Weight Loss Articles

Obesity is one of those issues that everybody has been talking about for the past few years. Things have been becoming gradually worse for the past twenty years, but we are just realizing it. The U.S. has the most elevated obesity rate in the developed world. In the last 25 years the amount of overweight grown-ups and adolescents have doubled. As of 2004, 17% of the total kids were obese and nearly a third of all adults past 20 were overweight. This means that millions are too fat and risking their health. It is now considered one of the largest health hazards in the country as the prevalence of obesity continues to rise. We're all huge; how did this happen? This overall increase in size has many contributing environmental factors and unfortunately they are now considered the American way of life.

During the 1980's, the people of this country began to have several factors of daily activity change to make for a less active lifestyle. Eating habits was the first thing. Food that used to be eaten at home and cooked by the homemaker are now more often consumed in restaurants and quick service chains. Fast food portions that were common in the 60's are two to three times bigger in today's popular restaurants. A meal in many of our most popular sit-down restaurants can be two to three times the size of a McDonald's Big Mac, even though the popular restaurant has been under fire the last few years as the leading culprit for our weight problem. Only one of these extra large meals can be somebody's entire day's necessary calories.

Wealth and abundance is another major factor that seems to link to the weight problem. As people in developed nations get more and more money, the requirement or concern to save is diminished steadily. Bigger and more different choices are now offered to kids compared a generation or two ago where a family's income would limit this. With parents that eat out constantly due to disposable income enables them to show their kids form their earliest age poor eating habits with rich, high calorie restaurant foods. More Americans are not concerned in where our food comes from and concentrate mainly on our personal desires in a society that makes almost three times what it's whole 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 human has half the risk of getting a deadly health problem than an overweight individual who is 40% overweight. Obesity causes the death of an estimated 112,000 people in this country per year. Just some of the possible ailments that are associated with being obese are; cancer, stroke, heart attack, diabetes, and liver disease. Swollen legs, loss of bowel control, breathing problems, and depression are just a few examples of problems with obesity that are not life threatening but are able rapidly develop into that.

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 due to increased fuel charges to make up for the extra weight and lawsuits to widen passenger seats started by obese people. 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. Litigation with obese people became so prevalent, the government attempted to create laws protecting food makers with the Cheeseburger bill of 2004.

One other major factor of being over weight is the sedentary life that most Americans live. Nowadays, even if it is an easy walk, many of us will take our vehicles. Overloaded lifestyles and hectic work schedules make it hard for most of us to allocate the time to work out. More jobs are becoming less active as technology has advanced. So now many Americans will work somewhere on a computer everyday and do nothing active all day because they are tired from their job.