Ladies, do you want to have almost $5,000 more each year? Gents, would $2,600 more each year be of interest?
Television advertisements push all sorts of products to assist your efforts in dealing with it, your health care provider tells you to watch your cholesterol and blood sugar that affect it, and social pressures of all sorts cause it to be a focus. “It” is your weight, and it costs you more as “it” increases.
Despite decades of studies that demonstrate the unquestionably negative impact that overeating and a lack of exercise have on the body, contributing to heart disease, diabetes, arthritis, sleep apnea, cancer, and any number of ailments, Americans keep getting bigger and less healthy. So, perhaps better understanding how much we lose in wages and real cash will draw some attention.
George Washington University’s School of Public Health and Health Services and Department of Health Policy published a study in September 2010 that analyzed the individual costs of being overweight and obese. The study reviewed data that observed the direct link between overweight and obese adults and illness, disability, lost wages and work absenteeism, and it broke down the information by gender.
Almost all research studies, physicians and insurance companies use the term “body mass index” when assessing an individual’s weight. You can calculate your BMI by taking your weight in pounds, dividing it by your height in inches squared with that total multiplied by a constant factor of 703.