Posted on July 28, 2007 in Diet and Fitness
Stable weight depends on an even balance between energy intake from food and energy expenditure. When a person’s caloric intake exceeds his or her energy expenditure, the extra calories get stored in the fat cells present in adipose tissue. These adipose cells generally function as energy reservoirs. They enlarge or contract depending on how people use this energy. If people do not balance energy input and output by adopting healthy eating habits and regular exercise, then fat builds up which in turn causes obesity.
Causes of obesity
Obesity results when the body consumes more energy than it uses. Research findings point to several different factors that cause weight gain. About 90% of people, who diet, gain every pound back that they lose regardless of their weight-loss method. Some evidence suggests that every person has an inherited weight range that varies by only about 10% either up or down from some set point. Genetic factors that influence fat metabolism and regulate, and certain hormones and proteins that affect appetite may play some effective role in 70% to 80% of obesity cases.
How unbalanced dietary habits cause obesity?
Different unbalanced dietary habits cause obesity. They are:
Night-eating
Consuming between 25% and 50% of daily calories between the evening meal and the next morning is called as night-eating syndrome. It is an important cause for obesity.
Binge Eating and Eating Disorders
Many people who are obese are binge-eaters who typically consume lot of calories in one sitting. Nutrition experts believe that binge-eating carbohydrates causes an increase in a natural opiate. This leads to dependence on carbohydrates, and this condition should be treated as an addiction. Dangerous consequences of binge eating are its antitheses and the eating disorders bulimia and anorexia. Bulimia is binge eating followed by purging in order to lose weight. Anorexia nervosa is a mental illness in which the person refuses to maintain weight at the normal level because of a terrible fear of getting fat and an abnormal perception of what his or her body looks like. These conditions cause risks for serious medical problems, and anorexia nervosa is sometimes life threatening.
Restrained Eating
Some people, mostly middle-aged women who have normal weight, have the pattern of restrained eating. This pattern requires a high level of conscious control and usually maintains a lower weight. However, such restrain places these individuals at higher risk for loss of control and subsequent overeating.
Infrequent Eating
Research evidence suggests that eating small frequent meals uses more calories than infrequent large meals.
Approaches to Weight Loss and Maintenance
Changes in eating habits, physical activity, and attitudes about food and weight, are essential elements in weight management. The following offer some general suggestions for dieters.
Start with Realistic Goals
Diet failure is extremely common and the odds of significant weight loss are poor, particularly in people with the highest weights. People starting a weight loss program should target only a 5% to 10% reduction in weight. But the present day unwholesome and distorted image of a super-thin female shape is a meager idea that almost no one can or should achieve.
Follow Effective Methods
The simplest, but still difficult approach to weight loss is reducing calories and exercising. One study suggested that only about 20% of people who try to lose weight use effective methods.
Hunger Pangs are Not Cues to Eat
Hunger pangs should not be taken as cues to eat. A stomach that has been stretched by large meals will continue to signal hunger for large amounts of food until its size reduces over time with smaller meals.
Maintenance of Healthy Weight
Maintenance is very important once a person has lost weight. To maintain a healthy weight everyone must make daily even hourly decisions about what is consumed and what is expended through activity. Such thinking helps a lot in controlling obesity.
Don’t Give Up
Even repeated weight loss failure is no reason to give up. Most studies indicate that yo-yo dieting or weight cycling has no adverse psychological or physical effects. Repeated dieting also won’t impair the body’s ability to burn calories efficiently.
Weight loss, in any case, should not be the only or even the primary goal for people concerned about their health. The success of weight reduction efforts should be evaluated according to improvements in chronic disease risk factors or symptoms and by the adoption of healthy lifestyle habits, not by just the number of pounds lost.
» Filed Under Diet and Fitness
Comments
Leave a Reply
September 27th, 2007 at 1:02 pm
hi iam 31 yrs old,my weight is 86kgs and my height is 5.6.i want to reduce my weight upto 20kgs.please give me a proper guidence.
October 5th, 2008 at 2:12 pm
Thats a really unhealthy weight to want to be thats just over 3 stone
October 19th, 2008 at 7:40 pm
Interesting post, i bookmarked your blog, best regards
November 14th, 2008 at 5:53 am
[...] It is also observed that eating a healthy breakfast plays an important role in controlling weight gain. [...]
September 30th, 2009 at 9:23 am
hi i am a health conscious men please guide me why there is head drilling if Blood pressure is not there