ralph cygan: obesity is defined by excess body fat. a normal body fat for a male is somewhere in the 20% range. for a woman it's 25 to 30% range. unfortunately it's not easy to measure body fat. it's not something that could be done easily in a physician's office or at home, so over the last few decades another measure of body fat and obesity has been developed, and that's the bmi or body mass index. bmi is calculated by dividing a person's weight in pounds by their height in inches squared. the answer is then multiplied by 705. a bmi that is associated with good health is in the 19 to 25 range. to put these figures in perspective, supermodels run bmi's of about 16 or 17. sumo wrestlers, on the other hand, are in the 43 to 45 range. you are considered overweight if you have a bmi between 25 and 29; obese if it's 30 or above. all of the very serious causes of early morbidity and mortality are strongly associated with obesity. for example, cardiovascular disease, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, low good cholesterol or low hdl chol

ralph cygan: today there are morehan 100 million americans who are either overweight or obese. i think we have a very serious public health problem on our hands that we need to address as a nation.