If you are lucky enough to live in a first-world country you have probably been the recipient of some of the best living standards, the highest minimum wage, the best technology, and the best education. Yet with all these advantages, as you look around the places you spend most of your time, namely your home, workplace, and your weekend hangouts – you’ll notice one of the distinct differences between person to person is their waistline. With all the advances in what the world has offered us nowadays, you would think it would be relatively easy for people to learn how to lose weight and keep it off.
Unfortunately, not, as it stands here are the facts from the World Health Organization as we speak:
- Worldwide obesity has nearly tripled since 1975.
- In 2016, more than 1.9 billion adults, 18 years and older, were overweight. Of these over 650 million were obese.
- 39% of adults aged 18 years and over were overweight in 2016, and 13% were obese.
- Most of the world’s population live in countries where overweight and obesity kills more people than underweight.
- 38 million children under the age of 5 were overweight or obese in 2019.
- Over 340 million children and adolescents aged 5-19 were overweight or obese in 2016.
Not a pretty sight eh? The real kicker here of course is that when fall into the overweight and obese category your chances of premature death and dramatically increased. Your risk of getting cancer, diabetes, coronary heart disease to name a few is also increased.
This means your quality of life until you do die even if it is not premature will not be pretty either. Getting out of bed is a struggle, putting on clothes, finding new ones, waking up, falling asleep. Day to day tasks that from the outset do not seem challenging can suddenly become a mountain overnight. We haven’t even mentioned the others that you could be responsible for throughout the week (parents, kids, grand-kids). Their care can also be affected, after all, if you can’t look after your own health how are you supposed to do a good job given the responsibility for others.
Then there are the people who care about you most. Your family and friends also suffer, perhaps just as much as you in the process. They as much as anyone notice you are a ticking time-bomb, maybe even how your mood worsens year in year out with every pound put on. Finally, then there is your own map of the world.
Those obese tend to have more psychological issues than those who are not. Self-worth and self-respect can also dwindle ultimately leading to poor mental health as well as physical health. So, we have a cocktail of problems where physiology and psychology are the main ingredients with both tasting sour because of someone’s muscle to fat ratio.
Am I selling it to you? I hope not. I hope you can see why this health stuff should be taken lightly for a multitude of reasons. What is most important though is your own reasons so let me pose a few questions. Consider the impact that of staying within the boundaries of “normal weight” throughout your life? What will you be most proud of? What will you be able to do? What will you be able to see? Who will you be able to meet?
I hope the answers you thought of created a picture in your mind that made you smile. These are your “Whys”, and therefore a healthy weight matter.
