Two airline seats for overweight? Warshaw Weighs In

The news last week that several airlines are  considering charging overweight people for two  airline seats evokes thoughts from me from two extremes. On one end I work as a concerned and empathetic health care provider to be sensitive to the challenges and struggles that overweight people face. From the opposite end of the spectrum, still wearing my health care provider hat, I am very concerned that if we continue to make larger airplane seats and take other actions to consider and compensate for the ever-expanding waistlines of both children and adults, then we’re just enabling people to eat whatever and how much they want and pack on more pounds?

I well recognize that to manage one’s weight--both weight loss and weight maintenance--takes a lot of effort which includes working at it every day (trust me, I know because I do it…everyday!). At this juncture in
time I believe it is exceedingly important to encourage everyone, starting with infants, children and adults; to prevent weight gain in the first place through healthy eating and being physically active. We know it's much easier to do this than lose weight and keep it off! However, if a person is overweight, let's encourage them to prevent further weight gain.

We’ve got to start to take actions as a society to negatively reinforce our unhealthy and disease provoking eating and physical activity habits…and turn this frightening epidemic around. People don’t realize that excess fat is not innocent blubber. Excess fat in millions of people, including children, is slowly causing metabolic changes which can cause insulin resistance, elevated blood pressure and eventually, for many, pre-diabetes and type 2 (more about this in a future blog).

Perhaps one step to negatively reinforce unhealthy lifestyles is charging overweight people for two seats?