"You look good!" We love to hear that when we run into an old friend or head back to school but looks can be deceiving. Skinny isn't the same as healthy.
With so much attention on the obesity epidemic, skinny folks (especially kids) get a free pass. That may not be such a good thing. Diabetes is catching up with them as well, and may be even more cause for alarm because the mortality rate for thin diabetics is higher than for those who are overweight.
As Dr. Mark Hyman points out in his Huffington Post article, being skinny may be more of a health risk than you think. New terms like Skinny Fat Syndrome or TOFI (Thin on the Outside, Fat on the Inside) and MONW (Metabolically Obese, Normal Weight) are now used to describe thin but ticking time bombs. Much of the blame is cast on the sugar-laden American diet of sodas and snack foods but our preoccupation with body-sculpting workouts and stress-inducing sports is also worth reconsidering. The stress on your arteries and organs is largely unseen until the damage is done.
The new film Carb-Loaded explores this issue and more through the eyes of one skinny 36 year old diabetic filmmaker who changed his diet and changed his diagnosis. You can order the dvd here: Carb-Loaded - A Culture Dying to Eat
It seems that the old adage was right: "looks aren't everything" but what (and who) you are on the inside is what really matters. Maybe (a little) fat and fit is better than skinny and sick.