October Article
Fighting The New Battle Of The Bulge
By Bev Hillman
Vancouver Personal Training
The battle of the bulge is ongoing. Roughly three out of four adult Canadians have a bulge of abdominal fat that's enough to raise their risk of heart disease, according to an international survey released last month.
Over the past few years, doctors across Canada and the U.S. have warned we're facing an epidemic of obesity. Surveys claim that not only are one-third of all adult Canadians overweight, but we're raising a "future fat generation." According to the Canadian Fitness and Lifestyle Research Institute, 25 per cent of all Canadian children - one child in four - are obese and the numbers have doubled during the past 20 years.
There is scientific proof that obesity is a major risk factor for heart disease, high blood pressure, stroke, sleep apnea, osteoarthritis (which can be caused by too much weight on the joints), diabetes and certain cancers such as ovarian, breast and colon.
Weight gain is a normal part of aging. It's been estimated that the average adults gains at least a pound or two every 10 years. Part of it is lifestyle. We tend to be more sedentary as we age. But it's also true that the older we get, the more of our lean muscle is displaced by fat. Muscle mass is the most important determinant of our metabolic rate - how many calories we burn when we're at rest. As we lose our muscle mass, we lose our ability to burn off energy. We need fewer calories but some of us just keep eating the way we always did. The result is a gain in weight.
What's more important, experts say, is where the extra pounds have settled. Excess weight around the abdominal organs is much more health - threatening than fat that's parked around the hips or thighs. Even a little excess weight can be dangerous because of where the fat sits - a man's beer belly, a woman who says she's suddenly lost her waist. This is called central obesity and there is a greater risk of hypertension, type II diabetes and artery disease. Lower body obesity is a lesser health risk; however, people with "pear shapes" are still at higher risk for obesity-related disorders than people who are not overweight.
Dr. Arya Sharma, scientific director of the Canadian Obesity Network, say the danger lies in a waistline more than 31.5 inches in women and more than 35.5 inches in men. "Part of our message is that it's not just extreme forms of obesity" that damage the heart, says Sharma, who teaches medicine at McMaster University. "It's people who would certainly never consider themselves to be obese that we are talking about". "It's the extent of the waist circumference" that's crucial, he says. "It's the little bulge that you have around your tummy, and it can be as little as a couple of pounds of visceral fat". "The numbers are quite frightening. I think it's way over 70 or 80 per cent of the adult population that have abdominal obesity if you define it based on waist-to-hip ratios or waist circumference," he added.
How to calculate your waist-to-hip ratio:
1. Measure your waist at your navel or noticeable waist narrowing (in inches or centimetres).
2. Measure yor hips at the widest point (over the buttocks).
3. Divide your waist measurement by your hip measurement.
For example, if you have a 27 inch waist and 38 inch hips, divide 27 by 38 to get a waist-to-hip ratio of 0.71.
For most women, the waist-to-hip ratio should fall below 0.8. For most men the waist-to-hip ratio should be no greater than 1.
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