We are all aware when we need to lose the extra pounds and what improves if we do. Everyone has their own reasons for losing weight. These reasons range from self-confidence/happiness to wanting to be able to wear a size 3 dress or a bikini with joy. Just in case you needed more motivation, here are the top 5 reasons to get serious about shedding those nasty pounds that keep you from being a healthy weight.
1. Your risk of developing cancer may drop: Some Americans don’t even consider carrying extra pounds as a health risk. But the truth is being obese can take away as many as 20 years off your life. The good news is that losing even a small amount of weight can significantly lower and sometimes reverse the risks. Women who are overweight have four times the risk of developing endometrial cancer, and probably for the same reason they have an increased risk for breast cancer: body fat produces estrogen, a hormone that has been linked by scientists to both those types of cancer. Also, University of Minnesota researchers dicovered that leptin, a hormone associated with weight gain, increased the proliferation of both normal and cancerous breast cells.
2. Keeping your mind healthy: Obese people, especially those with large middle areas, can be as high as 260% more likely to develop dementia. And the bigger the stomach gets, the greater the risk, probably because of hormones or inflammatory factors produced by the abdominal fat itself. To prevent this, start eating nonfat or low-fat yogurt for breakfast. The calcium in dairy products stimulates your body to burn rather than store abdominal fat.
3. Faster recovery from cancer: Women who are obese tend to have a higher risk of complications from breast reconstruction after mastectomy. They also seem to be less likely to get the full benefit of pre-surgery chemotherapy, as opposed to women with a normal weight , the reason being that doctors tend to give overweight women smaller doses than they really need of the medication they are taking as they are worried about toxicity.
4. Protecting your heart from disease: The bigger you get, the more chances you have of suffering a heart attack earlier in life, as early as 12 years sooner for the most obese, according to a study in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology. Overweight people are also more likely to have diabetes and high cholesterol.
5. A better psychological state: Studies have proven the existence of a correlation between obesity and depression. Findings from a recent research have shown that about 6.5 percent of the women who had a normal body mass index (BMI) were depressed, as opposed to more than 25 percent of those with BMIs higher than 35. Scientists have also found a 25 percent increase in the risk of developing mood disorders among the obese.
