Concerned about your weight?

Many of us are concerned about our weight. We know the population is getting bigger and that it has an impact on our health.

Being overweight increases the risk of health problems including heart attack and stroke, diabetes, bowel cancer and high blood pressure. Excess weight also makes arthritis more likely and can make breathing and sleeping difficult.

The most common benchmark of healthy weight for adults is based on height and weight, and is called body mass index (BMI). BMI acts as a good indicator of the total amount of body fat and a reliable predictor of the likelihood of disease associated with being too heavy (or too light).

To work out your BMI, divide your weight in kilograms by your height in metres and then divide the figure you get by your height again.

To find out more about what a healthy weight means read our fact sheet (click here)

Want to lose weight and keep it off?

Type this into Google and a myriad of diets and weird tips come up. It’s relatively simple – eat the right foods in the right quantities and move more.

Click here for the “How to lose weight and keep it off” fact sheet

But many of us don’t find it that simple and need more support and ideas for how to make healthy food into tasty meals that our families will eat. That’s were groups like Slimming World and Weight Watchers can be helpful

Slimming World – currently piloting an evaluation trial at NUH. If successful we may run a regular meeting on site. In the meantime they have lots of community sessions – visit http://www.slimmingworld.com/ for more information

Weight Watchers – currently have an express weigh in at QMC on Tuesdays between 12pm and 2pm (D floor restaurant) and a full meeting at City hospital on Thursdays at 10am and 5.45pm (Leisure Centre, North Rd). They also run community groups visit http://www.weightwatchers.co.uk/plan/index.aspx for more information.

Staff can also access our in house Weigh2Go programme – find out more by visiting www.nuh.nhs.uk/weigh2go.

It’s all aimed at women

Want something more male orientated? Then why not try Fatman Slim http://www.fatmanslim.com/ an interactive online programme designed specifically for men. Based on simple lifestyle changes, they promise to help you lose your belly. Oh and it’s free too! 

General healthy eating information

Of course we’re not all worried about our weight but the messages about what we should be eating and how much can get quite confusing.

Fruit and vegetables – we should all be aiming for 5 a day. To find out more about what counts visit http://www.nhs.uk/livewell/5aday/pages/5adayhome.aspx

Salt – we know too much is bad for us. But how much is too much? Well anything more than a teaspoon if we add it on. We need to get label savvy to avoid too much in the foods we buy. To find out more visit

http://www.nhs.uk/livewell/goodfood/pages/salt.aspx

Fats – we need to limit our fat but not all fats are bad and some are actually essential!

http://www.nhs.uk/livewell/goodfood/pages/fat.aspx

Sugar – most of us eat too much of this for one simple reason, it tastes good! But it can affect our health in lots of ways

http://www.nhs.uk/livewell/goodfood/pages/sugars.aspx

The Eatwell plate – want to know how to balance your diet? The Eatwell plate shows you what foods we need to eat to be healthy and the proportions we need to eat them in

http://www.nhs.uk/Livewell/Goodfood/Pages/eatwell-plate.aspx 

What about eating disorders?

One of the other concerns is eating disorders. The common ones are anorexia and bulimia

Anorexia nervosa is a condition where people are so worried about their weight that they develop difficulties with eating. Despite being very thin they often consider themselves overweight

http://www.nhs.uk/conditions/anorexia-nervosa/pages/introduction.aspx 

Bulimia is around 5 times more common than anorexia and can be linked to depression or stress. Sufferers try to control their weight by binge eating and then getting rid of the food by making themselves vomit or by using laxatives.

http://www.nhs.uk/Conditions/Bulimia/Pages/Symptoms.aspx