Overeating is often treated like the main villain in every weight gain story. As if people are constantly eating huge portions without realizing it. But that picture is rarely true. Most overeating isn’t loud or obvious. It’s quiet, repetitive, and usually emotional. It shows up as mindless snacking while working, eating late at night because the day was exhausting, or reaching for food because it’s the quickest comfort available.
Weight gain is one of those topics everyone thinks they understand. And that’s where most of the confusion begins.
A common myth is that weight gain is always about overeating. That if someone has put on weight, they must be constantly snacking or lacking willpower. But bodies aren’t calculators. Hormones, stress, sleep, genetics, medications, and even gut health play a role. Someone can eat “normally” and still gain weight because their body is holding on, not because they’re out of control with food.
"Weight gain is much more complex than simply consuming more calories than you burn there are many factors to consider such as the amount of hormones, your body's metabolism (rate at which we burn energy), how you live your life, everything including medication and existing illness will have an effect on how much you weigh and if you should be concerned about your weight. Even people who have a healthy diet and exercise regularly can experience unexplained weight gain from internal factors which are not within their control," Dr. Manish Kumar Tomar, Senior Consultant- Gastroenterology Medanta Hospital Noida told TOI Health.
Factors that drive weight gain
Dr. Manish Kumar Tomar shared the common factors, unknown to many, that causes weight gain.
Hormonal imbalances are an important factor here, some examples of hormonal imbalance are conditions such hypothyroidism, PCOS and Cushing's disease. All of these cause an individual to have a lower metabolism and will, as a result, will cause the individual to store excess fat and particularly around their stomach area.
Cortisol is a hormone that is released into the body when you are under severe, chronic stress and can cause an increase in appetite as well as encourage the storage of more fat to be stored in your body. Sleep disturbances, such as not having enough quality sleep, cause hormones that regulate hunger, called ghrelin and leptin, to increase hunger levels and reduce the feeling of satisfaction after eating.
Another often-overlooked cause for increased weight is medication use. Medications known for having a side effect of weight gain include steroids, antidepressants, antipsychotic medications, and certain blood pressure medications. Age has an impact on this as well; the loss of muscle mass due to the natural aging process will cause the body to burn less calories when at rest than it did previously.
In some instances, fluid retention will lead to sudden weight gain rather than fat, which may be due to increased salt consumption or a heart or kidney problem. Knowledge of these factors will provide a greater understanding of the many causes of weight gain, as well as reduce the stigma associated with weight gain and show that gaining weight is not necessarily only a result of eating too much.
2020 review dives into why some folks pack on pounds easier than others
We all know people who seem to gain weight just looking at food, and others who barely change no matter what they eat. This
papertries to unpack why that happens, why some bodies are “thrifty” and store fat easily, while others are more “spendthrift” and resist weight gain even with the same diet. It’s not just about eating too much or moving too little. There’s more going on inside us at a metabolic level that shapes weight change.
The researchers point out that even when two people eat similar calories and do similar activity, they can gain very different amounts of weight. That suggests individual metabolism, how our bodies use and burn energy, matters a lot. Some folks have a metabolism that slows down quickly when food is limited and stays slow even when calories increase. That’s what they call a “thrifty phenotype,” and it makes someone more prone to gaining weight and harder to lose it later.
They dive into a few biological players that might explain this difference. How fat tissue breaks down or holds on to energy, how brown fat (the calorie-burning kind) works, and how certain hormones and brain signals control how quickly we use energy all seem to play a part. For example, if your body doesn’t burn calories much during overeating or stress, you’ll end up storing more of it as fat.
Medical experts consulted
This article includes expert inputs shared with TOI Health by:
Dr. Manish Kumar Tomar, Senior Consultant- Gastroenterology Medanta Hospital Noida
Inputs were used to explain why food is not the only factor that drives weight gain.
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