Maintaining a healthy weight is an important aspect of living a long, healthy life. Carrying too much weight can shave years off your life, reduce your vitality, and lower your quality of life. Losing weight isn’t easy, but understanding the benefits of weight loss can motivate individuals to embark on a weight loss program if they’re overweight or obese. This article explores the multifaceted advantages of weight loss, encompassing improvements in physical health, mental well-being, and overall quality of life.
The Ripple Effect of a 5% Weight Loss
You don’t have to slim down to your high school size to get real health benefits. Losing just a few pounds makes a big difference. Five percent of your body weight -- 10 pounds for a 200-pound person -- can improve all kinds of health problems, and make you feel better, too. A 5% weight loss from baseline is generally accepted as a “clinically meaningful” amount. Talk to your doctor about whether it might help you.
Physical Health Benefits
Easing Joint Pain and Reducing Arthritis Risk
Just 10 extra pounds add 40 pounds of pressure on your knees and other lower body joints, which can wear them out quicker. Extra fat can also cause inflammation -- when chemicals in your body damage your own tissues over time, including your joints. Losing even a little weight can ease these effects. If you keep it off, you’re much less likely to get arthritis later in life. Knee joint loads were also assessed in those patients and the investigators found that each pound of weight lost resulted in a 4-fold reduction in the load exerted on the knee per step during daily activities. Accumulated over thousands of steps per day, a reduction of this magnitude would appear to be clinically meaningful.
Lowering Cancer Risk
One study showed that older women who lost at least 5% of their body weight lowered their chances of breast cancer by 12%. There’s no such clear proof that losing weight protects you from other types, but some changes that happen when you shed pounds hint that it might. For example, overweight people who slim down have lower levels of some hormones linked to cancer, like estrogens, insulin, and androgens.
Preventing and Managing Type 2 Diabetes
If you’re more likely to get the condition, weight loss is one of two ways to prevent or delay it. The other is moderate exercise -- 30 minutes on 5 days a week. If you weigh 160 pounds, you could lose just 8-12 of them to get the benefit. If you already have diabetes, losing that weight can help you take less medication, keep control of your blood sugar, and lower the odds that the condition will cause other health problems. This is fortunate for diabetes prevention; it takes only small amounts of weight loss to prevent progression to type 2 diabetes from impaired glucose tolerance and after the 10 kg of weight loss one cannot demonstrate much additional improvement in risk reduction.
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Improving Cholesterol Levels
You can lower your LDL or “bad” cholesterol with healthier food and medications. But it’s harder to raise levels of the “good” kind of cholesterol, HDL. That’s the type that clears bad LDL from your blood, so the more you have, the better. Exercise and losing body fat can get you into the ideal HDL range: above 60 mg/dl, which lowers your odds of having heart disease.
Reducing Triglycerides
They’re particles in your body that transport fat for storage and energy. High levels (more than 200 mg/dl) mean you’re more likely to have a heart attack or stroke. You can get closer to healthy levels (around 150 mg/dl) if you slim down a little.
Lowering High Blood Pressure
Extra body weight makes your blood push harder against your artery walls. That makes your heart work harder, too. You can lower the pressure by about 5 points if you trim 5% from that number on the scale. Cut your salt and eat plenty of vegetables, fruits, and low-fat dairy, and you may lower it even more.
Alleviating Sleep Apnea
People who are overweight gain extra tissue in the back of their throats. When your body relaxes when you sleep, that tissue can drop down and block your airway. It makes you stop breathing over and over all night, which causes all kinds of health problems, especially for your heart. Slimming down a little can often help with sleep apnea -- sometimes enough that you can stop using the bulky breathing devices that treat it. For some comorbid conditions, more weight loss is needed - 10% to 15% - to translate into clinical improvement. This is true with obstructive sleep apnea, and non-alcoholic steatotic hepatitis.
Reversing Insulin Resistance
Body fat, especially in your belly area, gives off chemicals that make your body stop reacting to the effects of insulin, a hormone that keeps the level of sugar in your blood normal. Even though your pancreas works harder to make more insulin, your blood sugar can get too high. A little bit of weight loss can help reverse this effect.
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Enhancing Sleep Quality
Some studies have shown that not getting enough ZZZs can make you more likely to be obese. Others show that losing at least 5% of excess weight can lead to better sleep. But don’t overdo it. Sleeping too much isn’t good for your weight or your health.
Improving Heart Health and Reducing Stroke Risk
Being overweight makes your heart work harder to move blood through the body. Shedding some weight reduces pressure on your arteries and stress on your heart. Moving toward your target weight lowers your stroke risk. Excess weight puts extra strain on nearly all of your body systems, and this includes your heart. Losing even a modest 5-10% of your body weight can make a difference when it comes to improving heart health.
Reducing Inflammation
Fat cells, especially those around the belly, can release chemicals that irritate and inflame tissues all over the body. This is linked to health problems like arthritis, heart disease, heart attack, and stroke. Work toward a 10% weight loss goal, and you can lower the amount of these substances and cut your chances of having a serious illness.
Mental and Emotional Well-being Benefits
Boosting Mood and Self-Esteem
Weight loss may help chase your blues away. Scientists are still trying to work out why, but better body image and improved sleep may be part of the reason. In one study, depressed people who were very overweight felt better after they lost an average of 8% of their body weight. Other research shows you’ll continue to feel better, even after 2 years -- as long as you keep the weight off. Not all the benefits of weight loss are physical. We’re all familiar with the idea of a downward spiral, where things go from bad to worse. Losing a few pounds gives you a little more energy, a little less joint point, and a healthy dose of confidence. Making progress can improve your self-esteem.
Increasing Energy Levels
Excess weight gets in the way of feeling energized, and can make daily activities feel more like walking through quicksand.
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Enhancing Intimacy
When you’re overweight, you typically have less sex. It might be because you just don’t feel good about your body. But it also may be that you have less desire and that even when you’re in the mood, your body doesn’t respond as well. Shed a few pounds and you’ll not only feel better about yourself, you may be in the mood more often, too.
Improving Sense of Taste
It’s not clear why, but people who lose weight often report that it sharpens their sense of taste.
Sustainable Weight Loss Strategies
Diet
There’s no one perfect diet to help you slim down, but there are some basic rules. Make half your plate fruits and vegetables. Keep your protein lean and unprocessed: Choose meats trimmed of fat, and eat seafood, beans, nuts, and seeds. Replace refined grains like white bread and white rice with whole grains like multigrain bread, brown rice, and oatmeal.
Exercise
You should be getting 30 minutes of moderate activity -- a bike ride or brisk walk -- on at least 5 days a week simply to stay in good health. To lose weight and keep it off, you may need more than that. Also include moves to strengthen your muscles, like pushups or light weight training.
Protein Intake
A high-protein diet promotes muscle maintenance and aids in weight loss by increasing satiety. Other benefits may include healthier blood sugar levels, bone health and metabolism and faster healing from injury. The National Academy of Medicine recommends that protein should make up 10%-35% of your daily calories. Sullivan recommends 20%-30% protein calories for weight loss. Sullivan said the recommended dietary allowance (RDA) for protein is 0.80 grams per kilogram of body weight, as determined by the Food and Nutrition Board, which is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine. However, the data also shows that, to reduce the loss of muscle mass and to increase satiety, people who are trying to lose weight may need to increase their protein, from 0.80 grams per kilogram of body weight to 1.0-1.2 grams per kilogram.
The Importance of Professional Guidance
Having the right support is essential to successful weight loss as well as maintaining a healthy weight long-term. Talk with your doctor to learn more about the benefits of losing weight and how to get started. The team of multidisciplinary professionals at Health Advantage Physical Medicine, provide tailored medically supervised weight loss programs that empower patients to adopt sustainable changes that support long-term health. Special weight loss surgery may be an option if you are seriously overweight.