Weight and wellness are strongly related to each other. The risk of disease goes up as weight gain pushes you out of the healthy weight range and into the overweight, obese range. Up to now, overweight has been linked with more than thirty medical conditions. It is not that just large weight gains carry bad health effects, even 10 or 20 extra pounds speeds up the risk of disease and death. The health effects of being overweight are dangerous and hazardous to life.

Obesity and High Blood Pressure

Around 40 to 70 % of humans suffering from high blood pressure are due to overweight and obesity. Societies where people do not gain much weight, as they get older, do not experience this increase in high blood pressure. The first thing a doctor tells an overweight or obese patient who has high blood pressure is to lose weight. Mostly this is enough to get his or her blood pressure under control even without any blood pressure medication.

Being Overweight increases the risk of Heart Disease

The health effects of being overweight on your heart is very dangerous and if your BMI is in the obese category, your heart disease risk quadruples. 54% of all human deaths results from heart disease and it is the major killer of both men and women. Being overweight or obese are firmly linked with heart disease risk factors. Overweight, obesity and abdominal fat increase the risk of diabetes, which is a heart disease risk factor. If your BMI is in the overweight category, your heart disease risk doubles compared to people with BMIs in the healthy weight category.

Being Overweight negatively affects Blood Cholesterol

One of the health effects of being overweight is that it negatively affects cholesterol levels in the body, as well as some of the constituents of cholesterol. Body cholesterol level is made up of various types of cholesterol: important ones being LDL (Low Density Lipoprotein) that is a bad cholesterol, and HDL (High Density Lipoprotein) that is a good cholesterol. LDL contributes to heart disease risk and HDL helps protect the heart. Hence, for heart health, the goal is to reduce LDL cholesterol and gain HDL cholesterol. Increase in weight creates problems by increasing LDL levels and reducing HDL levels.

Diabetes and Excess Body Weight

The strongest of the health effects of being overweight is found with diabetes. Weight gain significantly increases diabetes risk. The risk increases about 25% for every unit increase in BMI over 22. One study estimated that more than one-quarter of new cases of diabetes could be assigned to a weight gain of 11 pounds or more. If we eradicate adult weight gain and obesity, we could eliminate over 80% of all diabetes. It is not unexpected that one of the first treatment recommendations for diabetes is to lose weight.

Weight Gain and Cancer

Recent studies from the National Cancer Institute and other research institutions suggest that over 20% of all cancer is related to overweight or obesity. For so many years, researchers have been telling that certain forms of cancer with a link to hormones are due to health effects of being overweight. A government report on overweight and obesity has summarized that obesity increases the risk of breast cancer after menopause because body fat produces the hormone estrogen.

Weight Loss Makes You Healthy

The health effects of being overweight is very hazardous to your health and it is clear that gaining even a little bit of weight is not good for a person’s health. On the other hand, it takes only a small weight loss, as little as 5%, to gain great health benefits. For a person who weighs 200 pounds, that is just 10 pounds! Weight loss is vital in the treatment and prevention of heart disease, unhealthy blood cholesterol levels, heart failure, high blood pressure, diabetes, and other chronic diseases.

Here is a summary of just a few of the benefits of losing a modest amount of weight, around 5% to 10% of initial body weight:

•Reduce risk of breast cancer, in particular, if the weight is lost before age 45.

•Decreases blood pressure and reduces risk of heart disease.

•Increases HDL cholesterol incrementally

•Reduce incidence of diabetes by 58%.

The best thing in your life you could do for you is to attain and maintain a weight that is in the healthy weight range. Once your weight creeps into the overweight or obese range, the myth that a "small weight gain is nothing to worry about" can be very dangerous to your health and life.