How a Healthy Body Weight Promotes Overall Wellness
- Fact-checked by Dr. Desiree Granados
Most of us know that our health is important, but we don’t always prioritize it as we should. A healthy body weight is key to preserving your health, but what should you do if you struggle to maintain one? Is there a particular diet or exercise regimen that will solve your weight problem? How should you go about attaining a healthy body weight?
Let’s take a look at why a healthy body weight is good for you and what you can do to achieve one.
Why Is it Important to Have a Healthy Body Weight?
Maintaining a healthy body weight improves your overall well-being and physical ability to carry out daily tasks with ease. It enhances your energy levels, ensuring you’re less likely to feel drained during the day. Moreover, it helps preserve strong and healthy bones, reducing your risk of osteoporosis. Finally, it facilitates better sleep and better regulation of your sleep cycle.
Your body weight plays a crucial role in your mental health as well. A healthy body weight is associated with improved mood and self-esteem, leading to a positive self-image. It also reduces your risk of depression and anxiety, which can foster a better mental state. Furthermore, maintaining a healthy weight helps reduce stress and promote emotional stability.
Lastly, a healthy weight lowers your risk of diabetes and cardiovascular conditions like high blood pressure and heart disease.
How to Achieve a Healthy Weight
Achieving a healthy weight involves paying attention to your daily activity level and your diet, as well as your sleep schedule. You should eat a variety of fruits, vegetables, and lean meats and refrain from consuming excess amounts of sugar or trans fats. It’s also advisable to follow a weightlifting routine and perform regular cardiovascular exercise. In addition, aim to get at least seven hours of sleep each night.
How will you know when you’ve reached a healthy weight? Your BMI, or Body Mass Index, is one measurement that can be used, but it doesn’t differentiate between muscle mass and body fat. The best way to assess your weight is to appraise your body’s composition. Women should aim for 21% to 33% body fat, whereas men should aim for 8% to 21% body fat. You can use a body fat caliper to measure your body fat percentage at home.
Everyday Benefits of Maintaining a Healthy Weight
Improve Your Ability to Do Daily Activities
Do you enjoy traveling? How about being able to bring in the groceries without feeling out of breath? Maybe it’s the ability to be active with your kids when you go to the playground or keeping up with your friends on a night on the town.
Whatever it is, your ability to perform daily activities depends on your health. A lower body weight will give your muscles, joints, and bones a break, as well as your heart and lungs. This is partly due to the fact that weight loss improves oxygen efficiency so you won’t run out of breath as often. Maintaining a healthy body weight will help you be more active, and you’ll feel better too!
Improve Your Mental Health
Research has demonstrated that a healthy body weight is beneficial for mental health. Mental health issues such as depression and anxiety are negatively affected by weight gain. A lower body weight will not only boost your self-esteem, but it will also lower your risk factor for these mental health conditions.
A lower body weight also tends to be positively correlated with daily activity that releases mood-enhancing endorphins.
Increase Your Odds of Living Longer
Did you know that you increase your odds of living longer by maintaining a healthy body weight? Data has shown that obesity can shorten life expectancy by anywhere from 5 to 20 years. Your odds of living longer are drastically increased if you maintain a healthy body weight.
What Is a Prescription Weight Loss Program and Why Should You Join One?
A prescription weight loss program works by using medication to facilitate weight loss. These medications help take the pressure off of weight loss by jump-starting the process for you. In medical weight loss programs, physicians prescribe weight loss drugs to patients and then monitor their progress.
Medical weight loss injections have the ability to improve and prolong your life by providing several health benefits. For one, these injections can reduce your odds of developing major diseases such as heart disease, high cholesterol, and high blood pressure by lowering your body fat levels.
In addition to assisting with weight loss, these injections can provide other advantages such as increased energy, improved attention and mental clarity, and even stress reduction. All of these aspects are critical to helping you maintain an appropriate weight for the sake of your long-term health and fitness.
Why Choose the Sanctuary?
If you’ve struggled with your weight and want to try a new approach to achieve your goals, medical weight programs can help you do so. When you join a prescription weight loss program, you’ll gain access to life-changing medication that can drastically improve your health.
By signing up for the Sanctuary Wellness Institute’s medical weight loss program, you’ll gain access to weight loss injections and a knowledgeable physician to guide you through your weight loss journey. If you work with the Sanctuary to achieve your weight loss goals, we’ll stay by your side every step of the way.
How we reviewed this article:
- Relationship of obesity with osteoporosis
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1868430/ - 9 things no one tells you about losing weight
https://edition.cnn.com/2015/02/18/health/weight-loss-mystery/index.htm - Sleep disorders and obesity: A vicious cycle
https://utswmed.org/medblog/obesity-sleep-disorders/ - Why Is Body Composition Important?
https://www.webmd.com/fitness-exercise/what-is-body-composition - Does Being Labeled as Obese or Overweight Affect Your Mental Health?
https://www.goodrx.com/health-topic/mental-health/obesity-and-mental-health - How Much Sleep Do I Need?
https://www.cdc.gov/sleep/about_sleep/how_much_sleep.html - How Obesity Affects Life Expectancy
https://www.verywellhealth.com/obesity-and-life-expectancy-2509668 - Wegovy injections seem to provide major benefits beyond weight loss
https://www.wwltv.com/article/news/health/doctors-praise-benefits-of-controversial-weight-loss-injections/ ‘Food noise’ and how Ozempic affects the brain: 4 patients share their stories
https://www.today.com/health/how-ozempic-affects-mental-health-rcna72029
Current Version
November 28, 2023
Written By
Kirstie Gundlach
Fact-checked By
Dr. Desiree Granados
Editorial Process
Our Editorial Process
Kirstie is a Certified Cannabis Coach with over 10 years in the medical cannabis field. She has worked at The Sanctuary Wellness institute since 2021 and has helped countless patients with questions pertaining to medical cannabis.
