Definition of obesity

Obesity, which happens due to overeating and lack of self-control, is no longer a beauty issue. The World Health Organization (W.H.O.), along with national and international medical and scientific associations, now recognizes obesity as a chronic progressive disease caused by a variety of environmental and genetic factors. Obesity is very costly not only economically, but also in terms of personal and social health, longevity and mental well-being. Obesity, requires lifelong treatment and control, due to its progressive nature.

Body Mass Index (BMI)

Body mass index (BMI) is a measure used to define overweight and obesity. Many studies show that BMI generally indicates an adult’s excess body fat, although there are exceptions, such as the BMI of a pregnant woman, athlete, bodybuilder, or the elderly. BMI does not necessarily take into account the distribution of fat (abdominal versus peripheral) and is not a good measure of a person’s adipose tissue metabolic activity. BMI can be determined using BMI chart or calculated according to the following formula:

Weight in kg divided by height in square meters (BMI = kg / m2)

BMI categories are:

Prevalence and incidence of obesity

According to the WHO, 65% of the world’s population lives in countries where overweight and obesity cause more deaths than malnutrition and weight loss. Approximately 500 million adults worldwide are obese and one billion are overweight, along with 48 million children who are obese and overweight. The obesity epidemic has not only increased in number over the past two decades, but has also intensified. Data from the United States Annual Survey sponsored by CDC, show that between 1987 and 2005, the prevalence of severe obesity increased by 500 percent and severe obesity (BMI greater than 50) by approximately 1,000 percent. According to NHANES, between 2007 and 2008, 5.7 percent of American adults, or nearly 14 million people, suffered from severe obesity.

The progressive nature of obesity

Obesity is a multifactorial disease with a strong genetic component (meaning that various factors play a role in its development, the most important of which is genetics). There are a number of hormonal, metabolic, psychological, cultural, and behavioral factors based on genetic background that contribute to fat accumulation and weight gain.

Positive energy balance

A positive energy balance leads to weight gain and occurs when the amount of calories consumed (energy intake) exceeds the amount of calories used by the body (energy consumption) in performing basic biological functions, daily activities and exercise. A positive energy balance may be caused by overeating or lack of adequate physical activity. However, there are other conditions that affect energy balance and fat accumulation and do not include overeating or sedentary behavior.

• Chronic loss of sleep
• Eating foods that, in addition to their caloric content, cause metabolic / hormonal changes that may increase body fat. These include foods high in sugar or high-fructose corn syrup, processed grains, fats, and processed meats.
• Low consumption of anti-fat foods such as fruits, vegetables, legumes, nuts, seeds and high quality protein.
• Stress and mental distress.
• Many types of drugs.
•  Various pollutants.

Weight Gain

Weight gain is another cause of weight gain, or in the other words, obesity, creates “obesity”, which is one of the reasons why this disease is considered “progressive”. Weight gain causes hormonal, metabolic, and molecular changes in the body that increases the risk of further fat accumulation. Such biological changes associated with obesity reduce the body’s ability to oxidize (burn) the fat to produce energy, convert glucose (carbohydrates) to fat, and increase the body’s capacity to store fat in fat stores (adipose tissue). This means that most of the calories consumed are stored as fat. Worse than this, obesity affects specific regulators of appetite and hunger in a way that can lead to increased food volume and frequency of eating. Thus, weight gain alters the body’s biology in a way that supports more weight gain and obesity.

Conditions related to obesity

A number of other obesity-related conditions play a role in this disease progression. Obesity reduces mobility and the number of calories needed to exercise. Weight gain can also cause psychological or emotional distress, which in turn causes hormonal changes that can lead to weight gain by stimulating the appetite and increasing fat absorption in fat stores. Sleep duration decreases with weight gain due to a number of conditions that impair sleep quality such as pain, sleep apnea and other respiratory problems, the need to frequent urination, use of certain medications and changes in body temperature. Shortening sleep, in turn, produces certain hormones that both stimulate the appetite and increase fat absorption in fat stores. Weight gain also contributes to other conditions such as high blood pressure, diabetes, heart disease, osteoarthritis and depression, and these conditions are often treated with drugs that cause even more weight gain. In all of these ways and more, obesity creates obesity and traps the person in a defective weight gain cycle.

Food diets

Low calorie diet is the first treatment for overweight and obesity, but diet is also effective in the development of obesity. Weight loss through dieting triggers biological reactions that last a long time and lead to weight gain. One of these responses affects energy balance. When a person loses weight, the body thinks that it is hungry and consumes fewer energy to maintain calories. Reducing energy intake with weight loss in the diet requires that the dieter eat even fewer calories than a person of the same size who has never dieted, to maintain weight loss. However, it is difficult to follow a diet and eat less because there are long-term changes in appetite regulators that increase appetite and the amount of food that can be consumed. Such dietary changes lead to a positive energy balance and weight gain, and because the conditions responsible for reducing energy expenditure and increasing the desire to eat, continue in the long time, one often not only gains all the weight lost, but they gain even more weight.

Another biological reaction that occurs with dieting is a change in fat metabolism that reduces the body’s ability to burn fat and increases fat storage capacity in fat stores (adipose tissue). With diet-based weight loss, the amount of dietary fat that the body burns is reduced by approximately 50%. In addition, diet reduces the amount of body fat that is burned during low-quality activities such as walking, cleaning the house, preparing the dinner, or working on the computer. Reducing the amount of fat burned as a fuel following a diet-based weight loss, more fat is stored in fat stores, and the diet increases the fat storage capacity even more than before the diet. In general, diet-induced weight loss reduces the use of fat for the fuel and increases the capacity of fat that is not used for storage. These changes lead to a gradual increase in fat accumulation even if the person does not overeat.