Weight Loss Tips

Weight Gain Is Also Due to Overeating

While reduced physical activity is a significant contributor to weight gain, we are also eating more. The average American adult eats about 300 more calories per day than in 1970. In studies that have looked at where those calories are coming from, mixed grain dishes like pizza and tacos and calorie-containing beverages except milk top the list.

Experts agree – the combination of eating more and moving less is behind the weight gain of the past thirty years.

Weight loss and weight gain are explained by the balance between calories in and calories out. You gain weight if you take in more calories than you burn, and you lose weight if you burn more calories than you take in.

To lose 1 pound, you need to create a calorie deficit of 3,500 calories. Over a week, this translates into 500 calories a day. You can create this calorie deficit through a combination of increased physical activity and cutting back on food. But how much can exercise contribute? Can it be an effective stand-alone weight-loss solution?

Exercise alone as a weight-loss method is particularly ineffective without

paying attention to food intake, and increasing activity is not a free pass to ignore eating habits. People who begin an exercise program often overlook the food side of the calories in/calories out equation. Some people even increase the amount of food they eat because they think they are burning more calories than they really are. The end result – weight gain rather than weight loss!

Going to the gym without a similar effort on the food front is sure to backfire.

Numerous research studies show that it is common for people who are trying to lose weight to overestimate their physical activity—they think that they worked longer and harder than they really did. People also underestimate the amount of food or calories they are eating. So the difference between calories in from food and calories out from exercise is smaller than they think. It is all too easy to overeat any time spent in exercise. For example, it takes about an hour on the treadmill for a 170-pound man to burn off a medium-size bagel (without butter or cream cheese), a few cookies, or a donut. A 150-pound woman doing a 30-minute workout at a circuit training gym like Curves burns about 150 calories, or the equivalent of a 12-ounce glass of orange juice. That’s not a lot of food.

A Closer Look at Weight and Heart Disease

Heart disease is the leading killer of both men and women; 54% of all deaths result from heart disease. Being overweight or obese or having too much abdominal fat are strongly associated with heart disease risk factors including an increase in total and LDL (“bad”) cholesterol, triglycerides, and blood pressure. Overweight, obesity, and abdominal fat increase the risk of diabetes, which is a heart disease risk factor.

Being overweight also directly affects risk of heart disease – if your BMI is in the overweight range, your heart disease risk doubles compared to people with BMIs in the healthy weight range. If your BMI is in the obese category, your heart disease risk quadruples. Losing weight reduces the risk of heart disease.

A Closer Look at Weight and High Blood Pressure

If we could eliminate overweight and obesity in our country, we could eliminate between 40% and 70% of the medical diagnoses of high blood pressure. Societies where people don’t gain much weight as they get older do not experience this increase in high blood pressure. The first thing a doctor tells an overweight or obese patient who has high blood pressure is to lose weight. Often this is enough to get his or her blood pressure under control even without any blood pressure medication.

A Closer Look at Weight and Other Cardiovascular Problems

Increased weight is associated with increased risk of congestive heart failure, a frequent complication of obesity and a major cause of death. Obesity changes the heart size and structure, preventing it from working properly.

Obesity also dramatically increases the risk of ischemic stroke, which is like a heart attack that happens in the brain. Compared to a woman with a BMI in the healthy range, a woman with a BMI greater than 27 has a 75% higher risk of ischemic stroke, and a woman with a BMI greater than 32 has a 137% higher risk. Losing weight helps reduce the risk of both of these problems.

A Closer Look at Weight and Blood Cholesterol

Increased weight negatively affects cholesterol levels in the body, as well as some of the components of cholesterol. Your total cholesterol level is made up of three different types of cholesterol: LDL (“bad” cholesterol), VLDL (a mixture of triglycerides and cholesterol), and HDL (“good” cholesterol). Each type of cholesterol has a different function. For heart health, the goal is to decrease LDL cholesterol and increase HDL cholesterol, since LDL contributes to heart disease risk and HDL helps protect the heart. Increased weight creates problems by increasing LDL levels and decreasing HDL levels. It also drives up triglycerides, another type of fat in the blood. Weight loss improves the blood cholesterol and triglyceride levels.

TARGET CHOLESTEROL LEVELS

What It Stands For Levels to Aim For (mg/dL)

TG Triglyceride Lower than 150

LDL Low-density lipoprotein Lower than 100 is optimal; greater than 160 is high

HDL High-density lipoprotein Greater than 40

Is your body shaped more like an apple or a pear? When it comes to weight and health, being shaped like an apple carries greater health risks than being shaped like a pear.

You are apple-shaped if your body fat has settled around your belly. Men are genetically predisposed to gain weight around their belly, although there are exceptions. Having an apple-shaped body means that you have too much abdominal fat. Abdominal fat increases your risk of heart disease, diabetes, and breast cancer following menopause.

Pear-shaped bodies store more fat in the buttocks and hips. Women tend to gain weight on the hips and thighs. Whatever your shape, however, BMI is still important because it is linked with overall body fat. Chances are, if your BMI is high, your waist circumference will be high too.

How to Evaluate Your Abdominal Fat

• Using a cloth measuring tape, like the one used by tailors, measure around the widest area between your belly button and the top of your hips.
• For men, if this measurement is more than 40 inches, you have abdominal obesity.
• For women, if this measurement is more than 35 inches, you have abdominal obesity.

The Link between Weight and Health

Weight and health are strongly related to each other. Disease risk goes up slowly as weight gain pushes you out of the healthy weight range and into the o

verweight range. Your risk of disease and death increase significantly if extra weight puts you in the obese range. One study reported that obesity in middle age reduces life expectancy by seven years. The list of weight-related diseases continues to grow. Increased weight raises blood lipids (cholesterol and triglycerides) and blood pressure, which are heart disease risk factors. Weight gain impairs the body’s ability to handle glucose (blood sugar) and contributes to a pre-diabetic condition called insulin resistance. Other medical conditions that are associated with increased weight include certain cancers, osteoarthritis of the knees and other weight-bearing joints, gastrointestinal tract disturbances, interrupted sleep and sleep apnea, and reduced fertility. To date, obesity has been linked with more than thirty medical conditions.

It is not just big gains that carry ill health effects—the consequences of gradual or modest weight gain add up quickly. Even 10 or 20 extra pounds increases the risk of death among adults, as shown in a large study published in the New England Journal of Medicine. A recently published study found that just a 5% increase in the BMI over time had a negative impact on simple body functions like walking. Research on women, weight gain, and cancer found that women who gained 21 to 30 pounds since age 18 and were not on hormone replacement therapy were 40% more likely to get breast cancer than women who had gained no more than 5 pounds. The risk increased as the women’s weight increased. Similarly, another study found an 8% increase in the risk of postmenopausal breast cancer for every 11 pounds gained.

DO THOSE EXTRA FEW POUNDS REALLY MATTER?

As weight goes out of the healthy range, risk increases for

• Heart disease
• High blood pressure
• Stroke
• Diabetes
• Several forms of cancer
• Metabolic syndrome (Syndrome X)
• Gallbladder disease
• Gout

Understanding Weight Loss

BMI (Body Mass Index) Demystified

Before getting into the whole truth, let’s explain a term that will help you better understand weight and weight loss: Body Mass Index (BMI). BMI is the standard used around the world to determine whether a person’s weight is healthy, overweight, or obese. For most people, BMI is strongly related to the amount of body fat you carry. You could calculate your BMI using your body weight, your height, and the BMI formula, but it is far easier to look up your BMI on a chart like the one below. To determine your BMI category, find your height in inches in the column on the left, run your finger across to the range that includes your current weight in pounds, then look up to the top of that column for your BMI range and category. This chart applies to both women and men.

Body Mass Index and Weight Classification