Hope you know that this is why you need to lose weight

India is the third most obese country in the world. As per Mayo Clinic, “Obesity is a complex disorder involving an excessive amount of body fat. Obesity isn’t just a cosmetic concern. It increases your risk of diseases and health problems, such as heart disease, diabetes and high blood pressure.”  Obesity is glaring on our face much more devilishly than ever before.

However, when we were growing up, malnutrition used to be a concern. The pictures of lean kids, with no food and lots of diseases were fed in our minds. So does that mean we have suddenly moved from being a malnourished nation to an overweight nation in just 20 years? Now that’s encouraging, because it means our children finally have food to eat.

Ah! But I am proved wrong by Google. India is the number one nation globally for the number of children suffering from malnutrition! The numbers are declining over the years though. In a 2014 article by the Hindu, it said The proportion of underweight children in India might have declined from 45.1 per cent in 2005-6 to a historic low of 30.7 per cent last year, new provisional data from a survey conducted by the government and UNICEF shows.

So we are fat and we are thin. And we are almost at the top on both these key parameters of health!

Now look at these for stats taken from newspaper reports and a study conducted by doctors from India’s National Diabetes, Obesity and Cholesterol Foundation and published in Annals of Nutrition & Metabolism in 2013:

• The likelihood of obesity is particularly prevalent in families with monthly incomes in excess of 50,000 rupees, suggesting that the middle classes and affluent are more susceptible to becoming overweight than the poor
• In some Indian cities almost two-thirds of new mothers are now either obese or overweight by global standards
• 73% of Urban Indians are overweight; Nearly ½ of them obese

Clearly, it’s an urban-rural divide again! Malnutrition affects rural India and obesity the urban India.

It is understandable when we read studies and reports on malnutrition in rural India. Lack of basic healthcare facilities, lack of education, low incomes etc. all lead to this problem. With a lot of work by government and social workers/NGOs on that front, the decreasing numbers on that table encourages us. But what bothers is the increasing numbers of Obesity, Diabetes, and heart attacks specially targeting Young Indians. It’s appalling.

We are educated. We are aware. We are the internet generation. We are the future. We can’t afford to have and give these diseases to us and our children. It isn’t a rocket science to know that you need to burn calories and not only consume them! You don’t need dieticians or experts to tell you what you should do to maintain your body weight.

Government is not going to come and hold your hands from eating unhealthy food, or push you from your chairs while being in sedentary jobs. It’s your body, it’s your life. You need to lose weight, and now!

There’s been a 20 percent cut in this year’s healthcare budget anyways-let it go for larger problems at hand and let us take control to reduce the diseases that our own lifestyle are giving us.

You know what needs to be done, get up and just do it!