New Year, new you. Here's what to know about creeping obesity and how you can stop it

The holidays are behind us, and for the New Year, tens of millions of Americans have resolved to lose weight.

That’s a good place to start, but let’s tweak our resolutions a bit. First, concentrate on losing body fat, not just weight. And second, make losing excess fat around the waist a priority. Men are very prone to packing on belly fat. Women store belly fat too, but not as much as men. However, after menopause, women soon catch up.

Belly fat should be a priority because it poses a significant risk to your health by interfering with the body’s insulin response. When this happens the body resists the effects of insulin to move glucose (sugar) out of the bloodstream and into the cells. As a result, glucose accumulates in the blood which damages blood vessels. Ultimately, this can lead to Type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, amputations, blindness, etc.

Too much belly fat is also a big contributor to lower back problems. When there is too much belly sticking out up front, the lower back muscles have to compensate and work hard to keep you upright. This overloads and fatigues them and sets the stage for lower back injury.

What is creeping obesity and how can I stop it?

It’s human nature to respond to a crisis. For example, imagine if you woke up this morning to find that you suddenly had gained 30 extra pounds of body fat. This would alarm you and you would take significant steps to address the situation. On the other hand, what if those same 30 extra pounds were added gradually over many years, which is typical for most Americans?

This slow accumulation of body fat is called creeping obesity. If you are a typical American, once you get past the early twenties, your body fat and waistline start ticking upward gradually, year by year. The reasons are well known. You get your first “real” job, and maybe you get married and start a family. Job and family responsibilities eat up the extra time you used to have for yourself, the time when you probably were physically active in some way, but not anymore.

Less physical activity means burning off fewer calories each day. At the same time, odds are you will adhere to the same diet, the same food choices, the same bad habits you used to get away with. If your diet stays constant, but you cease to be engaged in even modest daily physical activity that might cost, say, 100 calories (kcals) — the equivalent of walking a brisk mile or so, that’s like adding 100 kcals to your diet.

If you add 100 kcals each day, over a year that’s 100 x 365 = 36,500 extra kcals that will be stored as body fat. One pound of fat stores 3,500 kcals, which means you could gain (36,500/3,500 =) 10.4 pounds of fat in one year. See how easily it can happen.

Why don't crash diets work?

When the addition of body fat is slow and barely noticeable you are not likely to do anything about it until there is a crisis. This means perhaps you develop high blood pressure or Type 2 diabetes, and you are made aware of the health consequences. Or maybe the excess body fat finally captures your attention when you confront a gathering where you will see folks you haven’t seen in years, like a high school reunion. The thought of “them” remembering what the slender you looked like years ago versus what you look like now may spur you to action.

This, combined with a New Year’s resolution to lose weight, often results in a burst of inspiration and momentum. Unfortunately, this momentum is doomed to fail if you choose a short-term solution to a long-term problem. In other words, you want to get the fat off (long-term problem) so you opt for a crash diet (short-term solution).

Here is what will happen. When you slash calories severely you enter a semi-starvation mode which alarms your body. Most alarming is that you are not taking in sufficient carbs which break down to glucose, and glucose is the main source of fuel for the brain. Thankfully, there is about a pound of glucose stored in the liver (as glycogen) and it can serve to keep your blood glucose concentration at a suitable level. However, this supply is depleted in as little as a few days. The misleading good news on your bathroom scale reflects that during those first few days, you used up the stored liver glycogen and the water that is stored with it. This can result in the quick loss of about 3 pounds, and none of it is body fat.

When glycogen is gone, attention is turned to breaking down your muscles to supply glucose for your brain. The proteins in muscle are broken down to amino acids that go to the liver, and some can be converted to glucose. Fast weight loss continues because one pound of muscle supplies only 700 usable calories compared with the 3500 calories in a pound of fat. This means you can lose muscle five times faster.

Have you accomplished anything of value? Of course not. Your goal was losing body fat, but instead, you quickly lost glycogen, water, and muscle. Hopefully, you can see the futility of a crash diet that leads to many pounds lost quickly, but the fat stays put.

If your New Year’s resolution is to lose weight, make subtle and comfortable changes in your diet and add exercise to your daily routine. Such changes can lead to a reasonable loss of about one or two pounds per month. You will be much more comfortable with this approach, plus you will be successfully working toward your goal of losing body fat.

Reach Bryant Stamford, a professor of kinesiology and integrative physiology at Hanover College, at stamford@hanover.edu.

This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: What is creeping obesity and how you can stop it