Share

Half of U.S. Women Weigh Too Much Before Getting Pregnant

While women with Asian-American descent under 20 years old, with college degree, pregnant for the first time and those who paid for their own delivery were the least likely to be overweight before becoming pregnant. Girls are carrying 7 pounds more than their counterparts of the same height in the 1990s, while boys are 13 pounds heavier.

Advertisement

The average height, however, remained the same for both men and women.

When race was considered, blacks put on most weight on an average. Their average height stayed the same at roughly 5 feet, 9 inches. While black men grew by one-fifth of an inch, they also increased 18 pounds.

“We are not doing almost enough to control and reverse the obesity epidemic and doing far too much to propagate it”, he added. “This is another notice of that sad fact”, Dr. David Katz, director of preventative medicine at Yale University and president of the American College of Lifestyle Medicine, told Medical Express.

The CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics published the new findings on Wednesday.

The data for the study came from over 19,000 participants in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey from 2011 to 2014.

The average weight for women went from 152 pounds to 169 pounds, with the average height also remaining the same, standing five feet four inches tall. Men’s height, averaging 175.2 cm, and women’s height, 162.6 cm, aren’t much different from what they were 22 years ago. The weight-gain epidemic isn’t exclusive to adults only. He’s an obesity researcher and scientist with the department of genetics at the Texas Biomedical Research Institute in San Antonio.

The BMI has three main categories: normal, overweight, and obese. This measurement, known as the body mass index (BMI), categorizes a person as either normal, overweight, or obese. This average weight increase may impact rates of diabetes and heart disease in the nation. Adolescents, both boys and girls, saw a 5.4-kilogram weight increase over the past 20 years.

There are numerous reasons for the weight gain, like an increase in high-calorie foods and a decrease in exercise.

But “at the end of the day, it is still fairly basic physics: If energy consumed is greater than energy expended, then there will be a gain in weight”, he said.

Advertisement

Could the USA population be getting fatter because it’s getting older overall, and developing lower metabolisms? While obesity rates were lower among younger women under age 20 versus even slightly older women (ages 20-39), a larger portion of these young women were overweight (28.5%) as opposed to obese (16.6%). “Such findings would suggest that there will likely be an associated increase in chronic diseases, in Type 2 diabetes and heart disease in the coming years”. Whether that will happen is another matter.

Heavier Not Taller How American Bodies Have Changed