A quote from a participant: "I exercise if I need it at the time – depending on whether I am dieting or not ... if I was lovely and slim I wouldn’t be obliged to go and do any [exercise] and that is it really. Partly the health benefit that I could improve my figure" (Drew,1996a: 63). (Taken from: Mutrie & Choi, 2000, p. 545) This quote highlights the way in which people interchange the idea of being skinny with being healthy, despite the bellcurve that generally links weight and health, with most of what is (arbitrarily) labelled on the BMI as "healthy" and "overweight" just as healthy, but with either extreme associated with illhealth. It further ignores the actual research evidence that dieting not only tends to fail to reduce body weight in the long term, but tends to result in reduced physical and psychological well-being- and actually weight gain. A stable weight is actually far more healthy. In contrast exercise and lifestyle changes are convincingly associated with health improvements irrespective of weight changes... See 'The Obesity Myth' by Paul Campos (2004) for some convincing arguments...