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For a very significant (and growing) minority of people living in the west today waging a lifelong battle with being overweight is the price to be paid for all the other comforts of living in today's post-industrial society. This is an issue that society as a whole has only really just got to grips with as the magnitude of the cost to the health and economic welfare of the populace at large, has become realised, with people now being encouraged to embrace healthy weight loss programs.

A lot of people do not realise that being overweight is very much an environmental issue. Today we are all increasingly aware of environmental issues and more conscious of the health implications of being fat, we don't realise that these subjects are closely interrelated. The plague of obesity in the western world is largely a function of the social environment in which we live nowadays because present day living conditions are substantially at odds with the environment that human beings evolved to survive in, over many millennia. This disparity between the conditions in which we are adapted to thrive naturally and the pampered and overprovided lives most of us live today, is the single most significant reason that so many people suffer from weight related health issues. Anyone with a weight problem can benefit from understanding exactly how these factors impact weight loss efforts, in order to follow a healthier course.

Medical trials have shown that obesity has a strong link with the development of something called the 'metabolic syndrome', a term applied to a cluster of medical problems including elevated insulin levels, high blood pressure, excessive waistline body fat and increased cholesterol, which increase the risk of diabetes stroke and heart disease. Men with three of these factors are twice as likely to suffer heart attack or stroke and three times as likely to develop heart disease. Anyone who thinks they may have any of the components of metabolic syndrome, should urgently consider appropriate lifestyle changes by quitting smoking and getting onto a proven healthy diet & fitness program, to avoid developing one of these life

One of the factors of living in today's high-pressure world is a tendency for people to want results 'yesterday'. It is not surprising therefore that so many people chase after 'quick fix' weight loss answers even though the results are invariably not long-lasting and which often end in disappointment and disillusionment. People who travel down this road come to realise that achieving lasting weight loss is more important than gaining just temporary weight loss and that, in fact, rapid weight loss is nearly always just temporary. People in this situation need to look carefully around for the answers to achieving long term sustainable weight loss, which may take longer to achieve but is a much more worthwhile destination.

Whilst some people decry government intervention in matters of health or lifestyle there is a growing awareness by many in positions of public responsibility that the cost to society of an unchecked epidemic of obesity could be very significant and this is driving a move to increase public awareness. The thought that the latest generation of children born in the west today might be the first ever to have a life expectancy LESS than their parents, is a sobering one. This is a result of the way we live today, but we do not have to put our children and ourselves at risk. We have a choice. If you are overweight you owe it to yourself to seek out healthy weight loss programs to join before this becomes a health issue.