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It’s plain to see with your own eyes how obesity is affecting our society, you can tell just by looking around a supermarket, a crowded street or a mall - there are more overweight people today than there were a decade ago.

What a lot of people don’t realize is the sheer magnitude of the progression of obesity. 

The Department of Health and Human Services Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has a running graph of the prevalence of obesity since 1985, and the increase over that course of time is astounding.

 Of the 44 states that participated in the study in 1990, there were ten states that had less than a 10 percent prevalence of obesity and no states were over fifteen percent.

By 1998, less than a decade later, with all 50 states now participating, there were no states with less than a ten percent prevalence of obesity and seven states between 20-24 percent, but no state had greater than 25 percent prevalence.

By the end of last year only four states (Colorado,Connecticut, Hawaii, and Massachusetts) had a prevalence of less than 20 percent.  Two states, Mississippi and West Virginia had greater than 30 percent prevalence of obesity.

I know sometimes percentages don’t make that big of an impact, so I did a little cross referencing with the US Census Bureau to come up with some ball park figures…  According to the information provided by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, by the end of 2006, there were in excess of one million people in the State of West Virginia who were considered obese, there were more than two million obese residents in the State of New Jersey, and in California - more than nine million people considered obese.

Obesity is responsible for many things, aside from the self esteem issues it often brings, there are a number of serious health concerns associated with obesity including; high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, heart disease and stroke to name a few.

This is a trend that can, and must, be changed.  You can start by heading over to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention website to find out if you, or someone you love are among the millions nationwide who are considered obese, or at risk of becoming obese.  Then take advantage of this site, and the many other excellent free resources available to you on the web to get yourself healthy and out of danger.