Worried About Your Weight?
Posted on 05. Mar, 2010 by afyakenya in Blog
How do I know If I’m overweight or Obese?
Find out your body mass index (BMI). BMI is a measure of body fat based on height and weight. People with a BMI of 25 to 29.9 are considered overweight. People with a BMI of 30 or more are considered obese.
Body Mass Index
You can find out your BMI by using the calculator at www.nhlbisupport.com/bmi/bmicalc.htm or the chart at www.nhlbi.nih.gov/guidelines/obesity/bmi_tbl.htm.
What causes someone to become overweight or obese?
You can become overweight or obese when you eat more calories than you use. A calorie is a unit of energy in the food you eat. Your body needs this energy to function and to be active. But if you take in more energy than your body uses, you will gain weight.
Many factors can play a role in becoming overweight or obese. These factors include:
Behaviors, such as eating too many calories or not getting enough physical activity.
Environment and culture.
Genes.
Overweight and obesity problems keep getting worse in Kenya amongst the urban elite. Some cultural reasons for this include:
Bigger portion sizes.
Little time to exercise or cook healthy meals.
Using cars to get places instead of walking.
What are the health effects of being overweight or obese?
Being overweight or obese can increase your risk of:
Heart disease.
Stroke.
Type 2 diabetes.
High blood pressure.
Breathing problems.
Arthritis.
Gallbladder disease.
Some kinds of cancer.
But excess body weight is not the only health risk. The places where you store your body fat also affect your health. For example, women with a “pear” shape tend to store fat in their hips and buttocks. Women with an “apple” shape store fat around their waists. If your waist is more than 35 inches, you may have a higher risk of weight-related health problems.
What is the best way for me to lose weight?
The best way to lose weight is to use more calories than you take in. You can do this by following a healthy eating plan and being more active. Before you start a weight-loss program, talk to your doctor.
Safe weight-loss programs that work well:
set a goal of slow and steady weight loss — 1 to 2 pounds per week.
offer low-calorie eating plans with a wide range of healthy foods.
encourage you to be more physically active.
teach you about healthy eating and physical activity.
adapt to your likes and dislikes and cultural background.
help you keep weight off after you lose it.
How can I make healthier food choices?
The Afya Kenya Foundation offers tips for healthy eating in Dietary Guidelines for All Kenyans.
Focus on fruits. Eat a variety of fruits — fresh, frozen, canned, or dried — rather than fruit juice for most of your fruit choices. For a 2,000-calorie diet, you will need 2 cups of fruit each day. An example of 2 cups is 1 small banana, 1 large orange, and 1/4 cup of dried apricots or peaches.
Vary your veggies. Eat more:
dark green veggies, such as broccoli, sukuma wiki, and other dark leafy greens
orange veggies, such as carrots, sweet potatoes, pumpkin, and winter squash
beans and peas, such as pinto beans, kidney beans, black beans, garbanzo beans, split peas, and lentils
Get your calcium-rich foods. Each day, drink 3 cups of low-fat or fat-free milk. Or, you can get an equivalent amount of low-fat yogurt and/or low-fat cheese each day. 1.5 ounces of cheese equals 1 cup of milk. If you don’t or can’t consume milk, choose lactose-free milk products and/or calcium-fortified foods and drinks.
Make half your grains whole. Eat at least 3 ounces of whole-grain cereals, breads, crackers, rice, or pasta each day. One ounce is about 1 slice of bread, 1 cup of breakfast cereal, or 1/2 cup of cooked rice or pasta. Look to see that grains such as wheat, rice, oats, or corn are referred to as “whole” in the list of ingredients.
Go lean with protein. Choose lean meats and poultry. Bake it, broil it, or grill it. Vary your protein choices with more fish, beans, peas, nuts, and seeds.
Limit saturated fats. Get less than 10 percent of your calories from saturated fatty acids. Most fats should come from sources of polyunsaturated and monounsaturated fatty acids, such as fish, nuts, and vegetable oils. When choosing and preparing meat, poultry, dry beans, and milk or milk products, make choices that are lean, low-fat, or fat-free.
Limit salt. Get less than 2,300 mg of sodium (about 1 teaspoon of salt) each day.
]
How can physical activity help?
The Afya Kenya Foundation states that an active lifestyle can lower your risk of early death from a variety of causes. There is strong evidence that regular physical activity can also lower your risk of:
Heart disease.
Stroke.
High blood pressure.
Unhealthy cholesterol levels.
Type 2 diabetes.
Metabolic syndrome.
Colon cancer.
Breast cancer.
Falls.
Depression.
Regular activity can help prevent unhealthy weight gain and also help with weight loss, when combined with lower calorie intake. If you are overweight or obese, losing weight can lower your risk for many diseases. Being overweight or obese increases your risk of heart disease, high blood pressure, stroke, type 2 diabetes, breathing problems, osteoarthritis, gallbladder disease, sleep apnea (breathing problems while sleeping), and some cancers.
Regular physical activity can also improve your cardiorespiratory (heart, lungs, and blood vessels) and muscular fitness. For older adults, activity can improve mental function.
Physical activity may also help:
Improve functional health for older adults.
Reduce waistline size.
Lower risk of hip fracture.
Lower risk of lung cancer.
Lower risk of endometrial cancer.
Maintain weight after weight loss.
Increase bone density.
Improve sleep quality.
Health benefits are gained by doing the following each week:
Moderate Activity
During moderate-intensity activities you should notice an increase in your heart rate, but you should still be able to talk comfortably. An example of a moderate-intensity activity is walking on a level surface at a brisk pace (about 3 to 4 miles per hour). Other examples include ballroom dancing, leisurely bicycling, moderate housework, and waiting tables.
2 hours and 30 minutes of moderate-intensity aerobic physical activity or
1 hour and 15 minutes of vigorous-intensity aerobic physical activity or
A combination of moderate and vigorous-intensity aerobic physical activity and
Muscle-strengthening activities on 2 or more days.
Vigorous Activity
If your heart rate increases a lot and you are breathing so hard that it is difficult to carry on a conversation, you are probably doing vigorous-intensity activity. Examples of vigorous-intensity activities include jogging, bicycling fast or uphill, singles tennis, and pushing a hand mower.
This physical activity should be in addition to your routine activities of daily living, such as cleaning or spending a few minutes walking from the parking lot to your office.
If you want to lose a substantial (more than 5 percent of body weight) amount of weight, you need a high amount of physical activity unless you also lower calorie intake. This is also the case if you are trying to keep the weight off. Many people need to do more than 300 minutes of moderate-intensity activity a week to meet weight-control goals.
How You Can Increase Your Physical Activity
If you normally… Try this instead!
park as close as possible to the store park farther away
let the dog out back take the dog for a walk
take the elevator take the stairs
have lunch delivered walk to pick up lunch
relax while the kids play get involved in their activity
Regards,
Oduwo Noah Akala
Chairman,
Afya Kenya Foundation.
I searched many websites and here I found what I was looking for, thanks for valuable post.
Your welcome. Hope it serves you well. Regards.
Interesting article I totally agree with the comments above. Keep us posting.
We’ll be sure to inform you of anything. If you subscribe to our RSS feed you can get updates of any new posts.
I have nowsubscribed to your RSS feed. I love your content.
Thanks! Hope you can enlighten others as well.
If you don’t mind I may use a snippet or two for my own site. Have a great day.
Not at all. The posts are open to everyone.
Hey, thanks for the great post. Honestly, about seven months ago I started a new dieting regime, I’ve been on the chubby side my entire adult life and I’ve tried everything. I found personally that the only thing that worked for me was hard work and putting the effort, take a look at this, it changed my life http://DietingHelp7.cowurl.com. Good luck and thank you for the great article.
Your welcome. I’ll be sure to do so.
I truly loved this brilliant article. Please continue this awesome work. Regards, Duyq.
Thank you for the positive feedback.
Regards Noah.
I just discovered weight loss product that works amazingly. Some famous reporters made tests and results were surprising. They posted results at WEIGHTSDOWN.INFO , copy that site name to browser and see!
Thanks pal. Great website you have here. Got some more sites to point to which have more stuff like this?
Just passing by to comment you for the great read. It was really worth my time reading this content. Waiting for more wonderful content soon! I added your feed in my reader!
Thank you for the feedback. Hope it will aid in your endeavours.
Regards.
be serious, this article is cobbled together from sites suited to the western world: peaches, garbanzo beans, winter squash. do you even know what these are? why not come up with something that talks of authentic kenyan foods: ugali, sweet potatoes, arrowroots, traditional vegetables, mangoes. there is so much so stop copying. disappointing
‘”; I am really thankful to this topic because it really gives useful information .-:
Thank you for the feedback.
Regards Noah
I’m writing to make you understand what a really good discovery our child undergone checking the blog. She even learned plenty of details, with the inclusion of how it is like to have an awesome teaching spirit to let most people smoothly fully grasp certain complicated subject matter. You undoubtedly surpassed readers’ expected results. Many thanks for providing such productive, healthy, informative and in addition fun tips on this topic to Tanya.
Good day I am so glad I found your website, I really found you by accident, while I was researching on Askjeeve for something else, Anyhow I am here now and would just like to say many thanks for a incredible post and a all round entertaining blog (I also love the theme/design), I don抰 have time to read it all at the minute but I have book-marked it and also added your RSS feeds, so when I have time I will be back to read a lot more, Please do keep up the awesome work.
Hey! I know this is somewhat off topic but I was wondering if you knew where I could locate a captcha plugin for my comment form? I’m using the same blog platform as yours and I’m having trouble finding one? Thanks a lot!
Hello there, just became aware of your blog through Google, and found that it’s truly informative. I am gonna watch out for brussels. I’ll appreciate if you continue this in future. A lot of people will be benefited from your writing. Cheers!
Thank you, I’ve just been searching for info about this topic for a long time and yours is the greatest I’ve discovered till now. But, what about the conclusion? Are you sure concerning the supply?
Great location, I know I’ll have to have to be back again shortly
Hey can you please draw me a daily food diet plan that I can use through the week with locally available foods in Kenya.Kindly include options…e.g if I cannot access beans, what option do I have?
I am obese +2 , High BMI,Blood sugar is ok,hugh body fat and I prefer running for exercise because of my hectic schedule.
Your blog is really interesting to me and your topics are very relevant. I was browsing around and came across something you might find interesting. I was guilty of 3 of them with my sites. “99% of website managers are committing these five errors”. http://is.gd/HWKqeJ You will be suprised how easy they are to fix.
Finally I got what I am looking for. Well, I need to bookmark this post so I can have a good reference for future queries. Great website dude!.
Hi Noah. Interesting article. Would like to share on weightloss management. Please get in touch with me.
Hi. Great site you have here. I’m struggling to shed about 25kg. Can you help? Thanks
I agree with one sophia – as good as this article is, its lifted off those western articles. If you really want to help a kawaida kenyan then you need to refer to foods that we can relate with. Few people eat broccoli mostly because they arent even sold in our local markets, tell me the foods that can suit me locally. Tell peeps to stop eating mandazis, samosas, mkate bandika especially on white bread and give them alternatives – e.g. take brown uji with an egg or peanuts for breakfast. Tell people contrary to their popular belief that skipping meals is a good idea it makes them fatter because ultimately they eat more later to compensate, tell them about the Glycemic Index and the effect it has on your insulin, blood sugar and how it ultimately affects your appetite…such things but make them relate to locals. Thanks.