It is important to understand, when desiring to lose weight and to avoid obesity, how the body works and how it uses calories. Education is an important factor in the fight for obesity prevention. Understanding some of the many causes of obesity may help some overweight people finally be able to be more conscious of the dietary choices they are making, and start making healthier living.

How you gain or lose weight is broken down into calories, using a simple caloric equation. When you consume the same amount of calories as you burn, your resulting calorie ‘sum’ is zero, which means that your weight should remain at a constant rate. However, if your caloric ‘sum’ is more than zero, then the extra calories is stored in your body as fat leading to weight gain. When your body fat mass exceeds 30% for women, and 25% for men, then you are considered, in medical terms, to be obese, while those with a body mass index (BMI) of 40 to 49% is considered to be morbidly obese, and a BMI over 50% is medically determined to be super obese.
Calorie Intake
The caloric intake for everyone is the sum of the calorie-content in the foods consumed within a given day. Your overall diet does not contribute much to your weight. It is all about the calories consume even if it is fat calories or from, carbohydrates or protein.
Calorie burned
While you might expect that exercise burns most of your calories each day, in actuality it only covers approximately one third or the total calories burned from the body. Typically, the calories you burn depends on the following three conditions, your Metabolic Rate, your level of physical activity, and dietary Thermogenesis.
When a person does not consume the recommended amounts of calories daily, especially over an extended period of time, the body thinks that it is in a ‘starvation mode’ and the metabolism will slow down in an attempt to help the body to survive. If a healthy eating routine is not reintroduced and maintained, the individual might find it difficult to lose weight as the body gets adjusted to the new caloric amount, and this can also mean that a ‘normal’ meal can be enough to begin putting back on any weight that has been lost. A slower metabolism can result, which can affect any future attempts at weight loss, making it more difficult to lose the weight. Additionally, most of the weight gain will be due to the associated retardation of the metabolism caused by the loss of Lean Body Weight. This yo-yo effect and the slowing of the metabolism is one cause for obesity.
One of the major factors in regards to how quickly a person’s metabolism efficiently and effectively uses the calories it has available, is the amount of lean muscle they have on their body. The basal metabolic rate (BMR) equals approximately 60% of the amount of calories used every day. Even when you sleep, your muscles burn most of the calories that are being used.