The U.S. government is monitoring your phone calls, but don't expect them to do anything to corral processed food manufacturers whose products are one of the primary reasons we have an obesity epidemic throughout America and the world.

Despite the already announced voluntary cuts, like partial soft drink bans in American schools, I'm sure processed food manufacturers breathed a deep sigh of relief after hearing the news. In theory the government was designed to protect our health, but the sad reality is that the last 200 years in America has allowed enough time to significantly corrupt and pervert the system to one that now serves corporate interests more than the citizens it was designed to protect.

So please wake up and face the reality that it's up to you to assume total responsibility for your health, and the health of your children. The government is simply not going to do it for you. If you choose to rely on them to protect your health you could easily wind up like the smokers who trusted that cigarettes were safe or arthritics who trusted NSAIDs like Vioxx were reasonable to use.

The growing obesity epidemic could soon overwhelm our dangerously flawed health care system. Already, more than two decades has been erased from the average American lifespan, an alarming statistic if there ever was one.

Childhood obesity is a grave problem, advancing much more quickly than the CDC and others predicted. And it sounds like your children may be getting more harm than help from their peers at school, demonstrating once again that the key to preventing childhood obesity is parental involvement.

Setting guidelines and educating children on good nutrition through providing them with nutritious meals and snacks will put them on the road to making healthy decisions as adults. You should also make sure they:

• Increase exercise
• Eliminate soda
• Decrease or eliminate TV time

TV is one of the most pernicious influences, and I couldn't recommend stopping it more strongly. Not only will it decrease their activity level, but also it will expose them to commercials promoting worthless foods.

For your own health, all it takes to keep your weight at an optimum level is a faithful program of exercise and an optimized nutritious diet designed for your unique biochemistry.

Exercise

The key to exercising is to keep in mind three important variables: length of time, frequency and intensity. By doing so, you will ensure all your hard efforts are not wasted and are having a positive effect on your body.

I encourage my patients to gradually increase the amount of time they are exercising to 60 to 90 minutes a day. Initially the frequency is daily. This is a treatment dose until you normalize your weight or insulin levels. After that, you will only need to exercise three to four times a week.

You should exercise hard enough so that it is difficult to talk to someone next to you. However, if you cannot carry on a conversation at all, then you have gone too far and need to decrease the intensity.

If you need some direction to get started, I urge you to review my beginner's exercise page that includes links to other pages and a free table you can download to keep track of your progress.

Eating Right

Aside from keeping active, another important factor in helping you achieve good health and maintain a healthy weight is to have a diet based on eating the right foods for your specific genetics and biochemistry. One of the ways you can determine this is through nutritional typing.

Discovering your nutritional type is simple: You can take my free online test or you can read my book, Total Health Program, for a more in-depth understanding.

Remember, the foods that may be healthy for others are not necessarily healthy for you, and vice-versa. Thus, eating according to your specific type is the proven way to ascertain which foods work best for you.

When you're trying to decide where to begin, remember exercise and nutrition go hand-in-hand to optimize your health. Focusing on one and ignoring the other does your body no good.

Emotional Issues

And finally, many people have emotional issues that keep them from eating right or exercising properly. You should tackle these issues that sabotage your health by learning a safe and effective energy psychology tool like the Emotional Freedom Technique.