Lose Weight For A Healthier Heart.

Obesity has reached epidemic proportions in the United States. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the number of obese Americans continues to rise. In fact, 30 percent of adults over age 20-more than 60 million people-are obese, which means they are 30 pounds overweight and have a BMI, or body mass index (a mea-sure of body fat), of more than 30.

Obesity Is On The Rise

One of the goals of the National Institutes of Health is to reduce obesity among adults by more than half by the year 2010. However, current data suggests that the situation is getting worse. Due to rising rates of childhood obesity, life expectancy for the average American could decrease by two to five years over the next few decades unless major efforts are made to slow down the rising rates of obesity.

What’s more, obesity is a risk factor for heart disease and other serious health complications:

• Obesity is a risk factor for type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure and high cholesterol. Having these disorders at the same time is a condition called the metabolic syndrome, which can lead to an increased risk for heart disease and kidney disease.

• High blood pressure, a risk factor for heart disease, is twice as common in obese adults than in those who are at a healthy weight.

• Obesity can also lead to arthritis, which is caused by stress on your joints.

A Likely Trigger For Heart Disease

Obesity, high cholesterol and high blood pressure are a common grouping of risk factors for people with heart disease. Managing all these risk factors will help reduce the risk of heart attack and stroke.

What You Can Do Today

Overweight and obesity together represent the number-two preventable cause of death in the U.S. after smoking. There are many things you can do to get your weight under control and to help manage your risk for heart disease:

• Develop a diet and exercise plan that you feel is realistic and that you can maintain.

• Talk to your doctor about medicines that may help control your risk factors for heart disease. If you are prescribed medicines, take them exactly as directed and for as long as your doctor recommends.

• Resolve to make this year a healthier one-set a weight-loss goal and stick with it.

Is Your Weight Stressing You Out?

I have been asked recently, what is my secret for my weight loss. I jokingly just say I quit eating. But I am serious. Who says you must eat 3 meals every day? Did GOD tell Adam he must eat 3 balanced meals a day? I have also heard it said that to lose weight you must eat 3 meals a day. Wow, who comes up with this stuff. What I have found to be true in all my current research is this. Most people who are over- weight; (and how many people do you know that are not over weight, especially our children?) are overweight because their body is suffering from mal-nutrition. You may ask, how can someone 100lbs over their ideal body weight be suffering from mal-nutrition? Folks, as we have all heard it many times before, and this is my opinion, there is nothing good in processed food. NaDa, zero, zilch. The box it is in may contain as much nutrition. **This is a Major clue ** If it wont start to rot on the way home from the store, DONT Buy IT!!! You can put processed foods out in your gar...

Lose Weight – A few thoughts.

There are few subjects in the world that have had more written about them than how to lose weight. Sad, but true. People are simply obsessed with their weight, and are willing to try any ridiculous fad if it promises to help them shed those pounds and lose those unsightly inches. At the moment, the fashion is for restricted-carbohydrate diets, like Atkins, the South Beach Diet and the GI Diet. These diets make foods like pasta and rice out to be the root of all evil, instead encouraging you to eat high-fat, high-protein foods like meat and dairy products. While this approach does result in weight loss for many people, its long-term health effects are, at best, unknown, with most nutritionists agreeing that such a diet would most probably be harmful if it was kept to for a long time. In the end, the reason that people go so far to find ways of losing weight is that the one method that works is so difficult. You simply have to eat less food, and find time to exercise. Unfortunately for u...

Increase Metabolism to Lose Weight

Metabolic Rate refers to the rate one expends calories in a given period of time. Essentially, it is the rate by which we expend energy through the chemical breakdown of burning calories. Not only do we spend calories during periods of work and during exercise, we also burn calories at rest simply to keep our cells alive. This is a vial point to understand! What I am referring to is known as the Basil, or resting, metabolic rate. In fact, you burn more during your resting hours than you do during periods of exercise! For example, one hours worth of tennis or basketball could burn about 600 or so calories. One hour at rest may burn only 90 or so. But you might only play one hours worth of tennis three or four times a week, while your resting metabolic rate is what you burn 24/7. It is easy to see that 90 times 24 times 7 is significantly greater than 600 times 4. (90 * 24 * 7 = 15120 vs. 600 * 4 = 2400). The point I am making is not that exercise is useless, it is the importance o...

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