reading Big Fat Lies you'll have a different view on the role of fat in your life. Pun intended. Reviewed by M. E. Wood

Must Have Advocate
I'd love to have a case of this book so that I could gift one to every health care professional who has made snap decisions on their patients based on visible fat. Well, I guess I'd need more than a case of them, wouldn't I... because that tendency is far too prevalent.

I am a healthcare worker, and have long had a love/hate relationship with my fat body. Yes, I do think obesity exacerbates preexisting illnesses; but I don't believe fat causes illness in and of itself. Looking at comparative studies of people who are of moderate weight and even thin who have the same dietary and exercise patterns would be a more useful guage than immediately assuming that weight loss will magically make health problems disappear. Many times, it doesn't.

Recently the New England Journal of Medicine published a study that claimed that weight loss could extend your life by a (staggering) five to nine months. Wow. Whoopee.

Could be the most important book you read this year.
Glenn Gaesser, Big Fat Lies (Gurze, 2002)

Do yourself a favor-- find this book and read it as soon as possible.

The first two sections of this book show a study in selective reasoning by the medical establishment. Gaesser provides a mountain of evidence that all we've been told by the insurance industry, the medical industry, and the fitness over the last half-century or so regarding weight loss is a lie. We hear some of it now and again on the news, especially how low weight is linked to osteoporosis, but you've never seen this much of it together all in one place. Gaesser's position is that exercise, not weight, is primarily responsible for a person's health, and that "exercise" as we know it today (high-impact aerobic exercise) is not the be-all and end-all foisted upon us. All of which points out why overweight and obese people should be reading it (and popularizing it), and they are its target audience to be sure, but Gaesser makes a lot of noise about the normal- or underweight unfit, too.

The first two parts of the book are the theory, the third part is the practice. Gaesser provides a simple, easy-to-follow exercise regimen suggestion, infinitely customizable for the average person, and dietary suggestions without ever proposing a diet per se; his goal is to steer us towards eating healthier rather than rationing out what we can and can't eat. Again, the thin will benefit from following his guidelines just as much as the overweight. It's all common sense, of course, but he does point out a number of things that may surprise the average grocery shopper (for example, the actual amount of fat to be found in whole milk, which is staggering).

The book's only real flaw is stylistic; Gaesser, not to much surprise, has adopted the medical-jargon use of "overweight" and "underweight" as nouns rather than adjectives, and it's enough to drive the average stickler up the wall. It is certainly not, however, enough to put anyone off reading this. It may be the most important book you read all year, and should go on the short shelf of sacred books next to Peele's The Diseasing of America. **** ½