When we are overweight, we often try to lose weight to better accept our bodies and feel good about ourselves. Aside from the aesthetic and physiological benefits of losing weight, it also has psychological benefits and can allow us to have an alleviated mood and be more content with ourselves.
This is not all, however; in fact, losing weight when you are overweight has many health benefits that many people don’t know about! If you’re trying to shed unwanted pounds, learning all the benefits that you can glean from weight loss is an important motivator. This is why we’ll delve into weight loss health benefits you might’ve not known about in this article.
Table of Contents
#1 Better Sleep
A night of good sleep is essential: it allows our bodies to recover, reduces the risk of diseases, and it leads to mood improvements. However, when we are overweight, it is common to be affected by sleep apnea.
Sleep apnea occurs due to problems in breathing, which disturbs sleep and prevents an individual from achieving deep sleep. If you suffer from this condition, you will have interrupted sleep and often wake up in the middle of the night. Deep sleep is when your body recovers most — your body only enters deep sleep after you’ve slept for multiple hours.
If you don’t sleep well, you are more likely to fail to concentrate during the day, be more irritable, and underperform at work! Losing weight is directly correlated with improved breathing and sleep, with research consistently showing people who are within the normal BMI range reporting better sleep.
#2 Lose Weight for a Better and More Active Life
When you are overweight, many small activities in your daily life can quickly become complicated: playing with the children, enjoying a walk in the park, going to work on a bike, putting on a bathing suit, and more.
This is even more pronounced when you eclipse the territory of overweight and enter obesity. Here, your weight might severely hinder your life: taking public transportation will become a chore, any kind of exercise becomes almost impossible, and you might start experiencing regular health complications.
Losing weight can help you enjoy your days to the fullest, reduce your hospital bills, and make your life more active and interesting.
#3 Losing Weight Leads to Mood Improvement
When you are overweight, your body experiences hormone imbalances. The level of some hormones becomes too high, and on the other hand, some hormone levels become too low in the body. Because mood is regulated by our hormones, this hormonal imbalance can affect your behavior and mood.
By losing weight, you help your body to rebalance hormone levels, and this allows you to feel better psychologically, regain your self-confidence, and have a more positive outlook on life. Across the board, when researchers have studied mood and weight, they’ve found that weight loss leads to mood improvements.
#4 Reduce the Chance of Falling Sick by Losing Weight
Scientific studies have proven that excessive weight is a risk factor for many diseases, from the less serious to the life-threatening. The link between being overweight and osteoarthritis, for example, has been proven, as has the link between being overweight and cancer, cardiovascular diseases, inflammatory diseases, and diabetes.
Not only that, but far more recently, when the COVID-19 virus affected the lives of billions worldwide, one of the most significant risk factors for death from the disease was being overweight.
In addition to all of the above, the extra weight from the fat stresses your skeletal structure substantially. You’re more likely to suffer from back pain or a spinal injury when you’re overweight. And although back pain might just be an inconvenience from time to time, a spinal injury can be life-changing (and not for the better). You’ll need surgery to get better, oftentimes, and it is not inexpensive, which is why we recommend this excellent clinic that offers spine surgery in Poland at very affordable prices.
Although it is important to remember that being overweight itself doesn’t trigger these diseases; but it makes your body more vulnerable and recovery more difficult. So, even if it doesn’t directly lead to those diseases, it still affects your health significantly.
Conclusion
If you are overweight and want to lose weight, we advise you to start with gentle exercise sessions that will not make you immediately experience muscle fatigue, such as swimming, cycling, or pilates. It is also necessary to rebalance your diet by avoiding foods that are too fatty, too sweet, or too salty.
Finally, if you’re severely overweight and diet changes and exercises have not worked out for you yet; you might need to undergo surgery.