Overweight attributed to genetics???
Replies
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Everyone gets dealt a set of genetic cards they have to deal with. I think the genetics behind obesity are really interesting, and I'm happy that it's being studied and researched. For practical purposes though, I think placing too much blame on genetics encourages victim mentality, and discourages people from trying their best to change their circumstances.
I have thyroid disease, and a slow metabolism that comes with it. I have to work really hard to overcome it, and I know that I always will. Those are the cards that I was dealt. I could sit on my couch and eat the amount of calories that the online calculators predict my BMR *should* be and continue to gain weight and complain about my thyroid, or I can get off my *kitten* and do something about it. It is possible to overcome these things, its just hard work.0 -
Genetics contributes, not dictates.
Anyone can lose weight if they do it properly.0 -
Genetics is an excuse. (That i used to use) Overweight in my opinion is FULLY attributed to eating the wrong foods. Eating man-made foods and excessive animal products pushes the caloric density of our diets way beyond what was found in nature for thousands of years. Man-made foods also can have addictive properties.0
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The problem of obesity is a relatively recent one in human history. Before the age of abundance and desk jobs, it simply wasn't a problem. Prior to the industrial revolution (circa 1850s) it was rare for a person to be overweight, with the exception of the rich and/or social elite.
There are still many hunter gatherer tribes still in existence in parts of Africa and South America. Certainly some of them carry genetics that may predispose them to being overweight, but NONE of them are. And so was the case of native Americans before they were assimilated into western culture.
Now given that humans are genetically unchanged for the last 100,000 years, these observations would suggest that lifestyle plays a much bigger role in obesity than does genetics. Certainly there are disorders that raise the risk that a person could become overweight, but these are rare - much more rare than the current obesity rate. And these genetics have been circulating the human population since before we entered the civilized era.
So no, I don't buy the fact that a person is overweight because of a "fat" gene. Human history doesn't support it.
Hmm, you should really read some more history then.
Really? Please enlighten me as to what historical event proves that genetics plays an overriding factor for the majority of obesity cases in the human population? I must have missed it.0 -
Genetics do play a role in the fat gain or fat loss / muscle gain or muscle loss, but everybody has the capacity to gain or lose fat and or muscle. As others in this thread have stated, your body type determines which diet/exercise plan would be most efficient for reaching your goals. The problem is that every fat person immediately assumes that they are an endomorph and every thin person believes that they are an ectomorph. This is not true. A body type only determine how easily one can gain or lose.
Most diet/exercise plans are not geared towards endomorphs, so the true endos will get frustrated and just blame genetics in the end. I do not blame them for giving up, I would too if everybody told me to do something and it wound up not working for me.0 -
The answer is simple. The slender people don't eat more than they burn, while the overweight people do eat more than they burn. It really is that simple.They do one of the 3
eat to much
exercise to little
Lie about wehat they eat
No Human can fight the law of energy in / energy out.
Even people claiming thyroid problems, It only accounts plus around 10 pounds the rest is over eating.
I under stand your three points. On paper it seems so simple. I know some people like about what they eat and how much they train. But how is it that there are those that eat garbage and tons of calories, more than they burn in a day and manage to stay slender. And then there are those, who should be slender because they train like beast, eat right, yet are still overweight.
no im sorry but the answer is not always that simple. like others have brought up, there are endocrine disorders that cause weight problems. i have one of them. it is called PCOS and 60% of women with this disorder are overweight. and it is because if insulin and hormone imbalances, which cause all sorts of problems. and until you have insulin, glucose, and your hormones in check it can literally be impossible to loose weight, no matter what you do. and even if everything is in check, you still have to work a LOT harder and a LOT longer to see the same kinds of results. EVEN if you are doing everything you should be. you can be doing the exact same eating plan and exercising as someone without PCOS. and while the other person can easily lose dozens of pounds in just a few months, women with pcos are lucky to loose one or two a month, if they loose anything at all. for us it is not simply calories in vs calories out. i am one that has struggled with weight. its taken me 5 years to loose 40lbs, a normal person could have easily lost that in a few months. so im sorry but you are wrong0 -
How do genes control energy balance?
The brain regulates food intake by responding to signals received from fat (adipose) tissue, the pancreas, and the digestive tract. These signals are transmitted by hormones—such as leptin, insulin, and ghrelin—and other small molecules. The brain coordinates these signals with other inputs and responds with instructions to the body: either to eat more and reduce energy use, or to do the opposite. Genes are the basis for the signals and responses that guide food intake, and small changes in these genes can affect their levels of activity. Some genes with variants that have been associated with obesity are listed in the Table.
Energy is crucial to survival. Human energy regulation is primed to protect against weight loss, rather than to control weight gain. The "thrifty genotype" hypothesis was proposed to help explain this observation. It suggests that the same genes that helped our ancestors survive occasional famines are now being challenged by environments in which food is plentiful year round.
http://www.cdc.gov/genomics/resources/diseases/obesity/obesedit.htm
worth reading if you want an actual informed and scientific answer to your question
and here's some more: http://rainhoward.blogspot.com/2012/09/is-it-genetic.html0 -
I think obesity is attributed more to environment than genetics. Genetics comes into play on how the body reacts to you abusing it with poor food choices.0
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Genetics is an excuse. (That i used to use) Overweight in my opinion is FULLY attributed to eating the wrong foods. Eating man-made foods and excessive animal products pushes the caloric density of our diets way beyond what was found in nature for thousands of years. Man-made foods also can have addictive properties.
I don't agree. If this were true then feeding experiments with controlled caloric intake and activity would result in the same weight loss/gain in all individuals but this isn't what happens.0 -
Genetics loads the gun, lifestyle pulls the trigger ...
^^This0 -
Tagging to read when I have more time - interesting stuff.0
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There is an Native Indian tribe that because they lived for generations in the desert regions have a metabolism that stores a lot of fat because food was hard to come by. Greater contact and assimilation into "civilization has created a group of people who are very obese with even higher rates of diabetes. Ethnicity plays a large part in genetics which dictates the body type you inherit. All it really means is that some of us have to work a lot harder to achieve our goals.0
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Let's start with the basics. How are their individual calorie needs calculated? Math formula? An estimate that can be several hundred calories off. How about the calorie counts of the food prepared? Also an estimate that can be off by a few hundred calories. Also, have necessary metabolic adjustments been made to account for any hormonal or physical illnesses or problems (PCOS, hypothyroidism, etc?) There are hundreds of explanations, but without being knowledgable of the methods being used, I can't give any specific ones. Other than it isn't magic or voodoo.
The answer is simple. The slender people don't eat more than they burn, while the overweight people do eat more than they burn. It really is that simple.They do one of the 3
eat to much
exercise to little
Lie about wehat they eat
No Human can fight the law of energy in / energy out.
Even people claiming thyroid problems, It only accounts plus around 10 pounds the rest is over eating.
I under stand your three points. On paper it seems so simple. I know some people like about what they eat and how much they train. But how is it that there are those that eat garbage and tons of calories, more than they burn in a day and manage to stay slender. And then there are those, who should be slender because they train like beast, eat right, yet are still overweight.
Its not that simple in every case. I know overweight teens that live at a special school for overweight children. Each child is prepared all their meals and calories are tailored to each student's needs. They live on campus and arent allowed to have any money so they cant go out and buy extra food. Every student works out 1 hour a day with a personal trainer. Yet despite doing everything that they should be doing, there are still many of them that aren't seeing the results that they should be achieving. How can that be explained?0 -
The answer is simple. The slender people don't eat more than they burn, while the overweight people do eat more than they burn. It really is that simple.They do one of the 3
eat to much
exercise to little
Lie about wehat they eat
No Human can fight the law of energy in / energy out.
Even people claiming thyroid problems, It only accounts plus around 10 pounds the rest is over eating.
I under stand your three points. On paper it seems so simple. I know some people like about what they eat and how much they train. But how is it that there are those that eat garbage and tons of calories, more than they burn in a day and manage to stay slender. And then there are those, who should be slender because they train like beast, eat right, yet are still overweight.
no im sorry but the answer is not always that simple. like others have brought up, there are endocrine disorders that cause weight problems. i have one of them. it is called PCOS and 60% of women with this disorder are overweight. and it is because if insulin and hormone imbalances, which cause all sorts of problems. and until you have insulin, glucose, and your hormones in check it can literally be impossible to loose weight, no matter what you do. and even if everything is in check, you still have to work a LOT harder and a LOT longer to see the same kinds of results. EVEN if you are doing everything you should be. you can be doing the exact same eating plan and exercising as someone without PCOS. and while the other person can easily lose dozens of pounds in just a few months, women with pcos are lucky to loose one or two a month, if they loose anything at all. for us it is not simply calories in vs calories out. i am one that has struggled with weight. its taken me 5 years to loose 40lbs, a normal person could have easily lost that in a few months. so im sorry but you are wrong
You do realize that NONE of that actually disproves what I said? Eat more than you burn and gain weight, eat less than you burn and lose weight. PCOS, hypothyroidism, insulin resistance, and other METABOLIC diseases change the calories burned part of the equation. The simple fact is that your medical condition causes you to burn less calories than a healthy person without your condition. It doesn't change the basic laws of thermodynamics or biology, it just changes the actual number. The difficulty is, without actually laboratory calorimeter testing, it's impossible to calculate how many calories someone with a metabolic issue actually burns. A website or math formula can't predict that.0 -
The problem of obesity is a relatively recent one in human history. Before the age of abundance and desk jobs, it simply wasn't a problem. Prior to the industrial revolution (circa 1850s) it was rare for a person to be overweight, with the exception of the rich and/or social elite.
There are still many hunter gatherer tribes still in existence in parts of Africa and South America. Certainly some of them carry genetics that may predispose them to being overweight, but NONE of them are. And so was the case of native Americans before they were assimilated into western culture.
Now given that humans are genetically unchanged for the last 100,000 years, these observations would suggest that lifestyle plays a much bigger role in obesity than does genetics. Certainly there are disorders that raise the risk that a person could become overweight, but these are rare - much more rare than the current obesity rate. And these genetics have been circulating the human population since before we entered the civilized era.
So no, I don't buy the fact that a person is overweight because of a "fat" gene. Human history doesn't support it.
Very good points. Do you believe in mutations? What if exposures to certain chemicals increased the rate of mutations that cause weight gain in some people. Only in the last few hundred years has man become exposed to more man made chemicals which may be causing mutations.0 -
They do one of the 3
eat to much
exercise to little
Lie about wehat they eat
No Human can fight the law of energy in / energy out.
Even people claiming thyroid problems, It only accounts plus around 10 pounds the rest is over eating.
Actually...Heard of cortisol?0 -
They do one of the 3
eat to much
exercise to little
Lie about wehat they eat
No Human can fight the law of energy in / energy out.
Even people claiming thyroid problems, It only accounts plus around 10 pounds the rest is over eating.
Actually...Heard of cortisol?
I could be wrong here but doesn't elevated cortisol potentially impact metabolism, getting back to the energy in/energy out equation. The energy out may change but the equation does not.0 -
They do one of the 3
eat to much
exercise to little
Lie about wehat they eat
No Human can fight the law of energy in / energy out.
Even people claiming thyroid problems, It only accounts plus around 10 pounds the rest is over eating.
Actually...Heard of cortisol?
I could be wrong here but doesn't elevated cortisol potentially impact metabolism, getting back to the energy in/energy out equation. The energy out may change but the equation does not.
Well considering a lot of people don't even know that they have high cortisol levels, therefore a lower metabolism. Plus, if you do have something like high cortisol how do you find out what your metabolism actually is?0 -
They do one of the 3
eat to much
exercise to little
Lie about wehat they eat
No Human can fight the law of energy in / energy out.
Even people claiming thyroid problems, It only accounts plus around 10 pounds the rest is over eating.
Actually...Heard of cortisol?
I could be wrong here but doesn't elevated cortisol potentially impact metabolism, getting back to the energy in/energy out equation. The energy out may change but the equation does not.
are there tests to test metabolic rates?
Well considering a lot of people don't even know that they have high cortisol levels, therefore a lower metabolism. Plus, if you do have something like high cortisol how do you find out what your metabolism actually is?0 -
Yes there are tests, I'm planning to get one done in the next month or so0
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I think it's silly that there's even a question about whether genetics has a heavy hand in how hard we have to work to maintain our bodies.
My mom is short and chubby and my dad's family has that tendency as well. Therefore, I knew from a very early age that I would have to fight hard to keep from getting fat. And I do.
My older brother is adopted. He is slim and tall like his biological mother and has never ever had to watch what he puts in his mouth. He had a six pack as a teenager and I never saw that boy work out a day in his life. He's just lucky.
Sometimes, though, time is the great equalizer. I know quite a few ladies that were a size zero all through high school and now their truly fat genetics have caught up with them in a big way. But you could have predicted their weight future by taking a quick look at their parents and going "duh." So yeah, I'm giving genetics a heavy hand in weight. Doesn't mean you shouldn't still fight it.0 -
Of course it is. Half of the fitness game is genetics. Period. But anyone can overcome them, up to a point. That point being somewhere in the professional fitness/bodybuilding level. So until then, no excuses.0
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They do one of the 3
eat to much
exercise to little
Lie about wehat they eat
No Human can fight the law of energy in / energy out.
Even people claiming thyroid problems, It only accounts plus around 10 pounds the rest is over eating.
Actually...Heard of cortisol?
I could be wrong here but doesn't elevated cortisol potentially impact metabolism, getting back to the energy in/energy out equation. The energy out may change but the equation does not.
Well considering a lot of people don't even know that they have high cortisol levels, therefore a lower metabolism. Plus, if you do have something like high cortisol how do you find out what your metabolism actually is?
Sorry, I am confused as to how not knowing that you have it changes the basic formula. Yes, it may be harder to determine the reasons, but the fact is, your metabolism is lower.
Also, one thing I am not sure whether it is genetic or not - I thought very elevated cortisol levels were more environmental0 -
I don't see why there's even an argument here. It's simple. Due to genetics it's harder for some people to lose weight than others. However, that should not be used as an excuse to stay overweight unless you have some type of medical problem. THE END.0
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Yes there are tests, I'm planning to get one done in the next month or so
Where do you get them done?0 -
They do one of the 3
eat to much
exercise to little
Lie about wehat they eat
No Human can fight the law of energy in / energy out.
Even people claiming thyroid problems, It only accounts plus around 10 pounds the rest is over eating.
Actually...Heard of cortisol?
I could be wrong here but doesn't elevated cortisol potentially impact metabolism, getting back to the energy in/energy out equation. The energy out may change but the equation does not.
Well considering a lot of people don't even know that they have high cortisol levels, therefore a lower metabolism. Plus, if you do have something like high cortisol how do you find out what your metabolism actually is?
Sorry, I am confused as to how not knowing that you have it changes the basic formula. Yes, it may be harder to determine the reasons, but the fact is, your metabolism is lower.
Also, one thing I am not sure whether it is genetic or not - I thought very elevated cortisol levels were more environmental
They are. Your point?
Yeah but what I am asking is how you get your metabolism checked without having to pay $$$$$$ amount of money.0 -
Yes there are tests, I'm planning to get one done in the next month or so
Where do you get them done?
If you google "RMR Testing" plus your location, you should get a bunch of places come up in search.0 -
Yes there are tests, I'm planning to get one done in the next month or so
Where do you get them done?
If you google "RMR Testing" plus your location, you should get a bunch of places come up in search.
Would a fitbit be accurate in cals burnt if you have a lower rmr?0 -
They do one of the 3
eat to much
exercise to little
Lie about wehat they eat
No Human can fight the law of energy in / energy out.
Even people claiming thyroid problems, It only accounts plus around 10 pounds the rest is over eating.
Actually...Heard of cortisol?
I could be wrong here but doesn't elevated cortisol potentially impact metabolism, getting back to the energy in/energy out equation. The energy out may change but the equation does not.
Well considering a lot of people don't even know that they have high cortisol levels, therefore a lower metabolism. Plus, if you do have something like high cortisol how do you find out what your metabolism actually is?
Sorry, I am confused as to how not knowing that you have it changes the basic formula. Yes, it may be harder to determine the reasons, but the fact is, your metabolism is lower.
Also, one thing I am not sure whether it is genetic or not - I thought very elevated cortisol levels were more environmental
They are. Your point?
Yeah but what I am asking is how you get your metabolism checked without having to pay $$$$$$ amount of money.
My point is, this thread is about genetics and I was asking a question as to whether it was. That is all, so no attitude is really necessary.
And where did you ask what you say you asked? I am not seeing it. You did not ask how to test it without having to pay any money at all.
ETA: In response to your question re getting an RMR test done at least cheaply, I believe that I have heard of some colleges and universities possibly doing them for at least a lot less money - you should also check those out to see if they do them (and even possibly teaching hospitals)0 -
Yes there are tests, I'm planning to get one done in the next month or so
Where do you get them done?
If you google "RMR Testing" plus your location, you should get a bunch of places come up in search.
Would a fitbit be accurate in cals burnt if you have a lower rmr?
Probably not. Those type of devices use certain alogorithms that are based on averages. The only way to get an accurate BMR is to do a RMR test (which involves blowing in a tube for about 10 minutes). Fitbits and the like just do not have the necessary information to get it accurate.
Edited as my typing sucks!0
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