Being Healthy

I started this blog to give people with weight problems good information about losing weight, reaching a healthy weight and doing it the right way. 

In the Sunday Houston Chronicle, in the Health Zone section, I found a great article “Searching for Solutions”, maybe you can find it on the website, CHRON.COM. I wrote about BMI before, it’s a formula for anyone to calculate a persons body fat. With this formula, which you can find on the internet easily, you can check if your of normal weight or overweight. And when your BMI is over 30 your considered obese. 

This word obese use to be reserved for people with extreme weight problems, 400 lbs. or more. But that’s been redefined now. Below you’ll find the dictionary definition.

Obesity is a medical condition in which excess body fat has accumulated to the extent that it may have a negative effect on health, leading to reduced life expectancy and/or increased health problems.[1][2] People are considered obese when their body mass index (BMI),[3] a measurement obtained by dividing a person's weight by the square of the person's height, exceeds 30 kg/m².

Obesity increases the likelihood of various diseases, particularly heart disease, type 2 diabetes, obstructive sleep apnea, certain types of cancer, and osteoarthritis.[2] Obesity is most commonly caused by a combination of excessive food energy intake, lack of physical activity, and genetic susceptibility, although a few cases are caused primarily by genes, endocrine disorders, medications or psychiatric illness. Evidence to support the view that some obese people eat little yet gain weight due to a slow metabolism is limited. On average obese people have a greater energy expenditure than their thin counterparts due to the energy required to maintain an increased body mass.[4][5]

Dieting and physical exercise are the mainstays of treatment for obesity. Diet quality can be improved by reducing the consumption of energy-dense foods such as those high in fat and sugars, and by increasing the intake of dietary fiber. Anti-obesity drugs may be taken to reduce appetite or decrease fat absorption when used together with a suitable diet. If diet, exercise and medication are not effective, a gastric balloon may assist with weight loss, or surgery may be performed to reduce stomach volume and/or bowel length, leading to feeling full earlier and a reduced ability to absorb nutrients from food.[6][7]

Obesity is a leading preventable cause of death worldwide, with increasing rates in adults and children. Authorities view it as one of the most serious public health problems of the 21st century.[8] Obesity is stigmatized in much of the modern world (particularly in the Western world), though it was widely seen as a symbol of wealth and fertility at other times in history, and still is in some parts of the world.[2][9] In 2013, the American Medical Association classified obesity as a disease.[10][11

I know you might not understand how to calculate your BMI from reading the above paragraph but basically your waist should measure half your height. For example, I’m 72 inches tall so my waist shouldn’t be more then 36 inches. That’s a rough way to tell if your overweight. You can find simpler formulas for calculating your BMI on the internet, this one is for people who are on the metric system. 

As I said in a previous post this is an easy and quick way for doctors to calculate percentage of body fat. It doesn’t work in all cases, but if you know your overweight this simple calculation is pretty close. 

The reason the medical profession wants to know your BMI is because the insurance companies will allow health care professionals to treat you differently. In other words, they’ll get more money for treating you. The insurance companies allow doctors or hospitals to see you more often and charge more for the services. 

Now getting back to the article in Sunday’s paper, one-third of Americans are obese and another one-third are overweight. Americans spend $60 Billion dollars a year on weight loss efforts. Drugs, procedures and fitness programs. Two-thirds of us have a weight problem, and the healthcare industry is ready to cash-in.

In the coming years the “weight loss business” will only get bigger and more expensive. Healthcare has many way to cash-in on this. Obesity causes many health problems: heart disease, diabetes, strokes, arthritis, high blood pressure and more. 

The thing is, we don’t have to be overweight. For most people it’s not generic, for most of us it’s about the diet. We probably started off early in life, eating the wrong foods, but because kids have a very high activity level they can burn the calories they eat. It’s only been the past 20 years or so, that kids aren’t as active as kids were before all the electronics we have today.

 So weight gain is mostly from inactivity, and the wrong eating habits. Yes, I think eating is a habit, we develop an appetite when we’re very active but as our activity level slows down, for instance in the winter, we eat the same. And as we get older and we’re out of school, our activity level can slow down, but our eating habits still stay the same or increase as we gain weight. So if you follow what i’m saying, as a person matures he or she will probably keep those same eating habits while their activity levels keep going down. The cycle is very much normal and is a recipe for being overweight, which will cause the different illnesses I mentioned in the paragraphs above.

It can all be avoided simply by changing the way you eat. In the following posts over the next couple of weeks, I’ll write more about changing the way we eat, and how you’ll lose weight just by eating.