Eating is not only a necessity, we also eat for other reasons — social, pleasure, habit and sometimes to satisfy a hunger for attention or to cope with our anxieties and depression.
We start off with a particular genetic make-up. This we can’t alter. We are destined to be either fat or thin. But then comes the influence of our environment and the behavior we learn. We can learn to avoid being overweight even if genetically we have that tendency.
Unfortunately, the seeds of obesity are often sown in childhood. A fat “healthy” baby is likely to grow into a fat child and a fat unhealthy adult.
It is now believed that the number of fat or adipose cells in the body are determined in childhood and that later in life the cells may increase in size but not in number. Being overweight in childhood means more adipose cells are formed and later in life they tend to fill up with fat and so we become obese.
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