Weight problems and obesity have become one of the chief health concerns in the Western world today. It is estimated that over 60 million people in the United States alone are overweight while it is increasingly becoming a world-wide problem. However, for many people this can be prevented with a few simple lifestyle changes. In this article we look at how to lose weight the healthy way.

It is possible to gain weight while remaining healthy if you are physically fit and exercise on a regular basis, thus increasing lean body mass. However, unhealthy weight gain happens when people gain weight as a result of putting on too much storage fat. We all need a certain amount of body fat as it serves as a reserve source of energy, provides insulation for the body and protects organs. However, putting on too much body fat can quickly lead to obesity.

There are a number of reasons why people become over weight and some cases it is not preventable. It may be a inherited genetically and can be linked the body’s metabolism in which case it can be difficult to prevent. However, in the majority of cases it is due to factors like overeating, lack of exercise, too much alcohol or stopping smoking. In these cases, a few lifestyle changes can make all the difference.

So, the first thing to do if you are concerned about your weight is to look out for the tell-tale signs of being overweight. These may include

irregular heartbeat
shortness of breath when exercising
difficulty in walking and moving around
painful back and knees
heartburn
depression or other emotional problems
diabetes
swelling of the feet or legs
osteoarthritis in some joints
increased blood pressure
coronary heart disease
increased cholesterol levels

While it is not foolproof, calculating your body mass index BMI should also give you a good idea of whether you are overweight or not. You can ask your physician to check your BMI or there are countless BMI calculators available online that will help you.

If you are overweight or obese it is time to do something about it. There is always the temptation to embark on a crash diet to help you shed those pounds. Certainly, these can be effective in the short-term but they are not healthy. Also, these diets do not lay the foundations needed to maintain a healthy weight. Too often, once people finish a crash diet and reach their desired weight, they fall back into old habits and they quickly gain any weight that was lost.

The key to losing weight the healthy way is a good diet and regular exercise. For many people this involves making some lifestyle changes and breaking some old habits, so it will take some effort. But it can be done. Once you get over some initial hurdles you will feel healthier, happier and more confident.

Initially, at least, you should seek some help and support. Enlisting the help of a dietician and a fitness trainer at the beginning will set you off on the right path. Not only will they tell you what to eat and what kinds of exercises are best, they will also give you encouragement and support through those tough first few weeks. Once you get into the swing of things you should be fine on your own.

It is obvious that a big factor in how much you weigh is what you eat. So, with a dietician or on your own look at how much and what kinds of food you eat every day. Most likely this will have to change, maybe even drastically.

You need to aim for a healthy, balanced diet that you can also enjoy. Take a look at the food pyramid to see what you need to eat each day to stay healthy and slim. If you do not have a dietician you will find plenty of meal plans on the internet to meet your needs. And do not despair, healthy food does not have to be bland and tasteless. Buy a few recipe books and find some meals that you enjoy to cook.

Inevitably there will be some temptation to fall back into old habits but it is essential that you resist this. Try to eliminate sugary and fatty junk foods from your diet altogether.

A healthy diet should help you lose weight, but this needs to be combined with exercise to be really effective. There are many benefits to regular exercise. Not only will you lose weight, it also combats a number of health difficulties and will help your body to burn off toxins.

Daily exercise is a habit you should develop over time, and as time goes on you will enjoy it more and more. However, you should start slowly. A thirty-minute walk every day is a good place to start. As you get fitter, you will find yourself able to cover greater distances at greater speeds.

There are so many different forms of exercise that it should be easy to find something you enjoy, whether that is swimming, tennis, martial arts or whatever. If you can spend at least one hour exercising every day you will soon find yourself shedding those pounds.

At the age of 32 Sigmund Freud developed a new problem. Pricking and other unpleasant sensations had overtaken the skin on the outer side of his right thigh. Walking made his symptoms worse. The affected skin was exquisitely sensitive to touch and even the usual rubbing of his underclothes irritated the area.

Seven years later in 1895, when Freud wrote up his self-observations for a German medical journal, the abnormal sensations were still present, but had migrated. At first, the area of disturbance had been more noticeable near the top of the thigh, but gradually the abnormal sensations moved downward to a palm-sized area a hands breadth above the side of his knee.

When Freud squeezed a fold of skin in this area, it hurt more than it did in his left thigh. Although he could feel a pinprick as such, it also burned. Even so, individual spots within the zone of abnormal skin were insensitive to ordinarily painful maneuvers. He also noticed that temperature sense was impaired. Warm objects placed against the affected skin felt cooler than in unaffected areas. And although the original pricking sensations improved over time, his outer thigh had become generally less sensitive to usual stimulations.

Freuds physician, Josef Breuer, found that the affected skin was in the territory of the lateral femoral cutaneous nerve, a nerve that concerns itself with sensation only and has no muscular connections. Dr. Breuer concluded that Freuds symptoms were caused by damage to this nerve. Dr. Breuer also suspected that the nerve might be particularly vulnerable to injury in the groin near the front of the hip where it passes between strands of a ligament. As a result, he thought that wearing tight clothing might aggravate the condition.

Our understanding of this disorder has changed little in the 110 years since Freud wrote his report for Berlins Neurologisches Centralblatt, or in the 20 years since Francis Schiller, M.D., translated it into English for the American journal Neurology.

To set the record straight, Freud and Breuer were not the first to recognize this condition. Max Bernhardt of Germany first wrote about it in 1878 and in 1895 Vladimir Roth of Moscow named the condition meralgia paresthetica, a term still in use. This name is the sum of its three parts. Meros is Greek for thigh, algos is Greek for pain and paresthetica means unprovoked sensations. This entrapment neuropathy pinched nerve condition was one of the first to be recognized as such.

The lateral femoral cutaneous nerve is formed in the lower back from branches of the second and third lumbar spinal nerves which combine to form a single nerve on each side soon after emerging from the spinal column. The nerve passes through the interior of the pelvis and exits the pelvis near the outer border of the inguinal groin ligament before making a downward turn to run beneath the skin of the outer thigh.

The course of the nerve can vary from person to person and even from side to side in the same person. In about 25 of people the nerve splits into branches before reaching the inguinal ligament, and there can be up to 5 branches. This variability might make some people more vulnerable to nerve-injury than others.

Pressure within the pelvis, as from pregnancy, obesity and rarely tumors, can injure the portion of the nerve within the pelvis. And as Freud’s physician surmised, the nerve is particularly vulnerable to injury from external pressure at the inguinal ligament, as from corsets, wide belts and tight pants. However, a cause for meralgia paresthetica is not always found, as was apparently the case when Freud had it.

The nerve can also be injured during a wide variety of surgical procedures, including orthopedic, vascular, gynecological, abdominal, hernia and even stomach-stapling operations. In a recent series of spinal surgery cases in Taiwan, 60 out of 252 patients experienced meralgia paresthetica as a complication of the surgery. Fortunately, in all cases it resolved within two months.

Diagnosis of this condition is usually made from the history and the physical examination, with the key features being numbness and unpleasant sensations on the side of the thigh. Other conditions can mimic meralgia paresthetica, for example, a pinched spinal nerve in the lower back, or impairment in the nearby femoral nerve that also emerges from the pelvis at the inguinal ligament. Tests of muscle and nerve electricity–electromyography and nerve conduction studies–can help resolve ambiguous cases.

Treatment of meralgia paresthetica has not been studied by the gold-standard method of randomized, controlled trials involving a comparison group of untreated patients. So in choosing appropriate treatment all we have to go on are collections of cases published in medical journals. Because many cases turn out well without drastic treatments, conservative approaches are tried first. Weight loss, removal of tight garments, completion of pregnancy and simple watchful waiting can all be effective.

While awaiting a favorable outcome, symptoms can be managed with skin-patches containing a local anesthetic drug, anti-inflammatory medications, certain epilepsy and antidepressant drugs known to relieve nerve-pain, and local injections with steroids. Surgery to relieve the pinch is usually reserved as a last resort.

C 2005 by Gary Cordingley

Obesity is as old as time itself and for many obesity is caused by medical or genetic problems. In today’s world, however, the alarming increase in the rate of obesity is very much a man-made problem, fired in part by the availability, and popularity, of the gastric bypass.

Advances in surgical techniques, not least the arrival of laparoscopic procedures, have made the gastric bypass a much simpler and more acceptable solution to the problem of obesity. What is more, the profile of the gastric bypass has been raised substantially in recent years helped in no small way by the number of celebrities choosing this method of weight loss.

The list of famous people following this route is long and includes the coach of the Notre Dame football team Charlie Weiss, the footballer Diego Maradona, the musician and harmonica virtuoso John Popper and the rock singer Randy Jackson to name just a few.

But why is obesity on the increase and is it truly a problem of our own making?

Despite the fact that there was a slight rise in the rate of obesity following world War II, the last twenty five years have seen a major growth in obesity, particularly in the USA. The precise reason for this is not known and there is fairly wide disagreement about the cause, but here are just a few reasons over which there is general agreement.

1. We are far less active as a society preferring to watch our favorite sport instead of getting out and playing the game ourselves and this is the majority of true amongst people who are overweight. perhaps more interestingly, if you lower the calorie intake for overweight people they do not become more active and if you raise the calorie intake for lean people they do not become less active. Weight loss, or gain, has little effect on a person’s level of activity, but that person’s level of activity does affect his weight.

2. Marketing today is highly sophisticated, if not subliminal, and this is particularly true in the world of fast and convenience foods. In addition, a large number of restrictions were removed for advertising made for children during the Reagan years and many of these restrictions covered such things as sweets and fast foods.

3. We are increasingly becoming a nation of two income households which means that people are now cooking far less at home. The number of people choosing home delivered meals, opting for fast food take out or frequenting their local restaurant has grown dramatically in recent years.

4. Trade subsidies negotiated during the past twenty five years have greatly cut the relative cost of food, not least that of sugar and sugar syrup. This in turn means that we now consume a lot more than we previously did.

5. Despite the present discussion over oil prices, the car is no longer considered a luxury and the two car family has become the norm. We do not think twice now about jumping into the car for even the shortest of journeys and many people wouldn’t even consider walking down to the shop at the end of the street.

6. Strangest of all perhaps is the effect that the craze for diet and exercise has had on the rise in obesity. We have become obsessed with dieting and many people diet as frequently as they change their clothes. Unfortunately it’s the case that most diets fail and, following a diet, it is common for your weight to rise to a level even higher than it was before you started. This pattern of falling and rising weight over time usually results in a steady underlying increase in weight towards obesity.

Each one of the factors mentioned here not only add to the growth in obesity but is also clearly made-made.

Now certainly gastric bypass provides one possible solution. However, even though the procedure is much simpler than it used to be and is gaining in popularity, it remains far from a pleasant experience and is not without its risks.

For those people who are obese today gastric bypass presents an excellent solution to their problem. For our children and grandchildren however perhaps the answer lies in preventing obesity rather than sitting back and waiting for the problem to arrive before resorting to gastric bypass surgery.

Anybody can lose weight; its no big deal. You only have to be careful about the food you eat and to make more effort than you usually do. Dieting doesnt have to mean food deprivation and money spent on gym subscriptions. You can keep your body in shape with simple exercises that do not require gym equipment or professional advice and supervision. If youre also using a dietary supplement like ProShaperx, losing weight will be the simplest thing in the world.

A simple exercise that anybody can perform at home or the park is called Stair Sprinting. The name is pretty self explanatory. All you have to do is run up and down the stairs between several floors; the more floors, the better off youll be.

Its a good idea to start small, even if youre in a good physical condition. Run up and down four floors two times. First timers and overweight people are unlikely to manage more than two reps anyway. However, its no big deal if you cant do more than two reps in the beginning. Resistance to effort is built in time. Do the two reps every other day for two weeks.

After two weeks increase the number of reps to either three or four, depending on how you feel. If you can take four reps up and down four flights of stairs, then by all means do so. If you cant, then stick to three reps. As the weeks go by, you can add even more reps to your routine in order to increase your endurance and to really put the muscles to work.

This exercise is perfect for the legs and ass. Ladies and gents looking to build shapely asses and strong thighs ought to try stair sprinting. Having to carry your own weight up the stairs instead of flat terrain puts more stress on the muscles and helps the feet gain more endurance. However, be very careful when doing this exercise. Running up and down the stairs makes it very easy to trip or miss a step and splay an ankle. Even more serious injuries might happen if youre not careful enough.

Weight gain and obesity are among the chief health concerns in the developed world today, with over 60 million people in the United States affected by obesity.

Adults usually gain weight as a result of an increase in storage fat or lean body mass. Obesity and weight problems to people whose weight increases due to too much storage fat.

Although too much body fat is a bad thing and can lead to obesity, we all need it in certain amounts. It stores energy, insulates the body and protects organs, but most people have more than they really need.

There are many reasons why people become overweight. Some people inherit it genetically, others overeat, while stopping smoking, lack of exercise, too much alcohol or not enough exercise can also be contributing factors.

The symptoms of being overweight can also easily be spotted. These include
heartburn
shortness of breath when exercising
difficulty in walking and moving around
depression or other emotional problems
aching back and knees
coronary heart disease
irregular heartbeat
swelling of the feet or legs
increased cholesterol levels
diabetes
osteoarthritis in some joints
increased blood pressure

How can you deal with obesity?

The two main causes of obesity are the consumption of pre-packaged and junk foods, and a lack of exercise and outdoor activities.

It has now become a very serious problem in Western societies. It has been recorded in some European countries that school uniforms for children and teenagers are, on average, being produced in larger sizes.

Obesity in society is a complex problem and there are many causes. However, for most people, a few lifestyle changes can reverse the ill-effects of obesity. If you suffer from obesity, reaching your healthy weight is an attainable goal, no matter how daunting it may seem at first.

Diet

Whether you go it alone or look for the help and advice of a dietitian, you need to examine your diet. Cutting back on the amount you eat or changing the types of food you eat can make a big difference.

However, crash diets are not the answer. You should be able to eat a healthy, tasty, balanced diet and lose weight at the same time. The food pyramid will show you how to meet all your nutritional needs.

Pick a healthy meal plan that is low in calories and suits your taste. Try to stick to this and do not to give into temptation. Eating healthily does not mean you can not eat well so check out some cook books on how to spice up healthy meals.

Exercise

Exercising regularly is a vital part of losing weight. Not only will it help you lose weight, it will keep you feeling healthier and happier, and you will have much more energy for the things you enjoy doing. Although it may not seem like an attractive prospect at first, you will be glad you did it once you get into the habit.

Doctors recommend that we do some form of exercise that increases our heart rate for at least 30 minutes every day. Not only will this help you lose the pounds, it also burns off toxins in the body that can make you ill, and prevent any number of health problems.

Do not bite off more than you can chew. The trick is to start slowly. Walking is an excellent form of exercise. Start with short distances and you will soon be comfortable walking, or even jogging, for a few miles.

Of course, there are many, many sports and activities you can take part in. Tennis, dancing, martial arts, football, the list is endless.

If you are unsure about it, try going along to your local gym and talk to a personal trainer who will take you through the first steps and come up with a plan that will bring you back to full fitness and help you lose the pounds.

Losing weight is not always easy. Most likely you will have to make some significant changes in your lifestyle. You may have to abstain from some of your favorite foods and be active when you just feel like watching some TV. However, this doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy life.

Also remember that your actions will have a knock-on effect on those around you. If you are fit and healthy, your family and friends will be more likely go be fit and healthy so you will be doing a lot of good.

Obesity is a big problem in the United States today and for many people it is something they can not avoid. However, for many of us it is a choice we make, a choice about our lifestyle. We owe it to ourselves and those around us to choose a healthy lifestyle that involves good eating and exercise.

Obesity is one of the biggest problems in the United States today and many families don’t follow regular exercise programs. It is often said that the family that plays together, stays together. This couldn’t be more true in the case of family fitness. Getting your family off the sofa and encouraging them to get moving can be a simple task.

Pay attention to what everyone in the family likes to do. If your sons and your husband like football, suggest a weekend excursion to the park for a game of flag football. If your daughter is an avid jogger, head to the trails. Even if your kids are more into video games than outside play, consider looking “dance pad” games that can be used on popular game consoles, which have been suggested to help in the weight loss process. This brings a whole new meaning to playing video games, and can actually be fun for you too. It’s not exercise, it’s play!

Your family’s fitness not only means exercise, but a change in the kitchen as well. It is time to throw out the chips and cookies and make healthy alternative choices. Snacks such as carrot and celery sticks, apples, seedless grapes, pretzels, air popped popcorn, and graham crackers make excellent choices. If available, your children will grab these snacks without a second thought. Fill your cabinets with these healthier snacks and you might find yourself surprised that your family doesn’t even notice the difference! Replacing sodas with bottled water and organic fruit juices while you’re at it can help your cause. Don’t buy diet sodas – they’re loaded with sodium!

Subtle changes in your family’s eating habits can have long lasting effects. It is never too late to make a healthy change for you and your family. But be discreet! If you tell your children that you’re making a change to the family eating habits, they are less likely to accept it, rather than not even questioning the change when grabbing a snack.

Taking care of your family is important, and family fitness is the way to do that. You are your children’s greatest example. If you follow a steady, healthy pattern, your children are just as likely to continue this pattern once they are on their own. Just don’t forget to make the habit fun! Everyone is far more likely to be eager and accepting of the change if it is fun.