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Posts Tagged ‘Obesity Epidemic’

Obesity is officially a disease. The western world is in the grips of an obesity epidemic. Obesity is caused by lack of exercise and eating larger and larger quantities of over refined and fatty foods. This is a stage when the body is carrying far too much fat. This is bad for the heart and can induce diabetes and high cholesterol amongst many other illnesses. This is a desperate situation and a lot of obese individuals turn to unrealistic diets and drugs. But there is a better way because it is the natural way.You can’t lose excess body fat and become healthy if you don’t do physical exercise. You must exercise three times a week. The workout doesn’t have to be extreme. You can go for a brisk thirty to forty minute walk. Doing this three times a week has a noticeable affect on the heart and fitness level. You will also have to adopt healthier eating habits. This means finding a balanced eating plan. The hard part for many is cutting out sugary over processed foods like cakes, cookies and junk food. You should eat more whole food like brown rice, nuts, salads, fruits, vegetables and lean meat and fish. A properly balanced meal will not leave you feeling hungry.Don’t turn to drugs to help you lose weight fast. You can use a natural product like green tea. This tea has been used for thousands of years by the Chinese and Japanese. Chinese and Japanese herbal medicine has become famous in the west and green tea extracts are often used in pills to help you lose weight. This is a completely natural way to fight fat. You can use the green tea pills indefinitely. The function of the pills is to speed up your metabolism. This means the pills encourage your body to burn up food and turn it into energy at a fast rate. But if you are obese you have to use your green tea diet pills along with a balanced eating plan and regular exercise. You can’t rely on the green tea pills to battle large quantities of sugary and fatty foods. It is important to be aware that green tea extracts are potent fat burners but they are not magic pills. You have to do your bit. These pills are going to help you to convert your food to energy easily and quickly.

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Obesity is officially a disease. The western world is in the grips of an obesity epidemic. Obesity is caused by lack of exercise and eating larger and larger quantities of over refined and fatty foods. This is a stage when the body is carrying far too much fat. This is bad for the heart and can induce diabetes and high cholesterol amongst many other illnesses. This is a desperate situation and a lot of obese individuals turn to unrealistic diets and drugs. But there is a better way because it is the natural way.You can’t lose excess body fat and become healthy if you don’t do physical exercise. You must exercise three times a week. The workout doesn’t have to be extreme. You can go for a brisk thirty to forty minute walk. Doing this three times a week has a noticeable affect on the heart and fitness level. You will also have to adopt healthier eating habits. This means finding a balanced eating plan. The hard part for many is cutting out sugary over processed foods like cakes, cookies and junk food. You should eat more whole food like brown rice, nuts, salads, fruits, vegetables and lean meat and fish. A properly balanced meal will not leave you feeling hungry.Don’t turn to drugs to help you lose weight fast. You can use a natural product like green tea. This tea has been used for thousands of years by the Chinese and Japanese. Chinese and Japanese herbal medicine has become famous in the west and green tea extracts are often used in pills to help you lose weight. This is a completely natural way to fight fat. You can use the green tea pills indefinitely. The function of the pills is to speed up your metabolism. This means the pills encourage your body to burn up food and turn it into energy at a fast rate. But if you are obese you have to use your green tea diet pills along with a balanced eating plan and regular exercise. You can’t rely on the green tea pills to battle large quantities of sugary and fatty foods. It is important to be aware that green tea extracts are potent fat burners but they are not magic pills. You have to do your bit. These pills are going to help you to convert your food to energy easily and quickly.

Technorati Tags: Balanced Meal, Brown Rice, Desperate Situation, diet reviews, Excess Body, Fatty Foods, Fruits Vegetables, Green Tea, Green Tea Diet, Green Tea Diet Pills, Green Tea Extracts, Green Tea Fat Metabolize, Green Tea For Weight Loss, Green Tea Ingredients, High Cholesterol, Japanese Herbal Medicine, Lack Of Exercise, Lean Meat, Meat And Fish, Obese Individuals, Obesity Epidemic, Physical Exercise, Processed Foods, Whole Food

Obesity is a health crisis in Illinois. Across our state, the number of overweight and obese individuals is rapidly increasing. In fact, more than 61% of the population of Illinois is overweight or obese. Not only is obesity the second most common cause of preventable death in the United States, but it can also foster comorbidities—that is, life-threatening illnesses related to obesity—such as heart disease, high blood pressure, and Type 2 Diabetes.

Unsurprisingly, Illinois also spends a fortune each year – some $3.5 billion – on expenses attributable to the obesity epidemic.

It’s obvious that something must be done to stop the epidemic of obesity in our state.

Getting Fit

Weight loss itself is a no great problem: by cutting a person’s daily caloric intake below the number of calories their body needs to maintain life, weight loss can be easily effected. The difficulty comes in conquering the primal urge to eat when hungry.

Obesity is not simply a matter of weight, nor is it a character flaw. It is a disease caused by a disordered relationship with food. For some, the pleasure of eating is a substitute for emotional satisfaction. Others are food addicts, who battle an overwhelming urge to eat even when they aren’t hungry. Sadly, the pain of obesity often leads those with the disease to attempt self-treatment, including fad diets, exercise programs, or gimmicks like so-called weight-loss pills. These efforts lead some to lose significant weight, but most quickly regain it. Many people suffer damage to their health as a result of such quickie “cures”.

No miracle cure for obesity exists. The only way to successfully treat the disease of obesity is through medical care, based upon a complete change in the patient’s lifestyle and eating habits. To beat obesity we must change the way we relate to food, making better food choices and eating less of it. Most of us can accomplish this through education and willpower, in some cases combined with counseling and support. For the rest, weight loss surgery is the only way to combat the disease.

About Weight Loss Surgery

Weight loss surgery works by surgically altering the patient’s stomach and/or digestive tract in order to physically limit the amount of food the patient can eat at a given time. This may be done by removing part of the stomach, or by re-routing the flow of ingested food around the areas where the calories are absorbed. In Lap-band surgery — the most widespread procedure — the stomach and bowel are not cut; only a few small incisions in the abdomen are made to allow the surgeon access to the stomach. An inflatable band is then placed around the stomach, creating a small pouch. If successful, these alterations will cause the patient to take in fewer calories each day than he or she burns, resulting in steady, safe weight loss.

But losing weight is only half the battle. Only a complete change in a patient’s lifestyle can win the war on obesity. Patients who fail to change their activity level and dietary habits may regain any weight lost via surgery.

Summing It Up

Weight loss surgery is a powerful weapon in Illinois’ fight against obesity, but it is only one weapon. To win the fight, we must be willing to change the way we live – eating better food, and less of it, and living an active lifestyle. Only by combining these weapons with our will to win can we conquer obesity and live longer, healthier lives.

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Pick up a newspaper or turn on the local news on any given day and you are liable to hear a report on how Americans are getting fatter. Government statistics tell us that approximately 60 percent of Americans (127 million people) are overweight. Many women who enroll in martial arts or fitness clubs have a primary goal of losing weight. Unfortunately, some expect instant results. If they don’t see immediate weight loss they become discouraged and inpatient. Some even drop out altogether.
In my 20 plus years of training men, women and children of all shapes and sizes, I have learned that diets just don’t work. If they did, we wouldn’t have an obesity epidemic. The diet industry continually makes promises that they can’t deliver and is fleecing the public at the tune of $40 billion dollars a year. The diet industry doesn’t want to tell you the truth. And why should they with the kind of money they’re taking out of people’s misery? The truth is that weight loss is difficult for many people to achieve. Weight loss is a personal struggle, complicated by an individual’s upbringing, eating habits, metabolism, genetics and psychology. Yo-yo dieting and subjecting the body to strange eating regimes is much more detrimental to one’s physical and mental health than maintaining a steady weight.
I’m not here to sell you the same bill of goods as the diet industry. What I will do is encourage you to develop a healthy lifestyle and feel better about yourself. When you train, go with the attitude that you want to move, breathe and stretch. What’s important is that you focus on wellness. According to Steven Blair, director of research at the Cooper Institute for Aerobics Research in Dallas, Texas, “There is a misdirected obsession with weight and weight loss. The focus is wrong. It’s fitness that is the key.”
Fitness is also a word that has been presented to the public at large. Go to any gym in America, what do you see? Weights and cardio machines, not much more. The only thing you can do is train strength and endurance; that’s not enough for true fitness! And how about the gyms with Yoga classes? Great, add flexibility to the list, if your lucky. You see Yoga teachers are a dime a dozen in America, especially in fitness gyms. Finding a good teacher is like finding a needle in a haystack, and they’re not at your local “Fitness” Center! Truth is many of the “Yoga” instructors in gyms don’t know a great deal and could actually end up hurting you.
Fitness is far more in-depth then most people are looking at. If your not improving in all areas of human performance: strength, endurance, flexibility, coordination, balance, body unity, grace, speed, hand eye coordination, reactions (and the list goes on) you are not completely improving your fitness.
You will notice that with a good well rounded system of exercise, you will start having more strength, more endurance, and more flexibility, and all the other benefits mentioned above. If you want to lose weight, it will take patience, exercise, sensible diet changes, and sacrifice. There is no way around it. Focus on fitness, moving, breathing, stretching, feeling strong and enjoying your martial arts or fitness routine.

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An epidemic is raging in our state: the obesity epidemic. Across South Dakota, the number of overweight and obese individuals is rapidly increasing. In the Mount Rushmore State almost 63% of adults are overweight or obese.

This epidemic is costing South Dakotans more than just their health – it’s costing them money. According to recent data from the U.S. Public Health Service Centers for Disease Control (CDC), the cost to the taxpayer for obesity-related expenditures in our state amounts to over $195 million annually.

And of course the costs of obesity are not limited to dollars and cents. People die from obesity (and related illnesses called co-morbidities) every day. Thousands of South Dakotans with diabetes, cancer, heart conditions, and hypertension suffer as a result these obesity-related illnesses.

Obesity Defined

A person who is significantly above their healthy weight is said to be obese.  Healthy weight is calculated in terms of individual body mass index (BMI), but actuarial tables generated from insurance industry statistics are used to determine the actual healthy weight in pounds for persons of various ages, builds, and heights. Your doctor can go over these data with you to determine if you are obese, clinically overweight, or at a healthy weight.

Many of those suffering from obesity have tried everything to lose weight – celebrity diets, brutal exercise regimens, even those snake-oil “medicines” advertised on late-night TV. Some who have tried these methods have lost weight, true, but many others have accomplished nothing other than ruining their health.

Gimmicks are not a safe weight loss option. The only safe way to lose weight is to eat less and become more physically active. Medically-supervised diet and lifestyle modification programs are the ideal way to do this. For some, however, education, counseling, support, and willpower are not enough. Weight loss surgery stands as their weapon of last resort in the war against obesity.

The Surgical Option

When all else fails, doctors can counter a patient’s obesity by physically limiting the amount of food – and thus calories – that he or she can consume. Surgical weight loss – also known as bariatric surgery — has been proven to help ease (and in some cases completely resolve) obesity-related health problems, as well as lessening their chances of developing weight-related health problems in the future. The procedures (there are three types) are performed under general anesthesia, most laparoscopically.

Making the decision

Weight loss surgery is not a cure-all for being fat. Patients must be prepared for a complete change in lifestyle for the surgery to have the desired long-term effect. Those patients who fail to follow postoperative instructions may regain any weight lost. These operations also involve certain risks, which include infection, nutritional deficiencies, ulcers, hernias, and gallstones. Obese patients should always consult with their physician before making any decision regarding surgical weight loss.

Considering Surgical Weight Loss

We South Dakotans are an individualistic people. Each of us must seek our own best method of staying at a healthy weight. For some, weight loss surgery is that method. We should each consider all the options, and then make an informed decision about our own strategy in the war on obesity in South Dakota.

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