What takes place in the body when I eat or drink?
Chewing and swallowing: you take into your mouth grind it up and swallow.
Digestion: You break down food into small components
Absorption: you take themes small components from the gastro-intestinal tract into your blood stream
Assimilation: You reassemble these small components in the liver and use them as building blocks
Excretion: you get rid of waste materials by the breathing perspiring urinating defecating
How does food get converted to fat in the body?
Fat stored in the body can be made from any food component - carbohydrates, proteins, fats, When food is eaten it travels to the stomach and intestines. Enzymes break down food into glucose amino acids and minute droplets of fats.
The fats travel to the liver and are proceeded to form fatty acids and glycerol. From the liver the fatty acids enter circulation where they are broken down further to release energy for immediate use by many organs.
Any excess is reconverted to fatty acids and stored as fat cells under the skin and around the internal organs. The glycerol is converted into glycogen which either is broken down to release the energy or stored in the liver's glycogen-storage system. When this is full the glycogen is changed into fat and stored in body cells, making you overweight if a lot is stored here.
Why We Get Fat and What to Do About It
What is that make people fat? The fact that two people react quite differently when they overeat has been known to us and yet this fact never seems to be taken into account or explained by the various experts who write popular books and articles about slimming.
What exactly is metabolism?
Metabolism is the term used to include in one world the entire complex chemical processes within the body which determine the growth and replacement of the body tissues, the production of body heat and energy necessary for muscular activity and other vital functions. In a sense, what people call the life process of the body, scientists call the same process as metabolism.
What is the reason for man's failure to use up as much energy as he takes in as food?
It could be that although you only eat a normal quantity, some defect in the way your body deals with food deflects some of what you eat to you fat stores and jeeps it there instead of letting you use for energy.
In other words you have a defect in your metabolism which a person with constant weight does not have. Too much attention has been paint to the input side of the energy equation and not enough to the possible causes of the defective output. Even with a low food intake, a person gets fat because his output is small. And this need not be because of insufficient exercise but because something is interfering with the smooth conversion of fuel to energy in his body and encouraging its storage as fat. Which means that something is wrong with his metabolism? The metabolic rate of every individual is different.
What is metabolic rate? Is there any test to determine it?
All individuals are metabolically different. One person's metabolism may be more active or less active than another's. The metabolism then has a rate. The rate may be average, slow or fast or as the case may be.
Just as you might judge the heat in a kettle by the amount of steam coming out from its spout, so too scientist have a way of determining the human metabolism rate.
The amount of carbon dioxide thrown off by the breath keeps pace with the heat production of the body. An apparatus has actually been devised to measure this output. A person's internal heat production can be determined by taking into account his/her height and approximate skin area in relation to his/her carbon dioxide output.
You can take a metabolism test usually twelve hours after you have eaten a light meal at about 70 degrees Fahrenheit when you are at the absolute physical and mental rest. The result of this metabolic test is called Basal Metabolism Rate.
The rate of your basal metabolism has much to do with the question of food and body fat accumulation. Basically body fat is food which has not been burnt to heat or energy. Now if
food is the fuel source of human body heat and metabolism the medium that converts food into heat, there
Digestion: You break down food into small components
Absorption: you take themes small components from the gastro-intestinal tract into your blood stream
Assimilation: You reassemble these small components in the liver and use them as building blocks
Excretion: you get rid of waste materials by the breathing perspiring urinating defecating
How does food get converted to fat in the body?
Fat stored in the body can be made from any food component - carbohydrates, proteins, fats, When food is eaten it travels to the stomach and intestines. Enzymes break down food into glucose amino acids and minute droplets of fats.
The fats travel to the liver and are proceeded to form fatty acids and glycerol. From the liver the fatty acids enter circulation where they are broken down further to release energy for immediate use by many organs.
Any excess is reconverted to fatty acids and stored as fat cells under the skin and around the internal organs. The glycerol is converted into glycogen which either is broken down to release the energy or stored in the liver's glycogen-storage system. When this is full the glycogen is changed into fat and stored in body cells, making you overweight if a lot is stored here.
Why We Get Fat and What to Do About It
What is that make people fat? The fact that two people react quite differently when they overeat has been known to us and yet this fact never seems to be taken into account or explained by the various experts who write popular books and articles about slimming.
What exactly is metabolism?
Metabolism is the term used to include in one world the entire complex chemical processes within the body which determine the growth and replacement of the body tissues, the production of body heat and energy necessary for muscular activity and other vital functions. In a sense, what people call the life process of the body, scientists call the same process as metabolism.
What is the reason for man's failure to use up as much energy as he takes in as food?
It could be that although you only eat a normal quantity, some defect in the way your body deals with food deflects some of what you eat to you fat stores and jeeps it there instead of letting you use for energy.
In other words you have a defect in your metabolism which a person with constant weight does not have. Too much attention has been paint to the input side of the energy equation and not enough to the possible causes of the defective output. Even with a low food intake, a person gets fat because his output is small. And this need not be because of insufficient exercise but because something is interfering with the smooth conversion of fuel to energy in his body and encouraging its storage as fat. Which means that something is wrong with his metabolism? The metabolic rate of every individual is different.
What is metabolic rate? Is there any test to determine it?
All individuals are metabolically different. One person's metabolism may be more active or less active than another's. The metabolism then has a rate. The rate may be average, slow or fast or as the case may be.
Just as you might judge the heat in a kettle by the amount of steam coming out from its spout, so too scientist have a way of determining the human metabolism rate.
The amount of carbon dioxide thrown off by the breath keeps pace with the heat production of the body. An apparatus has actually been devised to measure this output. A person's internal heat production can be determined by taking into account his/her height and approximate skin area in relation to his/her carbon dioxide output.
You can take a metabolism test usually twelve hours after you have eaten a light meal at about 70 degrees Fahrenheit when you are at the absolute physical and mental rest. The result of this metabolic test is called Basal Metabolism Rate.
The rate of your basal metabolism has much to do with the question of food and body fat accumulation. Basically body fat is food which has not been burnt to heat or energy. Now if
food is the fuel source of human body heat and metabolism the medium that converts food into heat, there
must be a definite relation between basal metabolism rate and fat production and there is a decided one.
A normal metabolism rate helps you greatly to stay just about normal in weight, a slow metabolism rate make you tend to put on kilos and high metabolism rate is apt to keep you thin.
Reasons for obesity:
The underlying reason in more than 95% of all the cases that are overweight is an imbalance between energy output and energy intake. That is, the body carrying out its functions does not expend as much energy as it take in through food and liquids. This is a disturbance in metabolism and it shows up in three ways:
- The body forms fat at a rate that is faster than normal
- The body stores fat at rate that is faster than normal fat formed in the digestive system quickly reaches the arms the thighs in the form of fat deposits. These deposits stretch your skin and distorts you shape.
- The body disposes off stored fat at a rate that is slower than normal. This is why it's so difficult to lose weight from the places you really want to lose it. The body is forming and storing fat cannot get rid of fat that has been already stored as easily as it should.
The disturbance in your metabolism therefore works on you in three ways all very damaging.
Preventing Kids From Getting Fat
Perhaps the most important treatment for overweight and obesity is prevention. The best place to start is with the child. It is important that children, from infancy itself should be taught good eating habits and it is equally important that mothers should appreciate that a child does not have to be fat to be healthy. In fact he may be less healthy than the lean child. Parents must be made to realize that forced feeding initiates a lifelong disability.
Excessive weight gain in children usually begins between seven and eight years of age. This is the period of filling out in the growth process. In addition, the children at this age become less active as they have to sit in class room for greater part of the day and then sitting down to do homework o r watch television. For this reason physical fitness exercises should be an important part of school curriculum. Once a child becomes overweight he is obviously less inclined to exercise and so the vicious cycle begins.
In families where one or both parents are obese or inclined to be overweight, it is even more important to control carefully a child's diet, since he may be predisposed to obesity because of hereditary factors. If he is taught basic nutrition and good eating habits, he may well be able to control his tendency to become fat. If heredity is a factor of his overweight, he must take extra care and effort in reducing his weight and keeping it at the normal range.
A normal metabolism rate helps you greatly to stay just about normal in weight, a slow metabolism rate make you tend to put on kilos and high metabolism rate is apt to keep you thin.
Reasons for obesity:
The underlying reason in more than 95% of all the cases that are overweight is an imbalance between energy output and energy intake. That is, the body carrying out its functions does not expend as much energy as it take in through food and liquids. This is a disturbance in metabolism and it shows up in three ways:
- The body forms fat at a rate that is faster than normal
- The body stores fat at rate that is faster than normal fat formed in the digestive system quickly reaches the arms the thighs in the form of fat deposits. These deposits stretch your skin and distorts you shape.
- The body disposes off stored fat at a rate that is slower than normal. This is why it's so difficult to lose weight from the places you really want to lose it. The body is forming and storing fat cannot get rid of fat that has been already stored as easily as it should.
The disturbance in your metabolism therefore works on you in three ways all very damaging.
Preventing Kids From Getting Fat
Perhaps the most important treatment for overweight and obesity is prevention. The best place to start is with the child. It is important that children, from infancy itself should be taught good eating habits and it is equally important that mothers should appreciate that a child does not have to be fat to be healthy. In fact he may be less healthy than the lean child. Parents must be made to realize that forced feeding initiates a lifelong disability.
Excessive weight gain in children usually begins between seven and eight years of age. This is the period of filling out in the growth process. In addition, the children at this age become less active as they have to sit in class room for greater part of the day and then sitting down to do homework o r watch television. For this reason physical fitness exercises should be an important part of school curriculum. Once a child becomes overweight he is obviously less inclined to exercise and so the vicious cycle begins.
In families where one or both parents are obese or inclined to be overweight, it is even more important to control carefully a child's diet, since he may be predisposed to obesity because of hereditary factors. If he is taught basic nutrition and good eating habits, he may well be able to control his tendency to become fat. If heredity is a factor of his overweight, he must take extra care and effort in reducing his weight and keeping it at the normal range.
