Now Will We Take This Eating Thing Seriously?

Thus far, it hasn't seemed to matter. Someone can perform an experiment on themselves in which they eat only fast food for a month (see SuperSize Me) and nearly die in the process, then make a major motion picture about it for all the world to see.

And what do people do?

They keep driving towards that drive through window and ordering up the latest meal deal from that funny little voice coming out of the speaker.

Someone can create a hit television contest that uses money as a way to coax contestants into exercising and eating well in order to see who will be crowned "The Biggest Loser", but the average person keeps gaining weight.

Even Shaquille O'Neal can get involved, trying to save overweight kids with a TV show contest of his own, but what happens? The show gets canceled half way through because the kids aren't trying hard enough. Mind you, these kids were not even teenagers yet and already showing signs of diabetes and heart disease!

Well maybe, just maybe, the latest news from the front lines of the war on obesity will finally be enough.

In what I have decided is the scariest study I have seen yet, researchers from the federal government's Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality have determined that, if we continue on our current trend of diet and exercise (or lack thereof) EVERY ADULT AMERICAN will be overweight or obese within 40 years.

Just want to make sure you have caught my drift on this one:

EVERY ADULT AMERICAN COULD BE OVERWEIGHT IN 40 YEARS.

What would such a statistic mean for all of us if it actually came true?

For starters, it would mean that health care expenditures on weight related issues alone would likely exceed ONE TRILLION DOLLARS.

It would also mean that every single American would have a vastly increased risk of cancer, heart disease, diabetes, and early death.

In other words....RISING GAS PRICES ARE NOT THAT BIG OF A DEAL!

With news like this, making positive, healthful changes in your life is no longer good enough. It's time to start talking to your family, friends, neighbors and co-workers too.

The saddest thing of all is that being overweight or obese is so.....fixable. While making positive diet and lifestyle changes is obviously quite difficult for some people, at least there are no hidden answers. There are no mysteries here. If you want to lose weight, it takes two things, education and a willingness to change.

I have found that the patients of mine who have had the most success with their weight issues DO NOT try to fit weight loss efforts into their old lifestyles. They make the decision to change their lives, and then ask me for advice on how best to do so.

Changing your life is not easy, but every single person can do it. We might not all be able to eat the perfect diet, filled with purely organic, local, perfect foods, or join a gym and lift weights for 2 hours every day of the week, but we don't need to.

We can all choose a salad with chicken, sunflower seeds, olive oil, lemon juice and a little salt on it for lunch instead of pasta, a burger or a sandwich.

We can all have some apple slices smeared with almond butter for a snack instead of chips.

And, unless we are actually physically unable to move, we can all MOVE. We just need to do it.
There's obviously a lot more to it than this, but it's not much harder than that.

We've run out of time people. There is nothing left to do but get better. Please don't wait another minute!!