Two Kinds of Fat People

47Jacqueline

The only way you become fat is to eat too much. Even people with a family history of obesity are not destined to become fat. Fat is not genetic.



AFAA Personal and Group Fitness Trainer
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Five years as a Health Professional
20 year background in human engineering

Elizabethgulick93

I've been overweight my whole life. I'm only 20, and can't remember a time I was a healthy weight. Even as a child I was overweight, bar at 14 when I joined weight watchers. While I don't think anyone is "destined" to be fat, there are people who just have slow metabolisms and it's a somewhat predetermined thing. My whole family has been overweight, and so am I. I think it's more genetics than many people say.

Elizabethgulick93

Also, I think it's all attitude. You can wish to be skinny all you want, but until something snaps you're not going to work at it.

seltzermint555

Definitely not the skinny person who became fat. I was only "skinny" until age four. Since then I've always been chubby, plump, or morbidly obese. Only in the past six months or so have I become very close to normal/average and I am almost 38.

KameHameHaaaa

What about third kind of fat people? Fat all your life but then become fit?

LunaStar2008

I read most answers here with great interest. I believe that eating habits are passed on from learned behavior, but also from genetics. If you are the +2, +3, or +4 generation of obese parents (even with just one parent obese) it will become genetic, as shown in lab tests in mice. It is called mutation - your fat cells and how fat is processed and stored will change.

Then, also bad habits are learned from parents, children copy their parents. I see it every day, how my son uses words, phrases and behaviors from his fathers, since he wants to be like him (he is just 6). As someone else stated that certain way of cooking, celebrating meals and snacking between meals was taught by the family (the one who was raised by a large italian family). It became habit to her until she figured that others are eating different and educated herself.

If you the only one in your family you may be overeating, have depression, need comfort, have stress, lack of sleep/rest or sleep apnea, lack of/ lack to exercise.....

As someone else stated, some people with the same genetic pool (siblings) may have different metabolism (one can eat what they want while the other one struggles with calculated calorie input).

Yes, and there is the others....who are fat and just don't give a dam about it, while the others got the "wake up" and struggle to get back in shape.

As a child I was thin, but I don't believe because of my genetics, but because we didn't get enough food. Sometimes we were so hungry that we picked the oats out of the dog food, when our parents weren't watching. While they ate as much as they wanted, we children were rationed by age and I haven't figured out, by what means they calculated that.
As a young adult, when I started to care for myself and made my own living, I swore myself that I will never go hungry again.....well, now I have to "starve" (meant ironically) limit my calorie input to not become obese as my birth mother. She is the example/motivation for me to keep exercising and staying fit, so I don't end up like her. By the way she is the +2 generation.

ninerbuff

The movie quote is silly and is a sneering attempt at mild abuse. There are people who are more prone to becoming fat because they are wired differently to others. For some of us its an addiction and you can't use abstinence as a way to get over it. Unless you've lived with it, you probably can't understand. That's why the majority of personal trainers (who are well motivated) cant grasp the problem in the first place.

Wired in what way? Calorie surplus and deficit work for ANYONE who isn't suffering from a health/hormone issue. Sorry, but I don't buy it. Doing this for professionally for more than 16 years, I've taken the same people you've mentioned and helped them attain and sustain a normal weight. I just got them to think different about themselves.

A.C.E. Certified Personal and Group Fitness Trainer
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Been in fitness for 30 years and have studied kinesiology and nutrition

chadya07

the breakfast club is a bad movie.

i wouldnt base my views of people on quotes from 80's teen films, especially those with molly ringwald. they almost always end in a makeover changing everything.... and center around changing to suit other poeple.

when you say destined, do you mean destined to happen or do you mean destined to continue until death?

there are two kinds of destiny. that which happens no matter what you do, and that which happens no matter how much you try to change it.

however, weight is caused by action and can be avoided, and can also be rememdied. therefore it cant be destined.

gothchiq

I am a person who started off thin, became fat, and have lost it back off. I became fat through two reasons. One is hypothyroidism, which is now properly medicated, and the other reason is eating disordered behavior that came from .... let's just say messed up things occurring during formative years.

Oishii

When I look at this sort of question I like to turn it on its head first to see if that helps. So: are there two types of skinny person, those who physically can't be heavy and those who can? The answer, at least according to a study conducted for TV, was that, forced to over eat, the vast majority of skinny people gained weight. Some found it very hard and very distasteful to over eat, but only one actually over ate and completely failed to gain. Any extra calories he ate, his body burned off somehow. So, there are two types of skinny person.

Does that mean there must be two types of fat person? I don't think so. Why? Because the body can't make anything from nothing. If a body is forced to, it will, surely, live off its fat stores. If there are no excess calories there can be no excess body, surely. Many factors, including genetics, affect the rates at which calories are burnt and fat is stored, but they are still rates, not absolutes.

So, I think most of us fit on a spectrum of gain and a spectrum of loss for a number of different reasons. You may gain easily and find it hard to lose, but it's not always so obvious. Personally, I need a lot of calories to gain but I am more than capable of eating a lot of calories. I have never found it hard to lose weight, but I've done so numerous times. There are many variations, and while I've seen research to suggest some may never gain, I have never seen proof that anyone physically can't lose and is therefore destined to be fat.

ukaryote

Philosophy from fictional adolescents. Pass.

zyxst

@ValGogo Your response was more along the lines of what I was questioning (not destiny vs. choice, although that's a good topic, too).

It seems to me some people view their weigh gain as temporary...just a phase they are going through. Like college kids who "experiment." They see themselves as thin people stuck in a fat person's body.

Then there are others who identify as "fat." It's embedded in their personality and their choices. And some people immerse themselves into "fat culture" with their own set of norms, beliefs, and values.

WTH is fat culture? :huh:

baconslave

No.

There are 2 kinds of fat people:
Those who stay fat, and those who do something about it.

Philosophy from fictional adolescents. Pass.

Yeah. And this^^

trm68

amen............I grew up in the era of bicycles and playing outside, no video games and so on, yes old fashion, but there were no fluffy kids, then again, there were no fast food joints,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,there was phys ed then to.