Almost any of the commercial weight-loss programs can work, but only if they motivate you sufficiently to decrease the amount of calories you eat or increase the amount of calories…

No matter how young at heart we may be, Old Father Time still counts down on the granules of our life expectancy. As we age, we become less able…

When we discover that we are heavier than we want to be, we have a natural inclination to eat less food. We may skip lunch or eat only a tiny amount of…

Reaching your fat loss goals may be easier than you think. To lose a pound of fat a month, all you need to do is cut 100 calories…

Habits, good or bad, are formed by repetition. Eating habits are no exception. If you are in the habit of snacking when you watch TV, you were reinforcing that habit until finally it became a…

If you want to reduce your body fat, focus on increasing the amount of exercise you get rather than decreasing your food intake. A recent national study was done using two groups…

“The heights by great men reached and kept
Were not attained by sudden flight,
But they, while their companions slept,
Were toiling upward in the night.”
~~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Q: How do I know how many calories I should consume?
A: To determine your approximate caloric needs, you can easily compute your basal metabolic rate. This is the number…

Q: What causes someone to become obese?

A: The core reason most people become overweight or obese is fairly simple: by taking in more calories than are burned on a daily basis. Those surplus…

Here’s the bottom line: one pound is equivalent to 3,500 calories. Whether by making slight changes to your diet like the ones listed below or exercising, a deficit…

If you are unable to use the BMI calculator, or if you are interested in how BMI is calculated, this page has the mathematical formulas. You can calculate BMI using either feet,…

So you have calculated your BMI and found which weight category your BMI matches. What does this all mean?

BMI is not the only indicator of health risk.
…

Q: What is obesity?
A: According to the Centers for Disease Control, obesity is defined as “the condition of an excessively high amount of body fat or adipose tissue in relation…

No one diet works for everyone: you need to find a diet that fits for your needs. A detailed description of each is in the diet index…

Why are kids overweight?
Most people understand and recognize that obesity has become an epidemic among children. Less is known about why, with much of the blame going to fast food…

Overweight and Obesity Among Adults

Results of the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) 1999-2000 indicate that an estimated 64 percent of U.S. adults are either overweight or obese, defined as having…

Q: How much do we spend on weight-loss products and services?

A: Americans spend $33 billion annually on weight-loss products and services. (This figure represents consumer dollars spent in the…

As the prevalence of overweight and obesity has increased in the United States, so have related health care costs-both direct and indirect. Direct health care costs refer to preventive, diagnostic,…

Overweight and obesity are found worldwide, and the prevalence of these conditions in the United States ranks high along with other developed nations. Approximately 300,000 adult deaths in the United…

The definitions or measurement characteristics for overweight and obesity have varied over time, from study to study, and from one part of the world to another. The varied definitions…

To use the table, find the appropriate height in the left-hand column labeled Height. Move across to a given weight. The number at the top of the column is the BMI at that…

Overweight refers to an excess of body weight compared to set standards. The excess weight may come from muscle, bone, fat, and/or body water. Obesity refers specifically to having an abnormally high…

Nearly two-thirds of adults in the United States are overweight, and 30.5 percent are obese, according to data from the 1999-2000 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES). This fact sheet presents statistics on…