Today, a whopping number of people face challenges with extra pounds, tipping scales into overweight or obesity zones more than at any time in history. This issue doesn’t just stick to grown-ups; it’s also creeping up on the younger crowd. When we tackle the terms “obese” and “overweight,” we’re actually spotlighting a concerning accumulation of body fat that can open doors to a host of daunting health battles.
It is no doubt that everyone needs some body fat for energy, heat insulation, and other body functions, but accumulating excess fat in the body leads to serious health problems. That is to say, the more fat one accumulates, the greater the risk of having critical health issues. Many factors contribute greatly to weight gain and go on to affect how much fat your body stores.
Let us briefly discuss how our body makes use of the calories we consume in a layman’s language; the calories we get from the food we consume helps the body in performing its functions as mentioned earlier. When one takes more calories from food than one uses up from all the daily physical activities, the body stores the unused extra calories. Over time, if one goes on to consume more calories than the body needs, then weight gain becomes easy. Excessive gaining of weight may now lead to overweight or obesity.
Attaining and maintaining a healthy weight may be a long term challenge if you are overweight or have obesity. If you are already overweight or have obesity, maintaining a healthy weight and not gaining more weight can go a long way in helping you lower the chances of developing associated health problems.
The health problems that can develop from obesity and overweight are diabetes, high blood pressure, stroke, kidney diseases and failures, heart diseases, arthritis and more.
The terms overweight and obesity get thrown around a lot with most people not realizing that the two words actually have their clinical definitions and a number of differences. One might wrongly refer to an overweight individual as obese and vice versa.
So, how do we differentiate these two terms? Though the two words obviously are part of a disease process caused by too much accumulation of fats in the body, there is definitely a medical definition for obesity as well as for the term overweight.
Being overweight has become a serious worldwide concern both in kids and adults. A healthy body system needs a required amount of body fat for adequate functioning of the immune system, energy for future use, hormonal and reproductive activities. When the body fat is accumulated, health becomes impaired and may, as a result, lead to significant long term health consequences. Besides internal health issues, overweight also alters the physical appearance of the body.
Overweight is generally referred to as the body weight that is higher than what is considered to be healthy for a certain height. Simply put, overweight is basically due to the accumulation of extra body fat as mentioned earlier.
In other cases, overweight may also be as a result of extra muscle, bone or even water.
In medical terminology, overweight can be defined based on body mass index (BMI).
An individual’s body mass index is one way to tell if one is at a healthy weight, overweight or have obesity. That is to say, the degree to which a person is overweight is generally described by the body mass index (BMI) (5).
Body mass index requires the height and weight of the individual for the calculation. It is a measure of a person’s weight taking into consideration the person’s height. It is mathematically given as the weight of the person in kilograms divided by the square of the person’s height in meters (2).
Therefore, the body mass index is measured in units of a kilogram per meter squared (kg/m2). The value of BMI is typically used and written without units (1).
This method of using body mass index to determine the degree of overweight of an individual provides a more accurate representation of fat in a body compared to just measuring the weight of the person (5).
It is pertinent to note that BMI does not take into consideration some factors such as pregnancy or bodybuilding.
It is a manual process to check for BMI, this makes it very simple and easy that anyone can use it to determine health risk due to excess body fat levels. The BMI calculators are readily available. One only needs to get the values of weight and height. By using the formula, you can interpret your BMI results (5).
Using the simple chart below, you can interpret your BMI result. For adults, BMI results are interpreted as shown below;
The above chart is for adults. In children, BMI is interpreted differently. This is because children are still growing and boys and girls grow and mature at different rates. This is why growth charts and percentiles are used so that age and gender are taken into account.
If the BMI falls between 85th to less than 95th percentile, then the child is overweight (1, 3).
If it is in the 95th percentile or greater, the child is considered to be obese (3).
Ok, let us give an example of how BMI is calculated.
Remember the formula is weight (kg)/Height2 (m2) (1)
If the weight, for instance, is 80kg and height is 170cm which is equivalent to 1.7m
Then, the BMI is 80/1.72
= 80/2.89
BMI = 27.68 (1)
Using the chart, the result above shows that this individual is overweight. It is as simple as that.
Even though there is a strong correlation between BMI and body fat measurement, there are some limitations which are based on the person’s age, gender, and athletic ability (3).
Being overweight has a strong correlation with developing serious health issues. This is the reason why BMI is used in screening the health of the general population.
Another tool used in determining the degree of overweight is the body volume index (BVI). Unlike BMI that is manual, BVI is devised as a computer that uses 3D software to create an accurate image of a person. This tool measures the location of weight and fat in the body especially the weight and fat carried around the abdomen.
Another tool used is a simple weighing method. This is the easiest and the most common method but the least accurate as it only measures the weight. It does not take into consideration the height of the person, body type or muscle mass.
With this method, a person’s weight is measured and compared to an estimated ideal weight.
People who are overweight have increased the risk of developing health conditions like; hypertension, type 2 diabetes, heart diseases, stroke some cancers, kidney problems, breathing problems, arthritis, gallbladder disease, and respiratory problems (4).
Obesity is a medical condition and a complex disorder in which excess fat has accumulated to an extent that it may result in serious health conditions. Obesity is not just a cosmetic concern. Being obese means you are highly likely to have health problems related to your body weight.
The bad thing about obesity is that it is a disease caused by many factors which we will be discussing soon. It has become a worldwide concern but the good news is that it is treatable and manageable. That you are obese does not mean it is your fault, it is also not about weight gain by food consumed and it is not yours to manage alone. Healthcare providers and other trained personnel are available to help through the prescription of medications and weight loss surgery.
Body fat is not simple to measure directly. So, BMI is often used to determine how obese one is. It is still the same method used for calculating how overweight someone is. That is, dividing the body weight (mass) in kilogram by square of the height (1).
The only difference is the range of the BMI value (1).
Therefore, a BMI that falls in the range of 30.0 to 39.9 indicates obesity (1).
How do we then describe someone with a higher BMI value? Someone who is more than 100 pounds has a BMI greater than 40 and this condition is referred to as severe obesity (3).
There is also the class I, II and III obesity. These are severe cases of obesity and should be treated as an emergency to avoid the high risk of medical problems (3).
Below is a chart that shows the classifications of obesity and the corresponding BMI range.
BMI is not a percentage of the body fat but only a part of a diagnosis of obesity.
As discussed earlier, BMI does not directly measure body fat, therefore, it is not a good tool for determining obesity in muscular athletes. This is because these athletes may have a BMI in the obese category even though they don’t have excess muscle mass and not excess body mass.
Many factors are causes of obesity and overweight; genetic, behavioral and hormonal factors. Basically, obesity or overweight occurs when one takes in more calories than one burns through exercise and other normal daily activities. It is natural that the body stores these excess calories as fat.
Generally, the principal causes of obesity and overweight are discussed below.
Having one or more of these risk factors doesn’t mean that you are bound to become overweight or obese. A healthy diet, physical activity, and exercise go a long way in counteracting most of these risk factors.
Whether you are at a healthy weight or at risk of becoming overweight or obese, you can take the necessary steps to prevent weight gain.
Maintain a healthy eating plan by focusing on low-calorie, nutrient dense foods such as fruits and vegetables. Stay away from saturated fats, alcohol, and sweet foods. Stick to foods that promote healthy weight and good health.
You can escape both obesity and overweight if you take out time to engage in daily workouts. Find a specific time of the day to engage in physical exercises. The early morning hours are ideal for this. Making daily workouts part of your life may help you burn excess fats.
This will help you in keeping off excess pounds by helping you detect small weight gain before they become big problems.
To achieve a long term success in preventing overweight and obesity, remain consistent. Maintain your healthy weight plan at all times.
(1) https://www.who.int/publications/cra/chapters/volume1/0497-0596.pdf
(2) https://www.who.int/dietphysicalactivity/media/en/gsfs_obesity.pdf
(3) https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/disabilityandhealth/documents/obesityFactsheet2010.pdf
(4) https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/7/3/765/pdf
(5) https://www.rki.de/EN/Content/Health_Monitoring/Health_Reporting/GBEDownloadsJ/FactSheets_en/JoHM_2017_02_Overweight_obesity_adults.pdf?__blob=publicationFile
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