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Bibliography

Ingram, Scott. Want Fries with That?: Obesity and the Supersizing of America. New York: Franklin Watts, 2005. Print.

Taitz, Jennifer. End Emotional Eating: Using Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills to Cope with Difficult Emotions and Develop a Healthy Relationship to Food. Oakland, CA: New Harbinger Publications, 2012. Print.

World Health Organization. "Obesity." WHO. World Health Organization, 2014. Web. 28 Jan. 2014.

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How bad is sugar for you really? We look at why exactly sugar is so troublesome, how it affects your body, and how healthy sugar substitutes really are.

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Adipose Tissue: Everyone Has It

In most cases, the excess weight that pushes someone from overweight to obese is due to an increase in the amount of fat contained in that person's adipose tissue.

Adipose tissue gets its name from adipocytes, a group of specialized cells that contain fat. These fat cells, which we all have, are like microscopic bags that contain a drop of fat.

Where's Your Adipose?

Fat cells are located mainly beneath the skin, where they accumulate and act as protection from heat or insulation from cold. This type of fat is known as skin fat.

Adipose tissue is also found around internal organs, where it provides protective padding and acts as a holding tank for vitamins, minerals, and other nutritional elements. This is known as visceral fat.

Adipose Tissue and Weight Gain

Scientists say that excess growth of adipose tissue has several causes. Because adipose tissue is the body's fat-storage-system, the cells are designed to absorb excess calories that are converted into fat. 

In theory, this fat is released into organs and other parts of the body, as it is needed. In studies done on these cells, however, it appears that adipocytes from any overweight person do not release fat as easily as adipocytes from a person of normal weight.

Weight gain occurs when fat cells undergo a large "energy in" from food, and a small "energy out" from exercise. The only ways to reduce the size of adipose cells is to limit the number of calories that are taken into the body and are stored there. (This reduction may become more difficult if a person is accustomed to eating a lot of calories and working off very few through exercise.)

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Another key understanding obesity is the distinction that scientists make in body structure. 

The 3 basic types of human body structure are:

Endomorphic - An endomorphic person has a large body with short arms and legs. He or she may have a soft, round shape with significant fat deposits.

Mesomorphic - A mesomorphic person is someone who is "well-built" or heavily muscled.

Ectomorphic - An ectomorph has a small body with long arms and legs. These people are often described as skinny or bony.

People with any of these body types can become over-weight.

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Is Your Environment a Friend or Foe?

Genetics play a major role in obesity. In general, people inherit their body type from their biological mothers. If the mother is heavy as an adult, there is about a 75% chance that her children will be heavy. If both parents are obese, a child has an 80% chance of becoming obese.

In addition, a person's environment is also a key factor in the problem. 

According to the Institute of Medicine, Environmental Causes of Obesity include:

Fewer Opportunities to Exercise: Some cities and towns that are not designed for walking or other physical activities results in fewer opportunities to exercise for the people within the premises.

Economics and Lifestyle: Modern lifestyles pressuring family to economize on food and to spend less time shopping for and preparing health food has led to the increased consumption of snack or convenience foods that are high in fat and calories.

Limited Access to Fresh Foods: In many communities, especially those with lower socioeconomic status, are in situations where there is little access to fresh foods, and those that are available are priced too high for household budgets.

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The billions of dollars that the food industry spends on junk-food marketing each year influence what children eat, and what they pester their parents to buy. That'€™s why curbing junk-food marketing ...

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You’ve probably heard someone say, “I’m fat but fit.” Several recent studies have suggested this statement could be true. But a new review of existing studies published this week in the Annals of Internal Medicine may put a stop to the rumor.

CNN recently published this article about how healthy obesity isn’t really “healthy.” If you don’t want to read this, I understand, so I have thoughtfully compiled a summary:

Scientists looked for the prevalence of cardiovascular events (any adverse event related to the heart like heart disease or a heart attack) in people of the following groups: (1) Metabolically unhealthy, normal weight, (2) Metabolically unhealthy, overweight, (3) Metabolically unhealthy, obese, (4) Metabolically healthy, overweight, (5) Metabolically healthy, obese, and used  the following group (6) Metabolically healthy, normal weight as their control. 

"Metabolically healthy" here was defined by their blood panel. Normal cholesterol, normal triglycerides, etc etc. Basically, their insides are healthy! 

They found, as one would expect, being metabolically unhealthy puts you at high risk for heart diseases, regardless of your weight. This shouldn’t be surprise…to anyone. 

They found very little difference between metabolically healthy folks of normal and over/higher weights! This is the kind of thing that you hear about and probably can see at the gym. You hear about people saying their blood panel is fantastic, even though they don’t quite look “healthy.” I have met several people who look to be far behind me in fitness, but can probably run a mile faster than I ever could. 

The reason why healthy, but overweight isn’t really a “thing” is because of long term effects. The risk at one point in time might not show any significant difference between the groups, but over time, overweight and obese people developed more cardiovascular events, irrespective of their metabolic health. 

Given this information and the fact that every body is different (biochemically, physically, metabolically, etc), it’s very difficult to come to an agreement about how much weight influences health in the long term. It’s a very fine line, but plenty of studies have shown that being overweight does have some long term impact on cardiovascular health. But then you wonder, if I am overweight, how do I fix it (because apparently, being healthy inside isn’t enough)?

I don’t like to bring weight into my progress, largely because it’s discouraging and also because I was considered “overweight” by BMI even when I was a stick. I don’t like that BMI is a hard and fast rule in medicine, but I also don’t like when studies like this make it seem like it is. At the end of the day, these researchers cannot control every aspect of their human subjects’ lives. They could smoke, they could eat McDonald’s every day, they could be a couch potato and never exercise, they could be 80 year old or 18, they could totally yo-yo in their weight: literally an endless list of variables, none of which was thoroughly analyzed/taken into account, but each of which is important enough to nullify the findings of the study entirely, if skewed.

The takeaway of this should be: Obesity is a growing epidemic, but is largely a result of lifestyle. Studies show that there is a correlation between obesity and the increased risk of cardiovascular events, but they don’t show causation. Eat healthy, be active, take care of yourselves so you can live long enough to take care of others.

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Chronic obesity risk starts before kindergarten

Children who are obese by age 5 may remain that way for the rest of their lives, according to a New England Journal of Medicine study, which surveyed nearly 8,000 children.

The study, which was released Thursday, revealed that a third of the children who were overweight in kindergarten were obese by the time they reached the eighth grade. Virtually every child who was already obese remained so for the duration of the study.

While very few obese and some overweight kindergartners managed to drop the extra pounds, some children with normal weights also became obese during the study, which followed the children from kindergarten to eighth grade. As each year passed the chances of an obese or overweight child losing the weight decreased.

Read more

Photo: Raul Arboleda/AFP/Getty Images

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Oh, those greedy fat cells...