Reasons For Overweight

Reasons For Overweight
Excessive weight is a significant problem, particularly in
western societies and in the United States most of all. The
numbers may vary, but general estimates are that two-thirds
of people in the United States are overweight, and
one-third of people in the United States are obese, or
extremely overweight. Given the exceptional levels of
people carrying excess weight, it's worthwhile to consider
what some of the possible reasons for the overweight
epidemic are.

In most cases, excess weight is a reflection of calorie
consumption. There are exceptions to this, most notably in
circumstances where some form of bloating illness has set
in. Generally speaking however, excess body weight is
directly attributed to food consumed. The formula isn't
quite so simple as eating and gaining weight: it's a matter
of consuming more calories than are burned off through
physical activity. In other words, eating more food than
one uses for energy.

So then there are two factors in typical weight gain: food
eaten and energy burned, or not burned. If energy goes
unburned, it eventually gets stored as fat. A typical form
of human energy is physical movement. Most humans to one
degree or another physically manipulate their bodies.
Performing this sort of physical manipulation takes energy.
The level of energy required to physically move depends
upon how much movement is actually undertaken. In the case
of many people in the west, and in the United States
especially, people don't move around very much in
comparison to the level of food they intake. What we have
then are lots of people who consume more energy than they
use.

The energy factor in overweight can be expressed in terms
of exercise; or more accurately, in terms of lack of
exercise. This is the next factor in the explanation of
levels of overweight. In short, people who are fat
typically don't exercise. Overweight people do move about
typically, but ordinarily moving about is not exercising.
To exercise essentially means to exert physical energy at
unusual levels. Under this description, walking to the car
or moving down the aisle at the grocery store would not
constitute exercise.

The next obvious question would be why don't people
exercise. The obvious answer is that people don't exercise
because they don't want to. A secondary reason, however,
and one that likely carries a lot of legitimacy is that
people don't exercise because they have little spare time
in comparison to the amount of obligations they have. A
working person who has children can see literally all of
their time filled. But there are always priorities to be
made, and not making exercise a priority is a good bet to
lead to overweight, and all of the problems that go along
with it.

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Zinn Jeremiah is an online writer. For help with weight
loss, visit http://www.hubonline.biz/lose-now.htm or
http://www.hubonline.biz/get-fit.htm .