by Patrick Cox
December 11, 2015
If you’re like me (and most Americans), you probably added a pound or two over the Thanksgiving holiday. Moreover, the high-calorie holiday season still has weeks to run, so it seems like a good time to talk about some of the solutions to that extra fat that afflicts so many of us.
The struggle to maintain a healthy body weight is not simply a matter of aesthetics. Body fat is associated with a variety of age-related diseases such as high blood pressure and adult-onset diabetes. These conditions significantly increase the risk of heart disease, stroke, kidney failure, cancer, blindness, and a plethora of other threats to health and life.
Two-thirds of Americans are considered overweight and one-third qualify as medically obese, so it should be no surprise that the weight-loss industry is worth $20 billion per year in the US alone. The closely related fitness industry is about the same size, and despite a record of high-profile failures, the growing weight-…
