Wondering How To Tackle Weight Gain ?

Subarna Ghosal

Updated on:

weight gain

Obesity Diagnosis:

We usually jump to treating or managing weight gain- and forget the critical step before that- To Diagnose it!

If the BMI (>25 kg/m2) is in the over weight range, your health care provider will typically review our health history in detail, perform a physical exam and recommend some tests.

Health History

  • The physician may review your weight history, weight-loss efforts, exercise habits, medications, stress levels, eating patterns and other issues about your health.

Physical Examination

  • Involves measuring your height; checking vital signs, such as heart rate, blood pressure and temperature, also listening to your heart and lungs, and examination of the abdominal area.
  • Calculating  BMI to determine your grade of obesity which must be done at least once in a year.
  • Measuring your waist circumference. Fat stored around our waist, called visceral fat or abdominal fat, further increase your risk of diseases, such as diabetes and heart disease.
  • The Hip Circumference is measured and the Waist to Hip Ratio is also calculated
  • Women whose  waist circumference measures more than 35 inches (80 centimetres) and men with a waist measurement of more than 40 inches (102 cm) have more health risks than do people with smaller waist measurements.
  •  Like the BMI measurement, our waist circumference should be checked at least once a year.
  • Blood tests are pretty much important to know about the current parameters. Tests include a lipid panel, liver function tests, fasting glucose levels, thyroid test etc
  • Physician may also  recommend certain heart tests, such as an electrocardiogram. etc

Exercise and activity

Increased physical activity or exercise is an essential part of obesity management.

To boost our  activity level:

Workout
  •  People who are obese must do at least 150 minutes of exercise a week consisting of medium paced physical activity to prevent further weight gain or to maintain.
Keep moving.
  • Regular  aerobic exercises is the most efficient way to burn calories and shed excess weight.
  • Please do remember that any extra movement helps burn calories.
  • Try to make simple changes throughout your day can add up to big benefits.
 Try to do little things that ultimately create havoc effects
  • Park far from store gate
  • Doing up our household chores
  • Gardening
  • Get up and move around periodically
  • Wear a Tracker fitness device or pedometer to track how many steps we actually take over the course of a day.

Behavioural changes

A behaviour modification program can help you make lifestyle changes and lose weight and keep it off.

Behaviour modification, called behaviour therapy, like:

  • Counseling.
  • Therapy can help to understand why we overeat and learn healthy ways to cope with anxiety.
  • We can also learn how to monitor our diet and activity, understand eating triggers, and try to cope with food cravings.
  • Therapy can happen on both an individual and group basis.
Support groups. 
  • We can find support groups where others share similar challenges with obesity.
  • Also check with our doctor, local hospitals, or commercial weight-loss programs for support groups in our area, such as Weight Watchers.

Few Home remedies for obesity management are:

  • Try adding fresh whole fibre fruits in our diet and tomatoescarrots, and dark leafy vegetables to our daily diet and keep your stomach full throughout the day.
  • These vegetables are low in calories and good for your health.
  • Green tea is one of the most effective remedies for metabolism that helps in fat loss.
  • Try to include  2-3 cups of green tea in your daily basis.
  • Many of us avoid exercising on a daily basis. Lack of exercise can lead to obesity or over-weight.
  • Exercise helps burn up extra body fat and keeps us  healthy. Hence, it is the time to start doing exercise on a daily basis.
  • 1 teaspoon of honey and lemon juice in a glass of warm water and have this mixture every day in the morning which will boost metabolism.
  • We can add Mint leaves into your daily diet in the form of peppermint tea. We can also chew them after our meals.
  • Apple cider vinegar is also  effective in breaking down  our body fat. A mixture of 1 teaspoon of lemon juice and 1 teaspoon of apple cider vinegar in a glass of warm /normal water and sip  every day on empty stomach 30 mins prior meal.

Exercise:

Obese individuals who have more weight have the potential to place a significant amount of stress on their ankles, knees, hips and lower back.  

According to Stacie Schmidt of the American College of Sports Medicine, obese beginners must try for low impact first.

 As we know that Jogging is stressful on our joints if you carry excess weight and increase our risk of injury

Low-Impact Cardio

  • Cardio exercises are effective for burning calories and contributing to a fat loss.
  • There is an innumerable cardio exercise that we can start with like, walking, cycling, swimming and water aerobics.
  • Try taking five minutes at the beginning of your cardio workout to warm up and then another five minutes at the end of our session to gradually decrease the intensity and allow our body to safely return to resting levels. 

Strength Training

  • Strength training builds lean muscle and increases your metabolic rate so we can burn more calories throughout the day.
  • A full-body routine includes exercises like seated chest press, lat pulldown, shoulder press, leg press, leg extensions and leg curls. We can even do some strengthening exercises free hand.
  • Try doing twice strength training workouts per week, and begin with two sets of 10 to 12 repetitions of each exercise depends on our capacity.
Daily Activity

The ACSM I.e. American College of Sports Medicine put a recommendation that taking the stairs instead of using an escalator or lab elevator any time we  can, parking our car farther from the door and incorporating short walks into our lunch hour and throughout the  work day.

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