Despite its extensive presence in our society, excessive weight gain, or obesity remains a complex and often misunderstood disorder. Discovering the causes of excessive weight gain is not a simple task.
Obese people often place too much emphasis on either the reality or the possibility that some other underlying medical issue is the true cause for their weight gain and inability to take the weight off.
Conversely, society often incorrectly accuses overweight people in general and even more specifically obese people of just being lazy. It is likely in many cases that neither of these rationales is entirely accurate.
It is likely the case more often than not, that obesity is a combination of these factors and that most of the factors are interdependent.
To add to the confusion, it is often a case of “which came first, the chicken or the egg?” when looking at the causes of excessive weight gain.
For example, a person who becomes depressed often has a hormone imbalance and overeats to compensate for missing or under-produced hormones.
Did the depression cause poor food choices or did eating the wrong foods in the first place throw the hormones out of balance causing the overeating and the depression?
We may never have the answer to that question. It certainly does appear that no matter which comes first, the factors involved seem to line up and fall down just like dominoes.
There are also a number of medical conditions that will cause weight gain. A few examples would be.
- Metabolic syndrome
- Hypothyroidism
- Cushing’s disease.
To simplify things, these diseases slow or impair the body’s ability to digest, process, or otherwise properly utilize food as an energy source.
What this means in effect is that whatever the body cannot immediately use for energy must either be removed from the body as waste or stored as fat to be used for energy at a later date.
Since the body senses a crisis in its ability to properly burn food for energy, it may decide that food or energy is scarce and work to store as much fat as possible for later use.
This is also why many fat loss diets recommend eating several smaller meals as opposed to a few large ones since any food that cannot be used within two hours for energy will be stored as fat.
