Most of us would still want to reduce and lose a few more extra pounds. With this thinking, diet pills, food regimens and different sorts of exercises have been booming in the market. We wrongly view being thin as having a healthy body and maybe even having healthy practices.
However, there was a study conducted and published which has found that slightly overweight people live longer.
Being overweight means you have a BMI or body mass index of 25 to 29.9. Anything above that is the BMI of an obese person. Those who have a BMI of 18.5 to 24.9 are considered people with normal weights. The BMI can be obtained by dividing your weight in kilograms by the square of you height in meters.
As an example, if you are 56 kilograms and 1.67 meters tall, you BMI is 20.07 which is well within the normal range which is 19-25. A BMI of below 19 is underweight and above 30 is obese.
The study which was published on the online journal Obesity sometime in June of 2009, found out that most people who are considered slightly overweight may have longer lives than those underweight and overweight. It used more than twelve thousand Canadians for the respondents.
The study followed adults over a period of 12 years. It found out that over weight persons have 17 percent less risk of dying than persons with a normal weight. Their smoking habits were considered but found unremarkable results. Physical activity was also another factor together with age, gender and alcoholic drink consumption. All these factors were considered and related to the weight classes.
It was not noted, though, how long over weight persons can live longer. However, it can show that being overweight might give us protection. For example, you have high blood pressure since you are overweight, but that can be easily treated by anti hypertensive medications. Also it is protective for those elderly people.
This would make you be aware of, not really your weight, but more on what you eat and how you take care of your body. It means lesser of the fats, oils and sugars and more of the vitamins, minerals and other nutrients usually found in fruits and vegetables. Also, it might be necessary to reduce your smoking habits as well as alcohol intake. As not only this study has shown the effects of alcohol and nicotine on your lifespan as well as your health.
So, after hearing this information, do you still feel like losing weight and trying to achieve that healthy body? What if you can live longer with a slightly overweight body than with a thin one? Ain’t that enough reason to stop you from dieting? Well, the decision still lies within you. Nevertheless, this study was an eye opener that sometimes what we perceive as healthy and good are not the same as what reality is.
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