Losing Weight - Factors to Consider

There are many reasons why being overweight is bad for your health. It can, for example, cause or aggravate type 2 diabetes. Obesity is also a risk factor for heart disease and other cardiovascular problems.

So what do you have to do to lose weight?

Eat less and move more is the trite answer usually received by someone who is overweight.

Of course you can lose weight by reducing the food you eat (energy intake) or increasing the amount of exercise you get (energy output).

But the problem of effective weight-loss is much more complex than simply changing the balance between the calories you Karen consume and the calories you expend in your daily activities.

The search for an effective weight-loss formula requires answers to these four questions:

Does genetics play a role in your weight problems and, if so, what can you do about it?
How many calories do you need to cut from your diet to lose one pound or kilogram?
What are the best types of foods (carbs, fats or proteins) to cut for losing weight?
Is exercise much good in helping you lose weight or for keeping weight off?
How genes affect your weight

Many people do their utmost to lose weight without much success. In particular, once they have lost a few kilos, they find it extremely difficult to keep their weight down... it just rises back up again.

This suggests that the problem is genetic.

In fact, more than 30 genes have been linked to obesity. The one with the strongest link is the fat mass and obesity associated gene (FTO).

The obesity-risk variant of the FTO gene affects one in six of the population. Studies suggest that persons who have this gene are 70% more likely to become obese.

According to research published in the UK in 2013 in the Journal of Clinical Investigation, people with this gene have higher levels of the ghrelin, the hunger hormone, in their blood. This means they start to feel hungry again soon after eating a meal.

In addition, real-time brain imaging shows that the FTO gene variation changes the way the brain responds to ghrelin and images of food in the regions of the brain linked to the control of eating and reward.

These findings explain why people with the obesity-risk variant of the FTO gene eat more and prefer higher calorie foods... even before they become overweight... compared with those with the low-risk version of the gene.

The FTO gene is not the only genetic cause of obesity, which is likely to be due to the sum of several genes working together.

If you have these 'bad' genes, however, you are not necessarily destined to become overweight... but you are more likely to end up obese if you over-eat.

Having these genes also means that you will need to exercise greater discipline over your diet throughout out your life, especially when you have managed to shred a few pounds and want to keep them off.