"Your BMI tells you whether your weight falls into a range that's optimal for health and longevity," says Morton Maxwell, M.D., co-director of the Obesity Center at the University of California at Los Angeles. The catch is, different authorities name different BMIs as optimal.

While the U.S. Government says a BMI of 30 and over equals obesity, Dr. Maxwell points out, "30 per cent is really quite high, while most every study in the medical literature shows that the ideal BMI for health and longevity is about 22 per cent."

For centuries the definition of fat has been up for grabs. A hundred
years ago, a man's bulging belly or a woman carrying 20 extra pounds
signified wealth, desirability and high social status. But if today's
rail-thin supermodels were transported back to those stodgy times,
their figures would doubtless be deemed undernourished and under-sexy.

Seventy percent of your cholesterol comes from that which you yourself manufacture, mostly in the liver; only one-third comes directly from the diet. This is why a low-cholesterol diet is not as important as a cholesterol-lowering diet.

Physical activity can greatly affect your cholesterol levels. By exercising, you raise your metabolism and burn calories, losing fat weight. Exercise, while lowering total cholesterol, also increases the good HDL cholesterol, which helps prevent plaque from forming on the walls of the arteries.

The No. 1 foods to avoid? "Anything that is deep-fried," says nutrition director Marlene Lesson, M.S., R.D. "Also, foods containing hydrogenated or partially hydrogenated oils are the enemy. These include margarine, pastries, packaged cookies, crackers, potato chips and other snack foods." Other foods to give up include cheese and other dairy products, poultry skin (remove it before eating the meat), and red meat other than top round and edge of round.

For centuries the definition of fat has been up for grabs. A
hundred years ago, a man's bulging belly or a woman carrying 20 extra
pounds signified wealth, desirability and high social status. But if
today's rail-thin supermodels were transported back to those stodgy
times, their figures would doubtless be deemed undernourished and
under-sexy.

In more recent decades, insurance companies set general standards in
the United States for healthy height and weight. But their definitions
of overweight and obese have grown skinnier over the years.