Women & Weight Gain – Not Just Aesthetics, Fat Cells Affect Every Aspect of Her Life!

We have often heard it from the womenfolk about their weight loss woes and stories of trials and tribulations. Unfortunately, the relationship between women and adipose cells (fat cells) is too deep and diversified. For women, weight gain is not just a body image issue. It has more profound implications and leads to a multitude of health problems. Studies have also indicated that weight gain, especially fat around the middle or central obesity, can be dangerous for women more than men, even if their BMI (body mass index) are the same. 

This means even if a man and woman have the same BMI of suppose 26, but the fat percentage in the woman is more, it spells more danger for her than her male counterpart. 

Now, weight gain and fat deposition happen differently in both genders. Men tend to have central fat distribution (abdominal obesity). In contrast, women tend to have peripheral fat distribution, which is mostly deposited on their limbs and hips, particularly in the lower body. Gender differences in body composition may be due, at least in part, to the effect of sex hormones. 

But there’s a catch: other factors can lead to abdominal obesity in women. Studies show that women who have a sedentary lifestyle and eat high sugar and high glycemic foods (foods that shoot your blood sugars after consumption) tend to store more fat around the belly. This is the danger sign. Particularly for women with a waist circumference of more than 35 inches is a sign of concern. 

Belly fat can increase the risk of  – 

Prediabetes and type 2 diabetes:

Belly fat is visceral fat. It is the fat that covers your internal organs. This fat leads to insulin resistance and prevents the body’s cells from responding to insulin and absorbing glucose efficiently. This leads to an elevated glucose level in the bloodstream, increasing the risk of prediabetes and diabetes. Now, why is this particularly dangerous for women? Women typically have more body fat and less muscle than men. Add to it the perils of visceral fat and it compounds the dangers of ill health. 

Prediabetes is the stage where your blood sugars remain raised but are not high enough to label it as diabetes. However, without proper precautions and care, it can lead to diabetes in a span of 3 to 5 years, approximately. While this implies to men also, in women, the complications of diabetes are much more severe, leading to organ damage, kidney failure, and even depression faster than in men. 

Cardiovascular diseases:

Visceral fat also increases the risk of cardiovascular diseases in women. The reason: this fat can also surround your heart leading to inflammation and higher lipid profiles (increases bad cholesterol levels). Visceral fat is also suspected of leading to atherosclerosis, accumulation of plaque on the artery walls that obstruct blood flow. This increases the risk of high blood pressure, heart diseases, heart attack and stroke. Fat accumulation around the neck (narrowing the airways) can also lead to breathing problems in women, especially at night, causing sleep apnea (a sleep disorder where breathing repeatedly starts and stops) that can aggravate the risk of cardiovascular problems.  

Polycystic ovarian syndrome & Infertility:

Weight gain, PCOS and infertility are closely related. Now, PCOS is an endocrine disorder that leads to hormonal imbalances. Women with PCOS have higher than normal testosterone levels or male sex hormones. This leads to a host of problems like irregular periods, insulin resistance, weight gain, annulation (inability to release an egg), infertility and more. However, weight gain can also be an independent risk factor for PCOS. Both PCOS and weight gain go hand in hand. Moreover, women with PCOS find it difficult to lose weight compared to women without PCOS. 

Many kinds of cancer:

Weight gain or obesity is likely to increase the risk of around 13 different kinds of cancer, namely, breast, colon and rectal, endometrial, gallbladder, stomach, oesophagus (throat), liver, kidney, meningioma (cancer of the tissue that covers the brain and spinal cord), multiple myeloma (cancer of blood plasma cells), pancreatic, ovarian, and thyroid cancers. 

What can one do? 

The perils of weight gain and belly fat are far more detrimental in women than men. The best one can do to improve one’s health quotient and avoid complications is lose weight and get into a healthy BMI range. Well, a healthy BMI would not mean that your body is devoid of visceral fat. To get rid of visceral fat, you need to lose weight healthily and scientifically. 

• Keeping a tab on your calorie intake is an excellent way to start 

• Performing 150 minutes of moderate to vigorous exercise each week to get rid of stubborn fat along with the proper nutrition

• Staying away from vices like alcohol consumption and binge eating also helps

While these tips sound easy and doable, most people get stuck on following these simple steps. The reason: these changes call for a behavourial shift, which in most cases isn’t easy. For instance, if you have lived a sedentary lifestyle, squeezing out 150 minutes to exercise each week could be a mammoth task. For the same reason, making changes in your food preferences could be difficult. This is where you might need expert help and hand-holding. At Fitterfly, we have designed a scientific weight loss program, Reset23, that considers every aspect of your life to help you make changes in your lifestyle and sustain them in the long run to lose weight. 

The program helps you to get a detailed diet plan keeping your likes, dislikes and preferences in place. Our coaches do a detailed macro and microanalysis to help you know where you are going wrong regarding nutrition. Counseling is done to help one know the basics of good nutrition – portion control, the ideal plate method, and choosing the right foods depending on one’s glycemic response because different foods raise blood sugars differently in people. This could affect calorie expenditure and postprandial blood sugars too. Apart from nutrition, our physiotherapy coach will help to chart out an exercise plan that suits your body type after a detailed physical assessment. The exercises offered are tailored to avoid injury or any kind of exertion to the main muscle groups. A well-being coach (Psychologist) also helps you make small behavourial changes to incorporate these habits and helps counter the mental roadblocks that make weight loss an impossible task. 

Reset23 offers a multidisciplinary approach to weight loss where you don’t just lose inches from your waist but get yourself in a healthy BMI range of 23 along with your blood sugars in check, PCOS in control, improve chances of conception and counter the hormonal imbalances too. 

So, if you have tried every other trick in the book or the web to lose weight and failed, try our digital therapeutic program Reset 23 for weight loss. To know more about this program, visit our website www.fitterfly.com or call us at 022 48971077 (Ext 2). 6