Throughout much of recorded history, people struggled to get enough food to eat. Today, many people in the world, and even in the United States, remain undernourished. However, the majority of Americans face the opposite situation: they are overweight and find it difficult to lose the unwanted pounds. This is a major public health issue because being overweight can lead to serious health problems. Every year in the United States, about 300,000 adults die from causes related to excess body weight.
Obesity means accumulation of excess fat on the body. Obesity is considered a chronic (long-term) disease, like high blood pressure or diabetes. It has many serious long-term consequences for your health, and it is the second leading cause of preventable deaths in the United States (tobacco is the first).Over the past twenty years, Americans have become more familiar with specific measurements related to health, such as cholesterol levels and blood pressure readings. When it comes to weight-related health risks, there are three important numbers that you should know. The first is your actual weight in pounds; the second is your Body Mass Index, or BMI; and the third is your waist measurement.Obesity is defined as having a body mass index (BMI) of greater than 30. The BMI is a measure of your weight relative to your height.
Regular consumption of high-calorie foods, such as fast foods, contributes to weight gain. High-fat foods are dense in calories. Loading up on soft drinks, candy and desserts also promotes weight gain. Foods and beverages like these are high in sugar and calories.
Obesity increases a person's risk of illness and death due to diabetes , stroke , coronary artery disease , hypertension, high cholesterol, and kidney and gallbladder disorders. Obesity may increase the risk for some types of cancer . It is also a risk factor for the development of osteoarthritis and sleep apnea.
The more your belly sticks out, the greater your risk of developing heart disease, a new study shows.
"The message is really obesity in the abdomen matters even more than obesity overall," Dr. Carlos Iribarren of Kaiser Permanente of Northern California in Oakland, the study's lead author, told Reuters Health.
Body mass index (BMI), a gauge of weight in relation to height, is a fairly crude way to judge a person's heart disease risk based on obesity, he noted. For example, muscular people may have a high BMI and be perfectly healthy.
In the current study, Iribarren and his team tested whether sagittal abdominal diameter, or SAD, which is the distance from the back to the upper abdomen midway between the top of the pelvis and the bottom of the ribs, would improve the accuracy of BMI in predicting heart disease risk.
Waist circumference is widely used to measure obesity in the abdominal area, Iribarren noted. But while there are many ways to measure a person's waist, he added, SAD, which is evaluated by a doctor or nurse with a caliper, is much more standardized, and therefore probably less subject to error.
He and his colleagues looked at 101,765 men and women who underwent checkups between 1965 and 1970, which included SAD measurements, and were then followed for about 12 years.
Men with the largest SAD were 42 percent more likely to develop heart disease during follow-up compared to those with the smallest SAD, while a large SAD increased heart disease risk by 44 percent for women, Iribarren and his team found.
Within BMI categories, the researchers found, heart disease risk rose with SAD; even among men of normal weight, heart disease risk was higher for those with bigger bellies.
The relationship between SAD and heart disease risk was strongest among the youngest men and women, which is not surprising, Iribarren said, given that people who develop central obesity younger in life would likely have more serious problems.
"I think it has important implications for prevention," he said. " Don't let this happen to you when you're young, that's kind of the message."
Some tips for weight loss:
*Eat only at the kitchen table.
*Don't drive, watch television, or talk on the phone when you eat.
*Push the plate away when you are no longer hungry. Don't wait until you feel completely full to stop eating.
*Eat only because you are hungry, not because you are bored, stressed, or tired.
*Go grocery shopping on a full stomach.
*Try having a diet soda, water, or a glass of skim milk instead of a regular soda. Learn more about the differences between different beverages in "What's in your drink?"
*For people who don't want to give up the sweet taste, sugar blended drinks (that contain a combination of sugar and non-nutritive sweeteners) are an option.
*Use a non-nutritive sweetener instead of sugar. Find out which non-nutritive sweetener might work best for you.
Substitute:
*whole grain breads for white bread
*brown rice for white rice
*baked or grilled chicken for fried chicken
*fresh fruit for fruit juice
*a small order of fries instead of a large order
*Read the labels on snack foods, and choose the ones with less fat and fewer calories.
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