Genes in charge; their relation to weight

Poor people tend to be fatter than wealthy people and the food that the poor eat is cheaper than that eaten by the wealthy.

Thus, the poor can't help but be fatter than the wealthy.

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In the last ten days or so, I've regained two pounds.

Yes, my little fat cells were yammering to be resurrected, but more importantly my little brain cells took a vacation and my monumental sloth and lassitude triumphed.

I skimped on exercise. Even more foolishly, I didn't make the time and energy to eat mindfully.

Instead of peeling and segmenting citrus fruit for a quick sugar fix, I was nibbling on jelly beans.

I decided that one generous portion of heated-meat-on-a-bagel was the same as two skimpy portions, ignoring that the two "skimpy" size-of-a-deck-of-cards portions were eaten as two meals.

Instead of scraping just-a-little hummus or cream cheese with my yummy fiber biscuits I was excavating heaping helpings of hummus or cream cheese.

I refused to notice that I was not really starving-hungry at breakfast. When I'm eating properly, I want breakfast. This doesn't make me any less sensitive or less creative or less interesting--just hungry after 8-12 hours without food.

Of course not being hungry didn't stop the overly generous helpings of cream cheese.

I was snacking in the evening.

Yes, the shells of 7,00,000 fat cells were waiting to be filled, but I was making hedonistic choices about what I ate and how much I ate.

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I don't think anyone's saying that lifestyle choices (what we eat, how much we eat, how much we exercise) have no effect on weight.

Just, various lifestyle choices have different effects on people who have different types of genetic makeup. There are people who could do what you did and eat as you ate and not gain anything. There are people who could do what you did and eat as you ate and gain much more than you did.

It's controllable -- it's just that it takes much more effort for some people. And I don't just mean willpower-type effort, I mean slam-dunking-the-basketball-when-you're-5'6"-as-opposed-to-7'-effort.

For example:

Quote:

they were burning as much as 24 percent fewer calories per square meter of their surface area than the calories consumed by those who were naturally thin.

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Soz--

Yes.

Life isn't fair--but this is the only life we have.

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Certainly.

Again, I'm wary of the fatalistic aspect of this -- "I have fat genes so I'm gonna be fat, nothing I can do about it, oh well." But I see SO many people extrapolate from their own experience and use that to judge fat people harshly -- "Geez, I'd have to totally stuff my face to get that fat so that person must be a disgusting pig who never exercises." I like that this article gathers some of the science to show how that ain't necessarily so.

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Quote:

In the last ten days or so, I've regained two pounds.

Could this have been due to water retention?

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soz...thanks for your post re food availability. That was the first time I ever thought of it in terms of not only that more food is conveniently available, but if in the past the same had been true, obesity may have been a problem back then too.

wow....that was a real AHA! moment for me.

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Quote:

In the last ten days or so, I've regained two pounds.

Could this have been due to water retention?

Quite possibly. On the advice of my Gastric Guru, I'm tinkering with pre-fab fiber in an already fiber-rich diet.

Still, the motto for the Formerly Fat/Fatter is Eternal Vigilance. Absent minded nibbling, nibbling under stress and frequent deliberate self indulgence can all add extra pounds.

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From U.S. News & World Report 5/28/07

http://www.usnews.com/usnews/health/articles/070520/28diet.htm

Quote:

Weight-loss researchers have long known that participants in diet studies who are fed identical meals often lose vastly different amounts of weight and that part of the reason may be differences in their bodies such as metabolism or hormones. They've recently focused the spotlight on insulin, which drives sugar into cells for storage and causes weight gain in carb lovers who produce too much of the hormone.

10-pound gap. In the JAMA study, researchers measured the insulin levels of 73 obese adults, without diabetes, after they drank a sugary beverage. One group was told to reduce carbohydrate intake to no more than 40 percent of calories and to consume unrefined or "low glycemic load" carbohydrates like fruits, vegetables, and barley to keep their insulin levels down. A second group could eat a variety of carbs but had to restrict fat intake to 20 percent of calories. After 18 months, participants who had the highest insulin spikes at the beginning of the study had lost nearly 13 pounds on the low-glycemic-load diet; their counterparts on a low-fat diet shed an average of just 3 pounds. The low insulin makers in the study lost the same 3 pounds regardless of which diet they followed. Yet all of the groups had cut their intake by about 400 calories a day.

Evidently the differences between Diet of Abel and Diet of Cain have been perpetuated through the generations.

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Genes in charge; their relation to weight

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