How to Fight Against Obesity?

Obesity is a serious medical problem that requires dedicated effort from the affected person. Consumption of nutrient rich foods without any control and lack of physical activity are the major factors that increase the possibility of obesity. Strict dieting habits and constant exercise is required to escape obesity. Exercise helps to burn extra calories deposited in the body and dieting prevents new deposits. Several medications and fat control diets are now available; but they can’t produce a long term impact on the subject.

Over eating is the predominant feature found in all people having obesity. The spread of fast-food culture has acted as a catalyst to accelerate obesity. Various campaigns were conducted in schools, colleges, and internet and food packages to emphasize the calamity of over eating. But still calorie consumption has been increasing at an alarming rate all over the world.

Obesity is caused by the deposit of large quantities of fat in your body. This results in severe health problems like high blood pressure, cholesterol, diabetes, cardiac diseases and stroke. Obesity is a major reason for coronary heart disease, which can lead to heart attack. HDL cholesterol level decreases in fat people making them more vulnerable to heart diseases. Obesity is also a major reason for gallstones and can adversely affect degenerative joint disease.

The only effective solution for obesity is dieting and exercising. Dieting helps to reduce body mass considerably. Exercise helps to reduce you body mass by burning away the excess calories in your body. But when these two are complemented on a regular and long-term basis, you can enjoy the results for your lifetime.

A balanced diet should contain nutritious food to avoid vitamin deficiencies or malnutrition.

Avoid foods with high calorie, fats or sugars. Try to use unsaturated vegetable oil based fats instead of saturated animal based fats. 

Inclusion of fiber rich foods in you diet will provide additional energy to do more physical activities. Include low energy dense foods that have less calories per unit weight in you diet. Vegetables, fruits, lean meat, fish, grains, and beans are low energy dense foods.

Energy dense foods have high calories in a small amount of food, and are rich in fats and sugars. Avoid energy dense foods like red meat, egg yolks, fried foods, fast foods with high fat or sugar, sweets, pastries, butter and fatty salad dressings. Alcohol, non-diet soft drinks and high calorie snack foods should be avoided because they add calories to the body but very little nutrition. Your diet should include complex carbohydrates like brown rice, whole-grain bread, fruits and vegetables rather than simple carbohydrates like table sugars, sweets, doughnuts, cakes, and muffins.

Physical activities require a large amount of energy in the form of calories from the body. Calorie is stored as fat in the body. These fat deposits are broken down to supply calories to the body when you are exercising. Walking, running, swimming and cycling are the most effective forms of exercise for reducing fat. 

The burning of calories depends on the weight and age of a person. It is difficult for an aged person to lose weight since the metabolic rate is slow. A person with more weight can burn more calories than a person with less weight doing same exercises. This happens because the person with higher weight has to carry his body mass also. Regular and intense exercise when combined with balanced dieting can be more effective to fight against obesity.