Weight Loss Articles

In the last few years, everybody has been learning more about the effects of obesity. It seems that all of a sudden everyone woke up one day to find a stack of pancakes in one hand and a bacon burger in the other. The nation with the greatest obesity rate on the earth is the United States. The number of obese children and grown-ups has doubled in the last quarter century. In 2004, 17% of the total kids were overweight and 32% of the total adults past 20 were obese. This means the number of people who are risking their health by being too large goes 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 general increase in size has many contributing environmental factors and unfortunately they are now thought of as the American way of life.

Americans began to change their daily activities and that made them more sedentary in the 1980's. Eating habits was the first problem. Restaurants and quick service chains started to be the most popular places for family dinner and not at the home prepared the traditional way. Due to competition, restaurants now have portion sizes that amount to three times that of the portions back in the 60's. A meal in most of our most popular sit-down restaurants can be double or triple the size of a McDonald's hamburger, even though the popular restaurant has been blamed as the cause for America's weight problem. Just one of these extra large meals can be somebody's entire day's necessary calories.

Obesity is calculated with a body mass index, or BMI. The higher the BMI, the more likely the person 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 life threatening health problem than an obese individual who is 40% overweight. Obesity kills an estimated 112,000 Americans per year. Just some of the possible ailments that are associated with being obese are; cancer, stroke, heart attack, diabetes, and liver disease. breathing problems, swollen legs, and depression.

Obesity affects you whether you're in those demographics or not. An estimated 275,000,000 dollars a year is what Americans are spending in air fares because of increased fuel charges to haul the added weight and lawsuits to make larger passenger seats brought on by overweight plaintiffs. In the medical field, health conditions caused by obesity now create almost 10% of all medical expenditures with a yearly cost of 78,500,000,000 dollars. The cheeseburger bill of 2004 was started by lawmakers to try to offer some safeguard for food makers after lawsuits with obese plaintiffs became so common.

The amount of over weight people has also grown due to American affluence. As citizens in developed countries get more and more money, the need or concern to save is diminished gradually. Kids that a couple of generations ago could have been more controlled on food selections due to a families budget nowadays are allowed wider and bigger choices in what they partake in. Children now get their earliest eating experiences consuming rich, unhealthy restaurant foods with their parents. More of us are not concerned about where our food comes from and concentrate mainly on our personal cravings in a society that produces nearly three times what it's whole population eats.

Many of us have an inactive lifestyle, another major factor of the weight problem. Nowadays, even if it is an easy walk, many of us will take our vehicles. Most people have a hard time finding the time to work out due to the busy lifestyles or hectic work days. Most occupations are becoming less physically demanding as technology has advanced. Because many Americans will work at the office on a computer everyday and do nothing active all day because they are tired from work.