One of the problems seems to be our distorted perception of what it means to be overweight or obese, the most well-known way of judging whether a person is overweight or obese is by using a measure of something called body mass index or BMI for short.
This is supposed to be one of the most accurate way’s of
determining if somebody is overweight or obese or not, it works on a method by
measuring your height combined with your weight and then a figure is calculated
which is your BMI . < 25 and you’re considered to be healthy > 25 then
you’re considered to be overweight > 30 then your now in the obese category.
Katherine Flegal who did the study for the CDC which was the one
that came out in autumn which was very heavily criticized, said that they
found, even though people whom had a BMI of 25 and whom were thought to be big
would still have health problems largely because of their size and of course
there BMI .
Some research which was put together in Dallas, which used
treadmills in order to see how people compared with each other, said that the
performance that people gave was a far better indicator of being fit than
relying on body mass index purely on its own.
The people who were able to sustain themselves for longer on the
treadmill taken into consideration even though they were overweight, were found
to have a lot lower risk of heart disease compared to thinner people whom were
unfit.
In December some statistics were brought up to correlate with
these findings they looked at the mortality rates of 2,600 adults of 60 years
age and older, and this was done over a 12 year monitoring period, the ones
having a BMI of between 25 and 30, and this is where it gets really interesting
were slightly lower than people who had a normal weight.
Mortality rates were considerably higher for those people who were
in the bracket of aBMI of 35 or more, but here is the most interesting aspect
of all of this whole thing is, the people whom had the lowest fitness were far
more likely to die earlier despite their weight, than those with poor fitness.
So it just goes to show and prove that no matter what weight you
are, even doing some form of fitness training you will reap the rewards no
matter what, when they were conducting the test on the treadmill it was quite
simplistic how they did it.
The treadmill was set to go at a reasonable pace and the increment
was done every so often, in order for somebody to become qualified as
being fit all they needed, to do was stay on the treadmill for eight minutes,
women had a lower rate of five and half minutes.
The participants who couldn’t manage to stay on at all were put in
a group of those at highest risk, they took into consideration things like
smoking, any cardiovascular problems which may have occurred in the past, and
their conclusion was that overall fitness was a far better indicator of a
longer life rather than their weight.
So the moral of this story is don’t really get in a mess if you
are overweight, but work towards becoming healthier because as we now know you
can be thin and still have health risks if you are unfit.
The overall moral of this particular story is do what works for
you and work towards what is best for you ultimately, if you particularly want
to weigh less, and do not stop yourself from trying to reach your target
weight. Just don’t worry too much about the fact that you are overweight focus
on becoming fitter and the two will come together in time.
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