I Need Your Help

In designing a weight loss program, building in motivating factors and supportive tools is especially important.  If you are currently struggling with or have ever struggled with your weight, I’d like your opinion.  Please fill out the following brief survey to help prioritize the key drivers that would motivate & help you to adopt healthier nutrition and exercise behaviors that will lead to a healthier weight.

Survey Instructions:  For each of the following 6 potential components of a Weight Loss Program, please rank their importance to you on a scale from 1 to 5 where 1 indicates Least Important & 5 indicates Most Important.

What Do You Need To Lose Weight?

So how does exercise relate to weight loss? Well we know that to lose weight you need to take in fewer calories as food than you burn through exercise and other activities. Exercise can help you burn more calories than without it, so weight loss should be helped by increased activity. While that’s true, it’s a bit more complex than that with real implications for losing weight. Before we discuss that we need to better understand some concepts that a discussion of exercise and prevention can best illustrate.

Beyond its effect on weight loss, one of the major benefits of exercise is in prevention. A recent study (1) in women underscores these key relationships. This study built upon the large Nurses’ Health Study. This study looked at data on over 88,000 women ages 39 to 59 from 1980 through 2000. None of these women had heart disease or cancer when the study began. Over the 20 years of the study, the women reported their diet, physical activity level and waist circumference every 2 years. The results found that women who were inactive and obese had nearly 3.5 times the risk of having coronary heart disease than those who were active and lean. The lead researcher, Dr. Frank B. Hu, noted, “A high level of physical activity did not eliminate the risk of coronary heart disease with obesity, and leanness did not counteract the increased coronary heart disease risk associated with inactivity.”

In the next post I’ll talk about some recommendations for exercise in healthy adults.

For Your Health – Dr. Bob

Footnotes: (1) Circulation. 2006;113:499-506

This is wrong.  There are many studies that show that people who have a higher BMI are at risk for serious illnesses.  For instance, the higher the BMI,  the greater the risk of a heart attack.  Most importantly, the reverse is true.  If you decrease your BMI you decrease your risk of stroke and heart attack.   Another study in women shows that women with a BMI over 29 have a 3.3 times greater chance of a fatal or non-fatal heart attack within the next eight years than women with a BMI less than 21.  BMI values between 18.5 and 24.9 are considered normal.  These results were adjusted for age and smoking status, meaning that comparisons were made between women of the same age and smoking status so any differences in heart attack risk could not be attributed to either of those factors. 

Insights For Health Bottom Line: A high BMI increases your health risks for many serious medical conditions, but other factors can also affect those risks.  BMI is a modifiable risk factor – something you can do something about to lower your risks.

Next time we’ll consider the myth that for some people a high BMI is normal.

For Your Health – Dr. Bob

From time to time I read comments or articles that are critical of judging a person’s weight by using the Body Mass Index (BMI). I have heard that there is a recent film that calls its usefulness into question. Being a physician, I thought I should clarify some of the more common misconceptions surrounding it. In my next few posts I’ll discuss some of the more common myths about the BMI and point out some facts to help you understand how it should be used and why it’s important:

Myth 1 – BMI Doesn’t Really Measure Obesity

Health care professionals will consider it and other measurements in assessing the proper weight range for an individual.

In my next post I’ll discuss another myth I’ve heard that the BMI really is not useful.

For Your Health – Dr. Bob

Body Mass Index (BMI) is a measure calculated from a person’s weight and height. It provides a reliable indicator of body fatness for most people and is used to screen for weight categories that may lead to health problems. BMI is calculated by dividing your weight in kilograms by your height in meters squared. That number should be between 18.5 and 24.9. The National Institutes of Health has defined certain classifications of weight based upon the BMI:

According to a report released on July 7, 2011 by the Trust for America’s Health and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, two-thirds of all adults and about a third of all children and teenagers in the United States are overweight or obese.  In fact 16 states have obesity rates over 30%.  Colorado has the lowest rate at 19.8%.  Twenty years ago no state’s obesity rate exceeded 15%.  Indeed we have an epidemic!

You should discuss with your physician whether your goal should be to attain a normal BMI. For people with a lot of muscle mass, such as trained athletes, a healthy BMI may actually be somewhat higher than what the table would indicate. For most people, however, these categories are a useful guide.

Another body measurement that is related to health risk is the waist circumference. It seems that the location of fat makes a difference as far as health risk. Fat in the waist carries a greater health risk than fat in hips or thighs. Scientific studies have shown that people whose waists exceed the targets in the table below have a higher risk of health problems.

In my next post I’ll talk about the health risks from being overweight.

For Your Health – Dr. Bob