A friend of mine just had her annual check up and everything came back A-ok. She is actually about 1 inch away from having a perfect Venus Index score as well! In other words, girl is in great shape with a great body.

With that said she wants to lose about 3-4 pounds for her ideal Venus Index shape. She can run 10 kms in less than 50 minutes, she’s got great muscle development and is stronger than almost any girl I’ve ever seen in the gym.

Her check up numbers were great across the board and her cardiovascular fitness is at the elite athlete level.

So far this isn’t much of a story, now here is where it gets interesting. She told the nurse that she was interested in losing a bit more weight…at which point the nurse proceeded to tell her: you don’t look like you need to lose any more weight”…and “you’re in a healthy weight range for your height”…and then pointed out that “exercise can be addictive” and handed her body image pamphlets assuming she had some sort of psychological problem.

Of course all of this information is coming from a middle aged female nurse with about 40-50 extra pounds of fat to lose.

My friend just responded with a polite smile with no intention of heeding any of the nurses advice and warnings.

This is good example of how the established medical profession misses the point on issues of exercise and fitness.

First of all its difficult to take weight loss advice from someone who is overweight.

Second, doctors and nurses understand the relative range of what is generally considered a healthy body weight. But this is just a range and estimate for the mass population. Each individual will have a specific body weight that he or she will look their best at, and no doctors chart will necessarily show this. (incidentally that is what the Adonis Index and Venus Index are for…an indication of what we think is your best look for your height)

It’s unfortunate that even a nurse and doctor would discourage someone from trying to lose a couple pounds in an effort to look better and be happier with their body.

It’s as if the nurse had been trained to tell everyone to be happy looking painfully average and that it’s somehow pathological to want to look better than average.

Interestingly, the overweight nurse was much more worried about my friends intention to lose a bit more weight…whereas the physician who was in good shape himself thought nothing of it.

Perhaps a little personal envy and bias even crept into the nurses cautions and warnings to her.

Regardless of the source of the warning, this is still a good example of how mainstream medical professions are not a place to go looking for advice on achieving your best looking shape. It’s just not what they’re trained in.

Don’t let other people talk you out of shooting for your best look, because your best look is going to be a healthy look.

John