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As society's image of the ideal body is getting thinner, Americans are getting fatter and facing many deadly consequences. The struggle with obesity has grown into an enormous national problem and needs to be handled. Recent government statistics show that 64.5 percent, or about 120 million Americans age 20 and older, are either overweight or obese. Millions of Americans are suffering and dying from obesity related diseases, such as diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, high blood pressure and even cancer. Obesity is now the second most common cause of premature death in the United States. The diseases people suffer from don't just happen all of the sudden, it's a very slow process that happens over your lifetime. In order to combat obesity and related diseases, people have to change their lifestyles, starting early will be the best solution to obesity. Although healthcare educators and government officials are implementing programs and guidelines to reverse these national trends, obesity rates are increasing at a rapid pace. It's going to get worse before it gets better. We think people are obese and unhealthy now, but it's going to get much worse. We're just holding back the tide through our technology and healthcare systems. We're trying to fix rather than prevent. Today we live in a toxic food environment. We're inundated with fast food, and the industry marketing tactics are becoming increasingly aggressive. It makes sense to regulate the fast-food industry as is done with other industries that produce harmful products. Health experts have suggested treating the fast food industry in similar ways as the tobacco industry by restricting advertising, taxing products, holding the industry responsible for harm to consumer’s health and limiting places where the products are sold. On the individual level, intuitive eating is the key to obesity prevention. The underlying principles of intuitive eating include eating what your body wants, when you're hungry and until you're satisfied. It takes a lot of skill to get in tune with your body, to know what your body really wants and to recognize satiation levels. The assumptions are that if you can master this, then you will be the normal body size for your genetics and will have a relatively healthy diet. I think we're very distorted in our relationship with food. We've lost the pleasurable associations with it, and we've become obsessed with using food to manage our body size. Food can become like a drug for many people. Their lives center around food, it becomes a medication to help us be thin or feel good. It's like substance abuse, we eat rice crackers to lose weight, and we eat chocolate to feel good. With society's emphasis on such a thin ideal, people become so obsessive and focused about dieting that they never get a chance to explore their real purpose in life. In the United States, obesity has risen at an epidemic rate during the past 20 years.
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