Important Facts about Obesity You Should Know ...

1. BMI

Your BMI is one of the biggest facts about obesity you should know. A person is generally categorised as being obese according to their BMI, or body mass index score. This is an equation that is found when you divide your weight by your height squared. People of a normal weight are classed as having BMIs of between 18 and 25, with less than 18 being considered underweight. The overweight bracket is defined as 25 to 30, with obese being any BMI number over that. As referred to in the introduction, though BMI is a useful tool in determining common obesity, it does not always pose a true reflection of a person’s health and fitness. Many muscular athletes with supreme fitness would register a higher recommended weight than their height would suggest on the chart, but the difference here is that their weight is increased by muscle, whereas an obese person’s weight is increased by excess body fat.

2. Waist-Hip Ratio

This is another method of determining obesity. If a woman’s waist to hip ratio is above 0.9 then she is considered to be obese. If you prefer to take only waist circumference into account, then a woman is again considered obese if her waist measurement exceeds 35 inches in total.

3. Health Complications

There is a long list of health complications that go along with being an obese person, some of the most common include:

• Being prone to cardiac issues such as heart disease, hypertension, hypercholesteremia, and stroke.
• Pulmonary problems relating to the lungs that can cause obstructive sleep apnoea and obesity hypoventilation syndrome.
• Type 2 diabetes.
• An increased risk of developing gallstones.
• Several menstrual abnormalities including polycystic ovary disease.
• An increased risk of several cancers including colon, gallbladder, rectum, breast, cervical, ovary, and bile duct.
• Gout.
• Deep vein thrombosis, which can lead to a life-threatening pulmonary embolism.
• Deeper psychological issues such as depression, loss of confidence and loss of self-worth through bullying.

4. Causes of Obesity

Here is some information about a few of the main causes of obesity:

• Eating Habits - Consuming more calories than your body can burn is one of the chief causes of obesity in human beings. If a woman needs 2000 calories to fuel her body for the day but eats 2900, then those extra 900 calories are going to be deposited as fat instead. Approximately every 7,500 excess calories turn into 1 kg of fat in the body.

• Inactivity - A small amount of overeating can be directly addressed by an increased amount of physical activity, but an unfortunate modern trend is that fewer and fewer people are engaging in any form of workout or exercise at all. Today’s modern, technology-obsessed world leaves little time for getting out and about and being as active as people were in generations past, and as a result, all of the little extra days of calories are adding up to turn into fat instead of being naturally burned away by physical activity.

• Genetic Tendencies - Not all cases of obesity are caused by an inability to control calorie intake. For some, it is a matter of unfortunate genetics. For reasons that haven’t been fully untangled by experts at this point, if parents are obese, then their child is also proven to be more prone to obesity in their own future if proper precautions are not taken. Some could argue that this is due to the family food dynamic that the child is born into, but others argue that there is a genetic trait for largeness that has been passed to the child from the parents.

5. One Key Solution

After reading through the facts, I’m sure that you can see that there is really only one true way to prevent obesity from occurring, and that is through a balanced, healthy, nutritional diet mixed with a lifestyle that incorporates plenty of calorie burning, body working exercise. Most of the time the simplest answers are the best!