Is Thinner Always Healthier For Men?

The ways weight loss improves your health with certainty are the changes you can feel. Are your clothes looser? Can you bend over and touch your toes? Have you stopped snoring at night?

Other health improvements from weight loss are far less certain. I’ll give you the (real) example of two brothers. One brother, we’ll call him Jim, who has the build of a linebacker, struggles to keep his weight to 250 pounds. He diets constantly, but has diabetes, high blood pressure, asthma, and emphysema, even though he has never smoked. His brother Joe has a sumo wrestler’s build. He weighs 625 pounds, but his blood sugars never run over 80 mg/dl, his total cholesterol is 155, his blood pressure is usually 105/65, and his pulse is 72. Joe has never dieted. Jim is 5’10”. Joe is 6”7”. Joe’s snoring, however, is legendary.

Would Jim’s health problems go away if he just gained 375 pounds? If he wore elevator shoes? Absolutely not. The fact is, there is no sure and certain proof that losing weight improves health or that gaining weight causes disease. The relationship between weight and disease is complex. A study of 6000 German men with BMIs from 25 (smaller than Jim) to 79 (larger than Joe) found that among men who already had a serious health condition, the fatter they were, the longer they lived. Among men who did not already have a serious health condition, this relationship did not hold. Overweight men were much more likely to be diagnosed with high blood pressure, heart disease, or diabetes, but they were considerably less likely to die of other causes.

In the Buffalo Health Study, epidemiologists found that overweight predicted diagnosis of cardiovascular disease and death from heart attack in women and in men under 45, but not in men over 45. In this study of American men and women, overweight had no relationship to death from cancer or other non-cardiovascular diseases.

None of these studies says you shouldn’t lose weight, but lose weight for the right reason—because it makes you feel better. In our obsession with preventing mortality, we often forget that feeling good and living well is a legitimate goal.