More than half of America’s youngest adults — 56 percent of those ages 18 to 25 — are overweight or obese, according to Johns Hopkins research, published in JAMA.
The biggest spike in weight measurements, however, was in the prevalence of obesity, which increased from about 6 percent to nearly 33 percent. The percentage of those with a BMI indicating a normal weight (18.5 to 24.9) dropped from about 69 percent to 38 percent. BMI matters because being overweight or obese puts you at risk for a range of health problems, including high blood pressure, heart disease, osteoarthritis, Type 2 diabetes, sleep apnea and some cancers.
To determine your BMI, you can do the math yourself (divide your weight, in kilograms, by the square of your height, in meters — BMI is calculated in metric measurements) or let an online calculator do the computation. For those whose BMI falls in the overweight or obese category, indicating excess body fat, health experts generally encourage a change in eating habits and behaviors. In essence: Move more, eat less.
— Linda Searing