Stay Woke! Maintain A Healthy Weight During the Covid-19 Pandemic By Charlene Kuipa

Dwelling much on how you will endure through to the next day in the pandemic? Well, that has become a normalcy but not exactly the only thing we should be worrying about after bills and loneliness mostly brought about by social distancing measures. Well, how about we worry less about everything else and focus more on our upkeep and how our health will be when this nightmare is over.

If you not managing a chronic ailment already then make sure you try and manage not getting one by lack of self-discipline. We all are living with qualms of what tomorrow will be and praying earnestly for survival has become a norm, but we also would want to come out of this pandemic stronger and healthier. Life as we know it has transformed, we are spending more time indoors and less outside whilst socially distancing, our chances of inactivity, sleeping, food bingeing are severely high. This might lead to a lot of health risks including overweight that might contribute to a lot of health problems including gaining excess weight leading to obesity.

Obesity is defined by Mayo Clinic online (2021) as a complex disease involving an excessive amount of body fat. Obesity isn’t just a cosmetic concern. It is a medical problem that increases your risk of other diseases and health problems. According to the American Medical Society (A.M.A) and the World Health Organization (W.H.O) together with several medical institutes, obesity is now listed as a chronic disease, resulting from multiple environmental and strong genetic factors. However, there are other factors contributing to obesity such as metabolism, behavior and economic status. However, we will only focus on dietary patterns and physical inactivity more specifically in the current lockdowns. Food bingeing and inactivity can lead to excess weight, and excess weight contributes to obesity leading to more than 40 diseases related to it including hypertension and type 2 diabetes heart disease, stroke, sleep apnea, osteoarthritis, at least 13 different types of cancers, infertility, liver diseases, high blood pressure, cancers to name but a few. World over obesity has been listed as the fifth leading risk of death; according to the American Society for Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery. Now ponder upon it, if we all scared of dying with the Corona virus, let us not be found wanting by the above mentioned.

Staying indoors half the times may result in dormancy and we more likely to devour more on snacks and processed foods than usual and most of these foods are rated as having a high addictive potential and maybe responsible in some cases of obesity and eating disorders. Basic research on humans and animals has shown that highly palatable foods have addictive properties, mentioned J. Cabrera, F. Carvajal and P/ Lopez (2016). thus, distancing ourselves from unhealthy eating habits lessens our chances to addiction. As mention in the Nutr J. 2016;15;5. Online, these are some of the most addictive foods there is on the food market, chips, chocolates, cookies. Soda. Cheeseburgers, pizza and most sugary foods to name but a few therefore avoiding these can lead to a healthier you.

As individuals let us take it on to save our selves from our selves through healthy eating and exercising more often. We all can eat more unprocessed food, vegies, drinking lots of water, uncarbonated drinks, avoiding excessive alcohol intake as well as eat lots of fruits. Keep in mind the common adage that says “a fruit a day keeps the Doctor away”. Also engage in physical exercise, be it a 5km run on the trade mill, a walk around the yard, skipping, yoga or ZUMBA it all is about choice. Let’s learn to move more and eat less so that we manage our weight. There are many ways of managing our food intake and managing our physical activities, thanks to technology we can now download applications that can help us or rather livestream whenever need arises. Moreover, after all is said and done, there is need for self-discipline in regards to our food intake as it has a great impact on our wellbeing. Let us strive towards healthy habits and reduce our risks of excessive weight gain leading to obesity that also leads to numerous health issues.

Here is a way of checking if we are overweight or not

We all ought to know our Body Mass Index so that we know when we are gaining excess weight then try and manage it. Below is how one can be able to measure their Body mass index commonly known as (BMI)

BMI=KG/M2 WEIGHT IN KILOGRAMS DIVIDED BY HEIGHT IN METERS SQUARED

Adopted from asmbs.org/calculate-your-bmi/

BMI of 40 or more is associated with a 50-100 increased risk of premature death compared to healthy weight people. Each 1-point increase in BMI leads to a 4% increase in medical costs and a 7% increase in pharmaceutical costs.

STAY WOKE

References
American Medical Association of Delegates. Recognition of Obesity as a Disease. (2013) Accessed from https://www.npr.org.documents/2013.jun/ama-resolutions-obesity.pdf
BodyMass Index (BMI) Accessed from: www.nhlbi.nih.gov/health/educational/lose_wt./BMI/bmi_dis.htm
Centers for disease control and prevention. (2015) The Health Effects of Overweight and Obesity. Accessed from: https://www.cdc.gov/healthyweight/effects/index.html
J. Cabrera, F. Carvajal and P/ Lopez (2016). Food addiction as a new piece of the obesity framework. Nutr J. 2016;15.5 pu6blished online. Accessed from: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4
Lerma-Cabrera, J.M., Carvajal, F. & Lopez-Legarrea, P. Food addiction as a new piece of the obesity framework. Nutr J 15, 5 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12937-016-0124-
Society for Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery. Obesity in America (2018) Accessed from:
The 18 Most Addictive Foods (and the Least 17 Addictive)(2019) Accessed from: ecowatch.com/addictive-foods-2641 htpps://www.ecowatch.com
Obesity.MayoClinicOnline(2021). Accessed from:
https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/obesity/symptoms-causes/syc-20375742.