Is Obesity a Pandemic?

Although obesity cannot be categorized as a disease, it is definitely one of the causes of various health complications, such as diabetes, kidney problems, heart diseases and osteoarthritis to name a few. Obesity has been defined as a pandemic of late because today more than 45 million people in America are going to the gym regularly, and the figure has risen significantly since 1993. In 1993 as many as 23 million people were gym goers.

It is surprising to see that people now spend about $19 billion per year on their memberships. This is actually a sign the rising trend of obesity. Until a person is obese why would they take the pain to go to the gym anyways?

The current statistics reveal that more than 70% Americans either belong to the category of overweight or obese. This indeed is an alarming situation and obesity leads to various diseases that can be life threatening. It is because more and more people are falling sick due to obesity and developing different types of health complications, obesity is now considered to be a greatest threat to human health and welfare.

It is important to control obesity at the very stage of onset. The condition develops due to our food habits, which we can actually control.

Identifying the Energy Gap

We have a troubled perception that leads to all the complications, when it concerns weight loss, we perceive exercise as a tool for weight loss, which is not true. We actually fail to define exercise.

Exercise does not mean you have to jump from the rooftop or walk miles after miles. It also does not mean that you will have to build a second home in your gym. All our daily activities are basic exercises to keep our body fit. Walking, moving around, cooking, taking the bus to the office, going to school, playing, grocery shopping and almost everything is exercise. However, if you are sitting on the computer or you are one of the couch potato types of person, you need help!

Any physical activity that makes you sweat and exhausted is a good exercise for your body. You need not push yourself too hard to exercise. If you push yourself you will only be endangering your muscles, which will result in pain and other complications gradually.

Exercise should not be the cause of pain; it should rather make you more energetic, enthusiastic and also help you lose weight dramatically. And if you lose weight, you would also be preventing many health complications, particularly the ones involving your heart.

Exercise Stimulates Hunger- Did you know that?

Exercise is good for your overall health. But there is a downside of exercise as well. Just think about it – how do you feel right after exercising? You feel hungry, don’t you? And what do you eat when you are very hungry? I would gulp down almost anything that comes my way; may be something that I have been asked not to touch if I want to lose weight.

Although experts would have different opinion on the fact that exercise stimulates your appetite and makes you feel hungry, but the human mind and stomach agrees to it. There are group of proponents confirming the fact that exercise actually reduces the desire to eat food, which I believe is not true.

Exercise means your body is actually burning calories or your food intake. This means that your food will start craving for food immediately after you’ve been through a vigorous exercise session. Although a certain degree of variation might be seen in the response, but the usual effects are always the same.

Proponents also blame the behavioral aspects for the increased desire for food immediately after exercise. We usually start feeling that as we’ve exercised we are not free to eat anything we want, and that contributes to body weight.

Exercise – What it does for the body?

Exercise does a lot for the human body; in fact it is beneficial for human beings in quite a lot of ways. Exercise helps in enhancing the health of the heart and also helps in preventing heart diseases or cardiovascular diseases. Exercise also helps in improving the overall mental health along with the cognitive ability of a person.

A study regarding the enhanced cognitive ability was published in a journal called Neurology which revealed that the elderly who exercise once in a week are actually 30% more likely to have enhanced cognitive functions than the ones who do not exercise.

Exercise does not mean you have to go to the gym and around the park or jog every morning, being physically active is the basic idea. Even your hobbies like gardening, golfing and regular walking are some of the few signs of healthy exercise habits. Activity is not just restricted to the machines in the gyms; if you want you can be active in the comfort of your home as well, just keep moving and stay active all the time. By doing so, you will have a healthy and functional heart and an improved body as well.