Obesity Health Risks

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When it comes to nutrition, it's easy to spend a lot of time worrying about what to eat. But how much you eat puts as much of a stamp on your long-term health as picking the right kind of fat or choosing the right mix of vitamins.

How much you weigh (in relation to your height), your waist size, and how much weight you've gained since your mid-20s strongly influence your chances of:

•dying early,

•having, or dying from, a heart attack, stroke, or other type of cardiovascular disease,

•developing diabetes,

•developing cancer of the colon, kidney, breast, or endometrium,

•having arthritis,

•developing gallstones,

•being infertile,

•developing asthma as an adult,

•snoring or suffering from sleep apnea,

•developing cataracts, or

•having a poorer quality of life.

Although researchers are quibbling about just how many people die each year as a direct cause of excess weight and what it costs our health-care system, excess weight takes an enormous toll—all the more worrisome, given that we are in the midst of an obesity epidemic.

If your weight is in the healthy range and isn't more than 10 pounds over what you weighed when you turned 21, great. Keeping it there—and keeping it steady—by watching what you eat and exercising will limit your risk of developing one or more of the chronic conditions noted above. If you are overweight, doing whatever you can to prevent gaining more weight is a critical first step. Then, when you're ready, shedding some pounds and keeping them off will be important steps to better health.

What's a Healthy Weight? Body Mass Index (BMI) Defined

Although nutrition experts still debate the precise limits of what constitutes a healthy weight, there's a good working definition based on the ratio of weight to height. This ratio, called the body mass index (or BMI for short), takes into account the fact that taller people have more tissue than shorter people, and so tend to weigh more.

Dozens of studies that have included more than a million adults have shown that a body mass index above 25 increases the chances of dying early, mainly from heart disease or cancer, and that a body mass index above 30 dramatically increases the chances. Based on this consistent evidence, a healthy weight is one that equates with a body mass index less than 25. By convention, overweight is defined as a body mass index of 25 to 29.9, and obesity is defined as a body mass index of 30 or higher.

Nothing magical happens when you cross from 24.9 to 25 or from 29.9 to 30. These are just convenient reference points. Instead, the chances of developing a weight-related health problems increases across the range of weights.

Muscle and bone are more dense than fat, so an athlete or muscular person may have a high body mass index, but not be fat. It's this very thing that makes weight gain during adulthood such an important determinant of weight-related health—few adults add muscle and bone after their early twenties, so nearly all that added weight is fat.

HARVARD - School of Public Health

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Abdominal Fat Health Risks

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Some research suggests that not all fat is created equal. Fat that accumulates around the waist and chest (what's called abdominal obesity or abdominal adiposity) may be more dangerous for long-term health than fat that accumulates around the hips and thighs. (1)

Some studies suggest that abdominal fat plays a role in the development of insulin resistance and inflammation, an overactivity of the immune system that has been implicated in heart disease, diabetes, and even some cancers. It's also possible, of course, that abdominal fat isn't worse than fat around the hips or thighs, but instead is a signal of overall body-fat accumulation that weight alone just doesn't capture.

In people who are not overweight, waist size may be an even more telling warning sign of increased health risks than BMI. (2) The Nurses' Health Study, for example, looked at the relationship between waist size and death from heart disease, cancer, or any cause in middle-aged women. At the start of the study, all 44,000 study volunteers were healthy, and all of them measured their waist size and hip size.

After 16 years, women who had reported the highest waist sizes—35 inches or higher—had nearly double the risk of dying from heart disease, compared to women who had reported the lowest waist sizes (less than 28 inches). Women in the group with the largest waists had a similarly high risk of death from cancer or any cause, compared with women with the smallest waists.

The risks increased steadily with every added inch around the waist. And even women at a "normal weight"—BMI less than 25—were at a higher risk, if they were carrying more of that weight around their waist: Normal-weight women with a waist of 35 inches or higher had three times the risk of death from heart disease, compared to normal-weight women whose waists were smaller than 35 inches.

The Shanghai Women's Health study found a similar relationship between abdominal fatness and risk of death from any cause in normal-weight women. (3)

Measuring your waist is easy, if you know exactly where your waist really is. Wrap a flexible measuring tape around your midsection where the sides of your waist are the narrowest. This is usually even with your navel. Make sure you keep the tape parallel to the floor.

An expert panel convened by the National Institutes of Health concluded that a waist larger than 40 inches for men and 35 inches for women increases the chances of developing heart disease, cancer, or other chronic diseases. (4) Although these are a bit generous, (5) they are useful benchmarks.

Waist size is a simple, useful measurement because abdominal muscle can be replaced by fat with age, even though weight may remain the same. So increasing waist size can serve as a warning that you ought to take a look at how much you are eating and exercising.



HARVARD - School of Public Health

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Weight Loss Motivation

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"The heights by great men reached and kept

Were not attained by sudden flight,

But they, while their companions slept,Were toiling upward in the night."

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
In order to take advantage of losing weight and being successful, you must be prepared to pay your dues.
Nothing is more frustrating than to see that you are gaining weight again.
Be in a position to benefit from your failure. It pays to be prepared, and that comes down to plain, hard work. It's not usually glamorous. It's not always exciting. It's not always fun. It is, however, always necessary.
By being prepared, you have to create a game plan to get back on track right away without beating yourself up and devastating your self-esteem.
My recommended game plan is taking it a bite at a time. What's yours? Maybe it's taking it a day at a time, going back to your diet tomorrow. Maybe it's getting angry and becoming more determined then ever to succeed.
Have you ever been at a Weight Watchers or TOPS meeting and noticed several people there who are slim and trim? What about those Jenny Craig and Nutri/System ads with their before and after pictures? They make losing weight look so effortless, but remember, in reality, these people have been dieting for years.
Without effort and action, you will not succeed.

You can't wish your weight away. You have to work at it and be prepared for those times when you slip, so you can pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and move on.
Losing weight demands preparation, effort and commitment to come to fruition. And it requires the right information towards a realistic and optimized healthy lifestyle than can guarantee you a slim body permanently.


Weight Loss Program Facts
Weight loss program facts are generally difficult to find.. There are all kinds of different weight loss program out there and a new program comes out almost every day.
As a result, weight loss which otherwise should be a relatively simple task is made very complicated..

I present here several popular weight loss program reviews and the pros and cons attached with them. Then I present a few things that you should look for in a good weight loss program.

Please use the links on the left to learn more about a particular weight loss program. For lots of free weight loss information, secrets and plans, use the 'Back To Homepage' link.


Weight Loss Program : Low Fat Diet
A low fat weight loss program recommends low fat or no fat foods. The underlying principle behind this diet is that reducing fat intake coupled with regular exercise results in lasting weight loss.
Pros & Cons For This Weight Loss Program

This weight loss program can be very effective if properly produced or administered by a good weight loss expert and results in steady and long term weight loss.
Unfortunately most low fat programs in the market reduce fat consumption to such a level that it becomes harmful for health. Some varieties recommend a very high consumption of carbs which is not good. Also, often with this kind of program, fat loss is very slow because of the un-optimized diet menus.

I stress again that low fat diet is generally the best way to lose weight. The drawbacks outlined are of the incorrect manners in which this diet is presented rather than of the diet itself.

Weight Loss Program : High Protein Diet
This kind of weight loss program requires you to consume high protein, low carb foods. This program claims that carbohydrates make us fat and reducing its consumption leads to fat loss.

Pros & Cons For This Weight Loss Program
This weight loss diet usually leads to quite a rapid weight loss initially but isn't very effective in the long run. Also, this kind of diet leads to a steadying of blood sugar levels which is healthy.

On the other hand, this weight loss program generally encourages over-consumption of saturated fats which increases the risk of heart disease.
Also the rapid burning of fatty acids due to the absence of sufficient carbs makes kidneys work overtime and may lead to serious health problems. This kind of weight loss program should better be avoided as it poses serious health threats.

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