Yo[u]Value | Online Self Help and Improvement

There is a staggering number of people in the United States of America who are overweight. Obesity is a disease that affects about a third of adults age 20 and over in the United States, which amounts to more than 72 million people. About 33.3 percent of American men and about 35.3 percent of American women are obese. The number of overweight and obese Americans has increased almost continuously since 1960.

There are a number of dangerous health problems that overweight people are prone to:

• high blood pressure
• type 2 diabetes
• heart disease
• stroke
• gallbladder disease
• cataracts
• age-related macular degeneration (AMD)
• breast cancer
• prostate cancer
• colon cancer

Even lesser known health risks of being obese include:

• asthma
• complications with pregnancy
• infertility
• Parkinson’s disease

You don’t have to be skinny to reduce these risks. If maintained, even weight losses as small as 10 percent of body weight can improve your health.

According to the Rand Corporation, almost 7 million adults were morbidly obese in 2005 which is defined as having a body mass index of 40 or higher. Body mass index (BMI) is a good indicator, because it correlates pretty well with the amount of body fat a person has. BMI is a formula that calculates the ratio between height and weight:

To measure your BMI using inches:

(pounds of weight / [inches of height]2) x 703 = BMI

For example, if your weight is 170 lbs. and your height is 5’6″ (66″), then the calculation is:

(170 ÷ 662) x 703 = 27.4

To measure your BMI using meters:

kilograms of weight / meters of height2

For example, if your weight is 75 kg and your height is 162 cm (1.62 m), then the calculation is:

75 ÷ 1.622 = 28.6

The following is a small table that outlines the BMI ranges and their correlating weight status:

Below 18.5 – Underweight
18.5 – 24.9 – Normal
25.0 – 29.9 – Overweight
30.0 – 39.9 – Obese
40.0+ – Morbidly Obese

So, what can we do about this? Exercise? Diet? Those words are far easier to think and say than they are to do. After I did my BMI calculation, I found that I was just a little bit overweight according to the BMI table above. I am willing to bet that I am about as equally unexcited about dieting and exercise as someone who is overweight or obese. However, the facts don’t lie. Too much weight means risk of poor health or even death. Not to mention, society has never taken very kindly to the overweight and the obese. It’s not right, but it is certainly reality. Even with all these bad things, it is still hard for us to go through the pains of exercise or the dissatisfaction of diet foods and, as if there needed to be more bad news, it typically costs more to each “healthy” than it does to eat the cheap food and junk food.

The things we have in our control for losing weight are what we eat, how much we eat, the type of activity we do, and the amount of activity we do. If you can’t eat healthier foods, you can change the amount of the food you eat. If you are overweight or obese, it is possible to lose a significant amount of weight simply be decreasing the amount that is eaten. This is true to a degree. In some cases, eating less can actually cause you to gain weight because your body things it is starving and tries to store fat.

Ok, so if we don’t change the type or amount of food, we can make it a habit to be more active, but what are the best activities to do? I suppose it mostly depends on what your life allows for. Some prefer walking or running. Some get exercise tapes to watch and workout to.

Ultimately, we can narrow this down to two basic things; eat better and be more active. But, even if we make it that simple, it is still hard to get started and even harder to stick with it.

I recently found a website that might be a big help to many people. This guy has figured out which foods can actually burn fat. Some of these foods you would never guess to be fat burning foods. He has also devised exercises that are easy to do and stick with. It does take at least a little bit of will power on your part, but he even has ways to make it easier to stick with a plan for a healthier, leaner, and more sculpted body.

There are free video presentations at http://www.gettabettabody.info for men and women. His name is Mike Geary and his system has been used by over a quarter of a million people all over the world. Go take a look and see if it is right for you.

Until next time, good luck and I wish you well.

This information has been circling around for a number of years now. The powers that be seem to be in a tussle over the facts about whether or not certain chemicals leak into our food and water as a result of heating or freezing the plastic containers that hold them. Plasticizers such as DEHA and another chemical known as BHP along with other chemicals considered to be carcinogens are said, by some officials, to be very costly to our health and in some cases are cancer causing agents.

An interview on NPR (National Public Radio) mentioned that Whole Foods is one of the only markets for groceries that provides their goods in packages and containers that are free of these chemicals.  I will be looking deeper into this to find out not only the validity to this, but also I will try to get a list of other food providers who offer the same.

I would also like to get more details about how dangerous these chemicals really are and how much risk are we really taking by microwaving and freezing our foods in plastic containers.  If anyone has some good resources for this information, please comment on this.

In the end, it is better and more “green” to get away from the use of platics, but our society and industries make it aweful difficult to do so.  Plastic is everywhere and it is in everything.  I would hate to think that we have surrounded ourselves with a toxic killer.

More to come on this subject…