Grocery Line Conversation

I had an enlightening experience in the grocery line the other morning. I have mentioned before that I had parasites – thank the Lord, they are gone! However, over the course of the two years since I first got them, I lost a total of 34 lbs. I was at my ideal weight before this weight loss so, to me, I am very much too thin. Many people have told me they agree.

Since I was a young child, I’ve been measured on the light side for my height. Growing up in the 60s and 70s, educational experimenting was conducted at our school. I’m quite glad they had all those experiments. For reasons I will discuss another time, I benefited greatly from some of them. Ours was a country school, so we had dentists, optometrists, public health nurses, and audiologists come to our school, usually once each per year. It was determined from an early age according to the Body Mass Index (BMI) that I was at the bottom of the healthy range. Considering my childhood and the mistreatment and improper nutrition, this was no surprise to us. And, even as an adult, my BMI has remained at 19. I think the range has changed a bit because now they list it as between 20 and 22. When I was in my early 20s, it was between 19 and 23.

At the moment, it is 17.4. The site I found for the calculation says I’m “underweight” (no kidding!), and that I’m in the “less than 2 percentile.” I had to read what that means. If you are in the 50 percentile, you are average. If you are in the 90 percentile, you are 90 percent heavier than the average population. So, this says I weigh less than 2 percent of the average population! Yikes!

Back to the grocery store line. In an effort to gain weight, I have been eating as much fat as I can – I leave the fat on the meat I cook, and eat most of it, I eat nuts, and I microwave about ½ lb of feta cheese for breakfast every morning. Sometimes I also eat several handfuls of nuts with it. I had run out of feta so ran over to the grocery store across the corner and picked up two 400 gram (approx. 1 lb) containers of cheese. The lady ahead of me was even thinner than I, and the one behind me was not overly heavy, but on the high end of the healthy range, I was thinking.

The woman ahead of me asked what I was going to do with all this feta, and then rambled on about all the things you could do with it, and I didn’t really feel like telling her that would last me for breakfast for four days. So, I just agreed with her, hoping she’d drop it. She didn’t. So I told her what I did with it, and that I have health issues and was trying to gain weight. The lady behind me said she thought I was a perfect size and didn’t need to gain weight. My jaw dropped! I said, “really?” She said, maybe it’s your height, but you look proportional. I asked if she knew the BMI scale and she said yes, and I told her I was 17.4. The woman ahead said, “oh, well, that’s not unhealthy… I’m 15.” Again, jaw on floor! What is the matter with these people? I told the woman behind me I thought she was actually in the right range and she said she was 22, which I confirmed to her was exactly in the right range.

We are so used to seeing such skinny people on our tvs that it no longer looks unhealthy. I like to watch the show Bones. Everyone makes such a big deal about Booth (David Boreanaz) and what a “hunk” he is and fit and muscular. I look at him and constantly think how skinny he is – he looks unhealthy to me. These attitudes are not likely to ever change either. The entertainment industry is such a big part of our society and has such influence, it won’t be until more of them get brave enough to actually appear as healthy-sized people. Until that time, I’m going to continue to try to regain 30 more lbs! Normal range, here I come!

Until next time, don’t obsess about weight – take care of your health…