7 Ways Your Body Profits From Lost Weight

These seven benefits of losing weight are life saving. They are sort of connected to two things that effect us all. They are Gravity and Blood Circulation.

If we are heavier than we should be, the effect of gravity on our bodies is significant – muscle tone,  our joints and heart are badly affected.

To gain weight usually means our energy intake (from the food we eat – or maybe the type of food we eat) exceeds our day to day energy requirements. So our bodies store this excess energy as fat, and to get the fat stored in the body it is transported by our blood circulation system. A process that can lead to hardening and clogging up of arteries. Not too mention the bad effect of the stored fat on the healthy function of our vital organs.

You weren’t going to mention that.

Ohh sorry.

When we lose weight, and reach a healthy weight for our height etc., then there are seven big benefits.

Why is Thinner Better Than Fatter

1. Your Heart Breathes A Sigh Of Relief

When reducing weight, each step of the weight loss process produces benefits for our heart. The fact that there is less weight to move around benefits the heart’s function and of course as we lose weight we also reduce our blood pressure which makes the heart’s pumping job a lot easier.

When losing weight there is a sort of trickle down effect on the improved operation of other organs in our body. Our circulation system benefits by  reducing the risk of continued cardiovascular diseases like hardened arteries caused by high triglyceride levels or blocked arteries caused by high levels of the bad Cholesterol.

Being overweight or obese means the LDL cholesterol (BAD) is too high and the HDL cholesterol (GOOD) is too low – not a good combination.

2. Softer, Cleaner Arteries – Lower Blood Pressure.

It has been shown that one of the biggies of losing weight is a reduction in blood pressure. Continued high blood pressure can result in stroke because the brain does not get the blood flow it requires. The brain is a hungry thing and needs a lot of resources.

As explained, hardening of the arteries and blocked arteries go hand in hand with obesity. With the arteries not functioning efficiently the heart has to work harder pumping to get the blood around our bodies and this increases our  blood pressure but also reduces the amount of blood being pumped – not good )-:  .

For people who are over weight, any movement they make requires a lot more effort and so they need more oxygen to do this. This is why people who are obese ending up “puffing” more after only mild physical activity.

3. Putting a Spring In Your Step

Gravity is the enemy of people who are Obese. When moving about,  overweight people are putting a lot of tension on their joints, especially knees and ankles.

Let’s look at weight and your knees. When you walk across level ground, the force on your knees is the equivalent of 1½ times your body weight. That means a 200-pound man will put 300 pounds of pressure on his knees with each step. Add an incline, and the pressure is even greater: the force on each knee is two to three times your body weight when you go up and down stairs, and four to five times your body weight when you squat to tie a shoelace or pick up an item you dropped. From: Harvard Medical School

Because of this extra weight bearing down on the joints, the cushioning material of the joint is being worn away and so moving about can become more and more painful. By losing weight this stress on the joints is reduced and the risk of osteoarthritus and possibly arthritus is reduced, especially in young people.

4. Are You Happy?

In general terms, if we are over weight and we undertake a weight loss program, as we lose weight our  “frame of mind” or mood improves; We will be happier more often (-:  .

This relationship between excess weight and mood has been well documented. Especially between a physical activity, like working out, and a reduction in depressive moods. So the emotional benefits of losing weight and getting fitter are huge.

Perhaps we should add under the Are You Happy  heading such things as: Improved Self Respect, Improved Self Worth, Improved Self Belief, Improved Self Discipline. This is all good stuff and I am sure that you can think of a whole lot more

5. What About Diabetes?

Well we know that obesity and diabetes II go hand in hand, so losing weight past a certain threshold will either reduce the risk of getting diabetes or make the disease easier to manage.

When we are overweight we have excess sugar in our blood stream (because the energy we have consumed exceeds what we need), and insulin is vital for keeping this excess sugar at healthy levels. But continued high sugar levels lead to insulin resistance which leads to Diabetes II which is bad.

If we lose weight then this means our body fat is disappearing – from our stomach region and from our liver. Also as we lose weight, our blood sugar levels will drop and so insulin sensitivity will increase and the management of our blood sugar it much more effective.

6. Better Bye-Byes (-: , That Is Sleep.

With weight loss comes a better sleeping pattern. This is not only because of the change in our bodies physical shape as we lose the weight, but also whereabouts the fat had been deposited.

Too much fat in the stomach area can interfere with a good nights sleep.

If the fat builds up around the upper part of our bodies like our airways, then this can interfere with our autonomic breathing when we are asleep and result in something called Obstructive Sleep Apnea (OSA). Losing weight has been found to reduce the severity of OSA, and maybe a major component of the treatment of OSA in obese people.

Irritability, tiredness, and lethargy are all the effects of having OSA and these will have a further bad impact on our health and well being.

7. Inflammation – What’s This??

Inflammation is an important part of our bodies armoury against infection. When we get a cut and it gets infected the area around the cut gets red and hot and this is the result of our body defending itself.

The inflammation we associate with obesity is called Chronic Inflammation and is different. Excess weight, bad diet, lack of exercise, smoking, stress and too much alcohol can all lead to chronic inflammation.

Chronic inflammation can affect different parts of the body. For example inflamed arteries will reduce blood flow, an inflamed brain can trigger depression, inflamed lungs can develop bronchitis or emphysema, and inflammation can also lead to insulin resistance.

So by losing weight we can take advantage of some big positives because the occurrence of chronic inflammation will disappear.

Simple Equation: Lose Weight = Get Healthy

So what we are talking about is Win:Win isn’t it – Lose weight and get healthy – simple.

Of course when we lose weight we should also do a bit of exercise. Losing weight and exercise do go hand-in-hand, and we owe it to ourselves to not only unclog the engine but also get it running as smoothly as we can.

We go to the effort of losing weight and we need to take on a mind set that the weight we have lost is a permanent loss, and one of the best ways or “easiest” ways to do this is to focus on flexibility and fitness.

Thanks for reading this post, I hope it helps you understand why thinner is better than fatter.