Chapter 7 – Overweight and Obesity: The Epidemic’s Underbelly

Obesity is now in pandemic proportions. This accompanies, and is associated with, rises in related chronic diseases. Whether obesity is a direct causal factor for such disease, however, is not clear, thus justifying a lifestyle medicine approach to the problem. Hence, whilst a linear approach to energy balance may still be useful for individual management, a systems approach using a modified understanding of energy dynamics and including the range of determinants from proximal to distal would seem to be necessary for effectively managing the epidemic as a whole.