Tag Archive for: BMI

The World’s State of Obesity

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A week ago, I talked to a reader and visitor to my website who continues to check her BMI occasionally to see where she stands; she still hasn’t made it to the normal range but continues to try. I understand—I’m not there yet either. But there’s good reason to keep trying based on a recently published study.

The Global BMI Mortality Collaboration decided to examine the deaths from overweight and obesity in the entire world. Sometimes we think that the U.S. is the only overweight nation in the . . .

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Health Habits: Just Do Better

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Let’s finish up our look at the recent paper that concluded we’re doing poorly when it comes to our health habits (1). If you thought smoking and exercise were underwhelming, today we’ll look at diet and body fat.

When it comes to following the U.S. Department of Agriculture Dietary Guidelines, just under 38% hit that goal. I’ve talked about this a lot over the years, and this isn’t a debate over what constitutes a good diet. While we are doing somewhat better, adults do not eat enough vegetables, fruits, or beans, and we still . . .

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The Cause of Obesity: Vegetarian Diet

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Last week I talked about the causes of obesity as it related to food choices. It all comes down to calories in versus calories out. There are a couple of more points I want to make so I decided to continue the message arc this week.

Let’s begin with vegetarians. Do they have any advantage in the calories in versus calories out? Yes and no. Based on the available research, mostly done on 7th Day Adventists, vegetarians have lower average BMIs than non-vegetarians. The more vegetarian the diet, the lower the BMI, with complete vegans having the lowest . . .

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The Cause of Obesity: The Data

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The National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, NHANES for short, is large-scale survey performed by the CDC every few years. I’ve written about studies that have used the data many times. I like the survey because they use a dietary recall from the previous 24 hours instead of a food frequency questionnaire; there’s still potential for errors, but most people can remember what they ate yesterday. It’s also open-access data, meaning that if you have the credentials, you can use the data to answer questions. A couple of Cornell researchers did have a question: did . . .

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Prediabetes Risk Factors

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Based on the recently published study that showed only about 12% of those who were pre-diabetic realized it, it’s time to provide you with a list of risk factors for prediabetes. Let’s get right to it.

Weight
The higher your Body Mass Index, the greater your risk. You can check out your BMI in the Health Info section of drchet.com.

Waist Circumference
The larger your waist, the greater the risk. Men should be less than 40 inches and women less than 35 inches . . .

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How Fat Are We?

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Sometimes I miss Jay Leno. There were times he would ask a question such as “How fat are we?” and hit one-liner after one-liner. While his jokes were usually outrageous, they were indicative of where we are in the U.S. today. I’m going to review a couple of studies this week and believe me, there are no jokes in the latest research.

To answer Jay’s question, we’re fatter than we’ve ever been (1). Based on statistics from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), the percentage of Americans who are overweight is 68.5 . . .

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Sarcopenic Obesity

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There is a lot that happens as we age. Especially in today’s society in the U.S. and Canada, one of the things that happens is we lose muscle mass. Why? We don’t use it. We tend to slow down as we age and don’t stress the muscles as much as we did when we were younger, and we usually don’t have as much to do—no job, no kids to run after, and so on. As a result, we lose muscle mass. That’s the sarco part of sarcopenic in the title of today’s . . .

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Pinch an Inch

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Have you ever hugged someone who looks to be normal weight but seems soft? You can tell that there isn’t much muscle under their clothes. These are the people who make up that additional 5% in the obesity statistics. They fall through the cracks in the BMI scale because their BMI is normal. There’s one more thing—in general, they’re 50 years and older. The largest group in that class is the baby boomers.

How can you have a normal BMI and be obese? The CT scan slices of human thighs give you an idea (no, those . . .

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Are We Fatter Than We Think?

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The number of people in the U.S. who are overweight and obese are about 70% according to the numbers reported by the Center for Disease Control. I hate to be the one to tell you, but that’s probably an underestimate. It’s probably closer to 75%. I can’t be more precise because of the way obesity is measured in large studies.

The Body Mass Index (BMI) is used to measure large groups of people. All you need is two measures: height and weight. Those are the basis for the statistics on overweight and obesity. From now on . . .

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