The Nation’s Expanding Waistline

Even in the face of increasing efforts to raise awareness of the nation’s obesity epidemic, the collective waistline of Americans continues to expand.

According to a new report released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, almost three out of 10 adults (26.7 percent) are obese, which is up from 25.6 percent in 2007.

Another discouraging statistic from the report found that the number of states in which 30 percent of the population is obese had tripled from three to nine between 2007 and 2009.

Not one state achieved the goal set forth by the federal initiative Healthy People 2000, which was obesity rates of 15 percent or less.

And the numbers could still be even worse than those reported, when you factor in that people often misrepresent their weight and height, which could skew the results of this type of survey.

Yes, the facts sound dire. But the findings also reinforce the need for widespread, stronger, and more effective health and wellness initiatives.

Your efforts to promote good health and wellness in the workplace are more important now than ever, and are farther-reaching than you might realize.

When your employees adopt healthy lifestyle changes, many will influence their friends and family with the message of good health, and they will influence theirs, and so on.

Continue to target obesity in the workplace by encouraging your staff members to develop nutritious eating habits and engage in regular physical activity.

Doing so will not only cut down on your company’s health-care costs, improve productivity, and decrease absenteeism, it will also benefit each individual by reducing the risk of heart disease, stroke, diabetes, and cancer.

Do your part to make it easier to maintain diet efforts in the workplace: