Weight Loss Articles

In the past couple of years, everybody has been hearing about the results of obesity. It seems that suddenly everybody woke up one day and found a stack of pancakes in one hand and a bacon burger in the other. The United States has the highest obesity ratio in the developed world. In the last 25 years the amount of fat grown-ups and children have doubled. Nearly a third of all adults past 20 and seventeen percent of all kids were too heavy in 2004. This means the amount of people who are endangering their health by being too big 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 general increase in size has many contributing environmental factors and unfortunately they are now thought of as the American way of life.

During the 1980's, Americans began to have several factors of daily activity change to make for a more sedentary lifestyle. Eating habits was the first problem. Restaurants and quick service chains where now the most popular places for family dinner instead of at the home prepared the traditional way. Fast food portions that were standard in the 60's are 2-3 times larger in today's competitive restaurants. A cheeseburger in most of our favorite sit-down restaurants can be double or triple the size of a McDonald's hamburger, even though the popular chain has been under fire the last few years as the leading culprit for America's weight problem. People that are used to eating everything on their plates can get their full amount of calories in one sitting with one of these meals.

Obesity is measured with a body mass index, or BMI. The higher the BMI, the more likely someone 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+. A normal human has half the risk of getting a life threatening medical problem than an obese individual who is 40% overweight. Currently, obesity is responsible for the deaths of an estimated 112,000 Americans a year. The risk of a heart attack, stroke, cancer, liver disease, and diabetes are just a few of the possible ailments that come along with obesity. 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 develop into that.

Most Americans live an inactive life, another major cause of obesity. More people have automobiles and drive them to get everywhere they go, even if it is a very short distance. Busy lifestyles and hectic work hours make it hard for many people to find the time to work out. As technology has become better more jobs are becoming less physically active. Because most Americans will work at the office on a computer all day and not have any physical activities all day because they are tired from work.

Obesity has also grown due to American affluence. The requirement to conserve goods and foods goes away gradually as citizens in developed nations acquire more and more money. Children that a few of decades ago would have been more limited on food choices due to a families income today are given wider and bigger options in what they choose to eat. Kids now get their earliest eating lessons eating rich, unhealthy restaurant foods with their parents. More Americans are not concerned in where our meals come from and concentrate mainly on our personal desires in a country that makes almost three times what it's entire population eats.

Whether obese or not, you are still affected by the rising obesity rate. In the airline business, lawsuits to widen passenger seats that are brought against airlines by overweight customers and the extra gas that it takes to haul all this extra weight is now costing Americans an estimated 275,000,000 dollars a year . In the medical field, health issues caused by the weight problem now create almost 10% of all medical bills with an annual cost of 78,500,000,000 dollars. The cheeseburger bill of 2004 was introduced by lawmakers to attempt to offer some safeguard for food makers after lawsuits with overweight plaintiffs became so common.