6 Ways Weight Loss Improves Your Heart Health
The experts at Weight Watchers share six ways weight loss improves your heart health. Knowing the connection between your ticker and weight can help you achieve your fitness goals!
Before the tips, a quip:
“Reality check: you can never, ever, use weight loss to solve problems that are not related to your weight,” writes Dr Phil in The Ultimate Weight Solution: The 7 Keys to Weight Loss Freedom. “At your goal weight or not, you still have to live with yourself and deal with your problems. You will still have the same husband, the same job, the same kids, and the same life. Losing weight is not a cure for life.”
Weight loss isn’t a cure for your life problems…but it definitely improves your heart health! For Dr Phil’s fitness tips, click on The Ultimate Weight Solution. And, read on for six ways weight loss improves your heart health…
In the ”Guidelines for the Treatment of Overweight and Obesity”, The National Institute of Health reports that even just a 5 to 10% weight loss can make a huge difference. February is American Heart Month – and a great time to achieve your weight loss goals. Click on the Weight Watchers’ Deluxe Starter Kit for a boost towards losing weight for good, and read on to learn how losing weight improves your heart health. 
6 Ways Weight Loss Improves Your Heart Health
1. Weight loss lowers the scary numbers. “Obese people frequently have abnormal blood-cholesterol levels, higher blood pressure and even sometimes bigger hearts,” says Gerald Fletcher, MD, a cardiologist at the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, FL, and a spokesperson for the American Heart Association. All of these things are risk factors for heart disease, but losing weight can help you reverse them.
2. Weight loss lowers blood pressure and cholesterol levels. Obesity is directly linked to heart disease: “Until a few years ago, it was thought to be an indirect link, but now we know that even if blood pressure and cholesterol are normal, extra weight can mean extra risk for heart disease,” says Karen Miller-Kovach, Weight Watchers chief scientist. So when you lose weight, you can get double and triple benefits – you’ll lower your blood pressure and cholesterol, and you’ll conquer a primary risk factor for heart disease.
3. A little weight loss goes a long way. You don’t have to achieve your weight loss goals to see a difference in your heart health. “When it comes to heart disease and weight, there’s an exponential curve,” says Miller-Kovach. “A little bit of extra weight increases your risk for heart disease a little bit, and vice versa.” In other words, a little bit of weight loss decreases your risk a little bit, and improves your heart health a lot!
4. Weight loss leads to exercise. As you’re losing weight, you’re more likely to start exercising, which has bonuses of its own: “Exercise has been recognized as an independent positive factor to heart health,” says Miller-Kovach. “We now know that exercise tends to mobilize the fat stores in the abdomen, which are the ones that put you at the greatest risk for heart disease.”
5. Weight loss benefits hearts of all ages. “Age factors into [the weight-heart connection] prominently,” says Miller-Kovach. “Being slightly obese at a younger age causes a greater increase in risk of heart disease than does being slightly obese and elderly.” In other words: It’s not just how much weight you have, it’s how old you are.
6. Weight loss improves the heart health of both men and women. Women, take note: after menopause, you’re just as likely as a man to suffer from heart disease. For more fitness info, read 10 Reasons men Lose Weight Faster Than Women.
What do you think of these ways weight loss improves your heart health? Please share below!
For more weight loss info, visit Weight Watchers.com.
Comment by Laurie Pawlik-Kienlen on 27 August 2009:
The latest research on Weight Watchers reveals the reasons why it’s such a successful way to lose weight. Here’s the press release:
Weight Watchers is the world’s largest support group, with more than 1.5 million members worldwide. What makes overweight consumers turn to this organization for help? A new study in the Journal of Consumer Research says dieters are attracted to its combination of spirituality and therapy.
Authors Risto Moisio (California State University, Long Beach) and Mariam Beruchashvili (California State University, Northridge) undertook observations of weekly Weight Watchers meetings and conducted interviews with female members and group leaders. They conclude that Weight Watchers provides a powerful service to its clientele.
“Even if Weight Watchers’ advertisements make it sound as if it were only about weight loss, the social function of weekly meetings extends far beyond the tricks of the weight loss trade,” write the authors.
Interviewing members and observing meetings taught the researchers that Weight Watchers aids dieters’ pursuit of well-being in a world that fails to understand them. “Pursuing weight loss is an immensely daunting project fraught with many troubles, whether psychological, social, or physical. To overcome these challenges, consumers turn to Weight Watchers.”
Members of Weight Watchers seek to alleviate many psychological traumas they link to their struggles with weight, the authors found. “As consumers evolve into full-fledged Weight Watchers members, the support group becomes their spiritual and therapeutic companion,” the authors write.
For many members, weekly meetings are crucial for their well-being. “The presence of fellow Weight Watchers is equally therapeutic as it is spiritual: it transforms the support group into a greater, spiritual power that engenders therapeutic aid to members struggling with their diets,” the authors write. “The support group gives meaning to members’ at times trauma-ridden overweight condition, grants forgiveness for members’ weight loss failures, offers valued oversight and overarching guidance needed to make it through the trials and tribulations of the week, as well as casting the occasional weight-loss successes in a veneer of much-needed glamour,” the authors conclude.