Weight Understanding the Basics of Weight Gain

If we understand why we are gaining weight we can understand how to lose it.

The Basics

There are certain basic rules that science has learned, and that we are aware of, that explain how our metabolism works.

There are exceptions to these rules in certain individuals that have certain genetic variations that cause their metabolism to work differently. They are beyond the scope of this article.

The food that we eat gets converted into energy that our bodies use in order to function.

These foods and sources of our energy are derived from three basic building blocks, carbohydrates, proteins, and fats. Each of these categories is divided into subcategories.

Each type serves its particular function, and is necessary to feed the various cells in our bodies.

The Three Basic Food Types Have Different Levels of Energy within Them

A calorie is a unit of energy. This means that with each gram that we eat, we are providing our body with a certain amount of energy. The amount varies according to the kind of food we have eaten.

How Much Energy Do We Need? It Depends On Our Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR).

The amount of energy needed to get through the day varies from individual to individual. If we are active, we need more. If we are sedentary we need less. If we are tall, muscular or overweight we need more, if we are skinny or short we need less. Women need less then men.

Our BMR or basal metabolic rate is determined by our weight, our height, our age, and our activity level. That is the amount of energy we need for our body to function efficiently.

What Happens If We Don't Use The Energy? Excess energy get stored as fat in our body. It works like this.

Each time we eat an additional 3500 calories more than we burned for energy, a pound of fat gets stored for later use.

If we burn off these 3500 calories of fat energy, through additional activities, then we lose the pound of stored fat.

Understanding this, it is obvious why the best way to lose weight is, by combining exercise and diet, to remove the excess weight.

By combining a diet, eating 500 calories less than we need for a week, and burning off an additional 500 calories through exercise that week, we would lose 7000 calories which corresponds to 2 pounds. Do this for 12 weeks and you lose 24 pounds!

Healthy weight loss should be done gradually, for two reasons.

1. Losing weight too quickly depletes you of nutrients necessary for the body to function efficiently.
2. Statistics show that when people lose weight quickly they tend to gain it back quickly. This seems to be because, when we begin exercising, and reducing the caloric intake gradually we do not feel like we are depriving ourselves, we feel like we made a positive healthy change in our life. We adopted a heart healthy lifestyle.