Obesity Causes and Prevention

With obesity rapidly approaching the number one spot for preventable deaths in the United States, it’s time we asked a few questions.

1. Why is it that society in general is growing fatter by the day?

2. Is it just a lack of willpower or is there another force tipping the scales?

3. What will it take to turn the situation around?

It’s really easy to point the finger at overweight individuals and conclude that their condition is their responsibility. While it is true, that they are the ones left with the responsibility, are they solely responsible for getting themselves overweight.

Let’s take a few minutes to look at some of the influences that people in our society have to contend with before we point the finger.

• Have you ever noticed how the candy racks in the supermarkets are right at the eye level of toddlers?
• Do you think this is an accident?

Who is Responsible?

We have all seen little children screaming at the top of their lungs in the grocery store because they couldn’t have that candy bar that is positioned right in front of their face.

Now we know that the child did not set up that candy bar rack. We also know that the child’s parents did not do it.

So who’s responsible?

Greedy corporate America does not care how many obese children there are.

• They don’t care what kind of medical challenges obese people face during the course of their life.
• They care about one thing and one thing only, profits.

Once a child’s taste buds have been perverted by junk food and sweets, is it any wonder they won’t eat their broccoli?

With more and more demands being put on people’s time these days, is it any wonder that so many people have come to rely on fast food restaurants?

What to Do?

It doesn’t matter where you look, people are constantly bombarded by images of unhealthy foods and snacks. TV commercials, billboards, magazine ads, the list goes on and on. From infancy people find themselves on a junk food assembly-line that leads straight to weight problems.

If we lived in an environment that fostered healthy eating habits and a physically active lifestyle it would be reflected in the way people look. But we don’t.

In fact the exact opposite is true. For the most part people are products of their environment.

If you want to understand why people look the way they do, then you need to take an honest look at the environment that produced them.

The Change Has to Come

Most people didn’t make a conscious choice, somewhere along the way, that they wanted to be fat. They were just living their lives and doing their jobs like everybody else.

As long as the fast food industry produces trillions of dollars of profit per year, things are unlikely to change. That means change has to come on an individual level.

That means people need to be educated so that they can make wise decisions about the foods they eat and the activities they choose.

What it really comes down to is this.

If you are overweight or obese, you probably did not get there by yourself, you had help.

Unfortunately, if you want to change it is going to be up to you.

You need to make up your mind to change and then you need to take action in harmony with that decision.

Once you do that, you will find that there are literally thousands of people who understand and are willing to help.

People die every day from complications of obesity. Make up your mind not to be one of them. Then take action.