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Weight Management for Lasting Health

To link directly to this toolkit from your website, use this link [www.health.mil/HealthyWeight]

More than 1 in 3 Americans adults qualify as obese. Effective weight management can help service members meet their readiness requirements, improve their mission performance, build long-term health, and maintain a positive body image. Identifying and maintaining a healthy weight also impacts many other health conditions that affect quality of life. 

Effective weight management can help service members live their healthiest lives. Finding and maintaining a healthy weight is challenging, and different for everyone, but worth the effort to help service members meet their readiness requirements, improve their mission performance, build long-term health, and maintain a positive body image. 

Message to Communicators

  • Finding your healthy weight is not about hitting a certain number on the scale. It should be the result of conversations between you and your primary care provider, trainer, nutritionist, registered dietitian, or other health provider. 
  • Not everyone has the same ideal weight or body shape. Don't base your success on looking like a certain body archetype, but on what works best for you, your mission, and your long-term health.

Talking Points

Expand to see talking points for the weight management topics below:

Losing even a small amount of weight can have a major impact right away on your health and quality of life.

  • Losing just 10 pounds of weight can relieve 40 pounds of pressure on your knees.
  • Service members who are obese often have other associated conditions like sleep apnea, lower back pain, depression, joint pain, hypertension, fatigue, and many others.
  • DHA data finds that 1 in 4 Service Member diagnoses of obesity share a diagnosis of sleep disorders like apnea or snoring.
  • DHA data finds that almost 1 in 5 Service Member diagnoses of obesity share a diagnosis of lower back pain.
  • Obesity is associated with many serious or life threatening chronic health conditions like osteoarthritis, heart disease, diabetes, hypertension, and stroke.
  • DHA data finds that nearly half of Service Member diagnoses of obesity are also diagnosed with hypertension, a common risk factor for stroke and heart attack. 
  • Each service has requirements for body mass index or body composition. Meeting these requirements should be aligned with, but not all of, your weight management goal. 
  • Achieving a healthy weight through nutrition and physical activity will enhance your mission performance and availability for duty.
    • Being over, or under, weight can contribute to other illness and loss of duty days due to sickness.
    • All Service Members must be physically able and healthy enough to perform their duties.
    • Effective weight management allows Service Members to optimize their physical, mental and technical job performance. 
  • It is not unusual for our weight to fluctuate. Don't get hung up on specific numbers, but keep focused on the steps you're taking to stay healthy. 
  • Maintaining a healthy weight takes a balance of diet and exercise. 
  • Eating a balance diet of fruits and vegetables, lean proteins, and whole grains, while minimizing foods high in sugar, sodium, refined food and fatty proteins, is probably the most important way to manage weight.
    • A good diet isn't just healthy and nutritious, it must be sustainable.
    • Trendy or gimmick weight-loss diets can offer short-term success, but often are not sustainable, and lead to long-term weight gain.
    • Any diet you undertake should be discussed and implemented under the guidance of your health care provider.
    • Helping make good choices starts with what foods are available to you. Fill your grocery cart with healthy foods, and if your workplace only offer junk food for snacks, bring your own nutritious snacks. 

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends healthy adults get at least 150 minutes a week of moderate intensity activity such as brisk walking, and at least 2 days a week of activities that strengthen muscles.

  • Achieving an active lifestyle is more than just working out or exercising.
  • Finding activities you enjoy and keeping moving throughout the day help you maintain and sustain good levels of activity.
  • The CDC estimates 1 in 10 premature deaths could be prevented through getting enough physical activity. 

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