Does This Post Make My Ass Look Big?
Why, yes, I *am* fat, thank you for noticing. Did I mention that you smell funny?
New York Times medical writer and author Gina Kolata has just published a new book entitled “Rethinking Thin: The New Science of Weight Loss — and the Myths and Realities of Dieting”, and the NYT was so kind as to run this excerpt of her book today. The excerpt presents some of the research that makes the claim that genetics influence our ability to gain, lose and maintain weight to such an extent that it is almost impossible to control your weight through diet and exercise unless you do it constantly.
There is a reason that fat people cannot stay thin after they diet and that thin people cannot stay fat when they force themselves to gain weight. The body’s metabolism speeds up or slows down to keep weight within a narrow range. Gain weight and the metabolism can as much as double; lose weight and it can slow to half its original speed.
The scientists summarized it in their paper: “The two major findings of this study were that there was a clear relation between the body-mass index of biologic parents and the weight class of adoptees, suggesting that genetic influences are important determinants of body fatness; and that there was no relation between the body-mass index of adoptive parents and the weight class of adoptees, suggesting that childhood family environment alone has little or no effect.”
In other words, being fat was an inherited condition.
A new study conducted by Harvard Medical School finds that different kinds of body fat have different effects on a person’s overall health, according to this BBC story. Subcutaneous fat — the kind that Sir Mix-A-Lot loves — actually produces hormones called “adipokines” (literally, “fat movers”) that can increase metabolism and can aid in insulin receptivity, thus reducing the risk of diabetes. Visceral fat — the All-American Beer Belly — does not have any beneficial effect.
Another new study, this one conducted at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden, found that fat cells in the human body actually replace themselves over time, just like other cells. It was previously thought that this did not occur. (It has also recently been discovered that brain cells also replace themselves, which was thought to be impossible as well. Maybe that explains the large number of fat-heads in our society…but I digress…) Even in gastric-bypass patients, while the fat cells shrank, the number of fat cells in their bodies did not actually decrease. That ties in pretty well with the idea that your overall tendency toward obesity is genetic and your ability to maintain a lower weight (if you’re overweight like me) is hard to achieve.
At least, that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
May 8th, 2008 at 9:31 am
While you may be genetically predisposed to weight gain, it still not impossible to lose the weight and keep it off by changing your lifestyle and eating habits. Everything in the research above is in fact actually true. Your body has a built in survival mechanism that kicks in if you start losing weight too fast, shutting down your metabolism, and keeping fat stores.
It’s why you see many people who will drop 10-20 pounds quick, then just stop losing weight. They become discouraged, stop exercising and dieting, and then gain even more weight as their metabolism kicks in overdrive when coming out of starvation mode. All you need to do is know how this works, and devise a method to beat it.
They key to prevent this from happening is calorie counting (I know, it sucks) and small goals. Ideally you should be losing [b]only[/b] 1-2lbs of body fat a week to prevent metabolism shutdown, and be losing only .5lbs of muscle. The keep is to find just how much food you burn, and the sweet spot below that amount that lets you reach these goals. As a general, it’s usually 500 calories less then what you burn. At this pace a 250 pound person wishing to get down to 180 should take almost a year and a half to reach that goal! I can see why people get discouraged; it’s a lot of hard work and keeping at it.
And as always, exercise, [b]moderation[/b] and eating healthy is key. You also need to include weight training with cardio, otherwise you’ll just burn away muscle with the fat, which lowers metabolism.
I honestly think much of the problems with not losing or keeping off weight are all in the brain, not the dna. Not to understate the effect that the brain has on our bodies.
May 9th, 2008 at 8:48 am
Her book was published a year ago, but I think that the paperback edition just came out this month. Also very worth the read are “Fat Politics” by J Eric Oliver, and “The Obesity Myth” by Paul Campos.
Err, hello, even if the change in intake/output/weight is not too fast, the body will still self-regulate to where it really is genetically determined to stay. If you take in less than what you burn, your body will lower what it burns. Eventually you need less and less energy to maintain your new, oh-so-svelte figure. Then you put it all back on, just as slowly, or you die, or become a fanatic, or go crazy. If you want to keep staying at less than your body’s natural range, you end up making a life-long obsession about it.
I have better things to do with my time.
If someone was eating really badly and not exercising, then eating moderately well and doing some exercise might result in weight loss. Or it might not. But regular moderate exercise improves health indicators even with minimal weight loss, so their heart and muscles and lungs would be thanking them.
A fat, active person will live longer than a thin sedentary one. Oh noes!!1! My head will asplode with the incongruity!
Far better is not to worry about being fat at all. Eat a varied diet. Learn to eat when you’re hungry, stop when you’re not. Do exercise for the sake of feeling good, for improved fitness, not to lose weight. Learn to *really* listen to your body. And be kind to it, whatever its size or shape.