Losing Weight Could Be a Matter of Life and Death

While being thin may be an unhealthy obsession in Western culture, the opposite is an unhealthy reality today around the world.

Obesity has become a global epidemic that — like waistlines — keeps expanding. Its prevalence worldwide has more than tripled since 1979, with about 500 million adults affected, including about 79 million in the United States. That’s more than a third of the population older than 20. Many more are overweight, a milder form of obesity.

Obesity raises the risk for heart disease, Type 2 diabetes, osteoarthritis and certain cancers, and it’s the second-leading cause of preventable death in the U.S. Both the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Health Organization classify obesity as a chronic disease that requires ongoing management to avoid serious health impacts.

What Is Body Fat?

Body fat stores energy our bodies can access if food becomes temporarily unavailable. It’s also an important part of the endocrine system, a network of glands and organs that produce hormones to regulate bodily functions, including metabolism, appetite and the infection-fighting immune system.

Subcutaneous fat lies just below the skin’s surface, where it protects muscles and bones from impact, gives you energy and helps regulate body temperature. If you accumulate too much subcutaneous fat, the excess is stored between your intestines and other abdominal organs. This is called visceral fat, and it’s what causes serious health problems.

Medical researchers have long grappled with determining how much body fat is too much. Today, the most widely used measure is the Body Mass Index, a simple calculation comparing weight to height, which provides a fairly accurate estimate of excess body fat for most adults.

How Obesity Impacts Health

Carrying extra fat leads to serious health consequences that range from disability to premature death.

On the disability end, those extra pounds increase wear and tear on cartilage in weight-bearing areas like knees, hips and spine, often leading to osteoarthritis, which is characterized by joint pain, stiffness and reduced mobility.

More dangerous still are the effects of obesity on the cardiovascular system, raising the risk of heart disease and stroke.

As cells in visceral fat are over-exposed to sugar, they become less responsive to insulin, which is needed to regulate blood sugar levels. Insulin resistance is a precursor to prediabetes and type 2 diabetes, a serious condition of unregulated blood sugar that can damage your heart, eyes, kidneys, nerves and blood vessels over time.

Excess fat also causes chronic inflammation, which can damage DNA and lead to 13 types of cancers, which together account for 40 percent of all cancer diagnoses.

Causes of Obesity

Maintaining a desired weight is a matter of energy balance. We gain weight when energy intake (measured in calories) exceeds energy output through physical activity, brain function and metabolism, the chemical reactions that convert food into energy.

Maintaining an energy balance may sound easy, but the scale is stacked against us:

• Evolution. Our human bodies are stuck in a time when it took many hours (and calories) to find the next meal, and they are designed, if the meal was a big one, to store the excess energy in fat tissue for the certain times of scarcity to come.
• Food production. Today, the next meal (or snack) is as near as your pantry, refrigerator or corner store, and too often we are tempted to choose foods that are convenient but highly processed and dense in calories.
• Serving sizes. Both grocery store products and restaurant meals have increased in size since the 1970s and now exceed federal standards for dietary guidance.
• Physical activity. Labor-saving devices have reduced the average person’s daily caloric expenditure. Being active is no longer a necessity but a lifestyle choice.

While eating too much and not exercising enough are the main causes of the obesity epidemic, genetics also play a role for some people, as do other environmental and behavioral factors.

So What Can You Do?

The scales may be stacked against us, but the good news is that the extra pounds can be managed, and your health will begin to improve with even a 5 percent weight loss.

Losing weight will always require consuming fewer calories than you expend in energy. In other words, you’ll need eat less and exercise more. You might want to seek  the support of medicine, a dietitian or behavioral counselor.

If diet and exercise don’t work and you have serious health issues, your doctor may discuss bariatric surgery.

The right treatment plan for you will depend on your weight, overall health and willingness to commit to a new, more healthful lifestyle.