Gaining weight seems to happen stealthily, and there are so many factors that could cause weight gain. From my point of view, I came up with two main reasons that I think we need to be aware of in order to avoid gaining weight, and the two reasons are: depression and PMS (premenstrual syndrome).
Let’s first talk about Depression. It seems that gaining weight has nothing to do with depression, but a study published in the American Journal of Public Health revealed that people who are always sad and lonely tend to gain weight more quickly compared with people who are less sad and lonely. This study totally applies to me. When we under depression, we tend to eat more high-calorie food instead of healthy food.
PMS, premenstrual syndrome, is a really personal topic for all girls and women. It influences a woman’s emotions and behaviors. This is a very common condition that almost affects 85% of the women. So we need to be very careful when dealing with PMS.
There must be lots of other reasons that could cause weight gain, but PMS and depression are probably the most two common factors that cause weight gain.
Resources:
- http://www.prevention.com/weight-loss/weight-loss-tips/health-problems-that-make-you-gain-weight/slide/2
- http://www.healthline.com/health/premenstrual-syndrome
I will have to say that depression definitely does cause weight gain. I’m not sure about the PMS theory. I will say though that emotional eating is a huge factor with gaining weight. Especially in college. At least for me and the people I know, emotional eating goes hand in hand with college. There are also medical conditions that cause individuals to gain weight. Also, certain steroids as well cause weight gain. Maybe you could pick something like this and analyze studies of how and why these factors make individuals gain weight. Something else to consider is how does a person cope with dealing with two or more of these factors at the same time.
What topics could you connect to what we learned in class? And I would say there are many more causes to wait gain, but I don’t know about the 2nd one. That only happens once a week of one month.
For me, I am going to Segway to the topic of emotional eating. Emotional eating is something that everyone goes through because of stress. We tend to see foods as a good and indulging thing to eat to make us feel better. But eating isn’t going to solve the problem, its just going to give you a taste in your mouth for a little bit. If I were to make a hypothesis out of this, I would say that People who are stressed out are going to gain a it more weight. The x variable for an experiment would be how much work is given to 2 classes. One class would get more than the other. We would weigh each student in the class before and after to see the effects on students. There are many 3rd variables in this study. One could be, maybe the students are smarter, so they don’t get stressed out that much.
I totally agree with your idea. Every time I feel depression, I would find something to eat. Later I would go to bed. Later I found that I gain a lot of weights. Now I think this might be the main reason for me to gain weight. I also find a website that talks about gain weight. http://www.prevention.com/weight-loss/weight-loss-tips/health-problems-that-make-you-gain-weight