Are we obsessed with weight loss?

To say that we are obsessed with weight loss is an understatement! Search Google for “Weight Loss” and get a whopping 64,600,000 results! Pick up any magazine, turn-on your TV, listen to the radio and any other source of advertising and you're bombarded with the latest diet schemes, health food and diet pills.

More often than not, those products are endorsed by some familiar celebrity, or promoted using some other “new” clever technique or “just released” test results. Obviously, the weight-loss industry has built a thriving empire. Billions of dollars are spend every year on weight loss products and diet plans. In addition, even more billion of dollars are spend for medication, hospitalization, and doctors to treat obesity-related problems. Even with all this, the obesity epidemic continues to spread worldwide.

More and more people are getting overweight.

The Dutch public health agency concluded in a research report last year that poor diet was as deleterious to health as smoking. It said 25 percent of deaths and serious illness caused by overweight.

The National Center for Health Statistics reports Americans, are packing-on the pounds faster than ever before and weight-related medical problems are taking center stage. Diseases like heart disease, diabetes and yes...even certain forms of cancer have all been linked to obesity.

A recent Harvard study of more than 120,000 children enrolled in Massachusetts health maintenance organizations found that the prevalence of being overweight and obese among healthy, middle class kids under the age of six increased by a whooping 59 percent between 1980 and 2000. There was an even greater jump when it came to babies – it increased by 74 percent in infants younger than six months.

Another study found that a child that met the criteria of being overweight as defined by a BMI (body mass index - How to calculate BMI) at least once between the ages of two and four was five times more likely to be overweight at age 12 compared to a child who wasn’t overweight between ages tow and four. This is not an “oh he or she will outgrow it” problem; these kids are at risk for serious health disorders such as high blood pressure, respiratory illnesses, and early onset of type 2 diabetes.

Obsessed? Maybe, but with all “new” diets, pills, exercise plans etc. the weight increase trends are not being reversed!