simple steps to avoid obesity

There is a great deal of nonsense spoken on the subject of obesity. There are numerous facts, figures and statistics in general as to the reasons why people are becoming more and more obese. Many of these facts are complicated - to many they are over-complicated. However, it is true that a 2006/07-health survey found that:

· one in three adults were overweight (36.3%) and one in four obese (26.5%).

· one in five children aged 2 to 14 years were overweight (20.9%) and one in twelve was obese (8.3%).

The World Health Organization now describes the prevalence of obesity as an epidemic. There has been a rise in obesity even in healthy and 'Green' New Zealand in recent decades - from 9% (males) and 11% (females) in 1977 to 20% and 22% respectively in 2003.

The fact that obesity is an expanding problem globally should make us sit up straight and take notice. But of what do we take notice? Some agencies claim that obesity is down to eating too much fast food. Others say that it is largely genetic, and that, if your parents and their parents were 'fat' then you will be too! To a limited extent some of this is accurate. What these 'schools of thought' forget, though, is that YOU are an individual, and if YOU follow a few simple and common sense rules YOU will be precisely the weight you want to be.

WATCH

1. Examine your eating habits and analyse what you are eating. This is number one on the list of tips because, if you are eating haphazardly (the wrong food), the chances are you DON NOT STAND A CHANCE of getting slim. Eat the right things for health. Salads, fruit, vegetables, fresh fruit and vegetable drinks - not fizzy, sugar-filled pop drinks. Eat honey if you must have sweet things. Reduce creamy, rich and deep-fried foods unless you know that they are cooked with healthy oils and not fat.

HABIT

2. If you are eating merely as a matter of habit you are probably not thinking at all about the things you are consuming. This will cause you to put on weight due simply to the fact that you are more than likely stuffing things into your mouth that have little or no nutrient value for your body's health and well-being.

EXERCISE

3. Monitor also your daily exercise habit. If you don not have one already, get one! You will find it easier to lose weight and keep it off if you have at least a walking or jogging routine three or more times each week. The body's metabolism needs exercise in order to utilise the nutrients and minerals you put into it. Good food is absolutely no use to you if your metabolism is hindered in this way.

WHAT IS OBESITY?

4. Obesity is defined as an excessively high amount of body fat (adipose tissue) in relation to lean body mass. Overweight is excess weight for height so, if you are a man six feet (1.8m) tall and you weigh 150 lbs (68kg) that is fine. By contrast, if you are a woman five feet tall and weigh the same, that is overweight. This is all pretty obvious, but what we need to be able to do as individuals is to objectively look at ourselves in the mirror and ask the question "am I overweight for my height and how can I remedy that"? The answer is in tips one, two and three.

5. Finally, once you can see that your excess flab is beginning to be shed, you will then realise just how simple it is to GET YOURSELF to a comfortable size and weight that you (and everyone else) can handle.

It is interesting to note that we generally eat as our parents eat. This is simply because it was our parents who first cooked for us and they were in the 'habit' of preparing the type of food their parents made for them. You can see that any hereditary connection to the weight we put on is almost certainly down to the food we are in the 'habit' of eating - because our parents put it on our plates, and their parents before them and....so on!

Remember, you will not show signs of weight loss until you make those all important decisions on what you can eat that will help you lose that unwanted weight. The day that someone says to you "Goodness you have lost weight" is the day you will skip with delight - literally