An important medical study shows what you see all around you. It might sound plain and simple, but the study looked at obesity trends and found that most of us are getting- plain and simple- fat.

This is one of those studies that makes people wonder whether time and money haven’t been invested in deducing the obvious.

What makes the study important is that the research comes out of a comprehensive survey of obesity trends in a community over decades. The message is very clear- most of us are headed down a fattening road of destruction to our health.

Take Larry Hoffman, for instance. He admits he was a fat kid.

“I sort of lost it in adolescence and as I got older, it kept up a few pounds each year,” says Larry, a common obesity trend.

He had gotten to be 50 pounds overweight, but says it didn’t show that much.

Until it showed on his insides.

“On my fortieth birthday I was told that I had had three heart attacks. I told them they were reading somebody else’s test, not mine. And I found out I had had three heart attacks. I needed bypass surgery twice to have a valve repaired, and then I had to figure out what the hell I was going to do,” recalls Larry.

It’s a question a lot of us have to ask, if you seriously consider the results of the latest research in the Annals of Internal Medicine.

It looked at weight and obesity trends and found that middle aged Americans are at extremely high risk for becoming overweight or obese.

The obesity trends and patterns in how much people weigh, were startling. Within just four years, up to 19 percent of the women and 30 percent of the men had become overweight. After thirty years a third of the women and a quarter of the men had become obese.

The health consequences of the obesity trends are numerous.

Dr. Nate Lebowitz, a cardiologist at Englewood Hospital sees the effects of the obesity trends daily. He says, “I’m seeing cardiovascular disease in people who may have been prone to it in their 60s and in their 50s.”

And many become so obese that they become real candidates for gastric bypass surgery.

“You need to be 100 pounds over your ideal body weight for gastric bypass surgery. We have probably 400,000 people in New Jersey alone who qualify for the surgery. The numbers are just dramatic,” says Dr. Stefanie Vainakis, a bariatric surgeon at Englewood Hospital.

The study is the latest warning that the obesity trends could mean big trouble, and we need to really think about our own personal health if we are overweight, and be vigilant about acting on it.

“You can develop all the best pharmaceuticals, the best vitamins, the latest technology, angioplasty, stents and everything but if what we put in our mouth and what we do with our bodies is toxic, none of it is going to work,” says Dr. Lebowitz.

Fortunately, Larry lived through his wake up call and has responded to the alarm by losing all his excess weight.

“For the first time in my life, I don’t feel like a fat kid,” says Larry.

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