Obesity:
What is obesity?
- "Obesity" specifically refers to an excessive amount of body fat.
- "Overweight" refers to an excessive amount of body weight that includes muscle, bone, fat, and water.
- As a rule, women have more body fat than men.
- Most health care professionals agree that men with more than 25 percent body fat and women with more than 30 percent body fat are obese.
Risks of obesity
Being overweight or obese increases the risk of many diseases and health conditions, including the following:
– Hypertension
– Type 2 diabetes
– Coronary heart disease
– Stroke
– Gallbladder disease
– Osteoarthritis
– Sleep apnea and respiratory problems
– Some cancers (endometrial, breast, and colon)
Reduce your Risk of Obesity
- Whether you want to lose weight or maintain a healthy weight, it’s important to understand the connection between the energy your body takes in (through the foods you eat and the beverages you drink) and the energy your body uses (through the activities you do). To lose weight, you need to use more calories than you take in. To maintain a healthy weight, you need to balance the calories you use with those you take in
- Be physically active, at a moderate intensity for at least 30 minutes most days of the week.
- Increasing the intensity or the amount of time that you are physically active can have even greater health benefits and may be needed to control body weight. About 60 minutes a day may be needed to prevent weight gain.
- Children and teenagers should be physically active 60 minutes every day, or almost every day.
- Some ideas…
– Walk
– Run
– Swim
– Weight train
– Bicycle
– Sports
Links:
1) Centers for Disease Control and Prevention:http://www.cdc.gov/nccdphp/dnpa/obesity
2) MedlinePlus: http://nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/obesity.html
3) World Health Organization: http://www.who.int/topics/obesity/en
Visit DEAF, Inc’s Project HOPE
for more information on Obesity.
