As a health and fitness fanatic, my email Inbox is filled with articles about obesity in America. And some of the most powerful information talks about how we live today — so different from our grandparents — and how lifestyle and environmental changes over the years have contributed to America battling the bulge. We’re eating more processed foods, not cooking from scratch. We’re sitting at desks, not working the farm. We sleep less and have more stress. We’re overexposed to pesticides and hormones and have access to a long list of medications for what ails us.  It’s not just a matter of food and  exercise; it’s about how we live. And about how we clean? According to an article published this week by Lifetime Fitness, it may be! Lifetime’s Weight Loss team outline four ways that common household cleaning products may be adding to our increasing waist lines: by increasing our appetite, interfering with our estrogen levels, impacting our thyroid function, and altering our gut microbiotia. Cleaning is healthy! It gets you moving, using your muscles, raising your heart rate. But the cleaners many of us are using may be negating that healthy activity and subverting our weight loss efforts. We’d like to offer these tactics for managing your household cleaners and minimizing their negative impact on your healthy body:

Read the full Lifetime Fitness article here.