Obesity

            Obesity is a disease that affects nearly 1/3 of Americans, and is one of the largest diseases in this country. I picked this disorder, because I know many people that suffer with it, and don't even realize it. I hope to learn information more on it, and inform them more about it. My motivation behind this whole paper is to get a better understanding of what obesity is, and how come more than one out of three people in our country are obese. Some of the questions I was hoping to answer is: "are there there different kinds of obesity?" "Is obesity a medical condition, or can people make themselves obese without having a problem?".
             After doing research, I found out that I already knew of information about this subject, which I had learned previously. I knew generally what obesity was, but didn't really know more than it being an "extremely overweight person". I did not know the details, such as the fact that there is a Body Mass Index (BMI) which is a mathematical formula which represents weight levels associated with the lowest overall risk to health. Obesity can be measured with height and weight charts, although they are not always accurate due to muscle mass, and different things in which different bodies vary. Obesity is actually defined as an excessively high amount of body fat or adipose tissue in relation to lean body mass. Body fat can be estimated in many ways, including skinfold measures, waist-to-hip circumference ratios, and even ultrasound, computed tomography, or magnetic resonance imaging. I found the answer to the questions that I wanted answered, and found out that obesity in some is a medical condition, which cannot be controlled, and they may have an overactive thyroid. In some scenarios, however, it is not a medical issue, and is just that of laziness, and being a sloth. There are different stages of obesity, from mild to extreme. Some people are considered "slightly" obese, while others are extremely obese and can actually die from it.