Obese Britain 2015.pdf

Recommendations

Info

PROMOTION What do we mean by Photograph: iStock ‘overweight’? L ast month a government policy paper on obesity and healthy eating said that “excess weight” can make it harder to hold down jobs and can affect self-esteem and mental health. But the obesity crisis that costs the NHS more than £5 billion a year will not be helped by people losing weight. What obese people actually need to lose is fat, and that’s a completely different ballgame. “Obesity is not about being too heavy, it’s about being too fat,” says Phil Chant, director of Bodyscan (bodyscanuk.com), a company that accurately measures body composition with low-dose X-rays known as DEXA. “Weight is nothing more than your relationship with gravity and there’s not much you can do about the force that keeps your feet on the ground. What you can do something about, and what you should be focused on, is changing your body composition – reducing the amount of fat in your body and increasing the quantity of lean muscle.” Unfortunately, the most widely used tool for classifying someone as obese is the muchmaligned body mass index (BMI) which is simply your weight divided by the square of your height. BMI is completely blind to how much fat and muscle you have and how it’s distributed around your body. “The biggest risks from obesity are related to fat in the upper body, in particular visceral fat, which surrounds the organs,” says Chant. “You can’t measure visceral fat by standing on a set of scales, and you can very easily be small and slim with risky levels of visceral fat.” Chant pulls out a folder of body composition reports to make his case against BMI and weight. The first is that of a 29-year-old bodybuilder whose BMI of 32.9 makes him not just ‘overweight’ but ‘obese’. The DEXA report tells a very different story - he has lower body fat than 97% of men his age, more muscle than 99% and a healthy amount of visceral fat. Another report is that of a slim 23-year-old male, 69kg in weight, 177cm tall and a BMI smack bang in the middle of ‘normal’, ie, officially healthy. But DEXA body composition analysis shows the young man to be 31% body fat – higher than for 81% of men his age, with very low levels of muscle and high visceral fat. And a third report is of a client who lost 7.5kg over 12 weeks but is now fatter than at the start because almost all of the weight lost was muscle. The crazy thing about BMI is that it’s used by the insurance industry to assess policy premiums. “As people get leaner and put on more muscle they get heavier,” says Chant. “Their BMI goes up and, with it, their insurance premiums. “Fit, muscular people are paying more than fat people for their health insurance. It’s ridiculous!” Conversely, the weight loss industry is making millions by convincing people they need to be lighter when in reality they need to be less fat. Instead of using body mass index, individuals and industry should switch to more meaningful indices such as fat mass index (FMI) and lean mass index (LMI). These are calculated from the exact quantity of fat and lean mass in your body, which can be determined with accurate methods of measurement such as underwater weighing and DEXA. Unlike weight – and even body fat percentage – a falling FMI is unequivocal proof that you’re losing body fat. So forget BMI and stop standing on the scales to check your relationship with gravity. Understand instead exactly what you’re made of – how much fat and how much lean – because they are things you can change. HIGH FAT, NORMAL BMI BODYBUILDER, OBESE BMI 36
“A great healthier alternative to the other oils out there. It’s so pure, gives my food more flavour and tastes amazing. I fry my chicken in it practically every day and it goes great in shakes too.” Shachar Head World Champion Powerlifter & World Record Holder
Page 2 and 3: Thirsty. Squash. No added sugar. Li
Page 4 and 5: IN THIS ISSUE An apple a day Interv
Page 7 and 8: The number of children in the UK wh
Page 9 and 10: 3. Your Brain The link between body
Page 11 and 12: Reduce errors! * Unique Intelli Wra
Page 13 and 14: There is so much contradictory advi
Page 15 and 16: COMVITA QUALITY & PURITY UMF ® Man
Page 17 and 18: Milk and dairy This group of produc
Page 19 and 20: Promotion When it comes to putting
Page 21 and 22: All these pitfalls do not mean you
Page 23 and 24: PROMOTION be thickened into super-f
Page 25 and 26: PROMOTION Photograph: iStock Make s
Page 27 and 28: PROMOTION Clinical Research on Alma
Page 29 and 30: een observed to detrimentally effec
Page 31 and 32: People with obesity are known to be
Page 33 and 34: With so much emphasis on weight los
Page 35: Back in the halcyon days of early 2
Page 39 and 40: After school swaps We all know the
Page 41 and 42: Enjoy the lighter side of cooking..
Page 43 and 44: PROMOTION Fabulous Fish! Exercising
Page 45: 5 A Day options with some extra gui
Page 48 and 49: An introduction to weight-loss surg
Page 50 and 51: Types of surgery Bariatric procedur
Page 52 and 53: helping overcome obesity Photograph
Page 54 and 55: Get your kids off the couch It’s
Page 56 and 57: 1. Outdoor fun As everybody knows,
Page 58 and 59: Psychology & Obesity It’s not jus
Page 60 and 61: How to Count Calories (Correctly) Y
Page 62 and 63: Living with type 2 diabetes Diabete

Obese Britain 2015.pdf

You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles

Delete template?

Save as template?