Obesity – How Big an Issue?
When I hit menopause, the weight started creeping up. Whereas I was used to being able to lose 3-5 pounds if I didn‘t eat for a few days (as when I had a cold or such), my metabolism seemed to have changed quite drastically. Now if I didn‘t eat for a few days I would put weight on! I found that to be an affront to common sense. It certainly doesn‘t agree with the calories in-calories out concept! What it did seem to do was to establish a new bodyweight for me, whether I liked it or not.
According to Professor Peter Saunders(1), the calorie theory is only partly correct. If things were as simple as that, our weight would fluctuate a lot more than it does. The theory says that if you left out 300 calories at breakfast you would lose ten pounds a year. But that doesn‘t always happen. The body has mechanisms to control both weight gain and weight loss, either by varying the appetite or by adjusting its metabolic rate. It is generally assumed that the obese eat more than those of normal weight. Research has shown that this is not always true; in some cases fat people eat less than those of normal weight(3). In addition, says Prof Saunders, not only does heredity matter but also our entire life experience from the moment we were conceived, and even what our mother ate while pregnant!