Weight Loss Issues - Essay Example

"Weight Loss Issues" is a wonderful example of a paper on food and nutrition. Overweight is different from obesity in that while obesity is a situation that there are excess body fats, overweight is the condition of having excess body weight as compared to height. Someone is considered obese when he or she has more than twenty-five percent body fat while someone may be overweight even when the fat content is lower than the threshold for obesity.

If you wanted to lose weight, what weight-loss strategies would you be most likely to choose? Which strategies, if any, have worked for you before?

There a number of approaches that I can partake in order to lose weight, they include burning calories by exercise, dieting, supplements, avoiding food triggers and healthy eating habits, avoiding long hours of rest, ingestion of foods that are high in fiber, increasing complex carbohydrate and protein intake and increasing water consumption. Of all the strategies, exercise works best for me; it allows me to keep consuming the usual amount of food while losing weight in the process, only daily activity changes, but for the better.

Which strategies offer the lowest health risk and the greatest chance for success?

While some strategies may expose one to health risks, some are body-friendly and offer more chances of success. Such strategies include exercise, high intake of fiber and avoiding long rest-hours, and more complex-carbohydrate to fat intake.

What factors might serve to hinder a person’s success in losing weight?

Apart from personal failures to obey one’s weight loss strategy, biological factors play a major role, for instance, low testosterone that, triggers the deposition of fats in the chest and abdominal region. Cardiovascular diseases that cause high cholesterol levels in the body, thyroid malfunction due to stress, ovarian syndrome, and diabetes are other conditions that hinder weight loss.

How would you coach someone to a better understanding of why the latest diet craze isn’t the best idea?

As much as diet techniques can help reduce weight, it is not always the best. This is due to reasons such as brain set point for body fat and homeostatic processes, in the event that one lowers food intake, the brain responds by enhancing desire for food while letting a little of the stored energy be used hence keeping weight constant. In addition, the brain is less sensitive to signals of fat cells in obese people, hence may not respond to the need to burn fats. Exposure to factors that will require one to store more energy molecules will lead to weight gain despite the change in diet. Making someone understand these facts can help him or her appreciate the fact that dieting isn’t the best of achieving weight loss.

Discuss the unique challenges that college students face when trying to eat healthy foods and the actions they can take to eat healthfully. Expand and add to the slides from the lecture discussing this topic. What other factors have you noticed that are not included?

College students often spend most of their time seated while studying or playing games accompanied by eating first food, snacks, pizza, and sugary drinks. In addition, most college students do not compensate for their high-calorie intake by avoiding regular exercises. A good number of students rely on processed food due to irregular class schedules while others may skip some meals for convenience purposes hence they are prone to poor eating habits.

College students can avoid bad eating habits by hanging out with friends with good diets, allocating time for regular exercise, avoiding bridging on unhealthy substances such as alcohol, and maintaining good sleep and vaccinations such as meningitis, tetanus, and hepatitis.

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