To lose weight you need to increase activity and decrease calories. Theoretical equations sound so easy, don't they? But if losing weight really were this simple, why does the collective girth of the United States continue to grow? According to a Harris phone survey from March 1998, a whopping 76 percent of adults older than age 25 were found to be heavier than the recommended weight for their height and body frame. The percentage of the population in the "obese" category (weighing 20 percent or more above recommended weight) was 28 percent. However, the National Institutes of Health puts the rate of overweight adults at 55 percent.

What's behind this growth? Two societal shifts — one in employment and one in eating habits — appear to hold the answer. Today, more people than ever work at sedentary jobs. Rows of office cubicles filled with immobile bodies have replaced rows of soil with people digging and planting and fertilizing as they till the fields. Even activity-intense manufacturing jobs, which once amounted to veritable eight-hour workouts, have largely left our shores.

These employment shifts are great for business, but the downside to performing mental work rather than physical work is that our national body has turned flabby. Staying in shape used to be a no-brainer, the happy byproduct of a working life. Now it requires a commitment to an after-hours exercise program, one that steals time away from family and leisure. Shift No. 2 is the country's ever-increasing reliance on fatty convenience foods, which have all but swept traditional well-balanced meals off the family dinner table. The healthful shape of the Food Pyramid has been replaced by the unhealthful shapes of buckets (from take-out chicken), boxes (from Happy Meals) and bags (from drive-thru windows). Even dinners prepared at home can contain high amounts of fat when folks rely on prepared packaged foods, such as vegetables in cheese sauces and meal-in-a-boil-bag entrees.

Obesity

It may be hard to think of overweight people as being undernourished but think about it. Our bodies require all of the essential elements to go about their business of building, maintaining and restoring themselves. When the food you eat doesn't contain enough of the elemental building blocks, your body signals your brain to tell you to eat more. It is quite natural for you to willingly oblige and when you do it is quite natural for your body to store those extra calories as fat. If your body was getting everything it needed it wouldn't be hungry and if it wasn't hungry you wouldn't be fat. Sound simple, it is! Weight control is a natural function of your body. Simply give it what it needs and it will respond. Let’s play Sherlock Holmes for a few minutes, let’s begin at the beginning and follow the deductive reasoning that illustrates these simple facts.

Looking at the facts in a logical sequence demonstrates why you are compelled to eat more calories than you use. To further illustrate this point, it is helpful look at food for what it does: