Obesity in America

Obesity refers to a condition in which the human fatty tissues are increased to an extent that it can cause abnormal growth in the human weight and size along with a high mortality rate. Nowadays thousands of people are suffering from obesity and many more are adding to the list.
Causes of Obesity:

1. Over-eating.
2. Mental depression, stress and fatigue.
3. Lack of sleep and eating disorders.
4. Unhealthy lifestyle.
5. Smoking cessation and weight cycling.
6. Genetic factors and disorders.
Side effects of Obesity:

It can lead to dizziness, varicose veins, and enlarged heart.
Menstrual disorders and infertility.
Breast and uterine cancer in females.
Headache, social stigma and low self-esteem.
Body dysmorphic disorder, stretch marks and carbuncles.
Hernia, intertrigo and immobility.
Asthma, depression, and carpal tunnel syndrome.

Obesity is not limited to the physical effects on the overweight individual, but rather expands to include increased health-related costs to businesses with overweight workers, stress on families when a loved one is diagnosed with a weight-related health disorder and psychological factors for the overweight person. Billions of dollars are spent each year on efforts to lose weight and yet the population grows fatter each day.

Worldwide, a billion people are now overweight or obese, including 22 million children under the age of 5. Obesity and ills linked to it, including heart disease and high blood pressure, have joined the World Health Organization's list of the Top 10 global health risks. Rates of obesity are going up in developing countries as well as industrialized ones, with the greatest increases taking place in the last 10 years. In the United States, 64.5 percent of adults and 15 percent of children ages 6 to 19 are overweight.
A sedentary lifestyle is the primary cause for the current obesity crisis. Many experts compare yesterday’s agricultural society where long hours of hard labor in the fields kept generations lean, with today’s cyberspace society where days and nights are spent sitting in front of a computer screen. Ironically, when the dietary needs should have been adjusted with fewer calories to match the less physical lifestyle, the calories intake has been dramatically increased through fast food, prepared foods, increased portion sizes and dining out.

Fast food, fried in obscene amounts of artery clogging oil does not have a place on the current pyramid. And yet, many fast-food meals are part of the typical diet of an overweight person. Adding the extra calories from fast food to the pyramid, or worse yet, replacing the healthy and nutrient dense fruits and vegetables on the current food pyramid has lead to the fattening up of the world.

To truly succeed at losing body fat and most important of all, keeping that fat off, you need a plan - a program to help you succeed. Each adult individual is responsible for calories ingested and burned on a daily basis. Almost any plan that reduces calories, limits fat and controls portion size will work when coupled with exercise done on a daily basis. If you're looking for an effective fat loss program, look no further.

Health is not an area where we should make compromises. It is time that we begin to take responsibility and corrective action to curb this expanding crisis right at the individual level, for it is the individual that determines the quantities of food ingested and whether or not that food is stored as fat or burned as the body’s fuel.