Weight loss

Weight loss, in the context of medicine, health, or physical fitness, refers to a reduction of the total body mass, due to a mean loss of fluid, body fat or adipose tissue and/or lean mass, namely bone mineral deposits, muscle, tendon, and other connective tissue. Weight loss can either occur unintentionally due to malnourishment or an underlying disease or arise from a conscious effort to improve an actual or perceived overweight or obese state. "Unexplained" weight loss that is not caused by reduction in calorific intake or exercise is called cachexia and may be a symptom of a serious medical condition. Intentional weight loss is commonly referred to as slimming.

Unintentional

Characteristics

Unintentional weight loss may result from loss of body fats, loss of body fluids, muscle atrophy, or even a combination of these. It is generally regarded as a medical problem when at least 10% of a person's body weight has been lost in six months or 5% in the last month. Another criterion used for assessing weight that is too low is the body mass index (BMI). However, even lesser amounts of weight loss can be a cause for serious concern in a frail elderly person.

Weight loss (disambiguation)

Weight loss is a reduction of the total body mass in an individual.

Weight loss may also refer to:

Weight Loss (novel)

Weight Loss is a 2006 novel by Upamanyu Chatterjee.

Plot summary

Weight Loss is about the strange life (from age 11 to age 37) of a sexual deviant named Bhola, whose attitude to most of the people around him depends on their lust worthiness. Bhola’s tastes are not, to put it mildly, conventional. Sex is a form of depravity for him and he has fetishes about everyone from teachers to roadside sadhus to servants; he progresses from fantasizing about the portly family cook Gopinath to falling “madly in love” with a vegetable vendor and her husband. This last obsession spans the entire length of the book and most of Bhola’s life – he even ends up teaching at a college in an obscure hill-station hundreds of miles from his home because he wants to be near the couple. At various other stages in his life he gets expelled from school for defecating in a teacher’s office, participates in an inexpertly carried out circumcision (one of the book’s many manifestations of the “weight loss” motif). visit http://tinyurl.com/2unsh