Due to Ontario’s concerning shortage of family doctors, I have been assigned as your official healthcare professional. Don’t worry, I’m totally qualified. Today’s topic: staying healthy.

I am defining health as maintaining a body that is comfortable to exist in, and creating good habits so that your body stays comfortable as you age. I recognize that the conventional definition of health is associated with athletes and models, but those are people who use their bodies for very specific purposes and work professionally to create a body that looks that way. They are not realistic bodies for anyone who has a job. In addition, many disabilities preclude someone from a body that is comfortable to exist in. Unfortunately, that’s outside the scope of this article; I would suggest finding another doctor just as qualified as I am to answer your personalized questions. 

Onto your questions!

How can I lose weight?

Honestly? In most cases, you probably can’t. If you look like your parents or other relatives did at your age, then your weight is likely determined largely by your genes. Weight loss is so difficult because your body will fight against you every step of the way. It doesn’t realize we aren’t living in caveman times; to it, your fat means protection from cold and starvation. This is especially true if you’re female; since your body is constantly begging you to have a baby (don’t listen, girl, your education comes first!) it requires your body to have enough fat to keep that fetus alive, should it develop. Skipping meals, doing cleanses, and taking diet teas will just convince your body it needs to hang onto it harder. 

But isn’t that bad? Aren’t fat people unhealthy?

It is true that people with more body mass are more likely to suffer from heart attacks and other cardiac dysfunctions. Simply, there is more body to pump blood through, so your heart has to work harder. I won’t deny that weighing less is better for your heart. I just think that the act of trying to lose weight is often pseudoscience, useless at best and severely damaging to your physical and mental health at worst. Ozempic and keto diets are terrible for you. Eating disorders are very easy to obtain, occur more often in plus-size people than thin people, and are more fatal than any other psychiatric disorder. We all know the weight-loss industry is predatory and tries to make people hate themselves. Instead of struggling to engage with “the good parts” of it without letting the bad ones harm us… why don’t we just call it rotten, ignore it, and try to define health separately from thinness? 

So I can do whatever I want and nothing bad will ever happen to me?

Not true. Building good exercise and eating habits now will give you a good quality of life for a longer period of your life. Since they will be tricky to enforce, the sooner you start them, the easier they will be to continue throughout your life.

1. Eat when you’re hungry and stop when you aren’t hungry anymore. Everyone needs a different amount of food, so you can only listen to your own body. 
2. Eat a plant with every meal. Doesn’t matter what the plant is, or what the meal is. Having poutine and an apple for lunch is better than just having poutine, and way better than not eating anything.  
3. Move your body. It doesn’t matter how—we aren’t trying to sculpt our abs, just vary our heart rate. There is no need to do anything boring or painful, so don’t suffer through pushups or jogging because you’ve heard it burns calories and builds muscle, unless you like the way it feels. 
4. Drink water. There’s literally no shortcut to this one. Just do it. It solves 95% of your problems.
5. Sleep every day. Just like with food, everyone needs a different amount at a different time. Listen to your body!

See you next time for more practical, attainable health advice. And remember, kids—smoking may be sexy, but living without cancer is even sexier!