Friday, November 8, 2013

America: fat and getting fatter


Gallup.com says almost 63% of American adults are "overweight" or "obese"….and getting fatter.

Recent findings from yearlong surveying by Gallup show that 27% of adults are "obese," based on the Body Mass Index (BMI) calculation, and that figure is up 1 percentage point from last year. More than 35% of Americans are "overweight."


You can get your own BMI at this National Institutes of Health website.

Example: if you are 5 feet 10 inches tall and you weigh 209 pounds, you are clinically obese….drop 1 pound and you move into the "overweight" category.

At that height, you'd have to get your weight down to 173 to avoid being classified as "overweight."






Those are startling numbers. Makes me want to remember to avoid blurting "Super-size me" the next time I'm in a McDonald's….





Here's the scoop on the Gallup report:

Gallup and Healthways began tracking Americans' weight in 2008. The 2013 data are based on more than 141,000 interviews conducted from Jan. 1 through Oct. 28, as part of the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index. Individual BMI values of 30 or above are classified as "obese," 25 to 29.9 are "overweight," 18.5 to 24.9 are "normal weight," and 18.4 or less are "underweight."



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