Often a person’s weight plays a role in decision making at a doctor’s office. Over 65% of American adults and over 35% of American children are dealing with obesity and the effects of obesity. While our movie stars and media idols become more buff and slim, as a nation, we are becoming more obese and fat. Why is that?
The answer is multifactorial and we will not address all facets in this one short article. Let us start addressing this issue with a basic formula, that weight is a factor of calories in vs. calories out. That is the more we eat and the less we exercise the more we weigh. As a nation we used to get all the exercise we needed through our daily tasks. Children walked to school, mothers washed clothes by hand and fathers chopped wood and walked to work. Across the board, every occupation required more manual labor fifty years ago than the same jobs today. Your grandparents or great grandparents would laugh if you told them that you paid to go exercise somewhere.
Another major factor in the epidemic of obesity is the quality and source of food today vs. fifty years ago. Ingredients found in the average loaf of bread like high fructose corn syrup, soy lecithin, canola oil, cotton seed oil didn’t even exist then. Most of their foods were cooked at home and prepared just prior to eating. Their food was either recently out of a garden or had seen the barnyard shortly before being on their table. It took some time and effort to prepare the food, so you had to be hungry to make it and be willing to work for it. Nowadays if you want veggies fresh from the garden you need to pay twice as much especially if it is “organic”. And it is hard to imagine what kind of hormones and fortified feed and preservatives that is used to get our meat from the hoof to our plates.
A recent article in the Southern Medical Association reports that obesity is especially prevalent among children of the financially disadvantaged aka “the poor.” Bottom line is that in America today it is expensive to eat healthy and keep fit. We have substituted quantity for quality and a slogan is “Supersize it”. Because of that our children are “supersized” and this generation has a lower life expectancy than that of their parents.
You ask, how can we avoid the health hazards of the modern American diet? Start with basics, remember that weight equals calories in vs calories out. Most people who gain 100 lbs gained it slowly over the course of many years. So just as weight is gained, weight can be lost. It takes time and dedication. At our clinic we offer a treatment called BrainTap that helps you reach brain balance and work on appetite suppression, anxiety, and depression. All of which are common causes for people to have increase calorie intake.
Call today to schedule a consultation to discuss your treatment options and wellness plan with one of our providers.
