The main cause of obesity is the adoption of poor habits and an improper lifestyle. Therefore, with the right healthy behaviors, it is easy to prevent obesity. Exercise and a healthy diet should be part of your everyday life routine.
You may have an interest in learning about obesity prevention for a number of reasons: you’re noticing alarming weight gain, family medical history, a related health problem, or simply because you want to steer away from obesity and be a healthy individual. Whatever the reason, avoiding obesity is an intention everyone should have. If you take action, you’ll reduce your chances of obesity along with the risk of numerous health problems, from heart disease to diabetes to certain cancers that are prevalent within obese populations.
How Do You Become Obese?
Obesity develops over time when individuals fail to adhere to a proper diet and lack physical exercise. In most cases, too much food is contrasted with too little physical activity. Even a slight imbalance between food consumption and exercise can lead to being overweight and even obese. In addition to lifestyle, genetic and psychological factors play an important role in the development of obesity.
A number of factors can promote obesity:
- Common occurrences of obesity in the family
- Unhealthy lifestyle:
- Sedentary lifestyle
- Consumption of larger portions of carb-rich foods and high-calorie foods
- Low-fiber and/or high-fat diet
- Stress, depression, and lack of sleep
- Eating disorders
- Metabolic diseases (for example, hypothyroidism or Cushing’s syndrome)
- Medicines that can also affect body weight (such as cortisone and some medicines for depression, high blood pressure, or diabetes)
Therapy for Obesity
Therapy for obesity is only successful if the person is motivated, ready to set goals and take action in their lives. The goal of therapy, in this case, will be to retrain your mind and develop daily disciplines that are associated with a healthy lifestyle. You must be realistic – it is better to first stabilize the weight and reduce it moderately over time than to lose an enormous amount of weight in a short period of time. Otherwise, frustration and premature giving up are inevitable despite the treatment that has started.
The goals of therapy for obesity are:
- Lose weight: Depending on the degree of obesity and previous fat intake, an average weight loss of 7–12lbs per year is realistic.
- Keep your body weight stable over the long term
- Optimize habits with regard to nutrition and exercise behavior; learn about healthy eating and proper exercise
- Reduce or prevent other risk factors and secondary diseases
- Become more mindful about self-conscious thoughts
- Increase the quality of life
Prevent Obesity through Diet and Exercise
The most effective method for weight control and maintaining a normal weight is to eat a healthy and varied diet and exercise regularly. Avoid lavish meals and reduce the consumption of foods rich in fat, sugar, and carbohydrates (cheese, sausage, meat, fast food, potato chips, chocolate, baked goods). Replace animal fats with vegetable ones as often as possible. Fresh fruit, salads, and vegetables as well as foods rich in fiber (whole-grain products) fill you up faster and are digested more slowly by the body than sweet and fatty foods. This way you can avoid food cravings. It’s also important to note that you should try and reduce your alcohol consumption as much as possible. You might not expect it but one beer averages around 150 calories!
There one phrase that you should also remember if you’re trying to lose weight. Eat less, exercise more. Because, the amount of daily exercise per individual will all depend on your current body weight, gender, age, BMI and daily food consumption. But if you just remember, to eat less and exercise more, then you’ll be on the right track.
Guidelines specify that half an hour to an hour of physical activity is recommended regularly around three to five times a week to maintain current weight. For weight loss, you’re looking at at least five hours of exercise per week.
The risk of diabetes increases tenfold
People with obesity also suffer from many physical consequences. If you are overweight, not only are your cholesterol and blood sugar levels increased, but your blood pressure also rises. In addition, obesity often slows down fat and carbohydrate metabolism and promotes inflammatory processes in the body.
Doctors refer to these metabolic disorders as the so-called metabolic syndrome, which is one of the greatest risk factors for diabetes mellitus. Obese people are six to ten times more likely to have type 2 diabetes than people of normal weight. In addition, obesity promotes high blood pressure, vascular diseases, chronic diseases such as fatty liver and is a risk factor for a severe course of a COVID-19 infection.
