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If you’re overweight and have been trying to lose weight, you are far from alone. The latest national stats on dieting have found that nearly half of American adults are trying to trim their widening waistlines. This is a smart move — being overweight is harmful to your health.
According to the experts, obesity rates continue to escalate — approximately 72 percent of U.S. adults are now overweight. Add to this statistic the fact that their physical activity rates are abysmally low, and you have the perfect recipe for creating the epidemic of type 2 diabetes that plagues the United States.
Clearly, many Americans need to lose weight. In fact, even a modest weight loss of just 10 percent of your body weight can treat and often reverse the un-healthy conditions associated with being overweight.
Discovering What the Scientists Know about Being Overweight
Everyone needs some body fat for good health. When people eat more calories than they use, their bodies store the extra calories as fat. A couple of pounds of extra body fat is no big deal for most people. The problem arises when people continue this pattern of eating more calories than they burn (creating a calorie surplus) over an extended period of time.
More and more fat builds up in the body, and eventually the amount of body fat is so great that it can harm a person’s health. Many doctors use the terms overweight or obese to tell if someone has a greater chance of developing serious weight-related health problems from excess body fat. The good news is, when you lose weight and the closer you can get to a normal weight (a BMI under 25), the greater the health benefits.
If you know that your BMI is above 25 and that the extra poundage is from too much fat and not muscle, then read on to see the toll that this condition can eventually take on your body.
Enumerating the numerous health risks of being overweight
Too much body fat is bad news for both your body and mind. Not only can being overweight make you feel tired and uncomfortable, carrying extra weight also puts added stress on your body, especially the bones and joints of the legs. The more body fat you have, the greater your risk of developing grave health conditions.
Heart disease
Heart disease is the leading killer of both men and women in the United States. The American Heart Association has now recognized overweight and obesity as a major, independent risk factor for heart disease. Excess body fat taxes the heart. People who have excess body fat — especially if concentrated around the waist — are more likely to have a heart attack than those people at a healthy weight. The good news is, if you’re overweight or obese, you can significantly reduce your risk for heart disease by successfully losing weight and keeping it off.
High blood pressure
High blood pressure is also known as the silent killer because it’s largely a symptomless disease. The fact that high blood pressure doesn’t have symptoms (you can’t see or feel it) is what makes high blood pressure so insidious; left untreated, it will kill you. In fact, high blood pressure remains the most common medical diagnosis in the United States and the condition that doctors write the most prescriptions for. It’s also the number one cause of stroke and kidney disease and a principal cause of heart disease and blindness.
Overweight people are five times more likely to have high blood pressure than normal weight individuals. The more body fat a person carries, the more blood is needed to provide the tissue with oxygen and nutrients, resulting in higher blood pressure. Researchers have found that extra body fat activates the two underlying origins of elevated pressure: an overactive sympathetic nervous system and an overactive renin (blood pressure hormone) system. The good news is that if you lose body fat, your blood pressure will significantly go down.
Stroke
Every year, more than 800,000 people in the United States have a stroke. Stroke kills almost 130,000 Americans annually and is a leading cause of serious long-term disability. On average, one American dies from stroke every four minutes. If you’re overweight, your risk of having a stroke significantly increases because of inflammation occurring in the arteries. Inflammation is partially caused by excess fat and can lead to difficulty in blood flow and an increased risk of blockage in the arteries. Excess body fat has also been shown to increase risk of stroke/transient ischemic attack (also known as a mini-stroke).
Insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes
Type 2 diabetes develops when a person has insulin resistance. Insulin is the hormone that enables sugar (glucose) to enter cells. Insulin resistance means that the body’s cells are no longer sensitive to insulin and can’t use it correctly. This loss in sensitivity to insulin means the person begins to lose the ability to take in glucose.
Excess body fat, especially around the abdomen, is a major cause of insulin resistance. The development of insulin resistance marks the beginning of diabetes. In time, the resistance to insulin exhausts the pancreas, which may stop producing this hormone entirely, meaning the diabetic must inject insulin. A program of regular exercise and weight loss has been shown to reverse insulin resistance.
Syndrome X
One out of every five individuals who is affected by excess body weight has a metabolic condition known as Syndrome X. Syndrome X is a cluster of metabolic factors that increases your risk for disease. The issues that characterize this condition include high blood pressure, insulin resistance, and abdominal belly fat. People with Syndrome X are at a significantly increased risk for developing more serious health problems including heart disease, diabetes, and stroke.
