The age ol’ war against sugary foods
Hi there! I’m Peng! A 23-year-old fitness enthusiast keen on drowning myself in fitness and fat loss content at every chance I get. These days, although I wish I could get out more often, that does not detract me from my hobbies which includes bodybuilding, calisthenics, reading, gaming and binging on dramas for a little longer than necessary.
In regards to health, I am particularly quite passionate on the research part. Especially in the areas regarding fat loss, muscle building, cardiovascular health, behavior change and mental health. I hope my articles can benefit you to be more health conscious to some degree. Well, in this article, I am going to cover fat loss. Specifically, what is fat loss, how it differs from weight loss, how we measure overweight and obesity, the impact of obesity globally, health risk of obesity and finally some shocking numbers you wouldn’t believe.
Fat Loss vs Weight Loss
In our society, most of us have equated the two. Fat loss = Weight loss. However, this is not very accurate. Fat loss is the process in which we try to lose the non-essential fats that we have. They’re namely the visceral fat (the fat that surrounds our organs) and subcutaneous fat (the fat that lies directly under our skin). This is all done while maintaining as much muscle mass as possible. Weight loss on the other hand, is the process of losing weight regardless of muscle or fat.
In terms of both aesthetics and health, the goal of fat loss is superior to that of weight loss. Let me tell you why.
1. Getting the physique you’ve always wanted
Aiming for fat loss would result in having a lean body-type (mesomorph) rather than a skinny body-type (ectomorph). The mesomorph body is what’s being portrayed in the media to be the “ideal” physique for both men and women. Bonus fact, according to American psychologist and physician, William Sheldon, he theorized that the changes to your body type also manifests different behavior changes as well.
Differences between mesomorph and ectomorph
2. Avoiding muscle deterioration
More significantly, working towards fat loss would not deteriorate your muscles which plays an important role in protecting our bones and organs. Just ask Kevin Hart when he had a car accident back in 2019. The accident led him to have a severe back injury for some time. He believes that if he didn’t strengthen his core muscles, he would still be paralyzed till this day.
Looking at the key results produced between the two, it is important for us to understand the difference. In the future, I’ll share more tips on how to achieve the body type that you want. For now, when someone says that they’re aiming to “lose more weight so they can be buff”, just link them to this article instead!
Explaining the Body Mass Index
In both instances of fat and weight loss, the main idea is losing fats for a healthier physique. Why is that? Are fats something so bad that human beings needs to actively remove them from our system?
Fats themselves are not inherently harmful to the human body. However, having excessive amount of body fat, particularly visceral fat, has been strongly linked to having poor mortality rate. The amount of body fat an individual carry determines whether they are medically overweight or obese.
It’s a less dreadful way of classifying weight. Photo from Pexels
There are many ways to measure body fat such as a DEXA scan or MRI. However, these methods tend to be very expensive. Hence, the more commonly used Body Mass Index (BMI) have been used instead to measure population-level classification of overweight and obese.
You can find many BMI calculators online; I have attached one here just for you guys. If instead you would like to go through the trouble of calculating it on your own. Here is the raw formula:
For example, if I weigh 60kg and my height is around 160cm, my BMI is around 23.44kg/m2. It is as simple as that to find your BMI!
Individuals with a BMI greater than or equal to 25 are classified as overweight and being obese is having a BMI greater than or equal to 30 (sourced from the CDC). In the previous example, I am barely classified as overweight. This indicates that I should work more on losing fat before it snowballs even more.
In the case of children, their BMI is calculated as a percentile relative to children of that region. Currently on the CDC website, their percentile is expressed as a child’s BMI relative to US children who participated in a survey from 1963-65 to 1988- 94. Children between the 85th and 95th percentile is considered overweight and children equal to or greater than the 95th percentile is considered obese.
Finding out if you are overweight or obese would help you to visualize where you stand on the physical health scale. Individuals with excessive body fat tends to have a higher risk of contracting multiple different complications. These are NCDs such as heart attack, stroke, type 2 diabetes, colorectal cancer and so forth.
Know your BMI so you’ll know what target BMI to hit or how much body fat you’ll need to lose!
The Status Quo on Obesity
Unfortunately, the World Health Organization states that obesity worldwide has nearly tripled since 1975 with 1.9 billion adults being overweight in 2016. Of these overweight adults about 650 million were obese. Sad to say, it’s looking a little bleak out there on our fight against this hidden “pandemic”.
Taking it back closer to home, the Ministry of Health (MoH) of Brunei Darussalam stated the country has one of the highest obesity rates in Southeast Asia with 27% of the adult population to be obese putting them at risk of the complications mentioned above.
What about the children of Brunei? Well, in 2016 the Ministry of Health (MoH) found that 1 out of 2 children from the age of 5 are either overweight or obese. From 2008 to 2014, obesity among school children in Brunei Darussalam increased from 12 to 18%. In other words, during this time, obesity has risen by 1% every year. This exposes the children to unnecessary mortality risks at a young age.
In conclusion, can we not get away from our insatiable hunger for food?
Looking at these grim stats, overweight and obese individuals are highly encouraged to prioritize getting their health in check. We wouldn’t want the future to be of obese people on hovering chairs like in Wall-E, do we? I hope with my involvement here, I can touch on more topics that can help my readers become healthier!
Even in the team, we are not all fit body builders or personal trainers. However, we aspire to spread more health awareness while we work on our own separate journeys. Let us all contribute meaningfully towards encouraging a healthier nation one article at a time.
All of us at HTO content team
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