Obesity Facts

•  300,000 premature deaths each year relating to obesity in the U.S. Morbid obesity is the second leading cause of preventable death in America.

• There is a significant risk of developing serious health problems, such as diabetes, heart disease, stroke, some types of cancer, and degenerative joint disease.

• Being severely overweight creates physical and emotional complications that make it difficult or impossible to participate in many activities.

• People often lose weight - only to gain it back, individual or commercial, medically supervised or not, have high failure rate in the long run.

• There Are No Shortcuts to Permanent Weight Loss. Losing weight permanently requires major lifestyle changes, including diet and nutrition, exercise and behavior modification. But it is always worth making the effort to improve your health.

• Approximately 127 million adults in the U.S. are overweight.

• One in five children are obese in the U.S.

• Approximately 60 million adults are obese in the U.S.

• Approximately 9 million adults that are morbidly obese in the U.S.

• Most over weight people have tried multiple diet programs, diet pills, prescription diet aids, nutrition programs, exercise programs, dietary supplements, meal replacements, high-protein diets, carbohydrate diets, and more.

• Genetics, medical problems, environment, learned behavior, and psychology all contribute to severe obesity.

• Obesity is most often defined as being 20% or more over ideal body weight.

• Morbid obesity is a much more severe form of obesity in which a person is 100 or more pounds.

• More Americans are choosing surgery to help control obesity.

• Research suggests that people most successful in long-term weight loss eat a diet low in fat and high in carbohydrate, regularly monitor their weight and food intake and engage in physical activity, about one hour each day.

• Many overweight and obese people fall for the “Fad Diets” These diets may work at first because they cut calories, but they rarely have a permanent effect.

• A weight loss of one-half to two pounds a week is usually safe, according to the Dietary Guidelines for Americans 2000.