Weight Loss Articles

These past few years, everybody has been learning more about the consequences of obesity. It seems that suddenly we all woke up one morning to find a doughnut in one hand and a cheeseburger in the other. The nation with the greatest obesity rate on the earth is America. The number of obese children and grown-ups has grown by 100% in the past 25 years. 32% of all adults past 20 and seventeen percent of all kids were too heavy as of 2004. This basicallymeans that millions are too fat and endangering their health. It is now thought of as one of the greatest health hazards in the country as the prevalence of obesity continues to get out of control. We're all huge; how did this happen? This overall increase in size has many contributing environmental factors that are now thought of as the American way of life.

Americans began to change their daily activities and that made them less active in the 1980's. The first was the eating habits. Restaurants and quick service chains where now the most common places for family dinner instead of at the home prepared the traditional way. Due to competition, eating establishments now have portion sizes that amount to three times that of the ones back in the early fast food days. A cheeseburger in most of our favorite sit-down restaurants can be two to three times the size of a McDonald's Big Mac, even though the popular restaurant has been blamed as the cause for our obesity problem. Those of us that are accustomed to devouring everything on their plates can get their full amount of food in one sitting with one of these combos.

Obesity is calculated with a body mass index, or BMI. The higher the BMI, the more likely someone is to have serious health issues. The three main levels of obesity are mild obesity with a BMI of 30+, morbid obesity at BMI 40+, and malignant obesity with a BMI of 50+. An average person has half the risk of getting a deadly health issue than an obese person who is 40% overweight. Today, obesity kills an estimated 112,000 Americans a year. The risk of a heart attack, stroke, cancer, liver disease, and diabetes are just a couple of the possible conditions that are associated with obesity. breathing problems, swollen legs, and depression.

Obesity has also grown due to American affluence. As people in developed nations get more and more money, the need or worry to conserve is lowered steadily. Larger and more different options are now offered to children as opposed to a generation or two ago where a family's income would control this. With parents that eat out all the time because excess income enables them to show their children early in poor eating habits with rich, unhealthy restaurant foods. The U.S. Makes almost triple the food than U.S. residents consume, so the majority of citizens don't think about where or how their meal is produced and decide from cravings.

Whether obese or not, you are still affected by the growing obesity rate. In the airplane industry, lawsuits to widen passenger seats that are started against airlines by obese customers and the added fuel that it takes to move all this extra weight is now costing Americans an estimated 275,000,000 dollars a year . An annual cost of 78,500,000,000 dollars is the cost of treating the number of health complications brought on by obesity, as it makes up nearly 10% of all medical costs. Litigation with overweight clients became so common, the government even tried to create laws protecting food producers with the Cheeseburger bill of 2004.

One other major reason for obesity is the sedentary lifestyle that most of us live. Today, even if it is an easy walk, most Americans will drive our cars. Busy lifestyles and hectic work hours make it difficult for most of us to allocate the time to work out. As technology has become better most jobs are getting less physically active. So now Americans who come home from work and relax because they are worn out from their job will get little or no physical activity all day long.