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"Obesity Is largely genetic"...well, it certainly is a common cause but I looked it up and learned there are several risk factors including quitting smoking. According to a study by Yale University, nicotine activates specific nicotine receptors in the brain that decrease feeding and increase energy expenditure when activated. This pathway essentially tells you that you’ve had enough to eat and signals your body to start using up some energy. When you quit smoking, you lose this effect, which can lead to weight gain.
But this isn't true. The Biggest Loser studies had RMR reducing to 1000 calories. It is impossible eat 700 calories and not become nutritionally starved. Not to mention that at this point the amount of calories burned with NEAT or any exercise is drastically reduced. Further, when you go back to eating 1500 cals per day you will gain weight massively. It has been shown the reduction in calories takes years -- YEARS - to reverse.
So even if you lose the weight unless you eat starvation calories for years you will gain it back quickly.
Morbidly obese people will invariably have ruined metabolic systems. The pancreas may well be shot. There livers are probably heavily damaged. Their kidneys are probably also damaged. Things like that are not going to be remedied any more quickly than the time it took them to get that obese, and in some cases, such as a spent pancreas, there is no remedy.
The guidelines for what is determined to be the threshold of so called obesity have been challenged by those who say the weight and height of a person (BMI) isn't telling the whole story. Factors such as muscle, bone structure, and yes, genetics, come into play and are considered to be the sticking points when determining who is "overweight" as opposed to "obese."
That said, most of us can clearly see a rise in the weight of the average American as a reflection of the diet they follow. That diet usually includes those high glycemic indexed foods, lots of sugar, too much salt, and on closer scrutiny, way too much intake of all that injurious food. Science has already weighed in on this debate and has concluded that genetics does indeed have a role in how our bodies are predisposed to whether we gain more than others, even if we were all to eat the exact same diet.
That same science tells me I should weigh around 165 pounds, and it seems like a great idea to have that as my ideal weight, but, to reach that as a goal would necessitate a very austere diet. The ten countries with the most thin people are those places that suffer a high degree of poverty and hunger. Vietnam is high on that list followed by nations such as Bangladesh or India. We can also look at the fact that most of the worlds high rates of obesity are found in the developed nations, more food, more choices, and of course more high calorie food and a large amount of sugars in the average diet.
I think the evidence is clear, America eats too much. And while there is a genetic component to how our bodies will respond to what we eat, the truth of weight gain in America includes a healthy acknowledgement of the fact that we have too many weighing in at two fifty to four hundred pounds, and too many with diabetes, heart issues, digestive disorders, cancers, failed knees and hips, etc. So while it's fair to say that genetics are in the picture with regard to our weight, we need to be honest and admit that a lot of people eat a very challenging diet considering our collective issues of obesity.
Thanksgiving is near and that is a great test bed of human behavior with regard to our eating and how that connection to food and celebration presents real challenges to our overall health. It's also a good opportunity to reflect on how we characterize our weight issues, are we really just doomed to our genetic predispositions, or are we really Jonesing for that pie, the ice cream, more stuffing, or more gravy?
We don't have to compare the US with other countries, we only have to compare the US today with the US only 50 years ago...in many cases, it's a comparison of the very same individuals.
Morbidly obese people will invariably have ruined metabolic systems. The pancreas may well be shot. There livers are probably heavily damaged. Their kidneys are probably also damaged. Things like that are not going to be remedied any more quickly than the time it took them to get that obese, and in some cases, such as a spent pancreas, there is no remedy.
Isn't it more likely that they have organ damage and metabolic damage from diet after diet that stressed their body out? At this point is there any obese or just overweight person who has done more than one diet in a life time? Lets not even talk about the damage done from diet pills that are said to be safe but eventually - are pulled from the market because they cause damage. And we never get to find out exactly what damage because they pull the drug.
It is a fact that yo yoing is bad for you. And indeed anorexia causes issues like high HS-CRP and heart issues. And since adaptation makes it so, eventually, you need to starve to lose weight... it is likely that dieting over and over again leads to damage to the organs.
Isn't it more likely that they have organ damage and metabolic damage from diet after diet that stressed their body out?
No.
Within the black community alone, we see the results of people who have not been on diet after diet, because the community accepted the gain in weight as it occurred.
This thread has about run its course, becoming a diet and food thread which is better posted in one of the Health forums.
If you have comments on genetics post them, else we'll close this one in a few days.
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Morbidly obese people will invariably have ruined metabolic systems. The pancreas may well be shot. There livers are probably heavily damaged. Their kidneys are probably also damaged. Things like that are not going to be remedied any more quickly than the time it took them to get that obese, and in some cases, such as a spent pancreas, there is no remedy.
A little more than two years ago, I was morbidly obese and had been so for at least a few years. Now, eighty pounds less, I'm just obese, close to overweight in terms of medical categorization.
I can't claim to have done it myself; my diet doctor prescribed Topiramate (Topomax) and that drug mitigated my cravings quite a bit for over a year. And I'm pretty well able to stick to to it and even lose a bit more now that the Topiramate doesn't work as well anymore.
As far as I know, or as my doctors have told me (from what my monthly CBC and Metabolic panels inform them), there is nothing wrong with my pancreas or my liver. I had come close to a fatty liver problem, but not anymore. My only problem in the bloodwork has to do with my immune system, due to chemotherapy.
At least in my case, I definitely agree that obesity is largely genetic. Both of my parents were normal in weight. My father was always on the lean side; my mother gained some 20 pounds in her middle to senior years but always exercised discipline in her eating habits, unlike me. Her mother, my grandmother was a bit fat, but not huge. I did have a great-grandmother who was obese, from the photos I have seen; I think she lived to be at least 75. My mother's siblings were also of normal weight; especially her sister, who was slender.
I do think there might have been a tendency towards addiction of one sort or another in my mother's family. My mother was a smoker all her life (she lived to the age of 92, having smoked for nearly 80 years). Her siblings had a fondness for alcohol; and my maternal grandfather smoked cigars. My father smoked not only cigarettes, but a pipe and cigars; and gave all of that up when he learned he was going to become a father. I had no interest in smoking, minimal interest in alcohol, but I craved, and still crave, all sorts of foods. At least my cravings have lessened slightly, as has the amount of food that I eat because of them. And my blood sugar and cholesterol has diminished.
If you eat a poor diet filled with a high amount of carbs, processed junk and sugar, some people will become obese and some will not. So genetics must play a part in that. I fell into the category of eating the world’s worst diet, but I wasn’t obese. I felt horrible and was in bad health, but I was never obese.
However, if you religiously eat a low carb diet, cut out all processed garbage and added sugar, plus get moderate exercise throughout every week, 100% of the people, regardless of genetics, will not become obese. Not only that, but you will feel amazingly better, too.
I don’t believe people who say that they exercise regularly, eat around 50g of carbs per day (not the 300g per day that the USDA advises), have cut out all processed garbage and sugar, have been doing this for months, and still can’t lose weight.
Sorry, I don’t believe you.
Some people get discouraged as it can take up to 2 months before results are seen. If you’ve been eating poorly for decades, your body needs to repair itself before the weight will come off.
Also, most people don’t understand just how many carbs they consume per day. I started tracking my food intake and was blown away by how many carbs per day I was actually eating. I had no idea how out of control I actually was.
Crucially, there is a strong genetic component underlying the large interindividual variation in body weight that determines people’s response to this ‘obesogenic’ environment. Twin, family and adoption studies have estimated the heritability of obesity to be between 40% and 70%.
Despite the difficulties in validating causative mutations and variants, genetic studies into both rare and common obesity over the past two decades have revealed two surprisingly cogent, overarching biological messages: first, the leptin–melanocortin pathway is a key appetitive control circuit (Fig. 4); and second, genes that are either enriched or exclusively expressed within the brain and CNS have a central role in obesity.
Genetic and epigenetic variations contribute to obesity by influencing the function of metabolic pathways in the body and regulating neural pathways and appetite centers. Subsequently, these variations influence insulin resistance, dyslipidemia, inflammation, hypertension, and ectopic fat deposition-especially in the liver, which are the markers of obesity.
I thought this was interesting. Of course, overeating during pregnancy contributes to fetal weight gain as well, so you have to hit a Goldilocks spot, I guess.
Maternal nutrition-both maternal over and undernutrition give rise to epigenetic changes that can affect the fetus and have intergenerational and transgenerational effects. Maternal undernutrition and intrauterine growth retardation are known to be risk factors for permanent changes in fetal insulin metabolism. Although this is a survival adaptation mechanism in fetal life, when these children are born and exposed to a nutrient-rich environment, it predisposes them to develop obesity and type 2 diabetes. This concept is widely known as the thrifty phenotype hypothesis, which was put forth by Hales and Barker 1992, published in the Journal Diabetologia.
New advances in genetic evaluation and analysis have led to the identification of obesity-related genes. For example, eight genes have been reported as causes for obesity, including leptin (LEP), the leptin receptor (LEPR), proopiomelanocortin (POMC), prohormone convertase 1 (PCSK1), the melanocortin 4 receptor (MC4R), single-minded homolog 1 (SIM1), brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), and the neurotrophic tyrosine kinase receptor type 2 gene (NTRK2), from over 500 obesity-related genes.
Thank you OP for sharing your story. I was a skinny kid, and now, at 77 i'm an overweight adult. But I don't judge either way or try to assign a cause. Don't understand why some folks feel compelled to do both.
I wonder if that is a genetic component. We were all skinny kids in my family. Granted, my mother cooked the heck out of everything so you usually didn't want more, but we were also thin adults until about 30. Then bang, weight started staying. Now I've witnessed it happen to my own daughter, now 32. She was naturally thin until a couple of years of ago. She is not obese, but she's not the thin young woman she once was. She eats mostly vegan (except for, weirdly, oysters of all things and the occasional salmon) and does not drink alcohol, and that's for about eight years.
In order to lose weight, I too have to watch my sugar intake. Not soda, or "sugary drinks", which everyone in every one of these conversations seems to assume everyone drinks (I think I may have drank a ginger ale earlier this year, but other than that day, no soda, no juice, etc.) but for me, it was ice cream, which I used to eat every day and now only have once or twice a year. But if I eat bread too many days in a row, I see a difference in the scale, although that could be due to water weight from the high salt content and the carbs in general in bread holding water in the body.
Anyway, definitely in my family we had a higher metabolism in our younger years. Even now, as I age, I see a difference. In 2020, with my blood sugar too high and having gained weight, I started eating mostly fish and vegetables, walking and doing some weight work at the gym and lost 27 pounds in about six months. I am doing the same thing now, but I've only lost 14 pounds in six months. It doesn't seem right, but now I am 65 instead of 62, and that seems to be the only difference.
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(I think I may have drank a ginger ale earlier this year, but other than that day, no soda, no juice, etc.) but for me, it was ice cream, which I used to eat every day and now only have once or twice a year. But if I eat bread too many days in a row, I see a difference in the scale, although that could be due to water weight from the high salt content and the carbs in general in bread holding water in the body. 