1. 2 Factors which affect obesity
There have been extensive and constant investigations about the nature and cause of obesity. There are environmental and genetic factors involved in a complex interaction of variables, which include psychological and cultural influences as well as regulating physiological mechanisms. Throughout the years, many hypotheses have been formulated to try and explain why people become obese while others remain thin, and why it is so difficult for obese people to loose this weight if they have the tendency to recover the weight they fought so hard to loose. This shows us how complex this pathology really is.
We need to say that obesity is a disease. It makes reference, not only to the extremely obese person, but to any person who weight over 30% of his/her normal/proper weight. This is a non-transmissible disease; thus, it is non-contagious. It is a chronic disease which lasts a life-time and has no cure. Different from other chronic diseases, such as diabetes, obesity is visible. It affects both genders, regardless of their age.
In spite of being a chronic disease, an obese patient can recover if he/she follows a proper treatment. In other words, any person, despite his/her tendency to gain weight, can achieve a proper weight if he/she learns to follow specific procedures and keeps them the rest of his/her life.
We need to know that obesity constitutes the main factor of important health risks, such as cardiovascular diseases, diabetes and cancer. Consequently, by fighting obesity, we are preventing other diseases.
We also need to know that more kilograms is not necessarily obesity: for example, a weight lifter or a pregnant woman can both be over their regular weight, but are not obese patients. Thus, obesity means "the excess of weight at the expense of the adipose tissue" or the increase in quantity or size of adipose cells or tissue.
1. 3 Causes
Obesity is a multi-factor disease. In other words, there are many factors which cause the appearance of obesity. Among these factors, the most common are:
genetic inheritance, accelerated life rhythm, poor eating habits and the lack of exercise.
Among the poor eating habits, we can mention:
- A high consumption of high-calorie food, loaded with sugar, flour, low quality fats (trans).
- Substituting water with artificial juice.
- The absence of breakfast, with the consequent decrease in the consumption of dairy products.
- Abundant and large food servings (or helpings).
- A progressive decrease in the consumption of home-made meals and an increase of industrialized food, loaded with fat.
- A progressive increase of alcohol consumption.
- Publicity induced eating, which induces us to eat industrial food more frequently.
It is important for us to reverse this. We know that the treatment against obesity is very complicated and it should be viewed from different points of view, well beyond a mere diet.
The main pillars for loosing weight are: physical exercise, a proper hydration and a proper eating or feeding plan.
1. 4 Diet-therapy treatment
Based solely in the Diet-therapy treatment, we can guarantee that the options are quite numerous.
The feeding plan is conditioned by a large number of factors: eating habits, the time of the year, the nutritional state of the person (overweight or Obesity), specific nutritional needs of the person, availability of food, diet-therapy options, etc.
In this course, we will see many diets; some will be traditional, more or less effective, which have been used more often throughout history and which have had better results.
We will also present a scientific analysis of "in fashion" diets. There is also a lesson dedicated exclusively to “Alternative diets”. These are diets we shouldn't use all the time, but present a viable alternative when we want to loose weight quickly. We can also use them whenever we are "stuck" in our progress.
