Hope everyone had a great day. Thanks for giving me the opportunity to assist you in whatever stage of the journey you find yourself in. I try on a daily basis to inform, inspire, and motivate you my readers, to reach for the stars and realize your full potential. I want each and every one of you to know you are important in God’s eyes, and that all of you deserve to be happy and healthy. With commitment and hard work , you can achieve all the goals you have set for yourself and more. Believe in yourself and never ever give up. My pic today is just another of my cozy winter casual looks. FiBit users, notice my matching band. Cool isn’t it? Was a little upset when I went to change to this band and found that my black one was cracked. That is the one I wear most. Ordered a replacement on Amazon, but know it’s coming from China, so it will be awhile before I get it. In the meantime I sent an e mail to customer support to see what they might do. Ok so let’s get on with it. I want to continue to explore the importance of maintaining a healthy body weight and possibly how to decide what that should be. Most of the information will come from The National Heart Lung Institute, NIH for short. As usual I will provide a link to wander the site at your leisure. Bookmark the links you like , so you can find them easily if you need them. Question: Why is a healthy weight important? Reaching a healthy weight and maintaining it once you get there, is important to your overall health. Doing this can help prevent or control many diseases. We discussed this yesterday but it bears repeating. Excess body weight and obesity puts you at a higher risk of developing serious health problems. These can include heart disease, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, gallstones, breathing problems, and certain cancers to name a few. That is why maintaining a healthy weight is so important. It can help lower your risk of developing these problems, it will help you feel good about yourself , you’ll find you have so much more energy, and if you’re like me , you’ll have a new found zest and joy for life. Mine had kind of disappeared, but now that I feel good about myself again, it has returned twofold. That is what I wish for you. Now let’s discuss what is overweight and what is obesity. Again I will be using the material from this site. Being overweight means you have extra body weight from muscle, bone, fat, and/ or water. Obesity is having a high amount of body fat. Your body mass index or BMI is a useful tool in determining what category you fall into. To the left of this site you will find many tools to assist or educate you. There is a BMI calculator, menu plans, something interesting called the portion distortion challenge, and much more. A normal BMI is considered to be18.5-24.9. A BMI of 25-29 is considered to be overweight, and a BMI over 30 is considered obesity. I thought this was something important to know, so you could assess where you’re at. Your BMI index is something you should discuss with your doctor or health care profession and let them help you determine what would be a good weight goal for you to aspire to , as you weave your way through the ups and downs you will go though along the road to better health and fitness. I see many things on this website, which I think could help you as you continue this journey. Avail yourself of all of them. Let’s continue on with more of the information found here in the main article. What factor’s contribute to a healthy weight? These could include, environment, family history and genetics, metabolism , and your behavior or habits. Let’s talk about what here, they call energy balance. This is interesting and explained in a pretty good way . Energy balance is important for maintaining a healthy weight. The amount of calories you get from food and drink is called energy in. This needs to be balanced with the energy your body uses for things like breathing, digesting, and being physically active. This is called energy out. If over time your energy in, is the same as your energy out, you have energy balance, and your weight will stay the same. If over time you have more energy in than out , you have weight gain. If the opposite is true , you will have weight loss. To maintain a healthy weight , your energy in and energy out don’t have to balance every day , but it’s the balance over time that helps you to maintain a heathy body weight. You can reach and maintain a healthy body weight if you do the following: 1. Follow a healthy diet, 2. If you are in the overweight or obese category , reduce your daily calorie intake by 500 calories (this is a good guideline to start with, and adjust if need be along the way),3. Be more physically active , and 4. limit the time you are physically inactive. These 4 items are your recipe for success. Here is the link to this site where you can find lots of other things of interest. Explore it and see what appeals to you. I think the portion distortion challenge sounds quite interesting and I will be checking it out later on. Here is the link. http://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/health/educational/lose_wt/index.htm . I am finding a wealth of information to share with you,and I myself learn something new each day. I hope you find something beneficial to aid you in reaching your goals, each time you visit Carol’s Corner. Tomorrow we’ll start talking about lunch. Believe in yourself, stay motivated, and stay active, and as Leslie would say “walk, walk, walk”. Till next time, God Bless.