Weight Loss Articles

Obesity is one of those subjects that everybody has been talking about for the past couple years. It seems that suddenly everybody woke up one morning and found a stack of pancakes in one hand and a cheeseburger in the other. The United States has the greatest obesity ratio in the developed world. In the last twenty-five years the number of overweight grown-ups and adolescents have doubled. Nearly a third of the total adults past 20 and seventeen percent of the total children were too heavy as of 2004. Basically the number of people who are chancing their health by being obese ranges in the millions. It is now considered one of the biggest health hazards in the country as the prevalence of over weight americans continues to get out of control. What happened to make us all so big? This overall gain in weight has many contributing environmental factors that are now thought of as the American way of life.

During the 1980's, our people began to started to make many lifestyle changes that caused it to become a less active lifestyle. Eating habits was the first thing. Restaurants and quick service chains started to be the most popular places for family dinner no longer at the home prepared the traditional way. Fast food portions that were standard in earlier years are 2-3 times larger in today's competitive restaurants. Fast food chains 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 available in many of today's most popular restaurants may be over double the size of a McDonald's hamburger, with a side of fries to match this unhealthy meal. People that are used to eating everything on their plates can sit down and get their full amount of food in one sitting with one of these super sized meals.

Many of us live a sedentary life, another major cause of obesity. More of us have vehicles and drive them to travel everywhere they go, even if it is a very short distance. Busy lifestyles and hectic work hours make it hard for most people to find the time to work out. Most occupations are now less physically demanding as technology has advanced. So now many Americans will work somewhere on a computer all day and not have any physical activities all day because they are exhausted from their job.

The amount of over weight people has also escalated because of American affluence. As citizens in wealthy nations acquire more and more money, the requirement or concern to save is diminished gradually. Children that a couple of decades ago would have been more controlled on food selections due to a parent's budget today are given wider and bigger options in what they partake in. Kids now get their first eating lessons eating rich, high calorie restaurant foods with their parents. The U.S. produces nearly threetimes more food than we consume, so the majority of citizens don't care where or how their food is prepared and go more by food cravings.

Whether overweight or not, you are still being affected by the rising obesity rate. In the airplane industry, lawsuits to widen passenger seats that are brought against airlines by overweight customers and the added gas that it requires to haul all this extra weight is now costing Americans an estimated 275,000,000 dollars a year now in increased air fares. An annual cost of 78,500,000,000 dollars is the price of treating the number of health conditions brought on by obesity, as it makes up nearly 10% of all medical expenditures. Litigation with obese plaintiffs became so prevalent, the government even tried to make laws protecting food makers with the Cheeseburger bill of 2004.

Obesity is measured with a body mass index, or BMI. The higher the BMI, the more likely the person is to have serious health issues. 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+. An average person has half the risk of suffering a deadly health issue than an obese person who is 40% overweight. Obesity causes the death of an estimated 112,000 people in this country per year. The risk of a heart attack, stroke, cancer, liver disease, and diabetes are just a couple of the possible conditions that are associated with obesity. There are also many of non-deadly conditions like depression, loss of bowel control, breathing problems, and swollen legs.