Obesity Causes

The cause can be simplified down to consuming more calories than are being used, the excess calories are stored as fat. But a person doesn’t develop obesity overnight. This condition develops over many years of making poor food choices coupled with little or no exercise.

There are other influencing factors as well, such as:

1. Family or environmental. If parents are overweight or obese, it is likely to run in the family, mainly due to food and exercise practices. Also, genetically, the hormones that control fat metabolism could be affected.

2. Overeating: Especially foods high in fat content and simple sugars such as sweets, chocolate, cakes, fizzy drinks, beer, wine, fried foods etc. These are energy dense foods with little or no nutritional value. It is easy to rack up the calories if your daily diet consists mainly of these types of foods.

3. Emotional. This is something that I believe to be a very important factor in weight issues. A lot of us let our emotional state be in charge of our eating habits. When we are upset, we usually over or under eat. If you are one of those people who overeat, when sad, then this could be a big factor in your weight. Our bodies are very astute at telling us we are full and also what types of foods that it wants. When one eats a balanced, healthy diet, rich in fruits, vegetables and water, the body craves more of these foods. It is our brain that tells our body that we want a chocolate bar instead of an apple. We need to feed our bodies what they want, not what our brain tells us they want!

4. Slow metabolism. Our metabolic rate is the rate at which we break down food and transform it into energy. It is directly related to the amount of lean muscle mass in the body. If you have a high percentage of body fat and low amount of muscle mass, you will not be metabolising food as efficiently as you would if you had a high lean muscle mass content and low body fat percentage. Also, our metabolism slows down when we have had a history of calorie restriction/binge cycles as in yo-yo dieting.

5. Lack of physical activity. It is one thing consuming a lot of calories but if you are sufficiently active you will use them all up. A top athlete may consume 5000 kCals a day but may use up more than that through exercise. The problem starts when you consume a high amount of calories and don’t do anything to burn them up.

6. Illness/Disease. Some illnesses or diseases such as hypothyroidism, insulin resistance or Cushing’s syndrome can lead to obesity.

7. Childhood weight. We are all born with a certain amount of fat cells. These fat cells can increase in size but not in number, except in very rare circumstances. When a child under 5 is overweight, their fat cells will increase in size and then will multiply. Even if the child loses fat, he will never lose the extra fat cells he has gained and therefore will find it increasingly difficult to lose weight. If you were overweight as a child, and I don’t mean puppy fat, you are at a greater risk of being obese later in life. There have been studies to suggest that being overweight at any stage of youth is predictive of adult obesity.

8. Hormones. Women tend to gain weight at certain points in their lives due to hormonal surges. Puberty, pregnancy, menopause. Many women also gain weight when using the contraceptive pill which is a hormone based medicine, although with the more modern, low hormone dosage pills, this is less of an issue than in former years.

Work out your Body Mass Index:
		Example:
Weight (kg) Height (m)²	Underweight: >18 Normal: 19-25 Overweight: 26-30 Obese: 30<	We have a woman with a height of 5’2’’ and a weight of 12 Stone   62" = 1.57m (²)= 2.46   168lb = 76.1kg   76.1 = 30.9 = Obese 2.46 This lady needs to weigh 135lbs or less to be in the normal weight range.

 

Emma Buckley B.Sc