The term “Excessive body weight ” is used here to refer to those conditions where body size and manipulation of food intake are used to solve or camouflage inner and outer adjustment problems (Stewart, D. A. , Carter, J. C. , Drinkwater, J. , Hainsworth, J. , & Fairburn, C. G. 2001).
Clinically these disturbances are recognized as obesity, characterized by excessive accumulation of fat tissue, and psychologically by helpless ineffectiveness in the face of bodily urges and social demands, or as anorexia nervosa, extreme leanness and cachexia, representing an over rigid effort at establishing a sense of control and identity while suffering from an all-pervasive sense of ineffectiveness.
According to Wikipedia (2007), “Excessive body weight has been shown to predispose people to various diseases, particularly cardiovascular diseases, diabetes mellitus type 2, sleep apnea, and osteoarthritis. Obesity is both an individual clinical condition and is increasingly viewed as a serious public health problem”. Though, daily life in the industrialized countries like USA has become more sedentary, and a raising body of evidence correlates’ sedentary lifestyles with eminent risks of chronic diseases, particularly diabetes, obesity, cancer, and heart disease.
The association between physical inactivity and chronic disease is so considerable that Americans are strongly urged to become more active. Substantial health benefits may be consequence from increases in activity. Several of these are an improved lipoprotein profile, carbohydrate metabolism, blood pressure, body weight, and mortality rate, to name a few. WHO describe sedentary lifestyles as a major underlying cause of death, disease, and disability?
Approximately two million deaths every year are attributable to physical inactivity. Preliminary findings from a WHO study on risk factors suggest that sedentary lifestyle is one of the ten leading causes of death and disability in the world. Physical inactivity increases all causes’ mortality, doubles the risk of cardiovascular disease, type II diabetes, and obesity. It also increases the risks of colon and breast cancer, high blood pressure, lipid disorders, osteoporosis, depression and anxiety.
http://www.who.int/docstore/world-health-day/2002/fact_sheets4.en.shtml