Weight Loss Articles

Being overweight is one of those issues that everybody has been talking about for the past couple years. Things have been becoming steadily worse for the last twenty years, but we seem to just now be realizing this. The nation with the highest obesity ratio on the earth is the United States. The number of obese children and adults has doubled in the last quarter century. As of 2004, 17% of the total kids were overweight and nearly a third of the total adults past 20 were overweight. This means 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 greatest health threats in the country as the prevalence of over weight americans continues to rise. What happened to make us all so big? Many environmental factors that are now an American way of life are thought to be the causes of this general increased girth.

During the 1980's, our people began to started to make many lifestyle changes that caused it to become a more sedentary lifestyle. The biggest impact was the eating habits. Food that at one time was eaten at home and prepared by the homemaker are now more and more often eaten in restaurants and fast food chains. Fast food portions that were common in the 60's are two to three times bigger in today's competitive restaurants. A meal in most of our favorite sit-down restaurants can be double or triple the size of a McDonald's Big Mac, even though the popular chain has been blamed as the cause for America's weight problem. People that are used to devouring everything on their plates can sit down and get their daily amount of calories in one sitting with one of these combos.

Most of us lead a sedentary lifestyle, another major factor of obesity. Nowadays, even if it is a very short distance, many of us will take our cars. Many of us have a hard time finding the time to work out because of on the go lifestyles or crazy work schedules. As technology has become better more jobs are becoming less physically active. This Causes those of us who come home from work and rest because they are tired from their job will get little or no physical exercise all day long.

Obesity has also grown because of American affluence. The requirement to save goods and foods goes away gradually as citizens in wealthy countries get more and more wealth. Children that a few of years ago would have been more limited on food choices because of a families income today are given wider and bigger options in what they partake in. With parents that eat out all the time because disposable income allows them to show their kids form their earliest age unhealthy eating habits with rich, unhealthy restaurant foods. More Americans are less concerned about where our meals come from and concentrate more on our personal cravings in a country that produces almost triple what it's entire population eats.

Obesity is measured with a body mass index, or BMI. The higher the BMI, the more likely the person is to be in poor health. 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 normal person has half the risk of getting a life threatening medical issue than an obese individual who is 40% overweight. Today, obesity kills an estimated 112,000 Americans a year. Only a few of the possible conditions that come along with being overweight are; cancer, stroke, heart attack, diabetes, and liver disease. There are also many of non-deadly conditions like depression, loss of bowel control, breathing problems, and swollen legs.

The weight problem affects you whether you're overweight or not. An estimated 275,000,000 dollars a year is what we are paying extra in air fares because of increased fuel charges to haul the extra weight and lawsuits to make larger passenger seats brought on by overweight people. A yearly cost of 78,500,000,000 dollars is the price of treating the number of health conditions started because of obesity, as it creates nearly 10% of all medical costs. The cheeseburger bill of 2004 was introduced by lawmakers to attempt to offer a little safeguard for food producers after lawsuits with obese clients became so prevalent.