Overweight and obesity can be caused by lifestyle. However, you can also be overweight or obese due to genetics or some other objective reasons. Let’s take a look at some objective reasons for overweight and obesity with easyhealthylive.com.
Obesity is one of the biggest health problems in the world. It is associated with a number of health conditions, collectively known as metabolic syndrome. These include high blood pressure, high blood sugar, and poor blood lipids.
People with metabolic syndrome have a much higher risk of heart disease and type 2 diabetes than people of normal weight. Over the past decades, many studies have focused on the causes of obesity and how to prevent or treat obesity.
Many people think that weight gain and obesity are caused by a lack of willpower. That is not entirely true. Although most weight gain is the result of eating behavior and lifestyle, some people are at a disadvantage when it comes to controlling their eating habits.
Some overeat are influenced by various biological factors such as genetics and hormones. Some people simply have a tendency to gain weight.
Here are the top 10 contributors to weight gain, obesity, and metabolic disease, many of which have nothing to do with willpower.
1. Due to family factors
If parents are obese, children are also more likely to be obese. Many studies show that overweight and obese cases have the presence of inherited genes.
Family lifestyle is also one of the causes of overweight and obesity in children. Regularly letting children use electronic devices, being sedentary also makes children’s weight increase quickly and difficult to control.
2. Excessive consumption of processed foods
Highly processed foods are often less than refined ingredients mixed with additives. These products are designed with low cost, long shelf life and irresistible delicious taste.
Processed foods high in unsaturated fats are one of the common causes of obesity
By making food as delicious as possible, food manufacturers are trying to increase sales. But they also promote overeating.
3. Food addiction
Many sugary, high-fat snacks stimulate the reward centers in your brain. In fact, these foods are often compared to commonly abused drugs like alcohol, cocaine, nicotine, and marijuana.
Junk food can be addictive in sensitive people. These people lose control of their eating behavior, similar to people struggling with alcoholism losing control of their drinking behavior.
4. Influence from advertising
Junk food manufacturers are very active marketers. Food manufacturers spend a lot of money marketing junk food, sometimes specifically targeting children, who don’t have the knowledge and experience to realize they’re being scammed.
In today’s world, children are becoming obese, diabetic and addicted to junk food long before they are old enough to make informed decisions about these things.
5. Insulin
Insulin is a very important hormone that helps regulate energy storage. One of its functions is to command fat cells to store fat and retain the fat they have carried.
The Western diet promotes insulin resistance in many overweight and obese people. This increases insulin levels throughout the body, causing energy to be stored in fat cells instead of being available for use.
Some studies suggest that high insulin levels play a role in the development of obesity.
One of the best ways to lower insulin is to cut back on refined or simple carbohydrates while increasing fiber intake. This often results in automatic calorie reduction and easy weight loss – no need for calorie counting or portion control.
6. Effects of drugs
Some medications can promote weight gain by reducing the number of calories burned or increasing appetite. Many medications can cause weight gain as a side effect.
For example, antidepressants have been linked to weight gain over time. Other examples include antidiabetic drugs and antipsychotics. These drugs do not decrease your willpower but change the function of your body and brain, lowering your metabolic rate or increasing your appetite.
In addition to the therapeutic effect, some drugs have side effects that also affect weight
7. Leptin resistance
Leptin is another hormone that plays an important role in obesity. It is produced by fat cells and its blood concentration increases as fat mass is higher. For this reason, leptin levels are especially high in people with obesity.
In healthy people, high leptin intake is associated with decreased appetite. When it’s working properly, it tells your brain how much fat you’ve stored.
The problem is that leptin doesn’t work as it should in many obese people, because for some reason it can’t cross the blood-brain barrier. This condition is known as leptin resistance and is thought to be a leading factor in the pathogenesis of obesity.
8. The appearance of convenience stores
Another factor that significantly affects people’s waistlines is the availability of food, which has increased massively over the past few centuries.
Food, especially junk food, is everywhere. Stores display mouth-watering dishes where they are most likely to grab your attention.
Another problem is that junk food is often cheaper than whole, healthy food. Some people don’t even have the option to buy real foods, like fresh fruits and vegetables. Convenience stores in these areas only sell soft drinks, candies, and packaged snacks. And these are all bad things for your weight.
9. Sugar
Added sugars are possibly the worst aspect of the modern diet. Sugar alters your body’s hormones and biochemistry when consumed in excess. This contributes to weight gain.
Loading too much sugar in your diet every day also makes you quickly overweight and obese
Sugar is half glucose, half fructose. People get glucose from a variety of foods, including starches, but most of the fructose comes from added sugars.
Consuming too much fructose can cause insulin resistance and increase insulin levels. It also doesn’t promote satiety in the same way that glucose does. For all these reasons, sugar contributes to increased energy storage and ultimately to obesity.
10. Misinformation
People around the world are being misunderstood about health and nutrition. There are many reasons for this, but the problem largely depends on where people get their information from.
For example, many websites convey inaccurate or even inaccurate information about health and nutrition. Some news outlets also oversimplify or misinterpret the results of scientific studies, and the results are often taken out of context. Other information may be simply out of date or based on theories that have never been fully proven.
Food companies also play a role. Some advertise products, such as weight loss supplements, that don’t work.
Reference source
10 Leading Causes of Weight Gain and Obesity https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/10-causes-of-weight-gain Accessed: October 29, 2020
John Alen was born in 1971 and is a doctor in the healthcare and psychology fields with many years of experience. He is currently working at easyhealthylive.com, a leading health and psychology blog. Having studied at Y1 National Medical University named after IM Sechenov, John Alen is using his knowledge and experience to help improve the physical and mental health of people in the United States.
