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It is easy to notice the activities that cause overweight, which are related to overeating, lack of exercise and poor dietary choices. What is often not recognised is that all these activities have covert – often unnoticed – causes. If you want to get rid of excess weight, you need to pay attention to these covert causes of excess weight. Below we will help you understand and notice the usual main causes of excess weight.
Bad habits
One of the biggest causes of overweight is our habits. The habit of eating a lot, the habit of eating often, or the habit of eating the wrong way – there can be many problematic habits. What makes habits especially problematic is the fact that they are extremely difficult to change. Anyone who has tried to change a habit in their life knows that our habits do not tend to care about what we want at all. It seems as if our habits are out of our control. There is even a saying – a person is a victim of their habits. And indeed, it must be admitted that a person is very much a victim of their habits. Our freedom of action, our choices and our decisions are all strongly influenced by our habits. We make decisions that are habitual and convenient; we make choices that we are used to making.
Scientists have been trying to find out how much of our daily activities we do without careful thought, or out of habit. It turns out that 55-80% of our choices and decisions are habitual. So, habits are a very big part of our lives and a very big part of our eating behaviour. If habits have developed in such a way that they do not support your weight loss goals, that is, they have developed around a sedentary lifestyle or a high-calorie diet, it is also very difficult to lose weight.
Habits are actually extremely necessary for us. Habits make us efficient and allow us to deal with many more issues in a day than would be possible without the help of habits. Habits free up our brain resources so that we can think about the future, solve new problems that come our way for the first time and make room for us to simply enjoy a vacation without thinking about anything.
But not all habits are completely good. There are many habits that successfully solve one problem but in the process create a new problem in its place. For example, the habit of warding off sadness by eating something tasty does indeed help quite well against sadness, but it also leads to a new problem – a growing waistline. Many of our habits are necessary for us on the one hand, but on the other hand, they can cause problems. It all depends on your goals.
In the context of body weight, it is important to identify the habits that keep us on the path to obesity. That is why we help you find these so-called ‘fattening’ habits and guide you on how to consciously change them. Our lives and our goals are constantly changing. Habits can and should reflect this.
Causes of obesity related to diseases
Psychiatric and emotional disorders
There are many psychiatric and emotional disorders that contribute to weight gain and make it difficult to lose weight. Depending on the severity of the psychiatric and emotional disorders, treatment of these disorders may be necessary before starting weight management.
Eating disorders
Binge eating disorder and night eating syndrome are often accompanied by weight gain. Binge eating disorder is when eating occurs in response to negative emotions or stress. Binge eating is characterised by very large amounts of food, eating quickly and eating uncontrollably until the stomach feels too full. Night eating syndrome is characterised by most daytime eating occurring after the evening meal and waking up in the middle of the night to eat because there is a feeling that you need to eat to fall asleep.
Depression
The link between depression and obesity is well-known, especially in women. However, it is not clear which comes first – being overweight, which can cause depression, or depression, which causes weight gain. In addition to classic depression, there is seasonal depression, which mainly occurs in the winter months. It is believed that the decrease in daylight changes the circadian rhythm, affecting both melatonin and serotonin (the happiness hormone) levels. Stress causes lower mood, fatigue, changes in appetite and weight gain.
Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder
Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder is characterised by low dopamine levels, which are partly to blame for overeating. Dopamine is the so-called ‘feel-good’ brain chemical. When eating something delicious, it is dopamine that creates a feeling of pleasure and peace. Carbohydrate-rich foods, in particular sweets and fast food, increase dopamine levels. Thus, people with ADHD often want to eat foods like ice cream, chocolate or fries to feel good. When ADHD is accompanied by impulsivity, it is more difficult to resist unhealthy food choices.
These two factors increase the risk of weight gain in people with ADHD.
Other medical conditions
In addition to psychiatric and emotional disorders, there are several other medical conditions that can contribute to weight gain and make it difficult to lose weight. However, if these conditions are correctly diagnosed and treated, they should not prevent weight loss.
Chronic pain
Chronic pain is caused by a number of conditions such as arthritis, back pain, muscle injuries, nerve damage, fibromyalgia and headaches. Pain can have a negative impact on mood, sleep and mental health, sometimes causing anxiety or depression. Pain also makes movement difficult and less enjoyable. If you exercise too little, it causes both muscle loss and a decrease in the capacity of your heart and lungs. In turn, these two factors make it even more difficult to exercise.
Sleep apnea syndrome
Excessive weight can lead to sleep apnoea, which is a condition in which breathing stops during sleep. This causes interrupted sleep, which in turn causes sleep deprivation. Lack of sleep disrupts the regulation of hormones that regulate hunger and satiety, which increases appetite. In addition, it is more difficult to make decisions in favour of healthier food choices when you are tired.
Underactive thyroid or hypothyroidism
Hypothyroidism is a condition in which the thyroid gland does not produce enough of certain essential hormones. This causes a decrease in resting energy expenditure, which is usually accompanied by a weight gain of two to five kilogrammes. Although hypothyroidism is associated with weight gain, most overweight people have normal thyroid levels.
Low testosterone levels
Low testosterone levels in men can cause a loss of muscle mass and an increase in body fat. Low levels can be caused by excessive alcohol consumption, heavy physical exercise, taking certain medications, etc.
Polycystic ovary syndrome
Polycystic ovary syndrome promotes weight gain because many women with polycystic ovary syndrome may have insulin resistance. Insulin resistance occurs when muscle, fat and liver cells do not respond adequately to insulin and cannot absorb glucose from the blood. As a result, the body starts to overproduce insulin to help glucose enter the cells. High insulin levels also increase the production of male sex hormones. The resulting insulin resistance and high levels of male hormones contribute to weight gain.
Cushing’s syndrome
Cushing’s syndrome is caused by high levels of cortisol in the body. Gradual weight gain is the most common symptom of Cushing’s syndrome. Fatty tissue usually accumulates in the face, neck, trunk and abdomen, while the arms and legs tend to be thin. Cushing’s syndrome is characterised by a round face and increased fat deposits in the upper back and lower neck.
Hypothalamic damage
Any disorder involving damage to the hypothalamus can result in significant obesity. The hypothalamus is the appetite centre of the brain and controls several appetite-regulating hormones. Hypothalamic dysfunction can be caused by brain trauma, brain tumours, aneurysms and other conditions.
Medications
Some prescription medications can cause weight gain. Certain medications that may be used to treat diabetes, high blood pressure, mood disorders, seizures and even migraines can contribute to weight gain. For example, taking insulin, as well as certain other diabetes medicines (such as sulphonylureas or thiazolidinediones), can promote weight gain and make weight loss more difficult. Long-term glucocorticoid treatment is also associated with weight gain. Weight gain can also occur with certain antidepressants, anticonvulsants, antipsychotics and non-selective beta-blockers. In most cases, weight gain is not caused by the medication itself, but by a side effect of the medication. Some medications increase appetite, causing you to eat more. Others can affect the way the body absorbs and stores glucose, causing you to store fat around your midsection. Certain medications reduce your body’s energy expenditure. Medication-related weight gain is highly variable. Weight gain can occur slowly over several years or very rapidly over a few months.
Anxiety and stress
Another big reason why weight loss fails is eating due to stress and anxiety. Emotional eating means that we eat not only when we are hungry but also when we feel anxious and tense. Food portions increase, the frequency of snacking increases and the number of calories consumed will start to increase your weight. But this is not all. Silencing unpleasant emotions or deceiving yourself with the pleasure of food means that the reason WHY you felt anxious, stressed or another negative emotion remains. And as soon as the effect of the food fades, that same unpleasant feeling resurfaces. The result is eating again.
Emotional stress, or constant or frequently recurring negative emotions, has two main effects on our eating behaviour. First, when we are stressed, we eat more than usual. These changes in cognitive processes reduce our self-control, reduce the desirability of a healthy lifestyle and increase the desire to escape emotional discomfort. All of which leads to eating more often and consuming more food. Second, we prefer unhealthy foods when we are stressed. Fatty, sugary, fried, deep-fried. In addition, we then buy more junk food, crisps, cookies, candy, chocolates, etc. Thus, our food choices become poorer in nutrients, which causes a lower feeling of satiety and at the same time, our meals become more calorie-dense, meaning that the same plateful of food provides us with significantly more calories compared to our usual food choices. And third, the quantities of food eaten increase. This stress-induced change in eating preferences is very common, according to studies. Thirty-nine per cent of the population, both normal weight and overweight, say their eating habits change under stress. In the overweight population, these numbers are even higher. Thus, emotional stress leads to an increase in food intake, a preference for calorie-dense and nutrient-poor foods, all of which leads to weight gain.
Negative emotions also significantly affect physical activity. This happens in two ways. First, voluntary physical activity, such as exercising or moving for health purposes, decreases when stress occurs. As a result of the cognitive changes discussed in the previous section, thinking about problems and finding solutions to problems become more important than working out and shaping a better body. As a result, a healthy lifestyle simply takes a back seat. Even if we find the time to exercise, stress is often accompanied by pessimistic thoughts and a feeling of giving up. In addition to reduced exercise and intentional movement, studies show that daily routine movement also decreases and our lifestyle becomes more sedentary due to negative emotions. We move less, sit longer, do less housework, go out less without a burning need. All of this means fewer calories burned, which in turn means a larger waist circumference.
And finally, experiencing negative emotions also affects our sleep. Emotional stress causes us to sleep less and makes our sleep intermittent and shallow. Scientists have found that reduced sleep affects our weight in several ways. First, constant fatigue and sleep deprivation cause our metabolism to slow down. This means that we burn less energy and some of the unused energy is directed to fat tissue. Lack of sleep and increased fatigue again lead to reduced physical activity. When we are tired, when we have not had a good night’s sleep, we move less, we sit more and in the end we burn fewer calories than when we are rested and active. People who are not rested are hungrier and, according to studies, eat more than when they are rested, so lack of sleep also causes a greater appetite.
Our experts have years of experience in dealing with emotional eating problems. We can give advice, help you take the right steps and support you in reducing eating caused by negative emotions.
False beliefs
Another reason why we eat when we do not need to eat is because we believe in the wrong things. Believing your body will go into starvation mode or believing that eating too little will make you gain weight. Nothing harms us more than when what we firmly believe is actually the opposite. Anyone who has seen countries in famine on TV knows that eating too little does not make anyone gain weight and our body only goes into starvation mode when our body fat percentage has dropped to an exceptionally low level.
Why is there so much misleading information around us? Most of the time it is human error. It is like a childhood game of telephone, where what the first child says to the second child is not at all what reaches the last child. When passing on information, we inadvertently add details that were not originally there or forget to mention some important information. This is how recommendations or even rules start circulating that have changed from the original to completely unrecognisable.
The important thing for weight loss is that you recognise them and do not let myths or misinterpretations make your weight loss journey unnecessarily difficult. The problem with false beliefs is that paths to weight loss that are too difficult or too complicated make us give up. For example, it may seem to us that some people can eat much more than us without gaining weight. We may also try different diets and come to the conclusion that there is something wrong with our body because diets simply do not work. As smart people, we draw conclusions from this that we have bad genes or that our metabolism has been disrupted by diets.
However, such conclusions do us a lot of harm. Namely, such beliefs prevent us from losing weight. If we believe that we cannot do anything about bad genes or a broken metabolism, then why should we even try? We cannot fight nature… or maybe we can? We should not believe the stories about bad genes and a broken metabolism. It is true that weight loss is harder for some people than others. It is actually easy to start losing weight and take the first decisive steps if we let go of the prejudices and beliefs that hold us back.
We are not destined to be overweight by nature or fate. Dietary choices are partly to blame, but a lot of the blame also lies in the information noise that surrounds us, which, even if we really want to, does not allow us to distinguish good advice from bad.
We will help you navigate the information overload related to weight loss and diets, find the right ways to lose weight for you and avoid falling into the trap of myths and false beliefs.
Unsuitable environment
Research shows that those who focus on creating a supportive environment are more successful in losing weight.
Self-control and willpower are definitely qualities that contribute to weight loss. The problem, however, is that very often and for very many people, self-control and willpower are simply not enough. We have surrounded ourselves with so many food-related temptations throughout our lives. We have learned to solve so many situations with food that our self-control and willpower simply cannot withstand it all.
A much easier and less burdensome way is to adjust our environment in such a way that our self-control and willpower do not have to go to the ‘battlefield’ every day. The best way to avoid temptation is to not put yourself in situations where temptations can arise. The environment influences our behaviour much more than we might think. Eating very often starts with a stimulus that is noticed in the environment. Passing a bakery, seeing a picture of food on Facebook or seeing an ice cream ad in a magazine. We may not be hungry or feel a direct need to eat. Something around us simply reminds us of how good it is to eat, how good it makes us feel and, naturally, we then have an appetite and a pressing need to eat. A desire for a specific food, a desire for a pleasant taste, etc. A desire does not mean that we are hungry or that it is really time to eat. The desire is simply a want that arises due to a stimulus.
The more food-related images and smells there are in the environment and the more information we associate with eating and good taste, the more likely we are to give in to our cravings. In this regard, the changes in the environment over the past few decades have been extremely unfavourable to us. There are more and more food advertisements. Have you ever wondered why you tend to head to the fridge during commercial breaks? Maybe the potato chip or ice cream ad on TV is to blame?
In addition, the increasing availability of food is a problem. There is no longer a need to stock up on potatoes for the winter and prepare corned beef to be rationed during the cold months. Our phones are equipped with everything we need to satisfy any appetite within about 20 minutes. From pizza to tortillas, everything is just a matter of ordering. The situation is not any better when we simply walk down the street. In larger cities, we pass about ten different restaurants, fast food places or kiosks during a 20-minute walk. In addition, there are advertisements that stand in the middle of the street as great appetite stimulants.
The situation actually does not get any better when we get home. The environmental influences do not leave us behind here at all. Perhaps, on the contrary, the environmental impacts are even more severe here. Studies show that the home is one of the biggest contributors to obesity. Everything that is edible in your home will be eaten sooner or later. Think about all the food that has quietly accumulated at home. Now think about how it will affect your health if you eat all of it. Are you making healthy choices? Makes you think, doesn’t it?
Contact us and we will help you find steps that will allow you to reduce the negative impact of the environment on your weight.
Lack of motivation
Setting a weight loss goal does not mean that we will reach the goal. To reach the goal, we also need to take action. Overcoming difficulties, perhaps giving up some pleasures and acquiring new skills. All of this is an effort for us and requires consistency. This is where motivation comes into play. Motivation is nothing more than the willingness to make an effort. It is the energy that we are willing to spend to move towards a goal. The stronger the motivation, the more effort we are willing to put in to reach our goal. But what determines the strength of motivation?
First of all, it depends on the ‘reward’. What do we get for this effort? If we believe that achieving a goal will make us happy and that we will live the best possible life because of it, then we are dealing with a goal that significantly increases our willingness to work hard for it.
Second, the strength of motivation depends on the belief in our abilities. If we doubt our abilities, it significantly reduces our willingness to take the difficult path. Perhaps our motivation to make an effort, for example, to lose weight, decreases. At the same time, when we learn something we did not know before, like new skills, it increases our faith in our abilities. Believing that our knowledge and skills are sufficient to overcome the obstacles in our way increases our motivation to move towards the goal.
Third, the strength of motivation depends on the probability of achieving success. If achieving the desired weight does not depend only on our effort, but also on genes and other somewhat unclear factors, it reduces our motivation. Why should I make an effort if, despite all my efforts, I might not succeed?
Our team is ready to help you both in finding motivation and identifying and solving all the other hidden causes of weight loss mentioned above.
If you can reduce the previously hidden but extremely important causes, you will make your weight loss journey much easier and often much faster. This allows you to avoid unnecessary spending on programmes, plans and nutrition consultants because everything you need for your weight loss is within you. All it takes is a little push in the right direction to significantly reduce the impact of individual causes and leave the problem of obesity permanently behind you.
