While the number of health, fitness, and nutrition bloggers who send messages about life style habits, workout templates, and healthy recipes has skyrocketed in the US, the upward trend of obesity rates continues to climb un-phased. With all this and other research readily available, some wonder why we have not seen decreases in the amount of people gaining weight. In this article, Dr. James Krieger, clinical professor of medicine at the University of Washington and executive director of Healthy Food America, an advocacy group, says, “Most people know that being overweight or obese is unhealthy, and if you eat too much that contributes to being overweight. But just telling people there’s a problem doesn’t solve it.”

Experts credit lifestyle, genetics, and poor diets as factors for this. While all age groups have increasing percentages of obesity rates every year, the most surprising impacted age group is children 2 to 5 years old.

It is important for individuals to take control of their weight because obesity often leads to heart disease, diabetes, some cancers, and premature death. For examples of how you can change your diet read our previous blog post, Four Easy Steps to Limit Sugar.