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Obesity: How to Get Overweight Under Control

Often referred to as obesity, obesity can be a health hazard depending on its severity, as it can result in diseases such as diabetes and high blood pressure. With the right diet, you can prevent and combat existing obesity.

What is obesity?

Obesity is often equated with the term overweight. However, being overweight is not necessarily obese. Depending on the body mass index (BMI), obesity is classified into different grades. Pre-obesity (sometimes also called slightly overweight) is defined as a BMI of 25 or more, a BMI of 30 or more is grade 1 obesity, a BMI of 35 or more corresponds to grade 2 and a BMI of 40 or more is grade 3. Obesity is grade 1 or higher itself a chronic disease that requires treatment. Reason: Obesity increases the risk of developing secondary or concomitant diseases such as dyslipidemia, diabetes, and other lifestyle diseases.

The BMI is only half the truth

However, body mass index alone – which you can find out with our BMI calculator – is not powerful enough to determine if someone is obese. Athletes often have a higher BMI, which results from the higher weight of muscles. An increased body fat percentage is therefore used as a further indicator of obesity.

To assess the health risk, it is important to know where the body fat is located. In particular, an increased proportion of fat in the abdomen causes problems, because there is a risk that the fat will be stored in the organs or lead to inflammation. When losing weight, it is therefore important to reduce the fat content in the abdomen in particular.

Obesity – causes, and consequences

The number of people suffering from obesity or overweight is increasing worldwide – in all age groups. As of January 2018, around three-quarters of men and more than half of women in Germany are overweight at the end of their working lives. Children are also increasingly affected. While the body can handle prolonged starvation, it doesn’t handle prolonged overeating well. Too little exercise in everyday life, no sport, stress, and too little sleep ensure that the excess calories are deposited as fat. Diseases such as hypothyroidism can also be causes of obesity.

Fight obesity

Diets are often used as therapy. However, the idea of simply eating very little to no food for a period of time falls short. Because if you continue to eat as before after the diet, such as the FdH diet, you will be overweight again very quickly. A long-term healthy diet combined with regular exercise is the best way to get rid of obesity. If certain diseases are responsible for obesity, this should be taken into account in the nutrition plan. In this case, professional nutritional advice is recommended.

What should an obese diet look like?

Otherwise, you can follow the following basic principles to lose weight in a healthy way in the long term. The fuller you feel, the less likely it is that you will snack between meals. Since the stomach is not a calorie calculator but measures the volume and weight of a food item to send the signal of satiety, low energy density is beneficial in weight loss and fighting obesity. The energy density describes how many calories are in the food per 100 g.

Therefore, healthy eating that helps you lose weight is primarily based on a large volume and weight, which is most easily obtained from a large proportion of vegetables. Since vegetables alone pass through the stomach quickly, it makes sense to incorporate brakes. These consist of protein-rich and fatty foods. Do you know the phrase “cheese closes the stomach”? Cheese is pleasantly filling because it has a good mix of protein and fat.

Healthy cooking for obesity, regardless of the degree, includes dishes such as an omelet with onions and tomatoes or baked vegetables with herb quark and a slice of wholemeal bread.

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Written by John Myers

Professional Chef with 25 years of industry experience at the highest levels. Restaurant owner. Beverage Director with experience creating world-class nationally recognized cocktail programs. Food writer with a distinctive Chef-driven voice and point of view.

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