According
to the WebMD, obesity is having so much body fat that your health
is in danger. The American Obesity Association explains that obesity
is a chronic disease that affects over 60 million Americans and counting.
Also, another 67 million Americans are considered overweight. The distinction
between obese and overweight is drawn from what is known as the Body
Mass Index (BMI).
Body
Mass Index is a calculation used to determine whether a person is overweight.
The calculation is simple. A person's BMI is their bodyweight in kilograms
(kg) divided by their height-squared in meters (m). A person is overweight
if the resulting number is between 25 and 29.9. A person is obese if
their BMI is 30 or more.
Use this BMI calculator provided by the National Heart Lung and Blood Institute to find out your BMI.
Obesity
is a serious public health concern. Every year, obesity causes at least
300,000 excess deaths in the U.S., and healthcare costs of American
adults with obesity amount to approximately $100 billion. While this
number is strikingly high, the National Institutes of Health spend less
that 1% of its budget on obesity research.
