What does it mean to be obese

Being overweight is more than just having a spare tire around your waist, or having a couple of extra pounds that you would like to lose. Overweight isn’t a subjective term with a loose definition. There’s a weight range that is considered healthy for a given height, and anything over that healthy range is considered overweight, or obese.

Body Mass Index – or BMI – is calculated based on your height and your weight, and is the metric used to determine whether you are underweight, at a healthy weight, overweight, or obese. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have a body mass calculator that can help you determine which range you fall in.

• A BMI under 18.5 is considered underweight for adults.
• A BMI between 18.5 and 24.9 is considered healthy weight for adults.
• A BMI between 25 and 29.9 is considered overweight for adults.
• A BMI over 30 is considered obese for adults.

The majority of Arkansans are overweight by these standards, and 35.9% are obese — the highest percentage of any state in the nation. Overweight and obesity can lead to long term health complications. Here are a few health risks of being overweight:

• Stroke
• Heart disease
• High blood pressure
• Type 2 diabetes
• Sleep apnea
• Stroke
• Osteoarthritis
• Fatty liver disease
• Certain types of cancer
• Health problems for the mother and baby during pregnancy

It’s important to recognize, however, that your BMI isn’t a precise measure of your overall health. It’s meant to measure body fatness, but does not indicate wellness, and should certainly not substitute for professional medical advice. People come in different shapes and sizes.

Of course you can take action to help manage your weight and reduce your risk of health complications. A healthy diet and plenty of exercise is a great place to start, and regular physician check-ups are extremely important to your health.

There is absolutely no replacement for a primary care physician. Because people are unique, with different health histories, health needs, and genetic dispositions, health advice cannot be universal. Your health needs will be different than your neighbor’s health needs, and they may even be different from your family’s. Schedule an appointment with a MANA clinic today to get on a path to wellness.

What Does It Actually Mean to Be Overweight or Obese?

At their most basic, the words “overweight” and “obesity” are ways to describe having too much body fat.

The most commonly used measure of weight status today is the body mass index, or BMI.

• BMI uses a simple calculation based on the ratio of someone’s height and weight (BMI = kg/m2). Decades of research have shown that BMI provides a good estimate of “fatness” and also correlates well with important health outcomes like heart disease, diabetes, cancer, and overall mortality.

Healthy BMI Ranges for Adults and Children

What’s considered a healthy BMI?

• For adult men and women, a BMI between 18.5 and 24.9 is considered healthy.
• Overweight is defined as a BMI between 25.0 and 29.9; and a BMI of 30 or higher is considered obese.

As in adults, obesity is also a growing problem in children and adolescents. Because children grow at different rates, depending on their age and gender, the definitions of overweight and obesity in children and adolescents differ from those in adults.

• In the U.S., for example, the definition is based on standard growth charts developed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In children and adolescents age 2 to 20 years old, a BMI in the 85th to 94th percentiles for age and gender is considered overweight; a BMI in the 95th percentile or higher is considered obese.

Waist Size Matters: Abdominal Obesity

One important category of obesity not captured by BMI is so-called “abdominal obesity”-the extra fat found around the middle that is an important factor in health, even independent of BMI.

• The simplest and most often used measure of abdominal obesity is waist size. Guidelines generally define abdominal obesity in women as a waist size 35 inches or higher, and in men as a waist size of 40 inches or higher.

Measuring Body Fat

There are a number of ways to measure body fat. Some are well suited to the doctor’s office, such as calculating a person’s BMI. Other, more complex methods require specialized equipment, such as magnetic resonance imaging or dual energy X-ray absorptiometry machines; while these machines can measure body fat very accurately, they are typically only used for this purpose in research settings.

Globally, there are 1.5 billion adults who are either overweight or obese, a number expected to increase to 3 billion by 2030. The epidemic is reaching catastrophic proportions, and one of the key-if small- steps to bringing it under control is to have a common language to describe the problem.