Good nutritional habits aren’t just important for preventing diseases. They can also help you control your weight, or even lose weight.
It is a sad fact: the number overweight and obese people, including those who can be categorized as ‘morbidly obese’, are higher than ever in the United States.
Morbidly obese means so overweight, they are at risk of death.
According to the CDC, more than six in 10 American adults are overweight or obese—and most adults are about 25 pounds heavier than people were in the 1960s. Clearly, living in the land of plenty has proven to be a mixed blessing.
To make matters worse, more than half of all overweight people actually think they’re at a healthy weight, according to a recent Associated Press poll.
In theory, weight control is a simple matter of balancing energy intake (the calories supplied by food) with energy output (the calories expended by physical activity, the digestion of food, and the functioning of your body).
To lose weight, you need to burn more energy than you take in.
In practice, however, the task is not that simple. While the basic principle of energy balance remains true, several mechanisms—genetic, metabolic, and environmental—can affect how much you eat, and how your body uses and stores energy.
