Obesity--What is it and What Causes it?

Do not be confused about being overweight and being obese. Being overweight is weighing above what is medically considered your ideal weight. Being obese is having a large amount of exess weight and body fat. Obese people are extremelly overweight and at high risk for serious medical problems. Obesity can cause diabetes, high blood, heart problems, breathing difficulties and can decrease your life span.

Body mass index or BMI is a measurement used to determine if a person is considered medically obese. BMI is a figure based on your weight and your height. Once your BMI has been determined, it will be compared to other people with the same gender and age. If your BMI is greater than 95% of the other people in that category, you are considered to be overweight. An obese person is considered to be extremely overweight. Very muscular people will be the exception to this rule because their excess weight is muscle and not fat.

Weight gain is caused when a person does not burn off as many calories as they consume. These extra calories will be stored in the body as fat. Obesity does not happen quickly. Usually, an obese person has been consuming an excessive amount of calories for several years.

Genetics plays a large part in how our bodies metabolize food. Families can be predisposed to obesity. Also, the way a person is raised (being expected to eat everything on your plate) will have an affect on how you view eating and food. These factors considered, it is hard to determine if obesity is nature or nurture. I suspect in most cases it is a combination of the two. A very small percentage of people are overweight due to medical reasons.

One the biggest contributors to obesity is emotional eating. Eating because you are bored, upset, stressed out, nervous or sad will only lead to feelings of shame causing you to repeat the whole cycle.

Another leading cause of obesity is not enough movement. With the evolution of the "screen age" people are less active. People are more likely to drive than they are to walk. With today's lifestyle being much faster paced than in decades past, people are more likely to opt for convenience foods and fast foods than they are to take the time to cook a nutritious meal. These are all factors that can be overcome, but it will not happen overnight and it will not happen without some consistent hard work.