Over 1 billion people in the world are considered overweight and over 300 million people are obese. In USA in particular, two thirds of adults are overweight and obese, while over 60% of women are overweight.
Causes of obesity have been linked to many health problems such as heart disease, diabetes, cancer, stroke, osteoporosis, depression, gallstone, arthritis, and more. It also poses negative effects on life in general as well. Obesity can cause ones to have low self-esteem and even to encounter social discrimination. Every day, there are lots of people trying to lose weight for health reasons or for better appearance.
Most of the weight lose methods used are extremely unhealthy; dieting being the most popular method. A study has shown that 60% of people who have been on a diet will experience rebound weight gain within a year and 98% of people will experience rebound weight gain within two years. So, why does dieting not work and why do people gain more weight during dieting? When you go on a diet, your metabolism slows down. Once the diet ends and you resume your normal eating habits, you will gain weight. If you then decided to go on a diet again, this everything becomes a viscous cycle (ie. yo-yo effect). Metabolism will become slower and slower every time you go on a diet, and thus it will be even harder to lose weight. Let's take losing 10 kg for example. By strictly dieting, you will lose only about 30% of fat, but lose about 70% of muscle. On the other hand, if you use a healthy method to lose weight, you will lose about 90% of fat and only about 10% of muscle.
To prevent rebound weight gain, we need to increase our metabolism. However, first we need to understand what causes weight gain. "We are what we eat" and this is really true. Fast food culture consists of high fat and sugar which cause weight gain. Lack of exercise, lack of sleep, medication, hormonal fluctuation and genetic reason can also contribute to weight gain. Keep in mind that we do not become fat in a day; it adds up day by day. A simple rule of thumb to remember, if you eat more than you burn, you will gain "fat."
Types of food that you eat also play an important role in overweight. If we eat high glycemic index food all the time, we will easily gain weight. Simple carbs and sugars such as rice, bread and sodas are high glycemic. Eating low glycemic foods such as vegetables, fruit, and food higher in protein will last you longer. There are three points that should be incorporated into a healthy weight loss program: increase metabolism, healthy eating and lifestyle, proper nutritional supplementation, and detoxification. We will talk more about the three points in our next article.