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Healthy Dieting

Staying Active and Eating Healthy Home > Healthy Dieting

• MyPyramid—Steps to a Healthier You
• Weight-loss Diets
• Additional Information on Healthy Dieting

Obesity plays an important role in causing poor health in women, negatively affecting quality of life and shortening lifespan. More than half of adult U.S. women are overweight, and more than one-third are obese. Low-income women in minority populations appear most likely to be overweight or obese. Among U.S. adults, Black (non-Hispanic) women have the highest prevalence of being overweight (78 percent) or obese (50 percent), followed by Mexican Americans (71 percent overweight and 40 percent obese) and White (non-Hispanic) women (57 percent overweight and 30 percent obese).

Many medical problems affect women who are overweight or obese. These include increased risks of:

• high blood pressure
• heart disease
• stroke
• type 2 diabetes
• pregnancy complications
• irregular menstrual cycles
• infertility
• arthritis
• gallbladder disease
• sleep apnea (breathing problems while sleeping)
• some cancers

Obese women also face significant discrimination in a society that equates thinness with physical beauty.

How do you know if you are overweight or obese? One way is to calculate your body mass index (BMI), which is a measure of body fat based on height and weight. Women with a BMI of 25 to 29.9 are considered overweight, whereas women with a BMI of 30 or more are considered obese.

Adults (aged 18 years or older) who have a BMI of 25 or more have an increased risk for premature death and disability. This risk increases as the BMI rises.

Not only are health care providers concerned about how much fat a person has, but also where the fat is located on the body. Women with a "pear" shape tend to store fat in their hips and buttocks. Women with an "apple" shape store fat around their waists. For most women, carrying extra weight around their waists (a waist size larger than 35 inches) raises more health risks than carrying extra weight around their hips or thighs.

MyPyramid—Steps to a Healthier You

In April 2005, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) introduced MyPyramid, a new symbol and food guidance system to help Americans make healthy food choices and be active every day. MyPyramid, which replaced the Food Guide Pyramid introduced in 1992, provides an individualized approach to improving diet and lifestyle. MyPyramid includes recommendations from the Dietary Guidelines for Americans 2005, put out by the USDA and U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

MyPyramid represents the recommended amount of foods from each food group (grains, vegetables, fruits, milk, meat and beans, and oils) and focuses on the importance of making smart food choices in each of these food groups every day. Physical activity is also a part of the symbol.

At the My Pyramid Plan page on the web site, you can key in your age, gender, and physical activity level and get a personalized recommendation of how many calories you should be taking every day to keep a healthy body weight. You also receive suggestions for making smart choices from each food group.

For a more detailed assessment of diet quality and physical activity, go to My Pyramid Tracker. If your BMI is in an unhealthy range, My Pyramid Tracker will provide suggestions for modifying your diet and physical activity level to bring your BMI back into a healthy range.

Weight-loss Diets

Some weight-loss diets recommend eating very low or very high amounts of protein, carbohydrates, or fat. However, achieving and keeping a healthy body weight depends on total calories consumed—not the proportions of fat, carbohydrates, and protein. When people are losing weight, they should follow a diet that is low-calorie but provides 20 to 35 percent of total calories from fat, 45 to 65 percent from carbohydrates, and 10 to 35 percent from protein.

Diets that provide very low or very high amounts of protein, carbohydrates, or fat are likely to provide low amounts of some vital nutrients, which can harm your health in the long run. Although these kinds of weight-loss diets have been shown to reduce weight for short periods of time, maintaining a reduced body weight ultimately depends on both eating fewer calories and increasing your physical activity level.

Additional Information on Healthy Dieting:

Current as of December 2006