A new study redefines obesity by adding waist circumference to BMI, pushing obesity rates from 43% to nearly 70% of Americans. One in four people with normal BMI actually have dangerous belly fat. Obesity is linked to diabetes, heart disease, and a lifespan 6 to 14 years shorter.
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If you have more than a 40 inch waist as a man, you're not overweight, you're obese. If you have more than a 35 inch waist as a woman, you're not overweight, you're obese. Redefining obesity get this 7 in 10Americans now qualify, according to JAMA the JMA Network Open. A sweeping new study led by Dr. Lindsey Foreman of Massachusetts General Hospital finds that adding waist size to the traditional BMI could classify nearly 70% of U.S. adults as obese. That's up from 43% under the old system. The research analyzed data for more than 300,000Americans and found that one in four people with normal BMI actually carried dangerous belly fat linked to higher risk of diabetes, heart disease and early death. The shift comes as roughly 74% of American adults are already overweight or obese. Obese, According to the cdc. Here's the problem. Obesity increased risk for at least a dozen major conditions, including stroke, cancer, arthritis, infertility and dementia, and can shorten lifespan expectancy by six to 14 years. Researchers say the new definition could transform treatment eligibility and insurance coverage, expanding the medical system's view of what unhealthy weight truly looks Looks like. What's the real message here? We already knew Americans were overweight and a huge percentage of us were obese, but now it looks like the vast majority of Americans are technically obese. Why does that matter? It's not about trying to be a Victoria's Secrets fashion model. It's not about looks. It's about avoiding death from cancer, stroke, heart attack. Wake up, folks. We've got to exercise more, move more, and stop putting so much processed food and sugar and and fat and junk food into our mouths all day long. Let's dig a little deeper here. It's Saturday morning when I'm doing this, and normally I would be playing pickleball this time because I do like to maintain my own health and my own weight at a healthy level. I hope you do as well. If you are watching this Saturday morning or anytime, I beg you, I plead with you. Spend some time to get up. If nothing else, walk more. Find a sport you enjoy. Eat. Let's eat real food. And it's harder and harder. I was just out with my wife and my family last night and the night before at 2, what you would call fairly nice restaurants. And so many of the dishes were not only fried, but covered with all sorts of sugary sauces. Now, I usually ask, and I'm pretty stringent about no fried food. Leave all the sauce on the side. But I was in a hurry, I didn't pay attention. And that before you know it, you've got all those extra calories and calories that do not help you when there's sugar and processed sugar added into gloppy sauce. That is a prescription for going from normal weight to overweight to obese. And as it turns out now, a lot of us were fooling ourselves. We said, well, I'm just a few pounds overweight. Well, there are new measurements now. I believe their measurement is saying if you have more than a 40 inch waist as a man, you're not overweight, you're obese. If you have more than a 35 inch waist as a woman, you're not overweight, you're obese. Again, this is not about trying to look good or appeal to male fashion editors. Sensibility, that's not what it's about. It's about life and death. Literally, average lifespan goes down 6 to 14 years. So instead of living to the ripe old age of 83, you die at 69. Those could be years that you really spend enjoying time with, with children, grandchildren, family, friends, traveling, gone because you had to have that Cheesecake factory appetizer that was 2,000 calories because it's so tasty. There were 300,000 participants from the NIH's all of Us program analyzed. So this was a serious, serious study. And again, the obesity rates jumped from 42.9% to 68.6%. In these guidelines, you are twice as likely to have diabetes and 55% more likely to have heart disease risk once you are in this obesity category. So this is a big problem. Obesity contributes to heart disease, stroke, 13 different types of cancers, sleep apnea, arthritis, depression, and it is historically something that's a rarity. Again, let's, let's step back in. For most of human history, the problem humans had was not enough food. It was starvation. As one of the reasons why for most of human history, people died or the average lifespan span wasn't above much over 30. Well, fortunately, lifespan has gone way up, thanks to, sorry to tell some of you this, vaccines and antibiotics and clean sewers, clean sewage. So we're not walking in raw sewage all the time. Those are the things that dramatically increased lifespan. And now we have a situation where in some years lifespan actually goes down because of obesity. And it's hard to talk about. Doctors are afraid to talk about it because they'll get negative reviews from patients. Oh, he fat shamed me. He asked me to step on a scale you know, the problem is not the scale. The problem is sad. Literally sad. Standard American diet, where we eat lots of heavily processed food that's had lots of sugar and lots of salt and lots of artificial sugars added to it and lots of processing so that it tastes so yummy, we can't stop. And we've now bought into this idea that kids and everyone else needs to have a snack available at all times. No, they don't really need to snack. Unless you're a professional athlete and you're training eight hours a day, you don't really need a snack. You finish dinner, you don't really need a snack while watching tv. In fact, you don't need to be watching tv. How about going out for a walk about playing a sport? This is a huge problem, and everyone's afraid to talk about it for fear of being called a fat shamer. This is not a moral issue, folks. This is an environmental issue. We have now created an environment where we as human beings, even if you are poor in America, you are surrounded by very inexpensive food that is designed to destroy your life and destroy your health. Now, that's not why food manufacturers created it. Their goal is not to kill you. Their goal is to make it so tasty that you can't stop eating it or drinking it. One easy way to reduce your chances of becoming obese is to simply stop drinking calories. See this? It's water. It's tap water. It's filtered water, but it's tap water. It costs nothing for almost nothing in the United States. So I beg you, if nothing else, join me in the goal of having a glass of water around yourself all day long. I don't measure it. I don't say I've got to drink 23 gallons of water per ounce, but just have water around, sip on it throughout the day. It will make you less hungry. And you're not putting all the calories of the fruit juices and the smoothies and the Cokes and the Pepsis and the Sprites and the Mountain Dews and the Kool AIDS and all the other garbage we are putting into our bodies.
