Obesity

What is obesity?

The foods we eat every day contribute to our general well-being. And through food we get nutrients that are necessary to keep our organs in good condition, and calories provide us energy.

If we take in more calories than we burn, the extra food turns into fat, which is “stored” in our body. If we overeat regularly, we gain weight, and if we continue to do so, our body weight becomes overweight.

Obesity is the result of the accumulation of excess fat in various places on the body in the form of adipose tissue.

It is considered a chronic disease like hypertension or diabetes and has many long-term health consequences and is among the leading causes of preventable deaths in Europe, along with tobacco use and hypertension.

The disease is diagnosed when the body mass index is over 30, which is a ratio between height and body weight.

Disease is becoming an epidemic because most of us are employed in occupations that require very little physical activity. The latest data on the disease in childhood are positive, and although its frequency remains high, at least the cases are not increasing.

What are the reasons?

You gain weight when you eat more calories than your body uses. If the food we eat provides more calories than our body needs, theexcess turns into fat.

At first, fat cells increase in size, but when they can no longer grow, they increase in number. If you lose weight, the size of fat cells decreases, but not their number.

However, the disease can have many causes that vary from person to person. Age, gender, psycho-emotional state, genes and environmental factors all play a role.

• Genes – play a role in the efficiency of metabolism and the storage and distribution of body fat.

• Lifestyle of the family – the inheritance of certain genes, as well as the adoption of certain habits related to nutrition and lifestyle determine the more frequent development of the disease in families. If one of your parents is overweight, you are more likely to become obese.

• Emotions – some people overeat because they are depressed, feel hopeless, angry, and many other reasons that have nothing to do with hunger. This does not mean that overweight people have more emotional problems than others.

• Environmental factors – the dominant is the way of life of the person. Eating habits and level of physical activity are partly perceived by the people around us. Overeating and a sedentary lifestyle are the main risk factors.

• Gender – men have more muscle tissue than women, and because this tissue burns more calories than everyone else, men burn more calories than women, even when they are at rest. Thus, women are more likely than men to gain weight, even with the same calorie intake.

Obesity Treatment

By reducing your daily caloric intake by 500 kilocalories or expending an additional 500 kilocalories in physical activity each day, you will lose one pound of pure body fat in a week. Reducing calorie intake by 10 units per day equates to half a kilogram of fat loss after one year.