Weight Loss Articles

Obesity is one of those issues that everyone has been hearing about for the last few years. It seems that suddenly we all woke up one day and found a doughnut in one hand and a bacon burger in the other. The country with the greatest obesity rate in the world is America. The number of fat children and adults has grown by 100% in the past 25 years. As of 2004, nearly one fifth of all kids were overweight and nearly a third of all adults over 20 were overweight. This means that millions are too fat and endangering their health. The amount of unhealthy people continues to rise in America and other developed nations and is considered one of the biggest health problems in the country. The country is huge; how did this happen? This overall increase in size has many contributing environmental factors that are now considered the American way of life.

During the 1980's, Americans began to have several factors of daily activity change to make for a less active lifestyle. Eating habits was the first problem. Food that at one time was eaten at home and prepared by the women are now more often consumed in restaurants and fast food chains. Fast food portions that were standard in the 60's are two to three times larger 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 meal served in many of today's most common restaurants could be over double the size of a McDonald's hamburger, with an amount of fries to match this enormity. Only one of these super-sized meals can be somebody's entire day's required calories.

The amount of over weight people has also escalated because of American affluence. The requirement to save goods and foods diminishes gradually as people in developed countries get more and more wealth. Bigger and more different choices are now offered to kids compared a generation or two back where a family's income would control this. Kids now get their earliest eating experiences eating rich, high calorie restaurant foods with their parents. The U.S. Makes almost threetimes more food than U.S. residents consume, so most citizens don't think about where or how the meal is produced and decide from cravings.

Whether overweight or not, you are still affected by the growing obesity rate. In the airplane business, lawsuits to widen passenger seats that are started against airlines by obese customers and the added fuel that is required to haul all this extra weight is now costing us an estimated 275,000,000 dollars a year now in increased air fares. In the medical field, health problems caused by the weight problem now create almost 10% of all medical bills with a yearly cost of 78,500,000,000 dollars. The cheeseburger bill of 2004 was introduced by lawmakers to try to offer a little protection for food makers after lawsuits with overweight people became so common.

Obesity is measured with a body mass index, or BMI. The risk for getting serious health conditions goes up as ones BMI gets higher. There are three levels of obesity; mild obesity with a BMI of 30+, morbid obesity at BMI 40+, and malignant obesity with a BMI of 50+. A person that is forty percent obese is twice as likely to suffer a life threatening health problem prematurely than an average person. Obesity kills an estimated 112,000 Americans per year. The risk of a heart attack, stroke, cancer, liver disease, and diabetes are just some of the possible ailments that are associated with obesity. There are also a number of non-deadly ailments like depression, loss of bowel control, breathing problems, and swollen legs.

One other major reason for obesity is the lazy life that many Americans live. Today, even if it is a very short distance, many of us will drive our vehicles. Crazy lifestyles and hectic work hours make it difficult for most people to allocate the time to exercise. As technology has become better more jobs are getting less physical. 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 exhausted from work.