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Obesity and Weight Loss
You may or may not know this, but Americans are fat. Grossly fat in many cases
- and let's not pull any punches here, "obese" means grossly fat. The
problem just keeps getting worse from one day to the next.
Having a lot of extra fat on your body causes a huge number of health
problems. In fact, it's more than reasonable to say that being fat causes most
of the health problems we know about today, and many others we're not even
aware of yet. Obesity is an epidemic that grows for both children and adults
each and every day. This epidemic keeps leading us further and further
down the road to serious health problems.
Obesity is such a problem in today's society, in fact, that it's now common
place to see weight loss reality shows on tv. The sad thing is, kids and
adults alike will sit and watch those shows instead of getting up and doing
something about their own weight problems.
There are though, many ways to lose body fat. All of the approaches work well,
but they all take time, effort, commitment, and sacrifice. And that's where
some of the major obesity problems of today come from unfortunately...
Everyone wants instant gratification. So they eat microwave meals or buy a
burger and fries at a fast food stop. They wolf down ready made cakes and pies
that come in little cellophane wrappers while watching TV, or they munch on
candy and drink sodas like there is no tomorrow.
Everything most people eat today is "ready made", or "instant",
and those
conveniences are putting on pounds faster than we can even see.
The growing problems with obesity in today's society stem from many things
though. One major problem of course is the convenience foods we already
mentioned, and another is mis-information. Decades ago for instance, the
general public was told to stop eating foods which were high in fat. So, they
complied. The problem, though, is they started supplementing their diets with
empty calories instead. You can go to the store and look in the candy aisle, for
instance, and you'll find many sugar laden sweets which advertise in big bold
letters on the packaging: "No Fat!" or "Low Fat!", as if somehow that means
the candy is healthy for you.
Another problem, of course, is being satiated from the meals and snacks we eat.
When you cut fat drastically low or eliminate it all together from your diet,
you'll find yourself hungrier more often throughout the day. This is because
fat actually helps fill us up and keeps us satisfied for longer periods of
time. That doesn't mean you should go the opposite direction, and eat all high
fat foods, though, because there are both good and bad fats.
Now, another source of mis-understanding or mis-information is the generally
accepted FDA food pyramid that most people grew up with. This pyramid was
designed with the best intentions, but it was interpreted badly over the
years. Carbohydrates in the form of bread products were said to be the primary
types of foods we should eat. Now, back in the 1940's or 1950's and earlier,
this may have been quite true. But, back then, "bread" was a lot different than
it is now, and back then people did a lot more manual labour than they do
today. Manual labour equates to exercise and muscle building. And when you have
a lot of physical activity in your life, your body needs and uses those
carbohydrates.
Today, though, "bread" has nowhere near the amount of grains or fiber in it. In fact, what
most people call bread doesn't even have any vitamins or nutrition in it,
unless something has been added. This is because manufacturers strip out all
of the good nutrition, then they add fake synthetic stuff back in.
Activity levels are also quite different today than they were 50 or more years
ago too. Instead of working our bodies each day, we work our minds instead.
There is nothing wrong with working the mind of course, but due to the
lifestyle changes we now have, we need to work harder at exercising our bodies
or we need to change our eating styles. Ideally we should be doing both.
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