Obesity and Exercise
Obesity is a critical public health problem, and it’s repeatedly associated with severe health conditions. Obesity is referred to as the condition of being overweight or having a body mass high than 30. The danger of developing overweight or obesity is based on an individual’s lifestyle, such as diet and exercise levels. Therefore, the treatment for obesity commonly involves exercise incorporated with diet measures. Worldwide, obesity has become a regular concern because, with the modernization of lifestyles, people have become less active physically. Other times people overestimate their physical activeness. Physical exercise activities have positive impacts on body weight and cardiovascular disease risk determinants in individuals with obesity.
Exercise increases individual energy expenditure and helps in balancing energy and consequently assist in weight loss. Exercises increase energy expenditure by facilitating metabolism and burning calories. Weight accumulates in a situation where the energy consumed is way more than the energy expenditure. Physical activities like walking and jogging ensure that the energy in and out is kept at a balanced level (Frye et al 831-841). However, exercise is only useful in weight loss as long as the diet equals exercise efforts. If the diet compensates the calories burned and keeps energy expenditure low than energy ingested, then the weight gain rate remains high with the potential of resulting in obesity. Therefore, any alteration of the energy and nutrients balances results in compensatory responses and restores the energy balances. The process of physical exercise activity should be coupled with a healthy diet for it to sustain appropriate energy balance and attain effectiveness. Another reason why exercise needs changing to a healthy diet is that it promotes hunger. Working out facilitates appetite hormones in some people, causing them to be more hungry calories than they burned during work out. The effect of appetite regulation varies from one person to another. The reason why a large population of people with obesity has reported to be exercising and yet not losing weight is that they still keep their prior diet. Exercise can not compensate for a lousy diet. Hence the two needs to be simultaneously monitored for the weight loss process.
Physical activities lead to the building of muscle mass, which increases the energy the body burns and keeps body weight in control. Exercise, especially strength training, increases muscle mass, which powers metabolism. Muscle ensures metabolism activeness is maintained, and one can consume calories without gaining weight only if the calories are healthily and wisely chosen. However, the challenging part about obesity prevention through muscle building is that the exercise has to be intense, and the routine regularly changed. In a case where the strength training exercise follows the same strategy over eight weeks, then the body becomes accustomed to the workout and no positive impact. Obesity people also get discouraged by the muscle-building exercise because the first time results of the workout include a little weight gain. The increased muscle energy can also lead to weight gain at first. The reason for that is because muscle building needs energy, which is obtained from the conversion of glycogen to glucose. When an individual exercise regularly, the body stores extra glycogen to fuel the muscle building. Then the glycogen binds with water as the process of producing the energy needed and that water adds a small amount of weight to the body (Ross, Robert, et al 325-336). The individual needs to keep working out to become more efficient with the exercise, then the body will need less glycogen to sustain the energy required for muscle building. The need for water retention reduces, and the weight starts to decrease. The water weight gain, which is roughly 1-3 pounds, starts to go down after a month of the program. Also, the muscle-building technique is often considered to be a discouraging process due to the initial lean muscle mass. The lean muscle weight adds up during the first few months, but it is a definite weight-loss trend that people misinterpret. People may consider these early changes as a total failure of the workout program and give up on the experience. Thus, an exercise that leads to muscle building increases metabolism and leads to the burning of calories and weight loss. Still, the training has to be done repeatedly, intensely, and differently. People give up on the first months of muscle building workouts because the activities seem to be resulting in weight gain because they do not understand those are only immediate results. The exercise is a long term solution to obesity.
Physical exercise activities also facilitate in treating abdominal obesity. Workouts are believed to reduce total body fat and fat around the waist, which slows down abdominal obesity. For example, aerobic exercise has significant weight reduction by reducing belly fat. Exercise also helps people to avoid re-gaining the lost abdominal fat. The abdominal fat it’s exceptionally harmful due to its location new the portal vein, which transfers blood from the intestinal barrier to the liver. Abdominal obesity is also a risk factor for metabolic syndrome, which results in metabolic abnormalities. Intense exercising and good dieting have proven to be a proper way to lose abdominal fat. People doing spot exercising like sit-ups are unable to treat abdominal obesity because the exercise only tights the muscles and fails to reach visceral fat. The health challenge about targeting the loss of visceral fat is that the rest of the bodyweight may keep accumulating and exposing people to obesity. However, treating abdominal obesity is still a big step in preventing serious health risks. In the reduction of the belly fat physical exercise requires a well-monitored diet to succeed. For instance, individuals working to reduce the risk of visceral fat treat abdominal obesity can avoid sugary diets and concentrate on foods with higher proteins.
Exercising also treats obesity in a minor way by reducing stress and anxiety. Stress affects people differently. One person may lose appetite when they stressed, and another one may experience an increased appetite and cravings for unhealthy food. Elevated stress can also lead to weight gain by causing hormone imbalances. High levels of stress stimulate adrenal glands, which results in the production of either excess or inadequate hormones. Higher levels of hormones increase insulin level and cause the drop of blood sugar leading from the craving of sugary and fatty foods. Therefore, if an individual faces these stress effects and the cravings increase, it may result in them eating unhealthy food and accumulating weight. Exercising regularly boosts a person’s mood, reducing anxiety and depression, and keeps their hormones under normal levels and prevents them from weight gain risk. In another way, being physically active through workouts motivates people to keep exercising and stick to their work out routines and consequently reduce the risk of people being obese.
In conclusion, obesity has become a worldwide health concern and is associated with several severe diseases like diabetes. People’s lifestyle, such as diet and exercise, are risk factors for people being obese. Thus, exercise and a healthy diet are two effective ways of preventing and treating obesity. One way through which exercise treats overweight is by increasing energy expenditure and balancing it with the energy consumed. Balancing the energy expenditure and energy consumed maintains weight at a healthy level. For exercise to succeed in increasing energy expenditure, then a healthy diet has to be adopted. Secondly, exercise can reduce the risk of obesity through muscle building. Muscle mass is metabolically active and capable of burning calories even when the body is at risk. Thirdly, exercise can help in reducing the risk of abdominal obesity by reducing visceral fat. Visceral fat can cause serious health implications because it’s located near a portal vein. Also, keeping a sugary and fat-free diet makes the exercise more effective in reducing belly fat. By reducing the level of stress, exercise also treats and reduces the risk of obesity. Stress causes hormonal imbalances, which can increase appetite and result in weight gain.
References
Frye, Christopher W., Justin W. Shmalberg, and Joseph J. Wakshlag. “Obesity, exercise, and orthopedic disease.” Veterinary Clinics: Small Animal Practice46.5 (2016): 831-841.
Petridou, Anatoli, Aikaterina Siopi, and Vassilis Mougins. “Exercise in the management of obesity.” Metabolism, (2018).
Ross, Robert, et al. “Effects of exercise amount and intensity on abdominal obesity and glucose tolerance in obese adults: a randomized trial.” Annals of internal medicine 162.5 (2015): 325-334.