Lighten your load by improving your diet, fitness

How is your load? I’m talking about your health and what you are carrying around every day … yourself. No wonder we have an obesity epidemic.

Food is everywhere beaming from roadsides, advertised on television, screaming in bright colors from grocery store shelves, glowing in vending machines at our favorite places and we can’t get away from it. The road to an obesity epidemic. Today, everyone seems to be sitting at their desk, sitting at their children’s ball games, standing in line, sitting on their couch, waiting, waiting, waiting.

Obesity doesn’t just make people feel uncomfortable about their appearance. It increases the risk of chronic and deadly conditions such as cancer, Type 2 diabetes, hypertension and heart disease. I wouldn’t be surprised if obesity soon overtook tobacco as the number one factor in people’s deaths.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention predicts obesity will soon be the number one killer. In 2000, tobacco was linked to 435,000 deaths, or 18 percent, and obesity was close behind at 400,000, or 17 percent. Isn’t it a wonderful to know that you have the power to make the choice and do something about it?

Did you know that 60 percent of Americans are overweight or obese? Surprised? Does anyone else find it a little strange that they started building cars to hold our food? You get in trouble for talking on your cellphone while driving in some states…yet, it is perfectly acceptable to chow down on a double cheeseburger while steering with your left knee. How do you do that? You don’t even have to get out of your car to get fat, you can just drive up to a window and get an entire days worth of calories handed to you with a napkin. Yuck.

Listen up people, it’s easy. Eat a healthy diet, watch calories, fat AND make exercise a part of daily life. When you say that some day you will start living a healthier lifestyle, some day you will begin watching what you eat, some day you will start an exercise program … guess what — news flash — there isn’t a calendar out there that has a some day on it. The choice is always yours.

Natalie Dreger is a certified fitness professional and can be reached at nataliedreger.com