Weight Loss Articles

In the past couple of years, everyone has been learning more about the effects of being overweight. It has been becoming gradually worse for the last two decades, but we seem to just now be realizing this. America has the highest obesity ratio in the developed world. The number of fat children and grown-ups has doubled in the last twenty-five years. In 2004, seventeen percent of the total children were overweight and nearly a third of the total adults past 20 were obese. Basically the number of people who are chancing their health by being obese goes in the millions. The amount of unhealthy people continues to rise in America as well as other places and is considered one of the biggest health threats in the country. What happened to make us all so big? This general increase in size has many contributing environmental factors and unfortunately they are now considered the American way of life.

Americans began to change their daily activities and that made them less active in the 1980's. Eating habits was the primary thing. Restaurants and quick service chains began to be the most popular places for family dinner and not at the home prepared the traditional way. Due to competition, eating establishments now have portion sizes that amount to three times that of the portions back in the 60's. Fast food chains like the McDonald's restaurant have have had a lot of criticizing for their super sizing high calorie sodas and french fries in the last few years, but a cheeseburger served in many of today's most popular restaurants may be over double the size of a McDonald's Big Mac, with an amount of fries to match this enormity. Those of us that are accustomed to eating the entire contents of their plates can get their full amount of calories in one sitting with one of these extra large meals.

Obesity is measured with a body mass index, or BMI. The risk for having serious health conditions goes up as a person's BMI raises. The three main levels of obesity are mild obesity with a BMI of 30+, morbid obesity at BMI 40+, and malignant obesity with a BMI of 50+. An average human has half the risk of suffering a deadly health problem than an obese individual who is 40% overweight. Today, obesity is responsible for the deaths of an estimated 112,000 Americans a year. Just some of the possible conditions 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 fatal but could quickly develop into that.

Many Americans lead a sedentary lifestyle, another major cause of the weight problem. Nowadays, even if it is an easy walk, most Americans will take our cars. Crazy lifestyles and hectic work schedules make it difficult for many of us to find the time to work out. More occupations are becoming less physically demanding as technology has advanced. Because many Americans will work at the office on a computer all day and not have any physical activities all day because they are exhausted from work.

The amount of over weight people has also escalated due to American affluence. As citizens in wealthy countries acquire more and more money, the need or worry to conserve is diminished steadily. Larger and more varied options are now offered to kids compared a generation or two ago where a family's income would limit this. With parents that eat out all the time due to disposable income enables them to show their kids form their earliest age unhealthy eating habits with rich, unhealthy restaurant foods. Our country produces close to triple the food than we eat, so most citizens don't care where or how the meal is prepared and decide from cravings.

Whether overweight or not, you are still affected by the rising obesity rate. An estimated 275,000,000 dollars a year is what Americans are paying extra in air fares because of increased fuel costs to make up for the added weight and lawsuits to widen passenger seats started by overweight plaintiffs. A yearly total of 78,500,000,000 dollars is the price of treating the number of health conditions started because of obesity, as it makes up nearly 10% of all medical costs. Litigation with overweight clients became so common, the government even tried to create laws protecting food makers with the Cheeseburger bill of 2004.