Weight Loss Articles

These past couple of years, everyone has been hearing more about the results of being overweight. It seems that suddenly everyone woke up one morning and found a milkshake in one hand and a bacon burger in the other. The United States has the greatest obesity ratio in the developed world. The amount of overweight adolescents and grown-ups has grown by 100% in the last 25 years. 32% of the total adults over 20 and nearly a fifth of the total kids were overweight in 2004. Basically the number of people who are endangering their health by being too big ranges in the millions. It is now thought of as one of the largest health risks 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 thought to be the causes of this general increased size.

Americans began to change their daily activities and that made them more sedentary in the 1980's. Eating habits was the first problem. Meals that used to be eaten at home and prepared by the homemaker are now more often eaten in restaurants and quick service chains. Due to competition, restaurants now have portion sizes that amount to three times that of the portions back in the early fast food days. Fast food restaurants like the McDonald's chain have have had a lot of criticizing for their extra large high calorie sodas and french fries in the last few years, but a meal available 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 unhealthy meal. Just one of these super-sized meals can be a person's entire day's required calories.

Wealth and abundance is another major factor that appears to link to obesity. The requirement to conserve goods and foods goes away gradually as citizens in wealthy countries acquire more and more money. Families that a couple of decades ago would have been more limited on food selections because of a parent's budget today are given wider and bigger options in what they partake in. Children now get their first eating experiences consuming rich, unhealthy restaurant foods with their parents. More Americans are not concerned in where our food comes from but focus mainly on our personal cravings in a country that produces nearly triple what it's whole population consumes.

The weight problem affects you whether you're overweight or not. In the airline business, lawsuits to make larger passenger seats that are brought against airlines by overweight customers and the extra gas that it requires to move all this extra weight is now costing us an estimated 275,000,000 dollars a year . An annual total of 78,500,000,000 dollars is the cost of treating the number of health problems brought on by obesity, as it makes up nearly 10% of all medical expenditures. The cheeseburger bill of 2004 was started by lawmakers to attempt to offer some protection for food producers after lawsuits with obese people became so common.

Obesity is calculated with a body mass index, or BMI. The higher the BMI, the more likely someone 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+. A normal person has half the risk of getting a deadly health problem than an obese individual who is 40% overweight. Today, obesity kills an estimated 112,000 Americans a year. Only some of the possible ailments that are associated with being obese are; cancer, stroke, heart attack, diabetes, and liver disease. There are also a number of non-deadly conditions like depression, loss of bowel control, breathing problems, and swollen legs.

Many of us live a sedentary lifestyle, another major factor of the weight problem. Most adults own vehicles and drive them to travel anywhere they go, even if we could walk. Most of us have difficulty finding the time to exercise because of busy lifestyles or hectic work days. As technology has advanced most jobs are getting less physically active. Because most Americans will work somewhere on a computer all day and not have any physical exercise all day because they are tired from work.