Know more obesity - No more obesity

What is obesity?

Obesity can be defined differently depending on one’s perception about it. Obesity to me is when the shape of the body looks like the letter ‘O’. It is a critical condition due to excess amount of body fat. Now how do you measure the excess level of fats in your body? Body mass Index is the criteria to check if you are obese. The normal amount of body fat (expressed as percentage of body fat) is between 25-30% in women and 18-23% in men. Women with over 30% body fat and men with over 25% body fat are considered obese. More important is the increasing numbers in child obesity. Our eating habits as adults are, in part, determined by how we're fed as babies.

What causes obesity?

There are many causes to obesity but some of the common ones are overeating, physical inactivity, diet high in saturated fats and sugars, hereditary, side-effects of medication, anxiety, and menopause for women. This means that people tend to be obese when their calorie intake is much higher than what they burn with physical exercise in their daily life.

Why is obesity so over-hyped?

Overweight and Excess fats has led to adverse metabolic effects on blood pressure, cholesterol, triglycerides and insulin resistance. They invite risk for major chronic ailments such as heart attacks, stroke, diabetes, hyper-tension, emotional imbalance and even cancer. In the United States, roughly 300,000 deaths per year are directly related to obesity.

Why obese women are more than obese men?

The simple reason for more women being obese as compared to men is their metabolism rate. Women have more fats and less muscle than men. Other tissues including fats burn lesser calories than muscles. Thus, women have a slower metabolism than men which results in putting on more weight than men and it becomes tougher for weight loss. Also with age, our metabolism slows down due to muscle loss. That is the reason you find older people gaining weight unless they reduce their daily calorie intake.