What Is Obesity ?

  

 Obesity is one of those words that you hear used on the news, all the time. You have a general idea of what it means. But are you right? Medically, someone who is obese has more fat on his or her body than is considered a healthy average for his or her height and bone structure.

What about fat?

    In order to understand obesity, you have to understand fat. But fat is another term that can be confusing because there are two different kinds: dietary fat and body fat.

    Dietary fat is a part of food. You want to have a little bit of fat in your diet because it serves as a major source of energy for your body. It is used to make cell membranes and compounds in your body that control blood pressure, heart rate, bloods clotting, and other body functions. It carries certain vitamins from your food throughout your body. Fat gives you healthy hair, skin, and nails. In infants and toddlers, it helps the brain develop. Fat also helps you to feel full and tells your brain that it is time to stop eating.

   Body fat is a part of the human body and what scientists mean when they refer to a person’s weight or body composition. Your body needs to have a certain amount of body fat. It acts like a blanket to keep you warm. It helps to cushion you against injury. In certain extreme cases, stored body fat is needed as the main source of energy to keep the body running. But while your body does need a little bit of fat in it, it really isn’t good to gain too much weight.

Healthy weight

   The key to overcoming obesity is understanding what weight is healthy for you. But how do you find out?

   The most common way to determine a healthy weight for a person is by using a tool called the body mass index (BMI). The BMI compares your weight to your height to figure out whether you are too heavy for your height. The BMI does not measure how much of your weight comes from your muscles compared to how much comes from fat, though.

If, for instance, you are an athlete taking part in a sport every day for several hours, the body mass index cannot tell that much of your extra weight is in your muscles.

   For that reason, some people prefer to use other tools to measure body fat. Some doctors use body fat percentages to measure body fat. This method uses measurements of weight, height, and the amount of fat on different body parts to estimate body fat percentages. Men and women need different amounts of fat in their body. Women’s muscles do not have the same mass as men’s, so their body fat percentage is higher.