Metabolic Syndrome - should I worry ?

Is there anything you can do about Metabolic Syndrome or even "Is it worth doing anything about it ?" 

Click on the image and expand in your browser if you want to study the whole sad story

This post isn't about the complicated medical story of why insulin resistance happens but what can you and might you do when you realize that Metabolic Syndrome is getting personal for you and your family.

Part of the answer is definitely amending eating habits. 

      Twenty years ago spagetti and meat balls would typically have been 500 calories for a god size plate - today the same dish is served up with 850 calories. The same super-sizing has happened with fries and burgers. Time to roll back the clock.

The effort in terms of exercise needed to change around the impact of Metabolic Syndrome can be daunting if you've so far lead a pleasant, relaxed couch-potato existence. 

The exercise goal is 6 or more hours a week - every week. During this time you are going to try and burn at least 2,000 calories. You might need to take 70,000 steps in a week to get through that number of calories. No question it's tough.

Should you just take a chance to stay on the couch or try dieting or maybe hope wonder treatment comes out in the next decade just in time to save you ? 

A few first steps to move off the couch without going totally crazy:

• buy a pedometer and start tracking how many steps you take a day. The Accusplit    Eagle 120XL  model is well liked by the medical profession because they do not count fidgety movements as steps - so you get a believable count at the end of the day. 
• start doing 10 to 15 minutes of hard exercise as home morning and evening. Ten to 15 minutes at a time can be squeezed into most busy schedules and does not get too boring. Hard means doing one exercise a minutes (so you get 10 to 15 done in the alloted time) and you push a weight (perhaps your own body weight) 10 to 15 times. Pushing the weight might take 20 to 30 seconds. Then you rest for the remainder of that minute and then go at it again. The exact exercise you do does not matter that much.
• think about buying a heart rate monitor to track how hard your are working out. The walking can be easy to moderate pace but the weights or resistance workout need to be pretty tough. Target and Walmart both sell heart rate monitors at around or below $40.

So should you worry about Metabolic Syndrome ? Probably yes if you have children or responsibilities because Metabolic Syndrome leads quickly on to either diabetes or heart disease.If you are unlucky with you genetics - both.