Weight gain occurs when you eat more calories than your body uses up. If the food you eat provides more calories than your body needs, the excess is converted to fat. Initially, fat cells increase in size. When they can no longer expand, they increase in number. If you lose weight, the size of the fat cells decreases, but the number of cells does not.
Obesity, however, has many causes. The reasons for the imbalance between calorie intake and consumption vary by individual. Your age, sex, and genes, psychological makeup, and environmental factors all may contribute.
Obesity, however, has many causes. The reasons for the imbalance between calorie intake and consumption vary by individual. Your age, sex, and genes, psychological makeup, and environmental factors all may contribute.
- Genes: Obesity tends to run in families. This is caused both by genes and by shared diet and lifestyle habits. Having obese relatives does not guarantee that you will be obese.
- Emotions: Some people overeat because of depression, hopelessness, anger, boredom, and many other reasons that have nothing to do with hunger. This doesn't mean that overweight and obese people have more emotional problems than other people. It just means that their feelings influence their eating habits, causing them to overeat. In some unusual cases, obesity may be used as a defense mechanism because of the perceived social pressures related to being more physically desirable, particularly in young girls. In these cases, as with the other emotional causes, psychological intervention may be helpful.
- Environmental factors: The most important environmental factor is lifestyle. Your eating habits and activity level are partly learned from the people around you. Overeating and sedentary habits (inactivity) are the most important risk factors for obesity.
- Sex: Men have more muscle than women, on average. Because muscle burns more calories than other types of tissue, men use more calories than women, even at rest. Thus, women are more likely than men to gain weight with the same calorie intake.
- Age: People tend to lose muscle and gain fat as they age. Their metabolism also slows somewhat. Both of these lower their calorie requirements.
- Pregnancy: Women tend to weigh an average of 4-6 pounds more after a pregnancy than they did before the pregnancy. This can compound with each pregnancy. This weight gain may contribute to obesity in women.
"Obesity Causes." emedicinehealth. 12/30/2005. Emergency
Care + Consumer Health. 23 May 2007
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Hi Mika,
At the end of the last class (on May 31st) we spoke a bit about your difficulty in finding an NGO that deals specifically with the issue of obesity. As I told you, and this applies to other controversial issue groups as well, it may be difficult to find an NGO that deals ONLY with the issue your group is researching. You may have to find a group that deals with the problem of obesity as one issue among many. Many public (or consumer) advocacy groups are concerned with the connection between obesity and public health (esp. obesity and diseases caused by being overweight). Infoplease.com has a good list of U.S. National Consumer Organizations. One that's appropriate for your purposes would be Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI). Go to that page and try downloading the PDF with the file name "Read our 35th Anniversary Report: Building a Healthier America." Take a look at page 8 and you'll see why they're concerned about the growing problem of obesity and how it can be addressed.
Cheers,
Joseph D.
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