Every time I interview a client for my program, One of the questions I ask them is, “What other problems are your obesity causing?”. I usually get the response “I do not have any health issues except fat on my tummy and other parts of the body”.

They have no idea that obesity is a symptom of underlying health issues. These issues may be serious at times.

This excess fat indicates that something is not right in your body. You may lose fat and gain it all back again and this may not feel like a big deal to you. But the issues in your body that caused the fat storage remains unaddressed. These issues will get worse in time. And the more you let these health problems fester, the more you dig yourself deeper into a pit.

When you resolve the health issues that cause fat storage, you too can lose the excess fat, and become healthier day by day!

In this multi-part blog post series, you will understand & learn that fat gain is not just because of the consumption of excess or the wrong type of calories. You will begin to appreciate how excess fat storage is an outcome of many factors, complex correlations, and multi-staged processes.

Totally unrelated story

Let’s say you get headaches! Brain-splitting, skull-cracking, sense-numbing headaches!

You need some respite, so you visit your doctor (or most likely you pop a painkiller on your own). Your doctor prescribes a simple painkiller. You pop a pill, and you get RELIEF! Finally! You get to work, only to feel the veins begin to throb again, the lights begin to have a halo again, and the tightness returns, all within a few hours. Ugh! The pain is back! So you pop another pill! You get relief for some time and then REBOUND pain!

Sounds familiar? I am sure that you have experienced this before. Why does this happen? It happened because the pills gave temporary relief and did not fix the root cause of your headache. The pills masked the symptom of the headache without going to the root cause. Right?

Now, for example, let’s assume that your headache is because you are not sleeping well. This is the root cause of your pain. Too simple? What if I tell you that you are getting headaches because you are not drinking enough water? Or it’s time to get your eye checked for reading glasses?

Till you do not fix the root cause. The headaches will keep coming back!

This is the reason for your rebound weight gain as well!

Why diet & exercise works only so far!

The diet and exercise helped you lose that excess fat at that moment. Yet, they did not address the root cause of fat storage. As soon as you stopped the exercise and/or the diet, your weight crept back again!

Look at the fat in your body. I’m not joking. Strip yourself naked and stand in front of a mirror and look at it for a few minutes. And realize that this fat is not the real problem, the root causes are.

Root causes of excess fat gain

Fat gain is not only because of the consumption of excess or the wrong type of calories, but also many factors.

The various root causes of fat gain are:

• Lack of exercise
• Liver toxicity, inadequate liver function
• Toxins in your system
• Your body’s PH levels
• Inadequate body temperature regulation
• Poor nutritional habits
• Food allergy/intolerance/sensitivity
• Poor digestive health
• Your stress levels
• Inflammation in your body
• Hormonal imbalances
• Sleep health
• Your diet
• Toxic chemicals in food and body care products
• Lack of sex
• How you exercise (lack or excessive)

Pheww!!! The excess fat in your body is because of one or many of the factors mentioned above.

As scary as it may seem but this is the harsh truth. One of the a-ha’s that you can expect is, “I have these health challenges, and I need to lose fat. But I thought that these two conditions co-existed and were mutually exclusive! If only I knew that these health challenges are the actual problem, I would have approached the whole situation in a better way and I would have been so much better by now!”

In the next part, I will delve deeper into why obesity is a symptom, not the cause

Read Part II of this series here