Article Medically Reviewed By:
Rebecca S. Reeves, DrPH
Assistant Professor Behavioral Medicine Research Center Baylor College of Medicine Houston, TX
Overview
What Is It?
Your diet—the way you eat—is ingrained in your lifestyle. To change your weight—whether you want to lose a few pounds, or more, and keep them off—or to ensure you don't succumb to the expanding-waistline syndrome, you must permanently adopt a healthy lifestyle.
Americans are obsessed with both food and dieting. As a nation, we love to eat. We eat out often, when meals are often higher in fat and calories than meals eaten at home; we eat larger portions; and we indulge in dozens of delicious "new" food products found on our grocery store shelves every year.
But we also spend billions of dollars a year on commercial weight-loss products and services hoping for a quick fix to our weight problem. And what a problem: with all that eating, about 142 million Americans—up to 66.3 percent of the nation—are either overweight or obese. What's more, dieting is failure-prone, and the statistics are even worse when it comes to those who can keep the weight off.
The answer to this weight loss/weight gain cycle lies in how you manage your weight on a day-in, day-out basis. Your diet—the way you eat—is ingrained in your lifestyle. To change your weight—whether you want to lose a few pounds, or more, and keep them off—or to ensure you don't succumb to the expanding-waistline syndrome, you must permanently adopt a healthy lifestyle. Experts have demonstrated through research that this approach to weight management is more reasonable and promising than traditional dieting strategies. Unfortunately, it's not just all that tempting food that stands in the way of your efforts to achieve or maintain a healthy weight. Technology has altered Americans' lifestyle. Most of us, most of the time can be found sitting—in front of a computer or TV, in a car, at a restaurant. Nearly 25 percent of adults—and an even greater percentage of women—report they are sedentary and engage in no physical activity during leisure time, and less than half exercise regularly. And as women age, their tendency to be sedentary steadily increases. Being overweight increases your risk for many diseases. If you are overweight, you are more likely to develop heart disease and stroke, the leading causes of death for both men and women in the United States.
Overweight people are more likely to have high blood pressure, a major risk factor for heart disease and stroke, and high cholesterol, also a risk factor. They're twice as likely to develop Type 2 diabetes—a major cause of death, heart disease, kidney disease, stroke, amputation and blindness—as those not overweight.
Additionally, several types of cancer are associated with being overweight. In women, these include cancer of the uterus, gallbladder, cervix, ovary, breast and colon. Being overw...
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