What Is Obesity?
Obesity is a condition in which excess fat accumulates excessively in the body, and overeating is its biggest cause. Overeating here does not mean eating a lot on one occasion; it means eating more than the energy you consume in a day, and when this continues, you gain weight.
Medically, the ideal body weight for both men and women is said to be the weight in their early twenties. In other words, it refers to your weight at the time when growth has finished and the body is physically mature, and it is essential to maintain this weight throughout your life. Obesity is also said to be the root of many illnesses. That is, obesity is a bodily state that can cause various diseases, and it also leads to many complications.
Obesity and body weight are also linked to increased mortality: for both men and women, people about 10% lighter than average weight are said to have the lowest death rate. In general, not being obese can be an important factor in longevity, and obesity causes great hardship in physical activity and in coping with stress. Therefore, people who are obese should follow a sound diet and keep up appropriate exercise to maintain a healthy life.
Causes of Obesity
1. Genetic influence
If one parent is obese, the probability that a child will become obese is 40%, and if both parents are obese, it reaches 50-70%. Genetic factors are thus a major cause of obesity, and a genetically low basal metabolism is also a characteristic of obese people.
Obesity due to heredity is a mixed type, involving both an increase in the number of fat cells and an increase in their size, which shows how hard it is to lose weight.
The fact that children of obese parents often become obese themselves is also partly because they are influenced by the family's eating habits.
2. Overeating
The most common cause of obesity is overeating. The calories taken in from food are burned through activity, and the calories left over are stored in the body. This means triglycerides accumulate in fat cells, which is how you gain weight. In particular, some diet methods involve simply starving yourself, and this leads to binge eating.
After eating, a person of normal weight feels full at a blood sugar level of about 120-130, whereas in obese people this level is much higher, so they have to eat a lot before feeling full, which leads to overeating. Binge eating contributes greatly to raising this blood sugar level. Thus overeating, or binge eating, is what makes you gain weight without realizing it.
3. Poor eating habits
Obese people often have problems with their eating habits themselves. To control food intake, eating habits and lifestyle habits must be corrected first, so an accurate assessment of them is needed.
In particular, food eaten during the day is used for energy expenditure, while food eaten at night is used for storage, so eating at night is a direct cause of obesity.
