Obesity

We've been inundated with facts about how being overweight can lead to tons of health risks including high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, high cholesterol, and an increased risk of heart attack or stroke. But now a recent study from the University of California Davis School of Medicine published in the Journal of the American Board of Family Medicine says it's more dangerous to your health to be underweight than obese.

In the six-year study following almost 51,000 Americans of all ages, researchers discovered that those with an extremely low BMI (under 18.5) had a risk of death that was twice as high as those with a normal BMI (18.5 to 24.9). Oddly enough, participants with BMIs that classified them as severely obese (30 or higher) were only 1.26 times as likely to die as those with normal BMIs, which means being obese is considered better than being underweight.

Obviously, this study isn't meant to glorify obesity, but rather to point out that not weighing enough can also pose health risks. And although another study showed there's such a thing as being healthy and obese, it's best to aim for a healthy BMI. Not sure what yours is? Use this handy BMI calculator. Of course, BMI isn't the only way to determine if you're at a healthy weight and isn't necessarily the most accurate since it doesn't take extreme height into consideration. If you're really concerned, have your body fat percentage checked to determine how much of you comprises fat compared to muscle.

HBO Documentaries recently launched a four-part miniseries, The Weight of the Nation, about the status of health and the implications of obesity in the US today. The miniseries offers insight of leading doctors, professors, and policymakers balanced with tales of hope, hard work, and sacrifice proving how ordinary people can make big changes regardless of their circumstances. While each part of the docuseries is chock-full of fascinating facts, stats, and quotes, here are a few from some of the experts who I found absolutely riveting to watch.

1. "How many people in this society are able to maintain a healthy weight? A third or less."

Shiriki Kumanyika PhD, MPH, professor of epidemiology from the University of Pennsylvania gives this staggering statistic to show how there is something broken in both our current health and food systems. It's harder than ever to stay fit and healthy if you go with the flow of the country and don't make big changes in your diet and exercise patterns.

2. "Being wealthier is not nearly as protective over obesity as it used to be."

While it's a sad story ingrained in The Weight of the Nation, historically, the poverty-stricken deal with more rampant issues of obesity. But Marlene Schwartz, the deputy director at the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at Yale, explains that while the relationship between obesity and socioeconomic status was linear, more recently, everybody's rates have gone up.

3. "We [women] fight against losing weight in our hips and thighs. And the reason we're programmed that way is that we rely on the calories in our hips and thighs evolutionarily to provide us with calories for breastfeeding or to help sustain a potential famine while we're pregnant."
   Metabolism investigator at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center Deborah Clegg explains that this is not a myth! It's more difficult for women to take off weight in "problem" areas due to evolutionary causes that were once advantageous but are no longer serving our bodies.

Keep reading for more interesting quotes from The Weight of the Nation.

In January 2011, Food Network host Paula Deen appeared on The View to promote her new children's cookbook. Those who caught it know that it wasn't pretty to watch. Put the sassy Paula Deen and the straight-laced Barbara Walters together, and you get an uncomfortable dynamic.

As the ladies of The View sit behind a stupendous spread of fried chicken and other Southern comforts, Paula licks strawberry cake off her fingers and pictures of macaroni and cheese grace the background. Walters then forces the queen of Southern cuisine to answer a rather serious question:

This is a cookbook for kids. Obesity is the number one problem for kids today. Everything you have here is enormously fattening. You tell kids to have cheesecake for breakfast . . . Does it bother you that you are adding to it? No? Not at all?

Stunned, Deen bumbles something about moderation — "you know, we don't eat this every day" — to an unconvinced Walters.

UPDATE: With the news that Paula Deen has type 2 diabetes, the women of The View furthered the debate on "hot topics" this week. Watch the video, and weigh in on your thoughts after the jump

The obesity rate may be steadily increasing over the years, but it seems that most Americans don't care. In fact, what we think of as our "ideal weight" has also increased over the past 20 years, reflecting a rising acceptance of being heavier.

A new Gallup poll of over 1,000 adults found that the average American weighs about 20 pounds more than the average American did 20 years ago. Back in 1990, according to the survey, the average American woman weighed 142; today, the average woman weighs 160 (the average weight for men in 1990 was 180 pounds, and today it's 196).

Not only has the average woman's weight increased, so has our perception of what our ideal weight should be, which has increased almost 10 pounds over 20 years, jumping from 129 pounds to 138 pounds. The same survey found that even though the average woman weighs 30 pounds more than the "ideal weight" of 1990, over half of men and women think their weight is "about right."

The increase in both average and ideal weight shows that being heavier has become the norm as the rate of Americans who are obese or overweight has increased (it's currently at 61 percent, according to government calculations based on BMI). Do you think that being overweight has become more acceptable now? Are you at your ideal weight? What is it? Let us know what you think in the comments section below.

New studies show that weight shouldn't be the only factor when determining whether or not someone is unhealthy. In fact, the studies show, certain obese people may actually be healthy.

The first study surveyed 8,000 Americans and found that not all those who qualified as obese — over 30 on the BMI scale — had health problems. It found that 20 percent of obese participants were what one of the study researchers described as "pretty healthy despite being large."

Your BMI, or body mass index, is determined by calculating your weight relative to your height. But many experts agree that a BMI number doesn't always correlate to how healthy you are.

Read on for more about the new findings after the break.

Are you a frequent diner-about-town? If so, it could be making you fat. The USDA has been examining the relationship between restaurant food and obesity, and it turns out that eating just one meal a week outside the home correlates to roughly two extra pounds a year.

Non-shocker: in comparison to homemade meals, restaurant portion sizes are larger, higher-calorie, and filled with inexpensive, obesity-promoting foods like processed grains and trans fats, all factors that certainly promote weight gain. That's a staggering statistic when combined with the fact that more than half of all American adults eat out more than three times per week.

Are you one of them — and if so, are you worried about its long-term impact on your waistline?

The obesity epidemic is not all about huge portions and processed foods — it's a no-brainer that a more sedentary lifestyle is part of the equation. And since most of us spend a good portion of the work day sitting in a chair, a new study published in the journal PLoS One has set about to quantify exactly how much those desk jobs are really hurting us. Turns out a lot; the number of desk-bound or light-activity jobs has increased in the last 50 years from 50 percent to 80 percent, leading to a loss of 140 to 160 calories burned a day.

These numbers are in line with the climbing obesity rate (currently one in three Americans), and while the results aren't surprising, it does show just how much the shift from more active jobs like those in farming and manufacturing has affected our national waistline. And having an understanding of how the eight or so hours in the day we spend sitting in a chair has led to a collective decrease in activity will help us get to the bottom of the reasons why our society continues to gain weight. Also, researchers want to use the findings as a way to encourage employers to offer incentives like discounted gym memberships or public transit fares (or even those hilarious-looking yet probably effective walking desk stations).

From taking walks at lunch (or the stairs instead of the elevator), office workers still have some fitness tricks up their sleeves. But does this study show that employers need to offer ways for workers to be more active, or should fitness be a personal responsibility?