Janet Bond Brill - Intermittent Fasting For Dummies

Excess weight increases the risk of developing the following three types of arthritis:

Osteoarthritis occurs when the cartilage that cushions and protects the ends of bones in your joints wears down over time. The added body weight puts more pressure and stress on weight-bearing joints such as knees and hips.

Rheumatoid arthritis, an autoimmune disorder, is caused when the body fat releases inflammatory compounds.

Gout is a kind of arthritis characterized by an excess amount of uric acid in the blood. Symptoms often include intense episodes of painful swelling and tenderness in joints, most often in the big toe. If you’re overweight, your body produces more uric acid and your kidneys have a tougher time eliminating it.

Overweight people have a much higher risk of developing asthma, especially people with a BMI over 30. Extra weight around the chest and abdomen constrict the lungs and make it more difficult to breathe. Fat tissue produces inflammatory substances that cause the inner lining of the airways to swell and mucus to be produced, which makes the airways more sensitive to asthma triggers.

Being overweight increases the likelihood of suffering from sleep-disordered breathing, known as sleep apnea. In turn, people with sleep apnea have a greater risk of high blood pressure, irregular heart rhythms, and stroke. Sleeping less also gives you more time for late night snacking, contributing to weight gain.

Excess body fat, especially in the abdominal area, increases the likelihood of developing what is termed nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD). NAFLD begins with the abnormal accumulation of deposits of fat in the liver cells. Liver cells normally help to process and regulate the amount of sugar and fat in the blood. However, extra body fat overwhelms the cells triggering the formation of fatty deposits. In fact, the BMI correlates with the amount of liver damage, that is, the greater the BMI the greater the damage.

Polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS) is a hormonal reproductive disorder, extremely common in overweight women, especially women with insulin resistance. PCOS refers to the appearance of small cysts along the outer edge of the enlarged ovaries of women with this condition. Excess insulin circulating in the blood results in overproduction of androgens (male sex hormones). Too much of this type of hormone prevents ovulation.

Being overweight predisposes you to suffering psychological ills. A poor self-image, physical inactivity, the biological disruptions caused by excess body fat, and the social stigma related to being overweight all contribute to a predisposition to mental illness.

Overweight and obesity are serious health concerns. The poor mental health, the reduced quality of life from many of the diseases and disorders that I mention in the previous sections, and the predisposition to develop the leading causes of death in the United States and worldwide clearly reduce length and quality of life.

People become overweight from creating an extended calorie surplus. If you’ve gained weight, it may be because you’re making unhealthy food choices (like fast food) and poor behavioral habits (such as eating mindlessly in front of the TV or while driving in your car). High-calorie, low-nutrient snacks and beverages, huge portions of food, and less-active lifestyles all contribute to the obesity epidemic.

You may be someone who turns to food for emotional reasons, such as when you feel upset, anxious, sad, stressed out, or even bored. If so, try writing the answers to these questions in your journal, an exercise in self-examination that can help you identify and overcome this obstacle to achieving your healthy lifestyle goals:

Do you tend to overeat in response to emotions? If yes, what emotions are your trigger?

What seems to be the root cause?

What and where do you eat?

I also suggest you flip to Chapter 2, where I give you more journaling exercises to work on as you progress through your intermittent fasting lifestyle.

Consider the following, which are things that may lead to your calorie surplus:

Eating a poor diet and making unhealthy food choices

Eating out often and chowing down on oversized restaurant food portions

Inheriting being overweight or obese

Feeling negative emotions like stress, boredom, sadness, or anger, that may influence eating habits

Living an inactive lifestyle:Spending too time in front of a screen — watching television, playing video games, working on a computerChoosing to be more sedentary (driving rather than walking, taking the elevator instead of the stairs, and so on)Not exercising enough

There is a problem with relying on traditional BMI measurements to determine whether someone is overweight or obese. These measurements ignore many people who have excessive body fat that puts them at risk of various health conditions. There is a new term being used in the medical world, namely, overfat . Overfat describes an overload of fat that builds up in certain parts of the body (the midsection), and it can affect even individuals who are of normal weight or BMI. Such a buildup of fat can pose serious metabolic threats to one’s health such as insulin resistance, high blood pressure, heart disease, stroke, and even cancer. In this section, I explore the dangers of the so-called overfat pandemic that is currently sweeping the United States and the myriad health risks of excess body belly fat and what it really means to be overfat.

Concerning body fat, location counts. Your body shape can say a lot about your health and your hormones. In other words, fat isn’t created equal. If you know you’re overweight, focus on where you’re carrying that excess body fat, which will give you a better idea of what type of fat you have. The two types of fat are as follows:

Subcutaneous: The jiggly fat located just under the skin you can pinch with your fingers and the type aesthetically bothersome

Visceral: Fat lying deep within the abdomen, surrounding the organs

Women, when they’re younger, tend to store subcutaneous fat around the hips and thighs, giving them a pear-shaped physique, mostly due to the impact of estrogen on fat distribution. A pear-shaped fat distribution is healthier; however, this fat is obstinate and is typically the hardest type of fat to lose. Pear-shaped women are better protected from metabolic diseases like diabetes compared to big-bellied people. Stubborn subcutaneous fat is not as dangerous for your health as the visceral fat that lives deep down within the abdominal cavity.

When women go through menopause, the location of where the body tends to store fat shifts, so that more body fat ends up around the middle and in the waist and tummy area. The pattern of storing fat around the middle (an apple shape) is much more strongly linked to chronic health problems than storing excess fat in the hips and thighs (a pear-shaped physique). Fat that builds up around your middle and deep within your abdomen places you at higher risk of heart disease, syndrome X, and type 2 diabetes. I discuss apple and pear shapes in Chapter 2in greater detail.