If you actually know me, you would know I can come across as a “health nut” and I am proud of that. I wasn’t always this way though.. Up until about my junior year of high school I was always that kid other kids called “fatty” or “chunky”, and it’s true.. I was, in fact, overweight.
I remember getting the call from my mother on the way to school. My grandpa had passed. I was still pretty young at this time, and I never got to see him much, and unfortunately, what I do recall of this man was that he was always suffering from his diabetes. He wasn’t necessarily the most self-conscious about his health and I remembered that I didn’t want my future grandchildren to remember me in the same way, so I changed my habits and started being conscious about what I was putting into my body. The summer following my junior year I started exercising and subsequently went from weighing about 210 lbs to about 165 lbs. Words cannot describe how proud I was of myself for turning my life around like that; which gave me a new reason to remember my grandpa by. In my case, getting in shape was a choice, and I encourage others to be active each and every day, because turns out: once obesity is onset, it becomes harder to “cure” it.
In a study we read for neurochemistry, hypertensive rats were given the choice between a high-fat diet and a “regular chow”. Not only did they increase their body weight in choosing the high-fat diet over the other, but they also displayed leptin and insulin resistance and further increased blood pressure. We don’t know why, but it is hypothesized that with an increase in obesity, there is a biological mechanism saying “eat more” of these fatty consumables.
Individually, I looked into the role the circadian rhythm has on obesity. Turns out, everyone is right in saying that YOU NEED SLEEP. Altering the circadian rhythm by not getting enough sleep is one of many side-effects of not eating or exercising healthily. This then starts a vicious cycle of negatively impacting your sleep schedule. You eat unhealthy, you maybe get a worse night’s sleep, then you throw off your circadian rhythm, altering your eating habits for the worse the next day, then you sleep worse the next day and so on… It seems as if our bodies are constantly combating the ability to stay fit, and you WILL have to put in a lot of effort if you are already facing obesity, but I am here to say from experience that it WILL be worth it.
I firmly believe in fighting obesity before it becomes an actual debilitating disease. Because of the biology behind it, some refer to it as a “biological trap” which becomes increasingly more difficult as it progresses. Kick it in the butt now, before you can’t.
Is Obesity a Choice?
