By Sylvia Iseghohi

Have you ever wondered why you eat what you eat and why you look the way you do? Well, your brain greatly influences what you eat and this also plays a big role in your resulting body weight. In this article, I will briefly discuss the link between the brain, eating habits and the consequent body weight. This will hopefully help you understand what adjustments you should make to your lifestyle in order to maintain a relatively constant body weight that is considered healthy for your height.

Depending on your height, you may be classified as underweight, overweight or in the normal weight range. A very popular way to classify body weight is to use the body mass index (BMI) which refers to a person’s weight in relation to the person’s height. If you are wondering how to calculate your BMI, it’s not so difficult. Most smart phones nowadays have apps for calculating BMI. You just need to know your weight and your height and this can be checked in pharmacies, hospitals and clinics around you.

Any way if you find that you are underweight or overweight, it simply means that you consume less or more calories (respectively), than you use up each day. In the case of underweight, your body has to break down your fat reserves in order to generate energy to keep you alive and active every day, hence your low BMI. In the case of overweight, your body has more calories than it needs to keep you alive and active, therefore the excess just gets stored as fat, hence your high BMI.

Both cases are not very healthy. Scientific research has shown that there is a strong link between overweight and the development of diseases such as cardiovascular disease (heart problems), diabetes (excess sugar in the blood), high blood pressure, stroke, high blood cholesterol, abdominal obesity (enlarged abdomen), difficulty breathing while asleep, cancer and many other syndromes. On the other hand, underweight has been linked to Osteoporosis (fragile bones), anaemia (deficiency of red blood cells which help to carry oxygen round the body), irregular hormone secretion amongst other health problems.

Okay, lets get down to business. How exactly does your brain control your eating habit and your body weight?

Firstly when you have not eaten food for a few hours, your stomach secretes hormones which alert your brain that there is a need to consume food. Your brain then secretes hormones that trigger the feeling of hunger and increases your appetite. Hence, you eat.

When you have eaten, the intestine secretes hormones that tell the brain you have consumed enough calories. The brain then secretes hormones that give you the feeling of satiety and make you stop eating.

Depending on when you last ate, a part of your brain known as the ‘reward center’ can induce you to eat more than you actually need at a given time. For instance, if you skip a meal, you tend to compensate for the low energy state you have been in since you last ate and this eventually leads to weight gain if you are in the habit of doing this. You can also gain weight if you eat too fast, because it takes at least twenty minutes for satiety signals to reach the brain from the intestine. Hence if you rush your food, there is the tendency to consume more than what you need at a given time, but if you slow down, you will most likely get satiated before you finish the amount of food on your plate.

A lack of appetite (also known as anorexia) is also connected to signals released from the brain. Anorexia can be triggered by stress, certain medications, or it may be a symptom of an underlying illness.

In summary, we look the way we look due to what we eat; and we eat what we eat due to signals released by the brain. Enough of the drama. To end this article, I will give you some tips to induce your brain to produce the right signals that will keep your body weight within the normal range for good health.

Lifestyle changes to inculcate

· Avoid skipping meals.

· Eat colourful food; it affects appetite and satiety.

· Eat a balanced diet

· Do regular exercise, but make sure it is not becoming a source of stress to you, because stress can sometimes produce the opposite result you seek (it could make someone trying to loose weight to gain more weight; and it can also make someone trying to gain weight to loose even more weight! Scary right? Well, that’s a topic for another day).

· Get a lot of rest

· Slow down when eating.

· Eat small quantities of food several times a day, rather than eating large quantities of food few times a day.



Eat healthy and stay well!

.......................................................................................

Please follow me on www.sylviaiseghohi..com

You can find more of my articles on nairaland
https://www.nairaland.com/2033470/health-opposite-side

nice one op