This article may seem a little obvious to most people, especially people who are overweight, but believe it or not, there are factors involved with being overweight that many people are not aware of. They think it all comes down to eating too much. Ironically, it’s got very little to do with how much you eat, but more to do with WHAT you eat as well as factors that have nothing to do with eating at all. Bet that comes as a shock to you? Well, after reading this article, you may find quite a few things shocking as to why you’re having so much trouble fitting into that new cocktail dress or speedo.

Let me start off by saying that you can eat as much as you want and still maintain your ideal weight. If you’re thinking this is voodoo, it’s not. See, the general concept of how we gain a pound and lose a pound is very simple. The best way to explain this is with an example. But first let me explain what a calorie is. Yes, the evil culprit to this whole vicious cycle of gaining and losing weight.

A calorie, to keep this as simple as possible, is the amount of energy that goes into our bodies in order to give us fuel to operate. If we get just the right amount of calories, then our weight stays where it is. However, if we take in more calories than we need because we don’t burn as much as we’d like, then the excess calories just sit in our bodies. When this happens, those calories turn to fat and that’s how we gain weight.

Okay, remember I said that gaining weight had nothing to do with how much food we ate? This is true to an extent. Naturally, I guess we could force ourselves to eat enough food to gain weight even if we at the right kinds of food. It would just be a lot harder to do than if we lived on a diet of Devil Dogs and Yodels. But I digress. The main reason people are overweight is because they take in more calories than they burn. Do that over a long enough period of time and you will gain weight. Take in enough calories and you’ll gain a lot of weight. It’s not rocket science.

Eventually, we’ll get to the actual part of dieting, which, when all is said in done, comes down to taking in fewer calories than you burn in a day. That is where the underlying reasons come in for why were are overweight, which come down to these few things.

The first is that we eat the wrong foods and too many of the wrong foods. A Whopper from Burger King has more calories than an average person needs for a whole day. So if you live on a diet of Whoppers, and mind you, this is just one meal in your day, you WILL gain weight, and a lot of it. There is just no way around this.

The second thing is that we don’t exercise enough. The only way we burn a significant amount of calories is by exercising. If we sit in a chair all day long, there are only so many calories we’re going to burn.

The third thing, unfortunately, is heredity. Some people have slow metabolisms, usually inherited from one of their parents. This makes burning calories that much harder. These are usually the most difficult cases in losing weight, but it is still possible to do so.

In our next article in this series, we’ll get into the area of dealing with being overweight. This is more than just going on a diet.