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Did you know that obesity or being overweight does not only change your body’s appearance on the outside? It can impair many of your internal organs and skeletal framework, making you prone to several diseases.
Just as body weight does not accumulate overnight (it adds up slowly), in the same way, you have to bring your weight down slowly but consistently. For this, two things are essential. A strictly healthy diet as prescribed by a dietician – plus, more importantly, a regular and graduated exercise regimen, as recommended and supervised by a certified fitness instructor.
Many people with obesity think a diet alone can do the trick. But exercise is vital for five reasons, and we have covered this right at the beginning of this article.
Once you know how to reduce obesity gradually, also read how many other ways obesity changes the physiology of your body and mind − and how you will reduce all these ailments and internal damage with the proper diet and exercise.
It’s usually apparent to anybody with obesity that they will have to throw out junk food and bad eating habits and begin afresh on a healthful customized diet.
Your diet must be designed for your age, gender, and health conditions. Despite what we all think, it’s possible that even if you are obese, you could be severely malnourished. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), people on an unbalanced diet can have unhealthy fat build-up without adequate vitamins, minerals, and other health-protective and health-regenerative ingredients.
Regarding exercise, there are five essential points to consider – all of these are vitally important.
1. Diet and exercise must work together:
Your exercise regimen has to be tailored to work in sync with your diet regimen. Your dietician and fitness instructor must put their heads together and devise a matched plan.
Neither should exercise make you tired and over-exhausted based on the slimming diet … nor should exercise be too light to use up the calories you consume each day. Intake and output have to be balanced.
2. Calibrated exercising is crucial:
When you have an obesity problem, overdoing specific exercises may injure your joints, muscles, and bones because your body is working out with a heavy weight load.
So, your fitness instructor will probably give you just enough exercises to get a good workout and help the weight come down gradually. When you’ve lost some weight, you will be lighter. It will be less harmful to your body as your exercise intensity slowly increases.
3. Moderate exercise with consistency is the key:
As we said earlier, no one quickly puts on a lot of body weight. It may be the result of weight accumulation over months and years. Therefore, your exercising also has to be moderate but consistent to bring the weight down gradually and in a healthy way.
Also, too much fat loss without simultaneous toning of muscles and skin will leave you with flabby arms or stomach pouches. As your weight goes down, your skin and muscles must shrink proportionately, states Health Match. This will happen aesthetically if your weight loss is slow but steady.
4. Exercising helps more than just obesity:
Exercising will help with many other ailments if you have them. You may have acquired illnesses like high blood pressure, cholesterol, diabetes, or even heart disease due to obesity − or alongside obesity.
All these ailments can benefit significantly from exercise, so remember that exercising is a holistic health practice. With exercise, the body’s energy and resources get redirected towards regeneration. And, so many ailments lose their aggressive hold on you and become progressively controlled, thus aiding the medications your doctor prescribes.
5. During exercise, your body produces “happy hormones”:
A lot of endorphins are created and infused into your bloodstream during exercise. Mayo Clinic has good things to say about endorphins –also known as the “happy hormones”. They make you feel good … energetic, peppy, and cheerful.
This may be a great relief if you’ve silently suffered from the psychological stresses, social guilt, and low self-esteem of being obese. So, remember, exercise does as much good for your mind as it does for your body when you are serious about losing weight and feeling great.
Here are just a few of the most critical illnesses that obesity can contribute to … there are several more too numerous to recount:
The Harvard School of Public Health writes of research on obesity that showed these results: “Compared with men and women in the normal weight range (BMI lower than 25), men with BMIs of 30 or higher had a sevenfold higher risk of developing Type 2 diabetes, and women with BMIs of 30 or higher had a 12-fold higher risk.”
They further explain that the fat cells in obese people, usually stored around the waist, secrete hormones that produce inflammation. And this inflammation makes the body less responsive to insulin. It changes the way the body can metabolize fats and carbohydrates. This leads to high blood sugar levels and, eventually, to full-blown diabetes.
WebMD states, “Every 10 pounds you’re overweight causes your body to produce as much as 10 milligrams of additional cholesterol daily.”
When we have overweight bodies, the extra weight raises our chances of having too much low-density lipoprotein (LDL), or “bad cholesterol”. This clogs arteries and may even cause heart disease or a stroke. Being overweight also increases the triglycerides in our bloodstream (another type of fat), compounding the problems of high cholesterol levels.
Scientists and other healthcare professionals already know that obesity causes “atherosclerosis”, which involves the narrowing and stiffening of arteries. This often leads to high blood pressure (also known as hypertension).
However, in the middle of 2021, Medical News Today released information about new research. This research has found that obesity may raise leptin levels − which in turn triggers the abnormal growth of small blood vessels in the hypothalamus part of the brain. These may also be responsible for causing hypertension in people with obesity.
In an article titled “Weight: A Silent Heart Risk”, researchers at Johns Hopkins Medicine have written of a new heart-weight connection, other than the risks known hitherto to doctors. Most medical scientists already know that people with obesity (by genetics or lifestyle) are more likely to develop conditions like cholesterol, diabetes, and hypertension, which can all have a multiplicative effect on our hearts.
But now, John Hopkins writes, “Excess weight may be more than an “accomplice” in the development of heart problems. The pounds themselves can cause heart muscle injury. Down the road, this can lead to heart failure.”
There are a host of other ailments that you may not suspect of being triggered by obesity, but you must pay attention to these as well:
Obesity can cause manifold problems to your health if it is not taken seriously. Diet is important, but exercise is more critical and must be in step with diet.
A sedentary lifestyle that adds to body weight is both externally and internally very unhealthy, for both your mind and body. Get a move on, get physical, grow slimmer with exercise, and treat your heart responsibly in the process.
