Most people think that obesity goes no deeper than a less than chic look, but they are so wrong. Obesity today is a pandemic, a disease spreading like fire across both the western world and the emerging economies. Obesity means having too much fat on your body. First and foremost, obesity puts a strain on joints and bones that have to carry more weight than before, which leads to arthritis in the long run. The weight also tends to make people less active, which, in turn, means more weight is put on.

The lack of activity and high cholesterol brought by eating too much of the wrong kinds of calories impair the proper performance of your heart and blood vessels. This results in high blood pressure, stroke and other cardiovascular heart conditions. Excessive weight also leads to sleeping apnea, the cessation of breathing during sleep and during the day you easily run out of breath. The cessation of breathing during sleep means that you also have a sleeping disorder which makes you even more tiered during the day.

However, obesity can be cured with persistence and effort. As this diseases spreads over the land, so do the efforts for curing its increase. There are lots of different diets claiming to be the right one but the fact is that no diet fits everybody. But a change of lifestyle does.

Recognizing obesity?

The scientific definition of obesity is a body mass index of 30 or above (BMI>35 is considered as severe obesity). The body mass index is a measure of a person's weight scaled according to height, as developed by Belgian scientist Adolphe Quetelet in 1840. This index serves to show the amount of fat stored on the body, and the higher your BMI is, the worse is your exposure to certain diseases. Although the BMI scale is not the best method to value one's obesity it has become the consensus of the scientific world.

Physicians also warn that having a lot of fat stored around your waist increases the risk of developing diseases. Going beyond size 35 in women and size 40 in men means only trouble in the future. Losing belly fat is no harder than losing the rest of the fat stored in your body and this is where exercise comes into play. No diet in the world is a good diet if it has no exercising coupled with it. I'm not talking hours of exercising every day but perhaps 4-6 hours every week.