Obesity increases your risk of so many diseases, including:

• Hypertension

• High total cholesterol and triglycerides

• Type 2 diabetes

• Coronary heart disease

• Stroke

• Gallbladder disease

• Osteoarthritis

• Sleep apnea and respiratory problems

• Some cancers (endometrial, breast and colon)

A new study sheds some light on exactly why excess weight is so dangerous for your health, including that high levels of the inflammatory factor CXCL5, which is produced and secreted at high levels by fat tissue, is linked to insulin resistance.

Their findings are similar to those of another study conducted about five years ago, which also found that insulin resistance is behind many obesity-related health complications.

Obesity causes stress in your endoplasmic reticulum (ER), a system of cell membranes found inside your cells. This stress can result in the suppression of the signals of insulin receptors which can then lead to insulin resistance.

Your endoplasmic reticulum is the inner machinery of the cell, responsible for processing proteins and fats. Scientists have also referred to the ER as a factory for producing protein, as well as the site where excess blood fats are processed.

When you take in too many calories, your body is bombarded with nutrients and the following occurs:

• Nutrients must be processed, stored and utilized

• Your endoplasmic reticulum “factory” becomes overworked and starts sending SOS signals

• SOS signals tell your cells to dampen their insulin receptors

• Your endoplasmic reticulum restrains normal responses to insulin

• Insulin can no longer clear sugar from your body

Another downfall of endoplasmic reticulum stress, besides obesity, is that it triggers inflammation in cells, and similar to CXCL5 causes more diseases such as heart disease.

Many people are now familiar with insulin and its role in diseases like diabetes. A much less known, but equally important, hormone is leptin.

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If you eat a diet that is high in sugar and grains, which is the type of diet that leads to obesity in many people, the sugar gets metabolized to fat (and is stored as fat in your fat cells).

This in turn releases surges in leptin. Over time, if your body is exposed to too much leptin, it will become resistant to it (just as your body can become resistant to insulin).

And when you become leptin-resistant, your body can no longer “hear” the messages telling it to stop eating, burn fat, and maintain good sensitivity to sweet tastes in your taste buds -- so you remain hungry, you crave sweets, and your body stores more fat.

Leptin-resistance also causes an increase in dangerous visceral fat, sending you on a vicious cycle of hunger, fat storage and an increased risk of heart disease, diabetes, metabolic syndrome and more.

Storing large amounts of excess body fat throws your body out of balance in so many ways obese adults also face increased risks of:

• Silent vascular disease (blood vessel disease that causes no symptoms)

• Atherosclerosis (hardening of your arteries)

• Thicker heart walls

It has been suggested that by the middle of this century, the increased risk of obesity-caused diabetes, heart disease and cancer could lower the average U.S. life expectancy  by as much as five years. If this obesity epidemic is not reversed we will, for the first time in history, see children living shorter lives than their parents.

The key to avoiding these complications lies in preventing obesity in the first place.This is great news because it means by making lifestyle changes you can alter the expression of your genes in a positive way. So don’t let anyone tell you that you’re destined to be overweight or unhealthy in any way.

Even though on some level, fighting obesity is a societal issue, when it comes down to it losing weight is something you have to do on your own, and here are the top steps to take:

1. Tailor your diet.  Eliminate white sugar, white flour, caffeine and processed foods from your diet, and replace them with fresh fruits, vegetables, nuts, pure water and meats that have not been affected by hormones. These are the foods that will push your body toward its ideal weight.

2. View exercise as a drug. When you’re trying to lose weight, a casual walk here and there is not going to cut it. There is strong compelling evidence that a mix of strength training, aerobic exercise, and high-intensity anaerobic interval training is ideal for weight loss.

3. Supplement your diet with whole food supplements that will restore cell function and cellular communication. When it comes to losing weight, diminishing  insulin resistance, leptin resistance, and easing metabolic syndromes, daily implementation of alpha polysaccharide-peptides provide cells with the arsenal to combat the barriers to weight loss by charging up the cells’ mitochondria, providing the body more energy and stamina for exercise, removing cravings for sugary foods, and lifting emotional and mental states.