Overcoming Obesity

Save your money for better investment rather than medicine

When you are an obese person, you have to face certain difficulties such as the risk of getting non-communicable disease including diabetes, high blood pressure, coronary heart diseases, liver diseases, and reducing of efficiency of working ability, decreasing of flexibility, subjecting to infertility and etc.

There are 2 ways to reduce your weight. They are planning, changing, maintaining diet and engaging in exercises. When you look for the best way, carrying out both planning, changing, maintaining diet and engage in exercises simultaneously is the best way and the most suitable target for the weight reduction is 0.5kg/week.

If you try only one way to lose weight, you will have to do either diet controlling or exercises to a higher extent, which will be annoying then. There are some issues that will be occurring if you choose only changing your diet for weight reduction. Then, you have to change not only quantity of food but also the quality of food in your diet. It can stress you then. As well as you will not be able to receive any physical or mental benefits which can be achieved via engaging in exercises. If you choose only engaging in exercises for weight reduction, you have to engage in exercises of high intensity for a longer time period of the day. It has to be done not for one day but for several days per week. It also causes both physical & mental stress. Finally you may be exposed to unhealthy factors such as elevated blood cholesterol, high alcohol consumption and decreased fiber intake due to not controlling your diet.

When you follow both ways simultaneously, that is the best way which helps to maintain the quantity of nutrients which provide energy. As well as it increases physical activity level of you while improving your muscle mass. It reduces the stress for you than previous (when using one method) as both ways support for weight reduction simultaneously while providing synergistic effect.

Fat/lipid, protein, water are diet related factors which increase body weight. But increased body weight due to water is temporary. Although, body weight is increased when drinking high amount, if it is not it will be back to normal. As protein contributes to improved muscle mass, body weight is also increased. So, increased body weight due to protein is a healthy factor. However, increasing body weight due to fat/lipid leads to obesity. So, you have to maintain fat content in the diet to manage fat deposition in the body. As well as you must avoid excess intake of carbohydrates and proteins which can be converted into fat. Both actions must be carried out while burning fat via engaging in exercises.

There are some practices among people who need to lose weight. One practice is to increase consumption of protein contained animal sources while cutting down high amount of carbohydrates containing foods (starchy foods). It is not good because protein containing animal sources have high amount of fat and no fibers. As well as it reduces time gap in-between meals and occurs hunger frequently. Due to increased consumption of animal protein sources, vulnerability for different types of diseases such as coronary heart diseases, diabetes, liver diseases, and intestinal cancers are increased. Another one is prolong starvation (for a week). It is also not a healthy practice as it is more prone to loss protein as well as micro nutrients like vitamins and minerals. If there is loss of protein, muscles will be getting wasted. Not only that but also micro nutrient deficiencies can be occurred due to loss of vitamins and minerals. Correct method to change diet is given below.

You can cut down initially the intake of sweets, biscuits, cakes, margarine, fast foods like rolls, patties, pizza, French fries instead of cutting down intake of major food items such as rice, bread, dhal, green gram, cowpea or milk. If you do not like to cut down that intake, you have to reduce amount and frequency that they are taken. When cutting down calories from the diet via reducing intake of starchy foods than previous, volume of the meal is reduced. It can be managed by adding soup, salad, grains or a glass of water to your meal. Because of that you can satisfy hunger.

There are some doubts about fruits and certain types of vegetables such as beetroot, carrot, and pumpkin when adding them into a meal while planning diet for weight reduction as they provides energy. Although, fruits and above mentioned vegetables provide energy with 25-60 kcal/100g and 28-35 kcal/100 respectively, it is comparatively low when compared to other starchy foods. So, adding fruits and vegetables for your diet is not bad during weight loss.

When choosing exercises for weight reduction, go for exercises that you prefer. If you like to enjoy with friends, badminton, table tennis, cricket like team games are good options for you to engage in physical activity. Otherwise, you can select riding bicycle, swimming, walking to engage in physical activity alone. But if you are a patient or a person having risk for coronary heart diseases, high blood pressure, diabetes, you have to choose exercise based on physician’s advises. You should engage in exercises at least 3 days/week. If it is possible to engage exercise 5 days/week, it will be more effective for weight reduction. Time duration for a day is at least 30 minutes continuously. You can do exercises any time except for the times near major meals as it disturbs digestion. Initially, you should start selected exercise for short time period with less frequency. However, you have to do warming up exercise before 5 minutes to start them. Not only that but also, warm down exercises should be done just after the exercises to avoid injuries and pains.

Take home messages from this article are given below.

• You have to maintain fat content and avoid excess intake of carbohydrates and proteins which can be converted into fat. Also avoiding your consumption of fast foods, sugary food items such as sweets, cakes and reducing starchy foods are also essential.

• You have to increase your consumption of fruits and vegetables. That means, you have change your usual plate into healthy plate which includes ½ of fruits and vegetables, ¼ of protein sources including fish, meat, poultry, legumes and ¼ of carbohydrate containing foods such as cereals and yams.

• Engaging in suitable exercises at least 30 minutes/ day simultaneously while changing diet is also essential to burn fat. You have to choose either team games like badminton, table tennis, cricket or physical activity which can be done alone such as riding bicycle, swimming, walking based on your preference. Giving attention for warm up and warm down exercises is essential for just before and after exercises respectively.

C.C. Ranasinghe

Undergraduate (3^rd year student)

Department of Applied nutrition

Faculty of Livestock, Fisheries and Nutrition

Wayamba University of Sri Lanka