Obesity: The Big Fat Truth

Almost a month into the New Year and having settled back into the daily routine, how many of us can truly say that we have been sticking to our resolutions of eating more healthily or exercising daily and staying active?

It is so easy to be consumed by the demands of your job, family and lifestyle, that many of us forget to make time to take care of ourselves.

Obesity is a very common problem which affects one in four adults. Obesity is often caused by the consumption of more calories than a person is burning off through exercise and physical activity. The excess calories are stored by the body as fat. However, this is not the only cause of obesity. An increasingly common contributor is our modern lifestyles. We tend to spend a lot of time sitting behind desks, on our tablets and phones and by the time we have realised it is lunch, we duck out for a quick McDonald's and think nothing of it.

Obesity can lead to various health problems such as type 2 diabetes and coronary heart disease and it can also trigger more psychological problems leading to low self-esteem, low confidence and depression.

Type 2 diabetes can arise from being overweight because this places extra stress on your body and can cause it to become resistant to insulin. The prolonged effects of the insulin resistance can cause you to develop type 2 diabetes as the cells in your body do not react to the insulin present. 

Being overweight can also lead to heart disease as it causes high blood pressure, high cholesterol and high blood glucose levels. This can cause fatty deposits to build up in the walls of the coronary artery. This means that the coronary artery becomes narrower and there is reduced blood flow to the heart which can cause angina or a heart attack. Obesity can also cause heart failure where the heart is not able to supply enough blood to meet the body's demand. 

Recently, obesity has been labelled as the “new smoking” in terms of the impact on a person’s health and also the increasing cost to the NHS. The problem is estimated to cost the NHS £9 billion per year and is said to be a threat to the sustainability of the NHS. Not only is there rising healthcare costs, there is also an increase in economic costs as obesity causes illnesses which results in more people taking sick leave and therefore output and productivity decreases.

The most obvious way of tackling obesity is to change your lifestyle by starting to eat healthily and exercising regularly. This may be by designing a balanced, calorie-controlled diet coupled with regular exercise either with a group, at the gym or simple activities like going for a run.

There is weight loss surgery available for extreme cases however, by having this, it does not mean that you do not need to still embrace a healthy lifestyle in order to maintain and control your weight.

One of the public proposals being discussed is the fact that more money should be spent on lifestyle intervention programmes to encourage you to change your lifestyle by highlighting the problems and consequences of being obese rather than being spent on surgery related to obesity. This is aimed to prevent the development of obesity so that it is easier to be controlled. As well as this, employers may be offered incentives to get them to encourage their staff to become healthier in order to ease the economic cost.

There is no quick solution for obesity. Commitment and time is definitely needed for weight loss in order to see the full benefits. As well as this, you need to ensure that you have the determination to continue to exercise regularly and eat well in order to maintain an active and healthy lifestyle.

“Be the change you wish to see in the world”