Obesity is a physical condition that refers to excess body fat. Chances are you’ve experienced the frustrations of dieting at least once in your life if you struggle with weight issues. Nearly one hundred million Americans go on a weight-loss diet each year, and up to ninety-five percent of them regain the weight they lost within five years. Worse still, a third will gain back more weight than they lost, risking switching from one popular diet to another. The conventional approach to weight problems, focusing on fad diets or weight loss medications, can leave you with so much weight and the added burden of poor health.
Today, an estimated sixty-five percent of all American adults are obese or overweight. Our culture is obsessed with staying thin even as we gain weight, but it’s not about appearance. Obesity is known to be a precursor to many debilitating health problems such as cancer, heart disease, diabetes, hypertension, osteoarthritis and gallbladder disease. Obesity is responsible for 375,000 deaths each year. Additionally, the public health costs of obesity are enormous. According to Harvard University researchers, obesity is a factor in 19% of all cases of heart disease, with annual health costs estimated at $30 billion; it is also a factor in 57% of diabetes cases, with healthcare costs of $9 billion per year.
Set realistic goals:
There is no doubt that you have fallen for one or more weight loss diets over the years, promising rapid and painless weight loss. Many of these rapid weight loss diet programs harm your health, cause physical discomfort, flatulence and ultimately lead to disappointment when you start to regain weight, soon after losing it. Fad diet or rapid weight loss programs usually emphasize one type of food. They contravene the fundamental principle of good nutrition: to stay healthy, you must eat a balanced diet, including a variety of foods. Safe, healthy and permanent weight loss is what is really lost among the thousands of popular diet plans.
Some weight loss diets reign supreme briefly, only to disappear. While some lose popularity because they are unproductive or dangerous, others simply lose public curiosity. Examples of such fad diets include the South Beach Diet, Atkins Diet, Grapefruit Diet, Cabbage Soup Diet, Rotation Diet, Beverly Hills Diet, Breatharian, Ornish Plan, the list goes on and on. These fad diets advocate a specific technique (such as eliminating a certain food or only eating certain combinations of foods) in conjunction with the basic idea that the body makes up for the difference in energy by breaking down and using part of itself, essentially by converting matter into energy. This self-cannibalism, or catabolism as it is called, usually begins with the breakdown of stored body fat.
Posted by May Healthy Lifestyle