Understanding Obesity And Its Effects On The Body

Obesity is a medical condition that is characterized by a person having too much body fat than normally needed to generate energy for everyday activities. It has been linked to many diseases and complications for a person.

Reasons for Obesity

Lifestyle and overeating are the main reasons for a person's obesity, especially in the Western world. The 20th century, particularly in the last 25 years, has seen a rapid rise in the number of people that are obese in Western society. This is because despite the number of warning published in print media and even in product packaging, there are still some people that intentionally overeat. For example, between 1977 and 1995, calorie intake rose four times while the number of people relying on fast-food meals tripled.

Sedentary lifestyle, a lifestyle in which persons engages in little or no exercise at all, also contributes to the rise of obesity. Coupled with overeating, this means that a person only takes in calories and fat, but does not burn them. Aside from obesity, sedentary lifestyles can also lead to diabetes, cardiac complications and depression. The muscles also weaken and shrink, making a person prone to physical injury. Since the immune system is strong when a person is physically fit, sedentary lifestyles can also lead to a weak immune system.

Obesity can also be caused by emotional issues. Some cases show that people became obese during their teenage years because they tend to let their negative feelings out by consuming food whenever they feel sad or depressed.

How Can Obesity Be Treated?

Obesity does not require complicated medical operations, although there has been at least one case where the excess fat in an obese person's body was directly removed through surgery. Aside from this, the only existing treatments for obesity are exercise and a proper diet.

Exercise is a fun and effective way to shed off that excess body fat. This is because when you exercise, you use energy. Energy is produced by burning the calories in our systems, and we all know that calories are stored in body fat. Putting two and two together, exercise burns off the fat in our body.

However, exercise alone is not effective if one does not couple it with a proper diet. What use is burning off those fats if you are just going to regain them by overeating after exercise? There are several ways to diet, or reduce food intake. One way is to engage in a low carbohydrate diet. This diet has been found to reduce the chances of contracting coronary heart diseases.

Despite the fact that it is very difficult and challenging, several success stories show that an obese person can actually lose the excess fat in his body. All it needs is personal discipline, and a determination to actually lose weight. An obese person must strictly tell himself every now and then that he wants (not needs) to lose weight, so that he can resist the temptation of overeating that arises every once in a while.

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