If you pick up any women’s magazine or look at the female section of a tabloid paper, the chances are there will be a piece written about dieting. Most of us have at least one friend who is keen to discuss the successes and failures of their latest diet ‘fad’ and if you are ever stuck for a topic of conversation, then try talking about food and see how soon the conversation moves swiftly from swopping recipes into the successes and failures of various diets, not to mention everyone’s personal story about weight-gain and or loss.
It is so easy to become obsessed with weight and Body Mass Index (BMI), i.e. our weight in kilograms divided by the square of our height in metres1 when actually, for most of us, it is more sensible to concentrate on perfecting our body shape than worrying about our weight. After all, common sense tells us that attractive looking people come in all sizes.
Obesity
The total number of overweight Europeans is rising and it is therefore quite right for governments to be concerned about obesity, however; as fortunately most of us are not seriously over-weight, we can leave the worrying about increasing obesity to the politicians. It is still only a minority of Europeans (less than 25%), who suffer with real obesity.2 True obesity is when a person’s excess body fat adversely affects their health. You would be considered to be obese when your BMI exceeds 30 kg/m2. BMI values that are between 25 kg/m2 and 29.9 kg/m2 are categorised as overweight. Normal people have BMI values between 18.5 kg/m2 and 24.9 kg/m2 and people with BMI equal to or less than 18.5 kg/m2 are considered as underweight. If you are worried and do not know your own BMI then there are many websites that can help you to quickly do the calculation. At the time of writing this article, these two websites were especially useful:
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