Being over weight is usually being 20 percent or more over the normal weight for his or her age, sex, build, and height. According to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, a person's weight is healthy if it falls within the acceptable range for his or her height and age; if the pattern of fat distribution does not place the person at increased risk for certain diseases; and if the person has no medical problem for which a physician recommends that he or she lose weight.

What is important, is not how much a person weighs, but the percentage of body fat. For women, fat can account for as much as 25 percent of body weight; 17 percent is a healthy percentage for men. Females are designed biologically to carry a higher proportion of fat tissue to ensure that there is plenty of food for pregnancy and nursing, even if food is scarce.

On average, we humans carry around 30 to 40 billion fat cells. All those excess calories we don't use up as immediate energy, are stored as fat. If we lived in ancient times, and had to still hunt and gather food, those stores of fat would be essential for our survival in times of famine.

Some researchers even believe that our seemingly innate love of high-calorie food may be a remnant of a survival tactic from ancient times, when we needed to store food for energy. But today, storing energy as fat isn't necessary for most people. Most people wait maybe 3 to 4 hours between meals and snacks and instead of remaining a survival mechanism, the stored fat is now more likely to have a negative effect on health. As fat accumulates, it crowds the space occupied by the internal organs, and puts a lot of stress on extremities and organs causing or complicating many physical problems.

Being overweight can increase the body's resistance to insulin and can make the body more susceptible to infection, and increases the chances of developing diabetes, gallbladder disease, high blood pressure, coronary artery disease, kidney disease, stroke, and other serious health problems that can result in premature death.

The most common causes of obesity are poor diet and/or eating habits and a lack of exercise. Other factors that can lead to obesity include glandular malfunctions, diabetes, hypoglycemia, emotional tension, boredom and a simple love of food. Obesity has also been linked to food sensitivities and/or allergies. Food your body cannot use or that is a poison to your system is stored in the tissues and causes water retention. Ironically, poor nutrition may be an important factor in obesity. When there is inadequate intake of certain essential nutrients, fat is not easily or adequately burned and can accumulate in the body.

Here are some basic approaches to weight management:

*Reduce caloric intake to 1,200 calories per day.

*Exercise Walk, Swim, Dance, Jump, Ride a Bike MOVE!

*Do not use diuretic herbs and nutrients to reduce water this is a temporary weight loss and throws off your electrolytes which can slow your metabolism.

*The use of lipotropic vitamins, which have the ability to reduce cholesterol and fat, works only is the diet is low fat and low glycemic.

*Eliminate all white flour, white sugar, white salt and white rice from your diet. All these ingredients breakdown very quickly in the system, and overloads the body with carbohydrates that the body cannot use at once, so it is converted to fat and stored.

*Replaced processed ingredients with ingredients that not only take longer for the system to break down, but provide better levels of nutrients also

*Whole wheat flour offers the body lecithin, antioxidants, fiber and vitamins that normal processing eliminates. FlourBlend is a blend of whole flours, vitamins, minerals, herbs and fibers designed to lower cholesterol and gives half the carbohydrates of normal processed white flour, with more protein and fiber.

*Stay away from artificial sweeteners, these will only make you hungry and does cause some damage to the liver or pancreas. Try our Natural SugarBlend, which offers better taste and performance in cooking, because it is natural and slow absorbing, keeps the blood sugar steady, increases the uptake of calcium and aids in colon health.

*Using Sea Salt, and mineral salt can be a better alternative to regular table salt. You use less and crave salt less if you use these e alternatives, you also receive the benefits of trace minerals in trace amounts, and these trace minerals can help in preventing some stroke and cardiac problems.

*Brown rice offers a great many benefits to the system, and paired with beans, nuts, seeds and whole grains, provides a complete protein for the body to use. Brown rice also is a rich antioxidant, one of the best the world has to offer. It also provides lecithin and an abundance of wonderful fiber that aids the small intestine, the colon and the large intestine.

Permanent weight loss requires a lifetime commitment to a healthier lifestyle in general.