Describe different factors that can affect the onset of obesity and what is considered to be a safe weight loss (and why)

You have been reading a great deal of information on why it is important to stay within a healthy body composition. But we need to talk about how to do so. To start us off, here are most of the factors that can affect a person's ability to maintain a healthy body composition.

Factors that Affect Obesity

Genetics

Genes can and do play a role for some people when it comes to unhealthy levels of body fat (remember this is up and above 25% or 30% fat for men and women respectively). But those who do have a "gene" related to obesity are not doomed to gain weight. Just below is an article about what we do and don't know about obesity and genetics

Click Here for obesity and genetics article

The final point on this webpage notes that "Obesity can be prevented or can be managed in many cases with a combination of diet, physical activity, and medication." Many people in this country will read this last sentence as "Obesity can be prevented or can be managed in many cases with a combination of starvation, torture, and medication"... leading to just using medication. Hopefully, you are starting to get the idea that this last statement is not true. Medication should be the final and very last attempt to make changes. And preventing obesity to begin with can be accomplished with a healthy lifestyle.

To help you start to learn about your genetic potential for health issues, visit this page and feel free to use the "Family Health History" tool...

Click Here for the Family History and Health tool

But, as researchers at Harvard point out... "Genes are not Destiny". For a great read on the subject, go to this website...

Click Here for Harvard's take on the obesity genetic risk

... and note the information on how physical activity can combat genetic-related obesity risk.

Environment

In the Harvard article mentioned above, the author quotes one conclusion by a researcher who studies obesity's link to genetics stating "Genes may co-determine who becomes obese, but our environment determines how many become obese." In this sense, the environment is the way we choose to live our lives, what we surround ourselves with or choose to do with our lives.

Harvard's Health program provides great information on nutrition and obesity. As matter of fact, they released another article on the affects of the enviroment on obesity...

Click Here for the Harvard article on obesity and the environment

In this article, many topics related to the environment are discussed including family life, worksites, neighborhoods, schools (P.E. classes), food marketing/advertising, etc. NBC Nightly news did a short story on this issue as well... Click Here for NBC nightly news story

Speaking of Food marketing, I just had to share the history of the "large" soda (and they are cheap too, more for your money!)

to show this in a different way...

Personal Choices

It seems as though much of the information we have to date related the onset of obesity for a person can come down to choices that we make on a daily basis. We could have a gene that could increase our chances of becoming obese, but if we exercise, we reduce that risk significantly. We could be influenced by food companies to buy unhealthy products. Once we get full time jobs, we could pick those jobs based on how much effort they give to keep employees healthy or perhaps learn how to start a healthier environment at work. We could chose to live in neighborhoods that encourage more activity rather than having to get into a car to drive everywhere. We could also choose to stop watching so much TV or spend so much time in front of our computers.

But I digress...

ok, maybe not...

Metabolism

A person will gain fat on his/her body if he/she consumes (eats/drinks) more calories than he or she expends (resting metabolism, energy to digest food, and physical activity).

Your resting metabolic rate (RMR) is defined as how many calories (energy) you expend just to keep your organs functioning and you living, accounts for about 55 to 75% of your daily energy expenditure. It would be 75% if you are a couch potato and do no real activity during your day . If it was 55% that would mean you are fairly active and burn lots of calories during the day. RMR is also called your basil metabolic rate (BMR), which is measured usually while you are sleeping or just woke up

To calculate your RMR (or BMR), go to this website... Click Here to calculate your metabolic rate. Once on the page, click the "BMR & RMR Calculator" link. Then fill in your information. When view your results, notice that the website tells you that the number of calories listed for you are when you are doing a day of complete rest. Below this information, you will see how many calories (on average) a person can burn during days of various types of activity. This estimate is a good value to use as how many calories you EXPEND during the day. You can compare it to how many calories you eat on a daily basis from your "Food Analysis" assignment to judge if you eat too many or two few calories during the day. But remember, they are both estimates, so if both numbers are somewhat close (within a few hundred calories), you are probably not changing your weight.

Your RMR is really affected by your heredity and the environment in which you grew up. Some people can eat what they want, never workout, and never gain any weight. That, by the way, only lasts a few years and quickly changes in your thirties when you start to lose muscle mass. Men typically burn more calories at rest than women because men have more muscle mass. This is why Health Professionals really want women to get into the gym and add some muscle to their bodies, so they have an easier time maintaining healthy “weight” as they age.

And your lifestyle plays a huge role as well. The biggest contributor within your lifestyle is the amount of exercise you get. If you are physically active, your metabolism goes up a little bit from the activity you do. But if you exercise, you will gain muscle (which will raise your metabolism) and you will also raise your metabolism from each individual exercise bout. When you workout, your burn a great deal more calories each minute of that workout compared to what you were doing sitting on your rear-end in class, in a computer lab, or resting on your bed. But as an added benefit, once you stop working out and go back to your rooms, you don’t just stop burning calories. It might take you two to three hours after you are finished working out to stop burning extra calories from your workout. So after your workout, you can go and sit by a pool and burn lots of calories while you do nothing, except for maybe studying for your next exam.

When it comes to weight maintenance, weight gain, or weight loss it all boils down to one equation and that is the calories in (consumed) versus calories out (expended) equation (also called the Energy Balance Equation)

If you want to maintain your current weight for the rest of your life, you just have to make sure that the calories you eat during the day from fat, protein, carbohydrates, and alcohol have to balance with the calories that you expend during the day from your resting metabolism, physical activity, and digestion of food. The picture above also mentions NEAT or Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis. NEAT basic involves people moving more during the day rather than sitting. For an example, watch this video... Click Here for NEAT video For additional information on N.E.A.T. go to here: https://www.everydayhealth.com/fitness/neat-exercises-for-couch-potatoes.aspx

Think of this equation looking like a scale. If your calories in (energy intake) equals your calories out (energy expenditure), then you should be able to maintain weight over time. To loose weight, you would need to either lighten your energy intake of calories or increase your energy output of calories, which is usually done by increasing activity levels. Or you could do both and lose even more weight. However, this last scenario is not what typically occurs in this country. Usually, most college students after they graduate and get a new job end up struggle with weight maintenance.

What typically happens is that a new graduate doesn’t like to cook, so he or she ends up going out to restaurants frequently and the energy intake side of this scale goes down (with more food calories added to that side). And at the same time, the new graduate has a very limited schedule so the first thing that he or she cuts out of the daily routine is exercise, which results in this side of the energy balance equation to go up. Both of these result in the new graduate gaining a bunch of weight within the first few years after graduation, and that trend typically continues because the person becomes less and less active.