Weight Loss Articles

In the last couple of years, everyone has been hearing about the consequences of being overweight. Things have been becoming progressively worse for the last two decades, but we seem to just now be realizing it. The nation with the greatest obesity ratio in the world is America. The number of overweight adolescents and adults has doubled in the last quarter century. 32% of all adults over 20 and 17% of the total children were overweight as of 2004. Basically the amount of people who are risking their health by being obese ranges in the millions. It is now considered one of the biggest health threats in the country as the prevalence of obesity continues to rise. The country is 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 factors of daily activity that made them less active in the 1980's. Eating habits was the primary problem. Restaurants and fast food chains began to be the most common places for family dinner and not at the home prepared the traditional way. Fast food portions that were standard in the 60's are two to three times bigger in today's competitive restaurants. Fast food restaurants like the McDonald's restaurant have come under serious fire for their super sizing high calorie sodas and french fries in the past, but a cheeseburger served in many of today's most common restaurants could be over double the size of a McDonald's Big Mac, with an amount of fries to match this enormity. Those of us that are accustomed to devouring everything on their plates can sit down and get their daily amount of calories in one sitting with one of these extra large meals.

Affluence is another big factor that seems to link to the weight problem. The requirement to conserve goods and foods diminishes gradually as people in developed countries acquire more and more wealth. Bigger and more different options are now offered to children compared a generation or two ago when a family's income could limit this. Kids now get their earliest eating lessons eating rich, high calorie restaurant foods with their parents. Our country produces close to triple the food than we eat, so most citizens don't think about where or how their food is prepared and decide from cravings.

One other major factor of obesity is the inactive life that many Americans live. Most people have automobiles and use them to get anywhere they go, even if it is a very short distance. Busy lifestyles and hectic work schedules make it difficult for most of us to find the time to exercise. As technology has become better more jobs are becoming less physically active. So now many Americans will work at the office on a computer all day and not have any physical exercise all day because they are tired from work.

The weight problem affects you whether you're overweight or not. In the airplane business, lawsuits to widen passenger seats that are started against airlines by overweight customers and the added gas that is required to move all this extra weight is now costing us an estimated 275,000,000 dollars a year . A yearly cost of 78,500,000,000 dollars is the price of treating the number of health conditions brought on by obesity, as it creates nearly 10% of all medical expenditures. Litigation with obese clients became so common, the government even tried to create laws protecting food makers with the Cheeseburger bill of 2004.

Obesity is calculated with a body mass index, or BMI. The risk for getting bad health problems goes up as ones BMI gets higher. 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+. A normal person has half the risk of getting a life threatening health problem than an obese person who is 40% overweight. Obesity kills an estimated 112,000 people in this country per year. Only a few of the possible conditions that come along with being overweight are; cancer, stroke, heart attack, diabetes, and liver disease. breathing problems, swollen legs, and depression.