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Comment by RickS | Hacker News Reader

Anecdotally, I've found this to be surprisingly impactful. One of my brothers was a bodybuilder/athlete who ate clean and exercised a lot early in life. The rest of us were typical "mountain dew and warcraft" types. As we all enter our 30s, fit brother is able to do things the rest of us can't get away with, like eat a box of donuts a day for a weeks straight and keep an impressively lean figure, even when neglecting his fitness routines. Surely this would take a toll if he did it constantly, but his metabolism appears to have a "buffer" that my other brothers don't/didn't have at the same age.

Really makes me regret all that young stress eating, and a crazy example of how "The body keeps the score" w/r/t early life experiences.

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I was a fat kid and I'm hit by the same regret every now and then (mice studies or not) when I compare myself with early-thin people. Two ideas cheer me up:

-Our starting point does not determine where we end up. An early lead is a big advantage but plenty of people have overcome the hand they were dealt through work and forming good habits. Being in the top quintile (at lots of things, fitness included) is not that hard once you get in the groove.

-We probably traded that early edge in fitness for some other capacity that we see ourselves as more "naturally" gifted in. Maybe you're better at abstract reasoning? Computers in general? So yeah, that negative might be balanced by a quality you developed in your early years by playing all the warcraft. Looking back I can see lots of good things in my life came from hours and hours of online gaming and forums - being fluent in English is probably one the largest (and easiest to acquire) edges I have over most Europeans and it came from umpteen late night CS sessions with Americans.

> Your starting point does not determine where you end up.

First sentence of the article: "Eating too much fat and sugar as a child can alter your microbiome for life, even if you later learn to eat healthier, a new study in mice suggests." So yes, eating bad as a kid means that you'll always be worse off and never get to where others are.

I have seen plenty of obese childhood friends transform themselves into thin people through discipline and hard work. Is it harder for them to keep the weight off than for other friends who have had six-packs since 10? You bet. Are they doing it anyway? You bet. Am I one of them? Not at all :)

Most of research shows that doing that is hard and very few people are able to keep it up so yeah, congrats for those able to do it, but it would be better not to place such burdens on people from the get go if possible.

You have to pay for this cost forever. I've been going through it for 10 years now and I'd rather just not have to care about this or invest on it as much :)

No doubt! I wish I hadn't grown up obese, it was probably the most damaging thing to ever happen to me psychologically. It's not fun being the fattest kid in school. But there's only so much your parents can get right - I was loved, well-cared for, never abused or molested. I'll never know what sort of burden someone who grows up in extreme poverty or around violence carries.

Could my parents have fed me a few cheeseburgers less? Absolutely. But it's a very small tarnish all things considered.

The end of that sentence says, "a new study in mice suggests." It later suggested that the effect may last up to 6 years post-puberty, which is a more than a few decades shy of claiming that it remains true for all humans for their entire life. And even later, it said that exercise may compensate for it by building up other similar bacteria.

IIRC, the "buffer" is because your body has to expend extra energy to make more fat cells if they aren't already there. Even if you lose weight after being fat, the extra fat cells are still there, so it takes less energy for your body to get fat again.

Nah it depends how you loose weight. If you properly do some kind of body re-composition diet where you gain muscle and loose fat mass and also change your BMR a bit, you can go in and out of this "metabolic buffer" state. My metabolic buffer lasts for about a month and a half and then I notice muscle mass going down and fat going up and my BMR changes.

If you go to lean from being fat and manage to stay there, are those fat cells eventually broken down or is that a new permanent record?

I'm the opposite - I was thin as a kid, and gained weight only in my 30's, for no reason that I could figure out.

My diet did not change, I rarely eat junk food, no sweetened drinks except tea, and I prefer vegetables over other food, and all my meals are cooked at home (no restaurant food, no pre-made food - not even cereal).

And yet, I keep gaining weight. I attribute it to eating too much of the healthy food I do eat, but I can't help it, I'm too hungry otherwise - but of course that doesn't really answer the question of why.

Oh, and if I exercise my hunger skyrockets and I gain even more.

> I was thin as a kid, and gained weight only in my 30's, for no reason that I could figure out.

That's pretty commonplace. But there are things happening that nobody tells you about. I can't fit into the pants I wore in my 20's anymore (not for a long time). But I don't weigh that much more. Being observant, I noticed that men over 30 simply did not have the slim hips that younger men do.

Googling it confirmed my suspicions - your hip bones grow wider as an adult, by a fair chunk.

I've also noticed my shoe size is larger as well.

Do you track your calories? Could be that with your aging you're moving less often and body is changing.

Either way, you're eating more than you burn. The important part is you're aware of the issue

Muscle mass, itself, plays a big part in metabolism. Two people with similar builds, weighing the same, but with very different body compositions (say a weight lifter versus couch potato) will burn different amounts of calories both at rest and when performing various physical activities. The weight lifter going on a 5-mile walk will, typically, be burning more calories than the couch potato. Even just overnight while sleeping, the weight lifter will be burning more calories.

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