Causes of excess weight
- Physical inactivity (low physical activity)
Sedentary work, elevators, accessibility to transport: all this affects physical activity and, unfortunately, not in our favor.
- Refined foods in the diet
The hyper-availability of refined products also plays a cruel joke. Artificially processed foods are:
- low biological value,
- calorie content
- low protein and fiber
- lots of saturated fats and carbohydrates.
- Excess calories
Due to snacking on the run, our body receives an excess of calories instead of a sufficient amount of healthy macro- and micronutrients. The body often does not have the opportunity to spend these calories and stores them in the form of fat deposits.
How does excess weight affect your health?
When health is not a priority, we deprive ourselves of the prospect of living happily ever after, and we become a potential target for dangerous symptoms that can lead to serious illnesses.
Thanks to the development of social networks and the Internet in general, more and more people are thinking about fitness. Competent exercise develops muscle mass, making the body slim and fit.
What do developed muscles give?
Developed muscle mass, in turn:
- protects against diabetes as it improves insulin sensitivity;
- increases the chances of surviving cancer, while a high percentage of fat reduces these chances;
- affects life expectancy; protects against age-related metabolic deterioration.
As for excess adipose tissue, especially visceral fat, it negatively affects all body systems. By getting rid of excess fat, we protect ourselves from diabetes, reduce the level of chronic inflammation and correct hormonal balance.
The Metabolically Healthy Overweight Theory
There is an opinion that people can be overweight and still be healthy. More often we are talking about the theory of “metabolically healthy excess weight”. You should not be under the illusion that just because a person appears healthy at a given point in time, this does not exclude the presence of significant subclinical problems.
“Healthy overweight people” are still at higher risk of developing metabolic diseases than lean or lean people with actively exercising muscles. It turns out that a “healthy obese person” is actually just a ticking time bomb.