The 6 main causes of being overweight - why do we become fat?

This article may seem a little obvious to most people, especially people who are overweight, but believe it or not, there are factors involved with being overweight that many people are not aware of. They think it all comes down to eating too much. Ironically, it’s got very little to do with how much you eat, but more to do with WHAT you eat as well as factors that have nothing to do with eating at all.

Let me start off by saying that you can eat as much as you want and still maintain your ideal weight. If you’re thinking this is voodoo, it’s not. You see, the general concept of how we gain a pound and lose a pound is very simple. The best way to explain this is with an example. But first let me explain what a calorie is. Yes, the evil culprit to this whole vicious cycle of gaining and losing weight.

Calories, to keep this as simple as possible, is the amount of energy that goes into our bodies in order to give us fuel to operate. If we get just the right amount of calories, then our weight stays where it is. However, if we take in more calories than we need because we don’t burn as much as we’d like, then the excess calories just sit in our bodies. When this happens, those calories turn to fat and that’s how we gain weight and become overweight.

Okay, remember I said that being overweight had nothing to do with how much food we ate? This is true to an extent. Naturally, I guess we could force ourselves to eat enough food to gain weight even if we at the right kinds of food. It would just be a lot harder to do than if we lived on a diet of Devil Dogs and Yodels. But the main reason people are overweight is because they take in more calories than they burn. Do that over a long enough period of time and you will become overweight. Take in enough calories and you’ll gain a lot of weight.

Eventually, we’ll get to the actual part of dieting, which, when all is said in done, comes down to taking in fewer calories than you burn in a day. That is where the underlying reasons come in for why we are overweight, which come down to these few things.

The first cause for being overweight, is that we eat the wrong foods and too many of the wrong foods.

A Whopper from Burger King has more calories than an average person needs for a whole day. So if you live on a diet of Whoppers, and mind you, this is just one meal in your day, you WILL gain weight, and a lot of it. There is just no way around this.

The second cause of beng overweight is that we don’t exercise enough.

The only way we burn a significant amount of calories is by exercising. If we sit in a chair all day long, there are only so many calories we’re going to burn.

The Third cause of being overweight is hormonal.

There aren't any tests you can really do to check the hormones for putting on weight, although thyroid dysfunction probably comes to mind, which can be tested for. What can be said, is if the hormones responsible for keeping you of normal weight are out of kilt, then putting on weight can occur. For example, if you eat normally through out the day, but then find your self starving after your night time meal, then that is likely a hormonal thing. There aren't any hormone pills for you to take, as there aren't any manufactured to correct it. It's a field of research very much in its infancy, but at least the doctor can identify it based on your eating pattern. It is a real bummer one too and I do suffer from this myself. Some anti-diabetic medicines can help fix it a bit.

The fourth cause of being overweight is poor sleep.

When we don't get enough restful sleep - whether because we burn the candle at both ends or have a neighbours dog waking us up repeatedly during the night - our bodies seek out high calorie foods to boost it's tired state. Of course, that just means a weight problem in the end. Eating may boost the energy for a little bit, but it doesn't rest the body, so you keep craving for more food very fast.

The fifth cause of being overweight and the least able to be controlled, is crisis and stress.

When we are under an emotional sledge hammer for a while or under chronic stress, we sometimes react by seeking comfort from high calorie food, this is a biological reaction to the hormones the brain secretes at these times and these high cal foods of fat and sugar actually do help the brain feel better when under ongoing stress - hence the term comfort foods. The will power we used to control our eating, is diverted to handling the crisis or stress, which means it is very easy to go back to eating too much too often and that is also what happened to me. It isn't a failure of will power, it's just that the will power has better things to do than control a diet which seems to be of less significant consequence than the current crisis or stress. Of course, from personal experience, we all know a persons immediate response to stress is the exact opposite, you go off your tucker, but draw that stress on and the brain flips the hormones over to ones that seek the high cal foods.

The sixth cause of being overweight, unfortunately, is heredity.

Some people have slow metabolisms, usually inherited from one of their parents. This makes burning calories that much harder. These are usually the most difficult cases in losing weight, but it is still possible to do so.

There are other causes of being overweight too.

Malfunctioning thyroid, and a number of medical problems, can also lead to us being overweight, which is why it is a good idea to get checked out by a doctor - to determine if being overweight has an underlying medical condition that needs to be addressed.

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