A majority of women are more concerned about their weight than overall health, says a recent US poll. The new poll has found, it is not health related issues that's weighing down most women, but weight-related ones - even among the 26 per cent of respondents whose Body Mass Index (BMI) is in the normal range.
Of the 1000 respondents, just one-third said they didn't like their physical condition - despite the fact that obesity and a sedentary lifestyle increase the risk of ailments like heart disease and Type 2 diabetes.
"So many women think more about the number on the scale than whether their blood pressure or cholesterol is normal," an American daily quoted registered dietitian Keri Gans, a spokesperson for the American Dietic Association, as saying. "They really don't think about disease risk as much as they do about their weight," Gans added.
The survey also revealed that women exercise for a median of just 80 minutes per week, which means that half the women do even less exercise. A mere eight per cent of the women surveyed said that they eat the minimum recommended servings of fruit and vegetables (five a day) and a full 28 per cent said they consume those five servings just once a week or less.
