Even with dietitians and doctors strongly urging Americans to eat less and exercise more, the majority of us continue to lead unhealthy lifestyles by smoking, drinking and eating poorly.

It is estimated that one in five Americans are daily smokers, and that one in five people consume at least five alcoholic beverages in a day at least once a year.

One in four Americans abstain from drinking, and more than 40 percent of smokers have attempted to quit at least once. But physical inactivity and obesity continue to be one of the most hazardous health challenges in America.

It is said that everything is bigger in America. Everything from the cars, companies, food and its people, thus making us the fattest nation in the world. Second only to smoking, heart disease is a leading major cause of preventable death in the U.S., causing more than 40,000 deaths per year. Many consider obesity the next tobacco and say it’s only a matter of time before it overtakes it.

New statistics released every day show that obesity among adults and children is on the rise at a phenomenal rate. Currently, it is estimated that 60 percent of Americans are overweight or obese, including one in five children. One out of every four people is said to visit a fast food establishment daily. On average, 40 percent of the meals we eat, we eat out. But why do people eat what they do, knowing how bad it is for them? While many Americans have too much food in their stomachs, many others still don’t have enough to eat.

Regardless of all the information available to us linking good nutrition and exercise to good health, many of us continue to make poor, life-threatening decisions - decisions and habits that can lead to diabetes and heart disease. Only 12 percent of Americans are considered to have a good diet.
Daily, we are bombarded with thousands of advertisements for fast food and hundreds of labor saving technologies that are making us lazier by the minute. Dishwashers, cars and elevators prevent us from burning those few extra calories that we desperately need to get rid of. We are living in a world that encourages us to drive rather than walk and spend more time watching television or playing video games. We have developed a sedentary lifestyle while having an unhealthy, high-calorie diet.

Obesity is not a condition that involves having a little extra fat around your mid-section. It is an extremely dangerous and unhealthy condition.

Recent tests found obesity rates to be the same in men and women, with men more likely to be physically active in their leisure time. It is estimated that more than 39 percent of adults don’t engage in any form of physical activity during their leisure time.

More and more teens fail to maintain an adequate amount of exercise. More than 12 million teens skimp on exercise and develop habits that worsen with age, and may even continue into adulthood. If the trend continues, estimates show that one in three children will develop diabetes.
The average American diet consists of large portions of unhealthy food. In a recent study, it was suggested that a mutated gene in people may contribute to overeating. People who have the mutated melanocortin four receptor gene, the gene that is responsible for regulating your appetite, are more likely to be binge eaters. But as the number of obese Americans rises, so does the number of people wanting to blame genetics instead of their poor habits. But don’t go rushing to the doctors to see if your genes are to blame for your weight problem. The study concluded that only 5 percent of the population can contribute their obesity to the mutated gene. The rest of us are just plain lazy.

There are many ways to lose weight and countless reasons why you should. When it comes to losing weight, few say it’s best to go with a diet, while the majority endorse exercise as the best route to take. Weight should drop slowly and steadily with a powerful combination of sensible eating and physical activity. But if you’re anything like me, that seems like it would take an awful lot of hard work and patience. Patience, I’m afraid, I, as well as a lot of you, don’t have.

So where do we turn?

It is estimated that we spend more than $30 million on diet products and weight-loss programs alone annually. That is two and a half more times the money we spend on fitness and health.
Then there are numerous miracle diets popping up everywhere, claiming you too can lose weight and eat anything you want, all with little to no exercise. And we can’t forget fad diets such as Atkins, South Beach and Dr. Phil’s Ultimate Weight Solution.

But the “diets” I have a problem with are diets such as the Subway diet. The Subway diet is nothing more than an extremely clever advertising campaign. Its goal is to instill in your chubby little head that Subway sandwiches are a healthier food choice than other fast-food options. You’ve all seen the commercials. They center around Jared Fogle, who claims to have lost 200 pounds with no exercise. Fogle says he did this by skipping breakfast, having a six-inch sub for lunch and a 12-inch veggie sub (with chips and a diet coke) for dinner. He began to walk only after he had lost around 100 pounds. Although Subway doesn’t officially endorse this diet, it does claim it involves no cooking, delicious food, and that you will lose weight fast.

Just because Jared may have lost weight with his diet, it doesn’t mean it’s a safe diet or that you should expect the same results. All the Subway diet does is limit the number of calories you eat. The basis of weight loss is quite simple. It’s just a matter of calories-in vs. calories-out. As long as you eat less calories than the calories you burn, you are going to lose weight, no matter what food choices you make.

Even Subway’s dietitian doesn’t fully approve of the diet. She says it is not a balanced diet. She would rather he had eaten a balanced breakfast and more fruits and vegetables. Not only is it not a balanced diet, but I think eating there twice a day would get quite expensive, not to mention boring. Sure, they have quite a few different sandwich selections to choose from. But only a select few are 7 grams of fat or less.

Since Jared, there have been numerous other Subway diet success stories emerge as more and more people follow in Fogle’s footsteps. Another big promotion for the Subway “diet” features twin brothers, Herman and Sherman Smith. The brothers lost a combined weight of 215 pounds in seven months on a diet that consisted mainly of Subway sandwiches and regular exercise. Personally, I think some of the weight loss came from them shaving those huge afros they were sporting. If you’ve seen the commercials, you know what I’m talking about.

Although the Subway diet is not endorsed, we have to be fair. It could have been worse. Had it been around at the time, poor Jared may have tried Burger King’s “Angus Diet,” a diet, I’m afraid to say that, is not a real diet. They even flash it a few times during the commercial. It’s just a crafty promotion of their new Angus Steak burger, which by the way, is anything but low carb. According to www.dietfacts.com, the Angus burger has 570 calories, 200 of which come from fat alone. That is just the plain burger with no cheese and without Burger King’s tasty mayo and ketchup combination. Add cheese and bacon, and you’re chowing down on 710 calories and 63 carbs of artery-clogging goodness. Complete the meal with an order of medium fries and a diet coke (after all, you are on a diet now) and you pump up your caloric intake to 1060 and 101 grams of carbs. There is a low-carb version of the Angus Steak burger, but the burger by itself will still pack in about 300 calories.

During my research for this article, I came across a film I’ve been wanting to see for a while now but never got around to it. A film that since I’ve viewed it, has had a huge impact on me. It’s because of this film that it will be a long time before I have another McDonald’s french fry. The film I’m speaking of is “Super Size Me.” In the documentary, writer / director Morgan Spurlock subjects himself to an all McDonald’s diet for an entire month in order to see what effects a high calorie diet and sedentary lifestyle will do to you. At the beginning of the film, the 6-foot-2 Spurlock weighed in at 185.5 pounds, with 11 percent body fat. He visited McDonald’s restaurants across the country, including Texas, eating there for breakfast, lunch and dinner. If McDonald’s didn’t make it, he didn’t eat it.

I think the film was a little extreme. I don’t know of anybody who eats at McDonald’s everyday or even 3 times a day. But the movie does offer tons of astonishing facts and info about the poor state of health America is in.

While on his McDiet, Spurlock developed and struggled with problems such as shortness of breath, fatigue, depression and even damage to his liver. At his final weigh in, Spurlock weighed in at 210 pounds, a 24.5 pound gain in only 30 days. His body fat percentage had climbed to 18 percent.

When I rented the movie, I chose the DVD because I love the commentaries, deleted scenes and extra features they offer. In one of the extras on the “Super Size Me” DVD, Spurlock held an experiment to show how different food items from the McDonald’s menu decayed and decomposed. To be fair, he also added a burger and fries from another restaurant. He placed all the sandwiches and fries in separate glass containers and covered them. After two weeks, all burgers were growing mold except for the Big Mac. That didn’t begin to mold until after the third week. But what really got me was that after 10 weeks, the McDonalds fries showed no mold or any sign of decay. The ordinary fries had been thrown out after five weeks because they got so bad the crew could hardly stand the smell. It just makes you wonder what McDonald’s puts in their fries that allows them to last so long.

Another tidbit of information I got from the movie is that soda is now being considered to be a huge contributor to childhood obesity and other serious health problems. On average, a 12-ounce can of soda contains around 150 calories and about 40 to 50 grams of sugar. Drinking a can a day without cutting back on other calories can lead to a 15-pound weight gain in one year alone. The odds of becoming obese increase 1.6 times with each additional sugar-sweetened drink you consume each day. And the drinks are just getting bigger and bigger. You have 7-11’s Double Big Gulp, McDonald’s Supersized cup and my personal favorite, Sonic’s Route 44 drinks. Car companies are even making their cup holders in the cars bigger to accommodate the growing cup sizes. Fact is, consuming extra calories, in any form, can and probably will lead to weight gain. Sodas are nothing but empty calories and offer no nutritional value. They don’t satisfy hunger and lead people to eat more because they do not replace the calories you get from eating nutritious foods.

Truth be told, we are all eating more calories today, as many as 350 calories more per day, than we did 15 years ago. But fast food chains are offering healthier choices. Wendy’s has started to offer mandarin oranges instead of french fries and milk instead of soft drinks. McDonald’s offers apple slices as a substitute for their fries in their happy meals, but they come with a small container of a caramel dipping sauce. It’s pretty tasty, so I’m sure it can’t be good for you. Sonic now offers a low-carb bun for their burgers. One of my favorite restaurants, Chic-fil-A, has recently begun to offer fresh cups of delicious fruit as a substitute for their waffle fries. They have also begun offering wheat buns instead of white buns. But for some reason, unlike other restaurants, Chic-fil-A charges you a little more for eating the wheat bun.

Limiting food choices can be affective in limiting consumption. But the more varied your diet, the more calories you’re likely to consume. Studies suggest that the more food choices one has, the more likely he or she is to eat more. In the study, 14 percent of the people observed ate more per meal just by offering them two different shapes of pasta.

It’s time to take responsibility and make better, healthier choices. It’s not your genes or your jeans, it’s you. Being fat and lazy is currently the American way, but it doesn’t have to be.
Another American way of life is suing for anything and everything. I’m sure you’ve heard of the lawsuit against the fast food industry. People were suing McDonald’s for making them fat. Needless to say, the case was dismissed when they failed to prove that McDonald’s was responsible for the weight gain. Last March, Congress passed the Cheeseburger Bill that made it unlawful for people to sue any company for making them fat.

So, I guess the only thing left to do is to get out there, break a sweat and have a salad.
Walking or biking to work or your next class instead of driving your car can make a difference. Consult your doctor before starting any diet and educate yourself on how to exercise correctly. Fitness programs should not be too extreme in the beginning. Start out slow and work your way up. Set yourself some goals, but make sure they are realistic and attainable. One of the most important things you can do when trying to lose weight is to keep a journal. Keep track of what you’re doing, what you’re eating and how you’re progressing.

Remember, nothing is more important than your health. Without it, it just makes life so much harder. Now, why would you take health advice from someone who’s overweight himself? After seeing the cost of having diabetes, both health-wise and money-wise, there is no way I would ever want such a disease. It’s time to do something before it’s too late. With sensible eating and regular exercise, you too can start your way to a better, healthier lifestyle.