Are a few extra pounds beneficial or harmful?
I’ve heard from many women over fifty say they don’t want to lose weight because if they get cancer they’ll lose a bunch of weight anyway and they’ll need those extra pounds to survive. That’s just backwards thinking. Walter Willett who is “chair of the nutrition department at the Harvard School of Public Heath” states that “it’s clear that weight gain during adult life is related to the risk of postmenopausal breast cancer” (1). Extra layers of fat, in men and women, increases estrogen, which is what we don’t want. Why that matters is that about 80% of breast tumors are powered by estrogen and/or progesterone (1).
We all know being fat is bad for our health and blah, blah, blah, but what’s a few extra pounds, right? To lower your risk, Mr. Willett says to “…weigh as close as you can to what you weighed at age 18” (1). Wow! We’d all look great at if we could be that thin again and we can but we cannot eat the same amount of calories as we did back then. Don’t make excuses and say “that’s impossible,” because it is possible to be trim and healthy at any age, it’s just harder. No one can succeed if they don’t believe they can. Believe in yourself; you’re totally worth it.
- Source: Nutrition Action Health Letter, Sept 2014 Issue, pages 1&3, article: 1 in 8, What You May Not Know About Breast Cancer
Photo: Burgers are totally yummy, but calorie-laden so eat fattening foods like this only on special occasions.
