by: Dr Farida Habib
To many people, living life to the fullest, simply means over eating, and over weight people don’t like to hear the four letter word DIET. However nowadays, we hear and read a lot about obesity. The very mention of this seven letter word creates and recreates in our minds, the figure of a BLOBBY MESS with BLUING BELLY.
The main debatable question is why and how do some people gain weight while others don’t? The simple riposte is “ whenever we fail to burn the number of calories devoured we gain weight”. In other words obesity is closely associated with laziness and a sedentary life style. Physical calmness and sitting down, relaxing, doing nothing and letting life pass plus persistent consumption of excess calories is how some people take life to be.
Genetic Factor
Another important point is the genetic factor. Some of us inherit good genes that accredit us with remarkable dexterity in our intake of calories. People gifted with such genes can eat any type of food according to their desire without storing fat in their bodies, whereas those who don’t inherit such genes are prone to fatness.
Obesity is not always a matter of calories in and calories out, gene have a significant role to play. Whatever the reason is, one thing is for sure, once you gain weight losing it is quite a hard affair.
How To Gauge Obesity?
Again the answer is very straight forward “ measure the size of the waist, which should not be more than 32 inch for a women and should not go beyond 37 inch for men”.
How To Rectify Obesity?
The answer is there is no single effective method to treat obesity, though there are several approaches.
Dietary Approach
- Don’t over eat.
- Consume a diet comprising low fat, high fiber, rich protein and low carbohydrate.
Behaviour Modification
Patients are taught to recognize the eating signals like emotional, situational etc. and how to hold back from them.
Daily Exercise
For a long term maintenance of weight, aerobic exercise on daily basis is recommended. Visit gardens and parks and enjoy the fresh air daily, run up a flight of stairs, walks, jog, go cycling, play some out door games etc. Do anything to get your blood pumping.
Medications and Gastric Bypass Surgery
There are also some medications that treat obesity but most have Toxic Effects.
For the Morbidly Obese, surgical therapy is available in the form of gastric bypass surgery, in which the capacity of the stomach to hold food is decreased, so that the person is no more able to eat the amount of food, eaten prior to surgery. The reduced stomach sends signals to the brain suggesting that it is full. In turn, the brain proclaims a sense of fulfillment, so that there is no more yearning for food.
However, the gastric bypass surgery is fraught with several complications and even death in (one out of 100 cases). Globally, about 300 million people are affected by obesity. Besides the many physical and psychological factors of obesity, there are yet numerous other problems such as it is big hindrance in terms of job hunting, marriage proposals etc.
Although obesity has had its due share of awareness and publicity by the media but despite that, it is no less than a global threat nowadays.