Obesity Comes With A Price Tag

And the news here is? (see below)

This is not it:

"There are hard dollars-and-cents costs to being overweight or obese, according to Humana (NYSE: HUM), one of the nation's largest health benefits companies.

Specifically, Humana estimates these costs at the following for 2009:

- $19.39 in added health care costs for every overweight pound;
- $1,037.64 for every overweight individual;
- $127 billion added to the national health care bill.

Overweight people are more prone to heart disease, stroke, diabetes - even some kinds of cancers. Chronic diseases that are a result of weighing too much are an ever-increasing part of America's health care bill."

Time for the rest of us to stop paying for it.

And this is not even the one-hundredth of it.

The personal costs have been ignored. To get a sense of what those are, go here.

This is news:

"The good news is that Humana's data also indicates that just a small change - a reduction of 276 calories a day for the overweight - makes a big difference. Cutting that little from each day's intake would start moving millions of Americans from the category of overweight to healthy. That means people don't have to re-engineer their lives to get on a healthier path. Incremental change - giving up one soft drink and walking an extra 2,500 steps each day, for example - will do the job."

FitnessMed, Inc., programs have, for years, made weight loss achievable through sensible reductions in caloric intake, not concentration camp-reductions as advocated by the experts.

Further, we have always said that "lifestyle changes" are unnecessary.

That the more mainstream in sick care is closing the huge gap between us and them is news.

But it is not enough.

To do weight loss and fitness right, go here.