Slim people have a genetic advantage when it comes to maintaining their weight
sciencedaily.com
sciencedaily.com
While the autoinjector is damn overengineered and barely noticeable, oral semiglutide should be available around 2024. If that doesn't require a cold chain, that would be a massive improvement.
If you want to achieve a goal that's different from the general public, most of us need a plan, whether it's a body transformation, financial goal, sport goal, whatever.
Even people who are trying to gain weight will tell you that it's difficult to meet a calorie goal unless you actively track it and override your feelings of hunger.
I personally don't really get people who struggle with making conscious food choices. For me, so many other things in life are harder. Getting up in the morning, sleeping (actually falling asleep) at the right time, staying focused at work, making sensible choices with women... all of those seem far harder than "do I put this thing in my mouth right now". That's genetics for you, I guess.
What is more common than genetic abnormalities causing excessive weight gain is eating calories in secret, as well as an extremely inaccurate sense of the caloric content of food.
1.There are certain genetic factors where, giving the same amount of calories to one person, will have a different metabolic result than giving the same amount of calories to a different person
2.Giving either person too many calories will result in a net weight gain
Given what we know about the food supply, including food deserts, education, or lack thereof, around nutrition etc. as well as average physical activity levels of modern humans, —- it is morally bankrupt to continue to try to push this idea that the majority of people who are obese is anything other than latter environmental and behavioral shaping over the last hundred years.
Until the literal aisles of disgracefully cheap liters of sugar syrup and literal pounds of salted fried potatoes become a relic we will 100% continue have an obesity crisis
I can eat pretty much anything and not gain too much weight, without paying attention to anything, while another people can't. People really do process excess calories different: some turn more of it in to fat, whereas others just excrete it or turn it in to muscle tissue. I'm also the kind of person who can not eat anything all day and basically just be fine (I don't really get hungry fast).
I play the game on easy mode, whereas others play it on hard or even nightmare mode.
[1] - https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/314345#Aspartame-b...
Some people don’t have to count calories but as someone growing up in America I think I can speak to this - some of y’all are eating full meals when cooking with taste testing or having what would be considered 3 serving of pasta or cereal in a sitting. Serving sizes might be significantly smaller than you imagine.
I'm sure that is the case, but my point was that I don't even need to pay attention to calories on menus, or anywhere else for that matter.
So funny to hear people who have never struggled with food saying "it's not hard" in the comment section of an article telling you in no uncertain terms that for some people it _is_ hard. It's like straight people sating "it's easy, just don't be gay!"
I lost weight and keep it off but my body constantly lies to me about my nutritional needs. I'm not sure I'll ever have a healthy relationship with food.
The point of this is that if you eat when your body tells you it wants to eat, you're going to be fat. Everybody who's fit has to deal with this. And this becomes even more true as you get older when your metabolism is going to fall off a cliff while your desire for food will, at most, slightly decline.
1. https://archive.is/20190419065429/https://www.nytimes.com/20...
Yet now look at the environmental side of things where we've dramatically shifted our view on obesity and its acceptability. There are not only endless mass media articles, like the one you linked, implicitly suggesting to people that their fitness might be out of their control, but there's been a rise in things like 'fit at any size' type models (who have a habit of dying prematurely of cardiac issues), and more. And of course the ever-creeping plate, drink, and everything size, and even an FDA who recommends a 2400 calorie diet for a sedentary mid-aged male [1], which is just crazy out of touch with reality. To say nothing of their decision to do absolutely nothing about the increasingly overwhelming evidence of the dangers of sugar substitutes, the least of which being the increased probability of weight gain from consumption.
By contrast one of the only countries to have actually taken major social action against obesity (once they saw it also starting to rise) is Japan. In Japan both employers and local governments are fined for the presence of overweight employees/residents, under a "metabo" law. And they're now the country with the 7th lowest rate of obesity in the world.
As I alluded to, I lost weight and have kept it off for about 7 years. Almost 100 pounds. But losing that weight was one of the hardest things I've ever had to do and I don't think I could have if I didn't have so little going on in my life that I could dedicate most of my willpower to it. I know very few people who have managed to do it.
So a lot really depends on your environment. And right now, America (and the West in general) has turned into a hellscape for people actually trying to control their weight. By contrast imagine you were in a country with a low obesity rate, no such obesity acceptance, and a culture (portion, clothes, etc) aimed towards more fit weights. It is dramatically easier. So congrats, because yeah - dropping and keeping off 100 lbs in America is definitely an achievement.
Then there are people with adhd, autism, and numerous other conditions that can indirectly influence it.
So yeah, “just do it” and “just have some self control” etc is totally not it. I have zero tolerance for all this pearl clutching about giving people a break from the self hate. I seriously doubt it’s harmful for people to acknowledge that there are things they can’t fully control that hold them back. The real point is you can say “yeah whatever, but…” until you turn blue but without being able to peer into another persons mind you can’t make any factual assertions about how hard something is for other people.
Quit clutching those pearls so tightly and just relax a bit. Calorie consumption vs calories burned isn’t something to get so offended over.
Selective breeding?
* By the way don’t do this I have no idea what the risks were
What happened was both my roommate and I had to move. My roommate was a math professor and incredibly thin. In fact in the years we lived together I hardly saw him eat a handful of times, always the smallest portions and often just a bowl of rice.
I have this old fashioned attitude towards never wasting. I have no disease but to protect an old graft I take cefadroxil 1g per day spaced in two doses. I also had some amoxicillin that was left over but since I was moving and didn’t want to carry or throw it out I took that in addition at 3g per day, spaced out in three doses as originally prescribed.
Then my roommate left behind about a quarter of a large bag of rice. Lundberg organic short grain brown. I hadn’t budgeted for food and was very busy after the move so I copied him and bought a cheap rice cooker without a non stick coating and started to cook what was left, and at the time I didn’t know you were supposed to wash rice before cooking it. I cooked one bowl of rice at lunchtime from the small cup provided with no spices or sauce or other ingredients and forgot to eat the rest of the day. Next day I did the same and again no hunger and then it occurred to me that I had eaten the smallest fraction of my normal calorie intake. It was also true that all the places I habitually visited for food were gone. Now I do weigh myself regularly. Before I moved about 80 days ago I weighed 215lbs. Today I’m at 175ish give or take a few water weight pounds for error, and the lowest ever recorded for me was 184ish in 2008. I’m 5 11
After about three weeks of only the bowl of rice and a glass of water I wondered what would happen if I skipped it entirely. Would I run low on energy or pass out? I wanted to know. I was simply never hungry. Even though walking past restaurants had a pleasant smell it didn’t effect me and I never thought about or craved food at all period. As it turned out fasting was easy. I no longer need to eat at all I just continually burn my reserves. It’s totally unbelievable and kind of awesome. I’ve been fat without exception since I was a teen. I’m dropping about 1.2lbs a day and walking a good ten miles as well no fatigue. That’s 35,000 steps on the pedometer for another 1000 calories. I don’t feel any different and plenty of energy. I haven't eaten a bite of food for a week although I do drink strictly one glass of milk daily for protein and take a multivitamin.
So my speculation on what has happened here is;
1) I killed off the dominant gut bacteria that caused hunger with a combination of antibiotics and starvation through a low calorie diet
2) The bacteria on the rice recolonized my gut and so I’m no longer hungry
That’s wild conjecture to be fair but something very significant has changed, because I used to stuff my face non stop. My hunger disappeared at 90 degrees and never returned
So that’s the story
* BTW the amoxicillin ran out about two weeks after I moved, was a pretty large container. Also they were expired. I really should learn to throw things away. I’m also saving a fortune on food
Some selected height / maximum weight combinations for a BMI of 18:
5' (152 cm): 93 lb (42 kg)
5.5' (168 cm): 112 lb (51 kg)
6' (183 cm): 132 lb (60 kg)
6.5' (200 cm): 159 lb (72 kg)
But comparing the extremes (<18, >30) and using in-between as control probably makes statistical power easier.
Calories in is largely correct, however it comes with a few small cavaets. If you eat an excess amount of food (and I mean a LOT, 6000cal+), you probably cannot disgest all of it. For normal sane amounts of calories you're going to digest the vast majority of them. For certain folks, they may have trouble digesting certain types of food. This is going to impact far fewer people than most think, I believe.
The much bigger one is calories out. What you burn can change a lot. Certain bodies adapt their calorie burn quite quickly to calorie reduction. Unconscious effort changes can heavily increase or reduce calorie usage.
There's very little about sugar that inherently makes it "constantly store energy" for certain people. Its calories like anything else, and if you eat tons of it, it's just tons of calories.
The final note is that certain people can have huge swings in water retention depending on food eaten. Salty foods do this for most people. But that isn't true weight gain, and should be largely ignored.
This obviously doesn't mean that genetics are making them bet their house on black. But if there's any genetic component to factors like self discipline, impulsiveness, and other factors then these would show up when you look at differences between people where those sort of characteristics can work as a driving (or mediating) factor.
[1] - https://journals.plos.org/plosgenetics/article?id=10.1371/jo...
CICO can be true while also having genetic play a role.
I often question this. It is something I really don't understand.
Gads, up until a few years ago, I was doing 4000-6000 cals most days. Other days, I was doing four shots of vodka and nothing else. I'm real thin, generally muscular, great health. Great health (to repeat) and quite capable of 20 mile hikes with a 40-70 pound backpack (absolutely no f' joke), at a very fast pace.
I still don't grasp this.
Also, muscles take energy to maintain. As you lose muscle as you get older your burn rate will also go down because of that.
Finally, most people eat at set times even when they’re not hungry and snack outside of set times when they are. Needless to say this automatically results in overeating. Skipping meals when you’re not that hungry is great but harder to do when you live with other people.
Also, if you were actually doing 4000cal one day and ~300cal the next (4 shots of vodka), your average cal count would still be 2150 across two days, which is perfectly fine.
Alternatively, if you actually are doing 20 mile hikes very regularly with that sort of weight, you truly could just be burning that much extra in calories. Long distance running/hiking burns an immense amount of calories.
For me I was lucky and my BMR is around 2400, so when I started counting calories and was averaging 3000, it.. well, dropping to a 2000 calorie diet was hard and it has its moments, but it was DOABLE. I could see going from 3000 to say, 1200? Like if your BMR was 1400? OH MY GOODNESS I bet that's a nightmare.
And even then there's days where you don't sleep enough and feel hangry. And for the first couple of months sometimes staying under 2200cal was really hard. It's gotten easier. Seeing the 16lbs lost since late February has been incredibly motivating lol.
"Eat what you like and never get fat" is most always "doesn't feel as though they need to eat that much and, therefore, never gets fat".
...They have found that the genetic dice are loaded in favor of thin people and against those at the obese end of the spectrum
Eg - your unique path in life maybe unlocked by figuring out how to handle your predisposition to obesity, while mine may require working through emotional baggage or whatever.
If we persevere, we not only avoid the problem but level up in our development.