OCR Text |
Show Obesity still a great puzzle suggests that obese people have fewer brown fat cells and more inactive white fat cells than the typical ty-pical person. Number and size of fat cells: Dieting does not eliminate fat cells, it only reduces their size. Obese individuals in-dividuals generally have more fat cells than normal-weight people. Studies also indicate that overfeeding overfeed-ing babies and young children may increase the number of fat cells that stay with them throughout life. By DENNIS HINKAMP Consumer Information Writer Utah State University You know that new brand of cookies called "Almost Home." Well, that's about as far as they get when I buy them. ..almost home. This joke I heard somewhere typifies ty-pifies the struggles we have with food. While obesity has been shown to be associated with many chronic diseases, obsessive fear of being overweight leads to its own set of problems. Diet mania is thought to contribute to the increase in eating disorders such as bulimia and anorexia. Put most simply, to lose weight, you need to consume fewer calories than you burn. Georgia Lauritzen, extension nutrition specialist at Utah State University, says this simple idea depends on dozens of variables. We still don't completely understand why some people have so much trouble losing weight while others remain slim, seemingly with no effort, she says. Although there is no definitive answer, Lauritzen summarizes some of the most recent research on obesity: Heredity: A tendency towards obesity may be inherited. Studies show that when twins are each raised in separate families they grow up having similar obesity tendencies. ten-dencies. Eating Patterns: Meal timing can affect body weight, temperature and hormone concentrations in the blood. Studies have also found that lower body weights result from eating eat-ing breakfast only rather than dinner din-ner only even when the meals are of equal calorie content. Set Point Theory: While still controversial, con-troversial, the set point theory remains re-mains quite popular and is part of the newest best-selling diet book, "The Rotation Diet." In Theory, your body has a programmed weight or set point It tends to adjust ad-just its rate of metabolism to slay at this weight even if you starve or gorge yourself. This theory is borne out by some studies showing that obese people actually eat less than their normal-weight counterparts.' Fat Distribution: Where you store your fat may be a better indicator of potential problems than total body weight. Several studies suggest that people who tend to have abdominal fat deposits (pot bellies, spare tires, etc.) as opposed to people with more even fat distribution are at higher risk to problems associated with being overweight. Exercise Effects: Studies show that, besides burning calories during the particular activity, exercise raises the metabolism and helps burn extra calories for four-five hours after the activity is completed. com-pleted. Fat Cell Types: Research indicates indi-cates that we are born' with a fixed number of brown fat cells. The brown fat cells are active in metabolism meta-bolism while white fat cells developed de-veloped throughout your , life are used only for storage. This theory |