NHD-EXTRA: BOOK REVIEW
BIG FIT GIRL: EMBRACE THE BODY YOU HAVE Review by Charles Cooke Nutritionist Charlie Cooke focuses on teaching simple nutrition science, boxing fitness and nutritious home-cooking knowledge to the general/ low-income public. He is now pursuing a writing, reviewing and media career while serving in the British Army.
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AUTHOR: LOUISE GREEN PUBLISHER: GREYSTONE BOOKS, 2017 ISBN-13: 978-1771642125 PRICE: Paperback £9.83
Plus-size personal trainer Louise Green claims that you can be fat and fit, despite current medical beliefs. In May this year, she appeared on BBC’s This Morning to explain how this is possible. Louise believes that the size of your body does not determine your athletic dreams. Louise Green, a Canadian overweight personal trainer, is on a mission to support and inspire anyone, but especially overweight women, to do more exercise. Her book is a description of her own experience as a very overweight person facing much challenge and criticism and how she now feels confident and comfortable with her body. Ms Green has a BMI of 35 and claims that she is in ‘perfect health’. In her recent BBC interview, Louise stated that “last year 34m UK citizens dieted and 99% of them gained the weight back. So, what I’m presenting is a new model: move your body, eat reasonably well and move yourself into a model of success rather than failure. I just know from 10 years of working with a plus-sized demographic that the UK is spending £2m a year on the diet industry and it’s a model which is failing people. So can we just take the focus off the weight and try to be the healthiest version of yourself?” I am not one who believes that being ‘plus-sized’ is a rightful vessel for feelings of shame, embarrassment or social isolation; and I don’t want to detract from the great respect that I have for Ms Green in her crusade to promote inclusivity of all women in media and sports. However, I feel that the emotion and the perspectives shared in the pages of her book Big Fit
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Girl - Embrace the Body You Have are too much of Ms Green’s own experiences and opinions, often conflicting with sheer proven fact. Firstly, there is a persistent and worrying theme of ‘us’ and ‘them’ throughout the text, i.e. that all those (qualified professionals) who don’t support her quest for athleticism while maintaining, in her case, a BMI of 35, are simply controlled by the media and you shouldn’t listen to them. The advice given in this book includes ‘walk out of a doctor’s office if your GP tells you that your BMI is at a high-risk level’. In my view, this is simply a display of unprofessionalism and a lack of respect for experienced and highly qualified doctors. It is very hard to write this review, as I don’t want to prejudicially portray the idea that those partaking in exercise while holding an above-average or ‘plus-size’ body size are inferior to anyone else within their respective sporting field, but on the other hand, does it not occur to the writer that a lean and muscular physique is often the product of being a high-performing athlete and not the determining factor? Also, that restrictive dieting doesn’t mean having ‘to be hungry all the time’, but is an effective way to gradually and healthily reduce body fat stores through their use as replacement
Louise Green states that ‘why’ we eat is more important than ‘what’ we eat, that there
is no ‘good’ or ‘bad’ foods, just foods that don’t work for you personally.
energy, to account for the greater demand than is being provided through calorie content of the diet alone. Louise Green states that ‘why’ we eat is more important than ‘what’ we eat, that there is no ‘good’ or ‘bad’ foods, just foods that don’t work for you personally. She states that she is ‘genetically cursed’ and this can’t be avoided, that she ‘never worries about portion control and eats until satisfied’. She feels that portions should be for meeting ‘energy needs and not calories’, despite the fact that a calorie is a measurement of energy. The advice given on protein is provided by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the author does include a list of healthy sources for proteins, fats and carbohydrates, but there is simply insufficient, accurate guidance on how these should be consumed within a healthy
lifestyle. Such information would be useful for health-seeking readers. There are countless professional athletes who do not possess the perfect physique of a Greek Adonis and I agree that it is a disgrace that our mainstream media don’t do more to support and promote such athletes to the public. But I cannot support the advocacy of maintaining an alarmingly high BMI and still call oneself an ‘athlete’, without performancerelated achievements, most especially when compounded with recommendations in the book that high-risk women should not aim to include weight loss in their health and fitness goals. It seems that by rejecting the advice of professionals to lose weight, Ms Green has, instead, created her own bubble to counter anyone who doesn’t share her opinion of ‘plussized athleticism’. It is rather worrying that after rejection from all but one publisher, she now has a platform from which to recruit many others to her cause, including that of being a spokesperson for the important and successful ‘This Girl Can’ campaign, run by Sport England. I wholeheartedly support the increased acceptance of all shapes and sizes of women in sport, in gyms, and in any other quest for health and fitness. However, I do not think it wise to promote the claim of being an athlete while deliberately refusing to take any account of the elevated risk-factors and bodily stresses associated with being obese. There is no ‘us’ and ‘them’ when it comes to health. We all just want to be healthy, happy and, ultimately, loved - in whatever form that may take. And, though this book may contain great resources for finding plus-sized active wear and a rather snazzy workout playlist, it does not support or respect health and nutrition professional advice, which is based on science and evidence. www.NHDmag.com June - Issue 125
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