How do you determine if you are overweight and need to lose weight? A chat with your doctor would be a good place to start. Just recently, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) developed guidelines to help doctors and other health professionals better identify and manage their overweight patients.

Overweight and obese individuals are at greater risk for health problems such as heart disease, high blood pressure, a specific type of diabetes, and stroke. When trying to assess if an individual needs to take diet pills to shed a little weight, the person's body mass index, waist measurement, and other risks factors for diseases and conditions associated with being obese come into play.

Excess fat around your middle independently increases your risk of illness, regardless of your weight. Men with a waist of more than 40 inches and women with waist measurements larger than 35 inches are considered at higher risk. Other factors will also help determine whether you need to lose weight, including whether or not you already have heart disease, high blood pressure, or diabetes; if you smoke cigarettes; have a high level of LDL cholesterol (the unhealthy type of cholesterol), a low level of the HDL cholesterol (the healthy type of cholesterol), or too much sugar in your blood after fasting. weight loss