Some people are unaware they are fat but may have health risks from it....

Today's Post: Tuesday, 11-29-2011

Some people are unaware they are fat but may have health risks from it.

1. Yesterday I saw an online health article about the more common way this happens.

It was a poll that found that just since 1990, the average American adult is about 20 pounds heavier.

This was true for both men and women. Both men and women said an ideal weight for them was about 10 pounds heavier than they said in 1990.

But this was the most important statistic: “just 39 percent of Americans classified themselves as overweight, with 56 percent reporting their weight was "about right."

Dr. Earl S. Ford and his colleagues from the CDC's National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion looked at data on nearly 23,000 people aged 20 and older as of 2008.

In 2008 he found that 44 percent of men had waists large enough, 40 inches or more, to have abdominal obesity. In 2008 62 percent of women had waists large enough, 35 inches or more, to have abdominal obesity.

That means as a group half of all Americans in 2008 were too fat. And, of those people two thirds of that group had weights on the scale that registered in the 30.0 or higher range for BMI.

Healthwise the indicator that relates to health risk is the waist measurement. That means that some of the 56% who thought their weight was about right were actually fat enough to be at a health risk because they had too much fat on their stomachs.

Enough people have begun to follow the lifestyle of several packaged desserts, pastries, and salty snacks each day that being pretty fat makes you look like many of the people around you.

But following that lifestyle and keeping it up once you get that much abdominal fat is a surprisingly high health risk for heart disease, cancers, and type 2 diabetes.

2. There are also people with high health risk from excess abdominal fat who eat less and weigh in the desirable range with BMIs under 25.0 and who have waists less than the cut off point for being visibly fat.

How did this happen to them?

They get no exercise at all – ever. They have so much lighter bones and such lighter more flabby muscles, that they have room for a large amount of internal fat. Scans of their insides revealed this to researchers.

And, of course many of them have the same junky foods each day, they just eat less of them.

Conversely, people who are fat but who exercise almost every day tend to stay in good health.

(And the research on this second group shows that people who are fat but who exercise almost every day ARE less fat inside than the people who weigh and measure the same but who never exercise.)

So, if you are in either group, to stay healthy, it is important for you to exercise on most days every week.

You can begin with very short walks and strength training with light dumbbells that just begin to be slightly challenging after lifting them over 12 times.

Second, soft drinks both regular and diet, and packaged desserts, pastries, and salty snacks all add this kind of dangerous fat to you each time you consume them.

Stopping them all totally works and is best for most people.

But if you have several you really like and are unwilling to do that, begin systematically to cut how much of them you have each week in half. Then do it again once you are used to having less. Drop any that aren’t your special favorites. Then only have these things every other day or every other day on weekdays.

And, only use this strategy if you also have begun regular exercise too.