The percentage of American women who are obese has not increased in recent years, but unfortunately, it’s still high, at about one-third.

However, men and children are gaining on women when it comes to being overweight.

Obesity rates on the rise

Dr. Arthur Frank runs a medical weight management program. He says, “We used to see primarily women in our program, almost entirely women in our program. But now, over the past number of years, we’re seeing men who are dealing with it.”

That’s because more American men are obese than ever before, and children are also gaining weight, according to a new Journal of the American Medical Association study.

“We’ve seen an increase in obesity in men and we’ve seen an increase in overweight in both boys and girls,” says Cynthia Ogden, Ph.D., of the National Center for Disease Control and Prevention.

At the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, doctors measured weight gain rates in American adults and children between 1999 and 2004.

Those statistics show, “About 17% of children are overweight and about a third of adults are obese,” says Ogden.

There is good news however. Obesity rates among women have leveled off at about 33-percent, but that is still a high percentage.

Also, obesity among men went from about 27-percent in 1999 to about 31-percent in 2004.

Among children and teens, almost 14-percent were overweight in 1999 by 2004, which climbed to about 17-percent.

“I was surprised to find that we saw an increase in obesity in men and overweight in children during such a short time period,” says Ogden. “I was particularly concerned about seeing the increase in children, because we know that children who are overweight often become obese adults.”

Dr. Frank says most people need to change the way they think about weight loss. “We want to get people to think of it as a long-term process,” he explains. “People tend to think of weight management simply in terms of losing weight, ‘I need to lose X pounds,’ and that really is only part of the problem.”

Researchers conclusions

Researchers came to their conclusions by analyzing the height and weight of about 8000 adults, teens, and children.

They also found that obesity rates were highest among African American and Mexican American women and children, but there were no race ethnicity differences in men.

Source: WNDU.com