We're Fat as Hell and It's Killing Us

Tuesday, the CDC reported that being overweight or obese is associated with higher risk of 13 different cancers. They put it into perspective with two additional pieces of data: first, two-thirds of American adults are overweight, and second, in 2014, there were 630,000 diagnoses of those forms of cancer in the U.S. That is, there were 630,000 cases of the kinds of cancer associated with being overweight.

Over a third of Americans are obese. Now, that’s not someone’s judgement call. That is a statistical finding, based on studies of body mass index (BMI). Here's the formula for BMI so that you can calculate it for yourself. You may want to convert your height and weight into meters; some of the formulas I’ve found use the metric system. Here's a converter for inches into meters.

A friend of mine said he is writing a three-hundred-page book on diet. On one page it has “Eat Less”. The facing page has “Exercise More”, for all three hundred pages.

There is no mystery here. We know what to do. I'm not going to body shame you. This is a math question. If your BMI is over 25, you are overweight. If your BMI is over 30, you are obese.

From a brain health perspective, if it’s bad for your heart it’s bad for your brain. Obesity is very bad for your heart. And if you die from cancer, whatever work you’ve been doing to protect your brain is lost.

Let’s get busy.

Let’s build bigger, healthier brains.

www.BigBrain.Place offers fun stuff that is good for your brain.

Excerpt from our coming book: You Can Build a Bigger Brain.

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