Hi, I am Dr. Milind Pimprikar and you are on a special show fighting fit Fridays with Dr. Pimprikar.
Today we are going to talk about obesity. Personally, to be honest I like people who are a little overweight rather than those who attain a size zero. I like their chubby faces; I find them more relaxed and chilled as an individual and I also feel they are pretty much fun-loving people. I may be wrong in my observation but when this “little overweight” concept moves towards obesity it raises a serious concern.
Believe me everyone in this world wants to look good. Bodily looks and image is one of the most important part of one’s life. You see weighing scales more often than your relatives at times and it is the biggest enemy, if it does not show you the results you want. You start hating weighing scales. We see so many people tucking their tummies in during a photograph or women spending hours in front of the mirror deciding which fat needs to go first.
Obesity is a friend who enters right under your skin and it becomes not your next to kin but in true sense next to skin. It is a tough friend to handle. This friend tarnishes your body image, self-confidence, makes you prone for company of other friends like heart disease and diabetes. Sometimes you feel like yelling at this friend and say… arre tu jata que nahin hai?
This is the time you start thinking to cut loose on this friend to come to terms with it. Again, the best way is, to take your friend on a walk. The crux is again physical activity/exercise.
I often advise people to undertake gymming to reduce the obesity and the universal reaction I get is, I will again put on once I stop gymming, so I don’t want to hit the gym. Ironically these people think of stopping the exercise before they have actually begun, and this is called as lack of motivation. Motivation is the biggest tool to be used to befriend obesity.
The next I hear is I do not eat so much, or I am following xyz diet so still is it necessary to exercise?
To answer this question, we need to understand certain facts about obesity. Obesity is all about the body composition and what we need to address is to achieve ideal body composition. In this attempt one needs to shed non-essential fat and loose inches rather than losing weight.
Obesity has emerged as a new and serious threat to health with 22% per cent of men and 23% of
women now classed as clinically obese (body mass index greater than 30kg/m2).12 Among people aged 55-74 years more than two-thirds of women and three-quarters of men are overweight or obese.12
An important effect of physical activity during weight loss is its effect on the composition of the
weight lost. People who use a combination of a low-calorie diet and physical activity in order to lose weight lose greater fat mass and conserve more lean tissue (mainly muscle mass) than people who use diet alone.228 229 This is likely to be important in the long term, as fat-free mass largely determines resting metabolic rate (the degree of energy expended by the body while at rest), and this is the bulk of daily energy expenditure for most people. Generally, the higher the fat-free mass a person has, the higher the resting metabolic rate, the more calories expended, and the more energy the body can take in without storing excess as fat.
Achieving at least 30 minutes of at least moderate intensity physical activity on 5 or more days a week (150 minutes per week) will represent a significant increase in energy expenditure for most people, and will make a substantial contribution to their ongoing weight management.52 222 226 However, the evidence indicates that in the absence of a reduction in energy intake, 45-60 minutes of moderate intensity activity per day may be needed to prevent obesity at a population level.31 53 People who have been obese and have lost weight may need to do 60-90 minutes of activity a day in order to avoid regaining weight.53
