
December 26, 2022
What Causes Obesity?
This is one of the leading questions which come to everyone’s mind when it comes to losing weight. Most of us do not think much and starting reducing calories as less the input more will be the weight reduction. I have encountered many dietitians or nutritionists who gave their clients a diet plan of as low as 1200 Cal or even less than that, claiming that within one month you will lose 10-15 kgs or even more than that. Are you one of them that have seen or went through such promises and end up gaining more weight than you have?
From the last few decades, obesity comes out to be a hurricane that is trying to engulf the entire world in sickness and disability and the best fat loss advice is to restrict calories. We are advised not to take ghee, butter, meat, cheese, and nuts as they are energy-dense food perhaps there is a fashion of low fat and low carb products. The market is flooded with such stuff and what makes them more appealing is the advertisement that a top actor or actress, which I believe has never eaten such things but advise you to be fit by eating these diet foods and most of us blindly follow them.
Now, the question comes “What is the outcome of such fad diets?” Does the problem of obesity go by cutting down calories and eating so-called “Healthy Food”? The answer is a big NO.
It’s high time to understand that body can adjust its basal metabolic rate (BMR)-the energy required to keep all the life processes like digestion, respiration, circulation, etc going. When we eat less than what is required, the body starts behaving as a miser and can reduce the BMR up to 40%. It goes into a shocking state and starts storing everything as fat or future survival, which means you don’t lose weight.
Bodyweight and body fat are regulated by hormones that regulate hunger by telling us when to eat and when to stop. Imagine you are served with a buffet in which you have already eaten a heaping plateful of food and you are full. Now could you eat a few more paneer tikka which you ate happily a few minutes back? Even the thought of eating one more makes you nauseous. This is the powerful effect of the satiety hormone which stops you from eating.
In a nutshell, Obesity is a hormonal imbalance, not caloric intake. Fat accumulation is truly not a problem of energy excess, it’s a problem of energy distribution. As long as we believed that excess calorie intake led to obesity, we are doomed to failure as we uselessly tried to reduce calories. The most important factor in controlling fat accumulation and weight gain is to control the hormone signals we receive from fat, not the total number of calories we eat. So, understand the requirements of your body, identify the signals which our body gives us rather than starving yourself. The ideal way is to take a balanced diet that includes all the macro and micronutrients to maintain optimal hormone levels that reduce fat and keep your belly tight.