Health Matters! Healthy Bodies, Healthy Minds

Overweight but not obese

• Being overweight (BMI 25-30), but not obese, is still a risk to health. People in this range should not gain anymore weight and ensure they participate in physical activity and eat a balanced diet to become a healthy weight.
• In many countries, there are cultural pressures for people, especially women, to be slim. People may try to lose weight even though they are in the normal weight range for their height or only slightly overweight.
• Severe weight loss may lead to development of an eating disorder, e.g. anorexia nervosa or bulimia.

• www.foodafactoflife.org.uk

Measuring body weight

• Comparing weight relative to height is a quick and easy way of finding out if someone is a healthy weight for their height.
• A useful way to judge if a person is overweight or obese is to calculate their body mass index (BMI). BMI should only be used for adults, i.e. after 18 years of age when growth has stopped.

• www.foodafactoflife.org.uk

Body mass index

• BMI is worked out by:
• weight (kg)
• height (m) x height (m)
• The BMI can be compared with the following ranges:

• kg .
• m2

• Recommended BMI range
• Underweight less than 18.5
• Normal 18.5 - less than 25
• Overweight 25 - less than 30
• Obese 30 - 40
• Very obese over 40

• www.foodafactoflife.org.uk

In our first lesson you were asked to give Joy advice as she was unhappy with her body and wished she looked like the people she saw in her magazine.

• In our first lesson you were asked to give Joy advice as she was unhappy with her body and wished she looked like the people she saw in her magazine.
• Joy has been looking at ways to make herself thinner and has been on a diet that restricts the amount of calories she eats a day. Within a few weeks she lost some weight but now her mum is worried that she is getting too thin. Her mum has given her some information on eating disorders and asked her to look at this before continuing on her diet.