If obesity were merely a matter of aesthetics, it would be of less concern. But obesity is a health issue. It is associated with an increased risk of diabetes, lipid abnormalities, coronary artery disease, high blood pressure, certain cancers (such as breast, colon, and gallbladder in women and colon and prostate in men), stroke, degenerative arthritis, respiratory problems, sleep disturbances, and gallbladder disease.
Obesity places a huge burden on society in terms of lost lives, ongoing illnesses, emotional pain, discrimination, and economic cost (nearly $100 billion annually). The most ominous burdens posed by being overweight are reduction of the quality of life and shortening of life span.
The likelihood of dying early (compared with the average age at death of all people in the population) progressively increases the more overweight you are.Diseases caused by obesity are the second leading cause of preventable deaths in the United States.
The Battle of the Bulge
With countless diet programs and products promising to help you shed pounds, losing weight should be easy. Simply eating too much and not being active enough are the causes of most overweight problems.
But you also know it is hard to lose weight and even harder to keep it off. The cause of overweight and obesity is a chronic imbalance of calories ingested and calories burned. Genetic and environmental factors also contribute to obesity.
Americans spend more than $33 billion a year on weight-loss products and services, but they are losing the “battle of the bulge.” Despite the great desire of Americans to be thinner, they have become more obese.
Some have even declared that the United States has an “obesity epidemic.” It is estimated that more than 50 percent of adult Americans are overweight. The prevalence of obesity also is increasing in several other countries.
Get the Terms Straight
“Overweight” and “obesity” are terms that often are used interchangeably, but they have different meanings. “Overweight” refers to having excess body weight compared with the norm for a person’s height, but the term does not account for what tissue is making up the weight.
For example, athletes are often overweight according to weight-for-height tables because they have increased muscle mass. However, for most people, overweight means having too much fat.
“Obesity” refers to body fat in excess of what is healthful for an individual. In healthy women, an acceptable level of body fat ranges from 25 to 35 percent. In contrast, an acceptable range of body fat in men is from 10 to 23 percent.
