In a recent study, it was found that obesity related medical expenditures have reach $147 billion per year and growing. This means that obesity related health issues make up about 10% of all medical spending.  Here are some more alarming facts:

• The prevalence of obesity has increased 37% between 1998 and 2006
• An obese person has $1429 more, per year, in medical costs than a non-obese person
• Obesity accounts for 8.5% of all Medicare expenditures, 11.8% of all Medicaid expenses, and 12.9% of all private insurance expenditures.

So, what are ‘obesity related heath issues’?  Research has shown that being overweight or obese increase your risks of:

• Coronary heart disease
• Type 2 diabetes
• Cancers (endometrial, breast, and colon)
• Hypertension (high blood pressure)
• Dyslipidemia (for example, high total cholesterol or high levels of triglycerides)
• Stroke
• Liver and Gallbladder disease
• Sleep apnea and respiratory problems
• Osteoarthritis (a degeneration of cartilage and its underlying bone within a joint)
• Gynecological problems (abnormal menses, infertility)

While some of this information you probably already knew, are you really surprised by any of the information that you didn’t know?  It isn’t a new revelation that being overweight or obese is unhealthy.  We’ve known that for decades…if not centuries.  Even with the knowledge of how you become overweight or obese, and the associated related issues, the problem only gets worse…day after day…year after year. 

Why is it that we have all the knowledge we need to do something about it but the problem only gets worse?  If only we could point to one thing and say, “That’s the problem!”  The ultimate responsibility lies with the individual.  However, that is not to say there aren’t external contributing factors at work.  Since it is next to impossible to cover all of the personal and environmental variables involved, we will turn our attention to those external factors. 

Contributors to the obesity epidemic

The focus of this series of articles is on the contributing industries to the obesity epidemic.  We will concentrate on six industries:

• The restaurant industry
• The fast food industry
• The diet industry
• The fitness industry
• The pharmaceutical industry

Each will be featured separately and how each contributes to the obesity epidemic will be explored in depth.  They all work together to create a perfect storm of sorts that tends to keep us in a repeating loop. This is not to insinuate there is collaboration between these industries but rather an unfortunate system that has evolved over time…and continues to evolve.

Stay tuned for part two of this series: the restaurant industry.

Just about anybody can say they’ve succeeded in losing some weight at some point in time.  How many of those can claim they have experienced life-altering long-term weight loss success?  Unfortunately, not many.

As has been said, to be successful in long term weight loss, you must break bad habits and replace them with good habits.  Not only will your lifestyle have to change but so will your attitude.  Losing weight isn’t a sprint, it is a marathon and should be treated as such.  Losing weight is actually the easy part.  Sustaining the weight loss is where the real challenge begins.

So how do you know if you’ve reached that point to where you can be relatively assured you’ve created the healthy habits needed to sustain your weight loss?  There are many milestones you can use to determine this.  Of course, they won’t be the same for everyone but here are few common ones:

Cravings and temptations subside

When you first start your weight loss effort, you will find it difficult to pass up those treats you normally consume.  For some, the temptations are just too great if they are readily available so they completely rid their house of them.  Your body is accustomed to the way you’ve been eating and it really won’t like it too much when you suddenly take away those simple carb, high-fat foods.  It will go through withdrawals.  Most likely you will exhibit physical symptoms such as headaches, irritability, nervousness, fatigue, and more.  Here’s the good news…the symptoms will go away, the cravings will subside, and temptations will no longer be unbearable.  When you get to this point, you’ve won a major battle.

Your food choices don’t change after you meet your goals

The problem with ‘crash’ diets or other extreme weight loss techniques is that it is more often than not unsustainable over a prolonged period of time.  When someone hits their target weight, they return to their normal way of eating and the weight comes back quickly.  Often times, they end up gaining back more than they lost.  This is why nutrition experts suggest a weight loss of 1-2 pounds per week is optimal for long term weight loss.  This allows learn a new way of eating, learn how to make good nutritional choices, and change your lifestyle gradually over a period of time.  If you have hit your target weight but notice that the types and quantities of food you eat doesn’t change that much, if at all, you will be more likely to sustain your weight loss for the long haul.

You ‘blow it’ for a day and don’t give up

Granted, there are differing levels of ‘blowing it’ but this is a trap that many fall prey to.  It’s the weekend and you have a night out with your friends.  You’ve achieved some success toward your goals and decide to relax your diet for a night.  Afterward, you feel guilty.  Your start thinking, “All that hard work and I blow it in one night!”  Thus starts the domino effect.  If you blow it for a night, you might as well go ahead and have a big breakfast…and so on.  You might as well just give up!  Wrong.  You know you’ve rounded a corner in your battle if you can afford yourself a ‘night off’ and hop right back on the horse the next day.  It just becomes a way of life and not a battle of willpower.

You just don’t ‘feel right’ if you don’t exercise

If you have become used to an exercise regiment, in all likelihood you are exercising at the same time every day.  It’s very difficult to workout in the morning one day then in the evening the next and create a routine.  When your body gets accustomed to the time you exercise and you have to take a day off, you just don’t ‘feel right’.  You may notice your energy levels are not as high or thinking in muddled.  You just aren’t ‘right’ until you have your next workout.  When you reach this point, you know you’ve created a good habit that will help carry you to long term weight loss success.

You exercise when you just don’t feel like it

This is a big one.  There are going to be days where the last thing you want to do, for whatever reason, is exercise.  When you find yourself in this situation but still end up in the gym, you know you’ve reached a milestone.  It’s not the days that you feel great and workout that test your mettle.  It’s the days where you’d rather visit a Dentist than run a mile…but yet you still do…that make the difference.

Someone calls you ‘obsessed’

There is a saying in the fitness and nutrition realm: ‘Obsession’ is what lazy people call dedication.  To many that don’t have to deal with weight issues in their lives, your dedication can come off as an obsession.  To those that are experiencing their own weight issues but aren’t doing anything about, it’s probably jealousy.  If someone refers to you as obsessed, take it as a compliment and let it fuel your motivation!

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If someone called you fat, how would you react?  Hurt?  Embarrassed?  Angered? Resentful?  What does that say about who you are as a person?  It’s not merely a statement about your physical appearance.  It’s about a physical characteristic that you can do something about but, for whatever reason, choose not to.  The insult is what it says about your habits, your self-control, and your personal accountability.

The blunt and honest truth is that it has become all too common to blame someone, or something, else for our situation instead of pointing the finger in the right direction…at ourselves.  If someone, or something, else is responsible for our weight problems, we can claim victim status.  Sure, there is a weight issue but its not our fault!  It softens that blow to the ego and keeps us from having to be accountable for our situation.

Often times, we don’t even realize we do it.  How many sentences have you heard from yourself or someone else that start with, “I could lose weight if I wanted to but…”?  Here are some of the most common endings to that sentence and a rebuttal for each.  See how many you recognize:

“…eating right takes too much time.”

The rebuttal:  You’re right, it does take a little extra time to prepare a healthy meal when compared to just having a pizza delivered. The easiest way to combat this is through planning your meals a week in advance.  Pick a time where you make yourself sit down and plan your menu and then create your shopping list for the grocery store .  If you don’t have time to cook during the week, cook your meals in advance and freeze them.  One very common way to reign in your lunches is to pack your lunch when you make dinner the night before.  Are you cooking for a family of four? Make and extra helping and put it in the fridge for lunch the next day.

“…I’m always sick and tired.”

The rebuttal:  Seriously?  You’d lose weight if you weren’t always so sick and tired?  Care to take a guess as to why you always feel bad?  Before you start a weight loss program, it is always a good idea to get a physical.  In all likelihood, you’ll find that your current ailments and lethargy are a result of your weight issues.  That is not to say that there can’t be a reason unrelated to your weight issues but the odds are not in your favor on this one.  Carrying those extra pounds around can lead to Metabolic Syndrome.  With Metabolic Syndrome comes a laundry list of problems.  Click here for more information on Metabolic Syndrome.

“…eating right is too expensive.”

The rebuttal:  It doesn’t have to be.  There are some ‘healthy’ products on the market that cost more than their not-so-healthy counterparts but eating to lose weight doesn’t mean you have to break the bank.  How many times do you eat out?  How much do you spend on ‘grazing’ food for the pantry?  Take the money you spend there and use it to buy fresh fruits, vegetables, and lean meat.  You don’t need to buy high dollar diet foods to lose weight.  If you monitor your portion sizes and shop intelligently, you may even find that you save money.

“…my family won’t support me.”

The rebuttal: There are many factors you have to take into account before beginning any weight loss program and one very important factor is your family. Here are some questions you really need to ask yourself if you use this excuse:  Have you talked to them about how they are effecting your efforts?  Have you included them on your plans and asked for their help?  Do you include them when you celebrate your successes?  Here is an article about the different family factors and how you can overcome them.

“…nothing has ever worked before”

The rebuttal: There can be many reasons for this but, most likely, you haven’t properly addressed the real reason for your weight problems.  Weight loss has always been temporary because as soon as you come off of your ‘diet’, it is back to business as usual.  The easy part is losing the weight.  The hard part is keeping it off.  That’s why you always hear the term ‘yo-yo diet’.  It is usually not that people can’t drop the pounds but that they don’t change their habits and lifestyle to match.

“…I like who I am”

The rebuttal: Usually, it isn’t that you like who you are but that you are unwilling to make the sacrifices needed to lose weight.  Dedication to losing weight and becoming healthier means more than just eating a salad every now and then.  It means bad habits must be broken and your unhealthy lifestyle must change.  Going out for pizza and beer has to become a thing of the past.  If you aren’t willing to make the sacrifices then you won’t succeed.  It really is that simple.

There is no set definition for ‘extreme’ weight loss but to determine what technique is best, a starting point should be defined.  The problem with defining the term for everyone is that there are too many factors that would need to be included such as height, age, body type, and more.

For the closest definition, the parameters of what is considered obese should be taken into consideration.  To put this into ‘pound’ terms, someone that is 40%-100% over their ideal weight is considered mildly obese.  Someone over 100% of their ideal weight is considered severely obese.  Someone over 150% of their ideal weight is considered morbidly obese.  If someone in the severely or morbidly obese category were to be able to obtain their ideal body weight, we would most assuredly consider that to be extreme weight loss.

There is another perspective to consider when you hear the term ‘extreme weight loss’.  It could be used when describing the speed at which you lose weight such as dropping 10 pounds in 2 days.  As we all have seen, there are many that use extreme weight loss techniques even if they aren’t considered to be severely or morbidly obese…or even moderately obese!

Some of the extreme weight loss techniques used today try to target speed of weight loss or amount of weight loss.  Most attempt to target both areas. Here a just a few of the well known techniques:

Diet Pills

There are two varieties: pharmaceutical and natural.  Generally, these diet pills do one of two things.  They either suppress your appetite or block something ‘bad’ from getting into your system (like fat or carbs).  There are varying degrees of success with diet pills but the side effects often make this method less than desirable.  With many of the appetite suppressants really just being a form of amphetamine, you can actually run the risk of dependency.  With the ‘blockers’ such as Alli, there can actually be rather embarrassing physical side effects.  A recent study even linked Alli to possible liver damage.

Liposuction

Liposuction is the method of sucking the fat out of your body with a vacuum.  Sounds great, doesn’t it?  Your fat is literally ripped out, blood vessels and all.  Many that turn to liposuction don’t do so because they are severely or morbidly obese.  They do it to remove fat from perceived ’stubborn’ areas.  Because of this, liposuction would mostly be considered extreme weight loss in the speed definition sense of the term.

Gastric Bypass

What list of extreme weight loss techniques would be complete without listing the good old gastric bypass surgery.  While the success rate of gastric bypass surgery is quite high, so are the risks and side effects associated with it.  This surgery, put simply, makes the stomach smaller and allows food to bypass some of the smaller intestines.  To get a better idea of the risks and what you can expect from gastric bypass surgery, you can click here.  This method addresses both the speed and amounts of weight loss associated with extreme weight loss.

Extreme Dieting

There are too many types of extreme dieting out there to list.  You can easily find someone willing to sell you their latest extreme diet that guarantees you will lose 30 lbs in a week.  The promises are plentiful, the results are short lived, and the only lasting guarantee is that you’ll be looking for another diet that is bigger and better in short order.  Many of these diets have the potential to yield large amounts of weight loss and at an extreme speed.  The question you should be asking of these diets, thought, is this: Are they healthy and sustainable?

So what is the most effective extreme weight loss technique?  It is one that most people know but don’t want to hear.  It is one that disregards the speed aspect of the extreme weight loss definition.  It’s the timeless technique of good nutrition, exercise, and patience.  It’s often said that we are a society that wants everything now and some of the other extreme techniques really prove this.  We are willing to undergo major surgery (gastric bypass), painful minor surgery (liposuction), and the risk of addiction (diet pills) to achieve faster results rather than change our current lifestyle for a longer period of time.

Of course none of these techniques will ultimately be effective if you don’t address the underlying issues of why you are overweight to begin with.  Stay tuned for future articles discussing how to identify those issues and ways you can address them.

When a someone breaks their arm and goes to the hospital, does the doctor give them some pain relievers and send them on their way?  What if the doctor only treated the symptom rather than attack the root cause of the problem?  In the case of the broken arm, the pain would subside somewhat but the break would still be there and it would heal improperly.  If it doesn’t heal properly, it will have to be re-broken and re-set. 

This is a rather simplistic view of root cause analysis but it does get to the point that should the root cause not be addressed, the long term result will most likely be worse than the original problem.  In root cause analysis, there are three actions to be taken: immediate, preventive, and permanent.

Immediate actions address the symptoms (the immediate need).  Preventive action is assuring the same problem doesn’t happen again by addressing the root cause of the problem.  Permanent action consists of using your knowledge of the root cause and applying it so the problem never happens again.

In our example of the broken arm, the immediate action of the doctor would be to address the pain so they may give you a pain killer.  After medication, preventive action would be taken by setting the arm to insure it heals properly.  Permanent action would be to make sure you didn’t perform the action again that caused your arm to break.

This same type of root cause analysis can be directly applied to your weight loss efforts and can be very effective.  The truth of the matter is that most diets truly fail because the root cause of your weight problems are not addressed.  Sure, you may lose 20 lbs. but you gain it right back because you only took immediate action and didn’t take preventive or permanent action.  In this case, the immediate action is changing the type of food you consume.  The preventive action is changing your lifestyle to incorporate healthier foods and exercise.  The permanent action would be addressing the underlying emotional reasons of why you over eat.

One step in the battle of addressing the underlying emotional reasons you eat is to be able to identify the difference between physical hunger and emotional hunger.  Physical hunger is the hunger you feel because your body needs nourishment while emotional hunger is the act of eating in response to your feelings.  It is often difficult to differentiate between the two but awareness of the differences may be key in helping you overcome those emotional eating habits. 

The following is a list of ways you can tell if you are eating out of response to a physical hunger or out of response to emotional hunger:

Physical Hunger

• Your hunger builds gradually since your last meal
• You get full and stop eating
• You feel satisfied after eating
• You have physical symptoms such as a rumbling stomach
• You don’t feel the need to eat immediately
• You don’t feel guilty after you eat

Emotional Hunger

• Your suddenly feel hungry
• There is an urgent need to eat
• The time since your last meal makes no difference
• You often have a taste for something specific (cravings)
• You continue to eat after you are full
• Guilt and shame after eating

As GI Joe says, “Knowing is half the battle.”  Arm yourself with the knowledge and you will drastically increase your chances of long term weight loss success.