Let's face it. Obesity costs money. Overweight individuals have higher expenses on almost everything they need to do. A recent report published indicates obesity may be more expensive than smoking when it comes to health costs. Researchers from the Mayo Clinic found that people who are obese have an extra $1,850 in health costs, on average, a year compared with normal weight people. People who smoke, on the other hand, have $1,275 extra, on average, in health costs per year. And for people who are morbidly obese, the costs are even higher, up to $5,500 a year.

The researchers noted that the extra costs by people who are obese went down after they took into account other health problems those people had. But they noted that obesity is a major risk factor for a number of health problems, so people should be careful not to underestimate the true health costs of obesity. The study was published in the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine.

A Cornell study shows that 21 percent of health care costs in the United States are related to obesity. That study also broke down the extra health costs of obesity, though the numbers were slightly different from the Mayo study. The Cornell study, published in the Journal of Health Economics showed that obesity is linked with $2,741 more in medical costs each year, compared with non-obese people.

Also, the Cornell report indicated obesity raises the risk of cancer, stroke, heart attack and diabetes. Obesity raises the costs of treating almost any medical condition. It adds up very quickly. Workers' comp carriers are among those concerned about this trend. Claims involving obesity have higher indemnity and medical costs, according to the insurers' organization, the National Council on Compensation Insurance.

Recently, a Gallup poll showed that overweight and obese workers cost $153 billion each year to businesses because of lost productivity. Altogether, they miss an extra 450 million days of work each year, compared with people who are not obese or overweight.

However, many obese people have misconception of their actual image and weight problems. A new study by the University of Illinois with more than 3,500 college applicants indicated a third could not accurately report their weight. As well, overweight and obese men were more likely to underestimate their weight than women. This misperception is important because the first step in dealing with a weight problem is knowing you have one.

In the study, although 33.6 percent of men were obese or overweight, only 16.9 percent described themselves as being those categories. For women, the gap between reality and perception was smaller—27.8 percent were overweight or obese, but only 21.2 believed they weighed too much. The study was published in Body Image.

Managing obesity involves the whole lifestyle change. This would include diet management, exercise management, and behavioral changes. Of course for some, medication and surgery are advised. Surgery, on the other hand, is only advised to those with very severe obesity issues. The ultimate goal in these management techniques isn't the perfect body type. It is to attain the weight where your health is no longer at risk. When successful, the techniques should not be stopped. Sustaining the healthy weight needs the same amount of determination as losing the weight.

If you are an employer with a lot of overweight workers, you'll want to implement a wellness program to incentivize those individuals to lose weight. There are plenty of options, and once a plan has been implemented, it should be a primary focus of the company to improve the health of those employees who are suffering from obesity. Your health care costs, as well as theirs, can go stratospheric if you are not proactively dealing with this disease.