General Definition of Obesity

General Definition of Obesity
Obesity is generally defined as the abnormal or excessive accumulation of fat in adipose tissue to the extent that health may be impaired.

Measuring the level of adipose tissue and determining when it is likely to affect health is not an easy task.

Quantification of adipose tissue mass can be achieved by a number of laboratory methods including underwater body density measurement and body fat content estimated by dual energy X-ray absorptiometer.

In addition, the development of new techniques, such as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and computed tomography (CT), has provided researchers with the opportunities to describe human adiposity in more detail.

However, most of these methods require costly equipment meaning that there is limited to clinical research setting.

In large scale population surveys and clinical/public health screening, an index of body weight adjusted for stature is commonly used as a surrogate for body fat content.

These indices are defined as different combinations of weight and height, such as weight divided by height or are defined as weight expressed as a percentage of mean weight divide by height or are defined as weight expressed as a percentage of mean weight for a given height and sex.

The most widely used in Quetelet’s index, better known as body mass index (BMI), which is body weight (kg) divided by height squared (meter square). This index has been shown to correlate weakly with height and strongly with body fatness in adults.

Determining the weight status status and level of adiposity in children and adolescent is even more problematical.

This is a stage of rapid growth and development.

During growth in childhood and adolescence, not only does height increase but body composition changes as well, thus classification of obesity according to a single measure is difficult.

In addition, international or regional weight status standards for children and adolescents may be less reliable as the age of onset of puberty and its associated physical changes often varies between different countries, ethnic groups or cultures.
General Definition of Obesity

It is not our fault

It is not our fault
Before planning how to get well, it may help to consider the various reasons we get sick, only a few of which are under our control.

Sometimes our genes are programmed for susceptibility to one or another awful disease.

We may lack sufficiently healthy food or water. We may grow up without opportunities for exercise, fresh air, education, relaxation or love.

Studies of stressful life events – job loss, divorce, relocation, death of a family member, etc – consistently show higher rates of all types of disease following such stressors.

To these, we can add all of our maladaptive response to life’s insults: bad posture, attitudes, or diets, unacknowledged emotions, lack of exercise, overwork, hurry, various forms of self abuse and addition.

All of these injuries behaviors were learned somewhere or adopted before we knew better for reasons that were necessary - or at least seemed like good ideas – at the the time.

Most disease, then except for overwhelming infections or pure genetic defects, arise from numbers of factors stretching back through our lives and heredity and outward though all our social and environmental influences, a web of causation that we cam never completely sort out.

For various reasons, our bodies and minds (do not get their needs met, and they react by getting sick.)

Our bodies weren’t made to last forever and years of wear and tear eventually cause breakdown.

Therefore, it makes no sense to blame ourselves for illness, to feel guilty about things we could not control.

Guilt doesn’t do anyone any good. Far worse than guilt, though, is helplessness, the feeling that turns us into victims without hope of salvation.
It is not our fault