Weight Gain

Weight gain has many reasons and causes. Why do People Gain Weight?

People gain weight for many different reasons, and as we all know, it can happen very quickly. Weight gain can be the result of unhealthy lifestyle choices or it can also be the result of physiological body functioning. Understanding why you may have an increase in weight is the crucial first step to preventing it from happening and reversing the trend.

From a basic, matter of fact perspective your body will begin to gain weight when you are ingesting more calories than you are burning off. It all boils down to how much food you are eating and how much activity you have, although many additional factors affect both of those halves of the equation. But eliminating all other components, your body puts on weight when it has excess energy from the food you have eaten, and that food is converted into fats for long term storage.

If only it was that simple than we would all be able to keep off the excess pounds, but as mentioned, there are additional forces at play. For example, many people have unhealthy eating habits as a result of an emotional experience. Many people turn to food in terms of discomfort, sadness, worry and stress. Food can be an escape for people like this, and it's all too easy to turn to it when something happens. Learning to cope with your emotions head on can help to prevent this type of overeating. There are a variety of eating disorders which could be affecting you. Binge eating is when you take in a huge portion of unhealthy foods in a very short amount of time. It's actually often the result of under eating and starving yourself. However, when you quit your food intake all together your body actually shuts down its metabolism to conserve vital energy, so you'll have a harder time of losing weight!

However, you may also be handicapped by a naturally slow metabolism. Your resting metabolic rate is the speed at which your body burns through calories throughout a day given no physical activity. If many people in your family are heavy or obese, one of the causes could be a slower than normal metabolism that leads to more calories being turned into fat. This is many times the cause for weight gain.

It's important to realize that weight gain can be combated in two ways: by decreasing the amount of calories you take in every day, and by increasing the amount of calories you burn every day. Neither of these has to be difficult to pull off. Small changes in your lifestyle can produce a significant change in how your body looks and feels.

For example, eating six smaller meals throughout a day rather than three large meals will keep your metabolism at a higher level throughout the day, meaning you burn off more of what you eat. You'll also feel less hungry and be less likely to overeat. Physical activity can be as small as walking around the block after dinner or taking the stairs at work. You may never be able to change the scientific factors working against you, but you can easily improve your health and appearance through healthier eating habits and increased physical activity.