According to the new stats available, obesity level is second highest among Scottish people just after US in the developed world. Now the Government is making plan to remove the junk foods like sweets, soft drinks out of their schools (BBC NEWS).

According to the new rules, children in schools will be offered more fruits and vegetables and there will be a cut in the amount of chips being served in their meals. With this report, Scotland becomes the most obese country just behind US in the developed nations.

There has been big increase in the obesity percentage in all groups of the population. According to the stats available, obesity has increased by 46 percent in adults and it has reached from 35 to 64 in men ages and 35 to 44 among women ages. Children minister there Mr. Adam wanted to change young people habits.

It is good to see that steps are being planned to stop obesity among people in Scotland. To get out of the obesity problem, we all need to make change in our lifestyle by including more physical activities and making healthy choices when it comes about eating.

According to some latest studies, too much TV, junk foods and little movement in modern life are pushing more kids in US to obesity. Our kids have got an environment where they can easily get fast food items and fresh fruits and vegetables are really hard to find (From Yahoo News).

Most of the kids avoid walking to their school and too much stuff available that inspires them to eat lot of junk food and sugary beverages. Some of the highlights of these studies include:

• Most of the schools whether they are middle school or high school have easy access to junk foods and beverages. Researchers at the University of Michigan found that 83 percent of high schools and 67 percent of middle schools now have contracts with a soft drink manufacturer.


• There are very few schools that create the opportunity for its students to get involved in more and more physical activities.


• 25 percent of the ads watched by kids are fast food, beverage and sweet ads.


• The availability of a large, chain supermarket was associated with a lower body mass index (BMI) in teens. In contrast, high availability of convenience stores was associated with a higher BMI.

All of the experts advocated increasing the level of physical activity among kids. Why not for a walk straight after dinner and motivate your kids for doing dance on their favorite music than wasting their time watching TV or playing video games. If your kids walk to their schools, that can bring in more physical activity in their daily routines.

Dr Patrick Lowe has been hired by the city council in Birmingham to solve the Childhood obesity problem where every one third of 11-year-olds are overweight. Dr Patrick has been employed at a cost of £45,000 for motivating city children to do more exercises and for eating healthy foods (From BBC NEWS).

Part of his vision includes personal trainers working with children in schools and educating parents how to cook their foods properly and how to prepare a healthy but cheap lunch box for school going children’s.

Dr Patrick has been asked to reduce the obesity problem among children in more than 400 city schools. He will be working with planning department for making more playgrounds in the city and with transport department for having extra cycle lanes.

Dr Patrick said "My job is to tackle within our community the year-on-year rise in childhood... obesity." "That involves working with our schools, with our parents, with our communities to develop things as diverse as cycle lanes to free swimming."

According to British Health Foundation figures, 6 people out of 10 would not love to do exercise despite of the fact their lives depend too much on it. One person dies after every 15 minutes as a result of physical activity (From BBC NEWS).

Only one third of UK adults are achieving the minimum exercise routine of 30 minutes for five times in a week. One out of seven people said they would exercise if the weather was fine. Almost one third of people between the age of 18 and 24 reported, they would do exercise if they looked fat. Many people said that they do not have enough time for exercising.

17 percent of the women said that they are doing exercise to maintain their physical appearance. For many of us exercise has become an ugly word, which we aim to avoid at all costs. Only 13 % of men and 7 % of women said that keeping a healthy heart was their main motivator for doing exercises.

British Health Foundation (BHF) is trying to show people that 30 minutes of exercise can do wonder for them and for their health and it can be funny also.

Some useful ways to bring exercising in our daily :

• Park your car 15 minutes walk from your office or take a brisk walk to the Bus stand or train station in the morning


• Do for 20 minutes of walking in the afternoon straight after lunch. It will help you remain active for the rest of the day


• Use stairs wherever available


• Do not hesitate to do the clearing work at home or around your home


• Join some dance class or swimming class or play with your friends or kids when you have time

There are lotsssssss of benefits of drinking water like

• Maintaining good health


• Burning more calories i.e. losing weight


• Healthy skin


• Reduction of heart attacks


• Regulating Body Temperature


• Staying fit and fine


• Become energetic


• Flush Toxins


• Cushion and Lube Your Joints and Muscles


• Less risk of diseases and infections

And we all know how much water is important for us to live a smooth and healthy life. There are many reports around that showed the importance of water in our daily life. To live a healthy life, we need to increase our water intake and again we all know it very well.

I am suggesting you some tips that will surely help you in drinking more water compared to what you are drinking right now:

1. Do not forget to carry a water bottle with you wherever you go.


2. Keep a glass of water or bottled water near you whether you are sitting for long hours in the office or at home.


3. You can use your digital watch or mobile reminding you about drinking water after every an hour or so.


4. Purchase a water purifier, as you will find water tastier after purification.


5. Sometime you can try lemon with water but do not make it too sour.


6. Eat water rich foods like Lettuce, celery, tomato, watermelon, cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli, papaya, oranges, carrot, yogurt, apples, pineapple and apricots and grapes.

Emily Robbins of Long Beach, now a fifth-grade teacher in Norfolk, Va., has been selected as one of the 2007 Weight Watchers "Inspiring Stories of the Year" grand-prize winners (From SunHerald.com).

She was chosen by a team of judges from nearly 1,700 entrants nationwide based not only on her successful weight loss, but the motivational nature of her personal transformation.

Robbins, 30, initially joined Weight Watchers in Gulfport, but those meetings were suspended after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina. She persevered, and lost a total of 92 pounds in just less than two years.

Her story will appear in the Sept. 13 edition of the national In Touch Magazine.

According to a group of Australian doctors, overweight people should be paid some dollars to join a weight loss program. This way we will be able to reduce the impact of epidemic type growing obesity problem (From Yahoo News).

According to them, obesity rate has been doubled in Australia in the last 20 years. It is not only a big area of concern for our waistline but also for our healthcare system.

This group wants the Government to give 170 dollars to the obese guys to do something good for their physiques. Effective weight loss programs are quite expensive. So it is quite difficult to join such programs especially for the low income people.

"We believe that this (money) will go a long way to helping people get access to accredited weight-loss programmes where the people will be supported," network chairman Tony Hobbs told state radio.

One month back I started a poll here at my weight loss blog. I run that poll for a month and ask people who visit my blog whether they are Overweight, obese, normal weight or under weight?

I got 123 votes for this poll in the last month and now the poll is called off for further voting. Here are the exact stats from previous month poll:

Category          No of people with percentage
Overweight        63 (51%)
Obese             30 (24%)
Normal weight     28 (22%)
Underweight       2 (1%)

School kids in Ark are able to keep their body mass index static when compared with their previous year BMI. According to kids BMI report that was released on Monday, 20.6 percent of kids were overweight and 17.2 percent of kids were at the risk of being overweight. BMI stats were same the year before as well (Yahoo News).

"We've got to keep everybody engaged and working hard, or we're going to lose a future generation of kids to this epidemic," Arkansas Surgeon General Joe Thompson said.

472, 000 school children were tested last year. Student’s absenteeism was the biggest reason why 77 percent kids were weighed. In the previous school year, 20.5 percent of 369,416 tested were overweight, with 17.1 percent considered at risk.

Even under the program's recent changes, Thompson said the state will still be able to reach out to children with its BMI reports and through other efforts to cut down on obesity among youth, such as limits on junk food sales at schools. He cautioned that parents must also step up.

"After four years of reporting to every parent, we are transferring some of the responsibility back to the parents," Thompson said. "That's an imbalance that's OK."

We do not have too much time as we remain too much busy with our daily routine activities like going to the office, spending most of day time there and then coming home back in the evening. In the morning we remain in hurry to reach the office, as we do not love to leave our bed on time in the morning. In the evening as well, we do not prefer to walk or exercise and mostly prefer to spend most of the remaining time in watching TV, eating delicious foods and talking to our family and friends. So we rarely are able to save some time for our health and losing the extra fat around our bodies.

But the truth is that we need to give some time and make some efforts if we really want to lose love handles.

• Avoid eating and sleeping late in the nights. Do not go to bed straight after taking your dinner. Healthy option will be to do some walking straight after the dinner.


• We love junk too much as that sounds really tasty to us especially in the weekends. Eating junk food will no way do any good our health and our body fat. So try to avoid junk food to some extent at least.


• Avoid processed, canned and refined foods and prepare fresh foods that include lots of fresh fruits and vegetables.


• If you are a beer or wine addict, it is not good news for you. The more beer or wine you drink, the more calories you are going to consume. Alcohol does not contain nutrients but contains fat only. It may not be possible for any of us to leave it fully, but we can have it on some big occasions.


• With these steps, you will also need to be regular with your exercises. You do not need to go to the gym for doing the exercises. The ultimate goal is increasing the activity level which you can increase by walking in the morning with your friends or dog, playing some outdoor games, playing with your kids, bike riding or doing some cleaning work at home.

Related posts:

1. What are love handles?


2. How to lose love handle


3. Love handle exercises


4. Losing love handles tips