What is Healthy Weight, Overweight and Obesity?

We had a neighbor in Russia, who was huge. When he was sitting in his car, his stomach was touching the steering wheel. There was not enough of safety belt to embrace his body. But he used to say “I am not fat as long as I am able to wipe my own butt”. Pretty lame justification, what do you think? We tend to cover up our own weakness, find all kinds of excuses and explanations to justify ourselves for not acting right.

Then, I thought, but, really, are there any standards to proclaim what is healthy weight, overweight and obesity other than each certain person’s  feelings? If a person feels okay with his weight, if he is active physically, not a couch potato, if he has normal chemistry tests, may be it is really not so important if his weight skies up to a hyppopotamus weight  and he looks like one too? The problem is that such a person is very seldom active physically and his blood tests are very rare normal.

I myself was never overweight from the point of view of recognized standards, but I had my own criteria of a concept “overweight”. If you have fat folds on your sides, you know, those “love handles”, you  ARE overweight. I agree, women should have curves. According to my taste, a flat, bony, skinny creature of female gender looks like a clothes hanger, not like a famine. Not saying anything that it is not good for her health. But when we eat well, fat tissue (fat) has a tendency to store in hips and sides of our body, making curves. Curves are attractive. At the same time there’s no need to make a stock of this. We don’t need fat for isolation, we have enough clothes nowadays to protect our bodies from cold weather. Women can have curves, but not folds of fat hanging from all sides.

To my opinion, there’s no excuse to be overweight and pretend that you are healthy; or being obese and cheat yourself that you are just overweight.  Of course, every one is unique and beautiful in his own way. What is inside matters more than what is on the surface. At the same time, our health is the most important thing that we might have control over and we have to watch our weight to keep our body healthy.  While we are young it might be not so crucial, but in a long run spare pounds will put their bad mark. 

Besides looking into the mirror and noting folds of excess fat on the sides of the body, how can one determine if his weight is healthy? Probably no certain definition exists.

 Measurements of height and weight help to assess the overall health and nutritional status of adults. Overweight, obesity, and healthy weight can be defined by the Body Mass Index (BMI), calculated as weight in kilograms/height in meters squared.

Although BMI is not a measure of body fatness, persons classified as obese, tend to have excess body fat. A BMI in the overweight range is less healthy for most people, but in some cases may be acceptable for people who are muscular and have less fat. Similarly, people with a BMI in the healthy weight range may have excess body fat and little muscle. Therefore, the BMI ranges are not exact ranges of healthy and unhealthy weight. However, studies have shown that health risk increases as BMI increases.

  Body mass index (BMI) values for healthy weight, overweight, and obesity

Weight                   BMI values            Man 5’9 tall                    Women 5’4 tall

                                                        (average height)             (average height)       

Healthyweight ....... 18.5–24.9                 121–163                      108–144

Overweight .......     25.0–29.9                  164–195                     145–173

Obese ................. 30andabove              196andabove           174andabove

How can we maintain a healthy weight and a decent look? It was not a problem before, when all the food we ate was natural without any addictives added. People could eat whatever they wanted. The rule for healthy self was eating less exercising more. The same attitude works now, though besides these two golden rules we also have to watch what we eat. Addictives in food, added to increase people’s appetite might be disastrous for our health. One of them is MSG (and it is NOT Madison Square Garden…), it is Monosodium Glutamate (another name would be Hydrolyzed Vegetable Protein)

http://www.rense.com/general52/msg.htm

http://www.truthinlabeling.org/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monosodium_glutamate

I don’t want to go further into chemical food additives problem here, but it explains why it is harder and harder for me to maintain my regular weight now. What was so easy before (just eat less, exercise more) is not so easy now. I can’t study each and every label before I put food into my mouth. Besides, labels do not display all the truth about what is added to food.

So I will eat LOTS of vegetables from the garden, nuts, fruits, fresh fish…..And I will move, walk, swim….exercise! Good luck!