You Don’t Need it: How Extra Weight Affects Your Body

According to WHO research, 39% of men and 40% of women have extra weight, and 13% are diagnosed with obesity. After 1975, the last figure has grown almost twice. Let’s see what extra weight is, what problems it can cause, and whether everyone can benefit from the principle of moving more and eating less.

How to evaluate your weight and when to worry

Start by calculating the body mass ratio. To do this, you need to divide weight in pounds (lb) by height in inches (in) squared and multiply by a conversion factor of 703. If the resulting figure is within the limits of 18.5-25, then your weight is within the normal range. According to WHO experts, the health risks occur when the body mass ratio equals 25-29.9 or, in the case of obesity, when the index equals or is greater than 30.

Another way to determine if your weight can damage your body is to measure your waist circumference. The waist circumference should be within the limits of 31.5-35″ for adult women and up to 40″ for men. If your waist is more than that, no worries! Just add more vegetables to your diet and exercise to your daily routines. You will certainly benefit from both.

Meanwhile, misconceptions about own ‘extra weight’ can lead to serious consequences. In March 2020, a group of scientists published the report of their research in the Nature Journal, which has shown that stigmatizing overweight people leads to their psychological and physical problems, such as feeling ashamed of one’s own body, which prevents them from turning to medical help, including issues which are not related to extra weight.

Why the extra weight is bad

With that being said, extra weight is really dangerous. According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention experts, abdominal obesity can lead to low “good” cholesterol and high “bad” cholesterol and problems with blood pressure. Extra weight increases pressure on your joints and causes gall bladder diseases, liver inflammation, prediabetes, or Type 2 diabetes. 

Obesity can also cause apnea or snoring. It is often taken lightly without serious thought, but apnea leads to a short cessation of breathing, which causes oxygen deprivation and seriously increases the risk of cardiovascular disease.

Diet and sports: what is the best?

So far, there is no single cure. For the moment, modern science doesn’t offer a single formula to lose extra weight. No diet would have been ideally suited (or, at least, acceptable) for everyone, and the principle of eating less and moving more doesn’t work in every case. Where one can cut carbohydrates and integrate running into his or her life, another will become neurotic. For example, in the case when in childhood, food was not only the means of satisfying the natural need but a reward or because of joint pain as a result of a steep increase in exercise intensity

In addition, obesity can result from genetics, chronic stress, wrong medicines, long-term eating habits, hormonal diseases, and depression. There can be several causes at the same time, and only doctors can help to identify them. Until then, don’t worry and don’t stick to “superdiets” even if your waist is more than 88 (or 100) centimeters. Even though American scientists explain how to measure your waist, they recommend going for screening instead of self-diagnosis.