Weight Loss Articles

Being overweight is one of these issues that everybody has been talking about for the last couple years. It seems that all of a sudden everybody woke up one morning to find a doughnut in one hand and a cheeseburger in the other. The United States has the greatest obesity ratio in the developed world. In the last 25 years the amount of fat adults and children have doubled. thirty-two percent of all adults past 20 and nearly a fifth of all children were obese as of 2004. This basicallymeans that millions are too fat and risking their health. It is now considered one of the largest health hazards in the country as the prevalence of obesity continues to rise. What happened to make us all so big? Many environmental factors that are now very commonplace are blamed to be the causes of this general increased girth.

Americans started to change factors of daily activity that made them less active in the 1980's. The biggest impact was the eating habits. Restaurants and quick service chains started to be 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 many of our most popular sit-down restaurants can be two to three times the size of a McDonald's hamburger, even though the popular chain has been blamed as the cause for America's weight problem. Those of us that are used to devouring the entire contents of their plates can sit down and get their daily amount of calories in one sitting with one of these super sized meals.

Obesity affects you whether you're overweight or not. In the airplane business, lawsuits to make larger passenger seats that are brought against airlines by overweight people and the extra gas that is required to move all this extra weight is now costing Americans an estimated 275,000,000 dollars a year . A yearly total of 78,500,000,000 dollars is the price of treating the number of health complications 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 make laws protecting food makers with the Cheeseburger bill of 2004.

BMI, or body mass index is what is used to calculate obesity. The higher the BMI, the more likely the person is to be in poor health. 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 suffering a life threatening medical issue than an overweight individual who is 40% overweight. Today, obesity is responsible for the deaths of an estimated 112,000 Americans a year. Just some of the possible ailments that are associated with being overweight are; cancer, stroke, heart attack, diabetes, and liver disease. Swollen legs, loss of bowel control, breathing problems, and depression are just some examples of symptoms of obesity that are not life threatening but are able quickly turn into that.

The amount of over weight people has also escalated due to American affluence. The requirement to save goods and foods goes away gradually as citizens in developed countries get more and more money. Larger and more varied choices are now offered to children as opposed to a generation or two back where a family's income would limit this. With parents that eat out constantly due to excess income enables them to show their kids early in unhealthy eating habits with rich, high calorie restaurant foods. The U.S. produces close to triple the food than U.S. residents eat, so most people don't think about where or how the food is produced and decide from cravings.

Another major reason for being over weight is the inactive lifestyle that most Americans live. Today, even if it is an easy walk, many Americans will take our cars. Crazy lifestyles and hectic work schedules cause it to be difficult for most people to allocate the time to work out. Most jobs are now less physically demanding as technology has advanced. 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 throughout.