• Study suggests ‘genetic advantage’ keeps some people slim and healthy
    36 replies, posted
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2019/jan/24/thinness-and-obesity-its-in-the-genes https://journals.plos.org/plosgenetics/article?id=10.1371/journal.pgen.1007603#abstract1
Curious to see if future gene-editing will allow this to be changed. Imagine this: A trip to the doctor's office, you get a shot in the arm and after a few months, you just shed off all excess weight.
I mean... Yeah no shit, I feel like this has always been obvious. Some people gain weight easier than others! I know I can gain weight pretty fast but I workout and eat pretty healthy so I haven’t had any issues maintaining it.
During the times where most of us were hunter-foragers, being able to gain weight more easily would have been an advantage then. I mean, it still kinda does matter in survival situations but most of us don't face that kind of challenge anymore.
I wouldn't be surprised if some people had genes for poorly metabolising the food they eat, taking on a fractional percent of the sugars that other people might.
“However, most obesity is acquired in adult life and is linked to the obesogenic environment we live in (a sedentary lifestyle and abundance access to calorie-dense foods). Furthermore, genetic differences are unable to explain the large rise in the prevalence of obesity in children under six years old, which may have its origin in pregnancy and early infancy when appetite is programmed in the offspring.” Only tangentally related, but the rise in childhood and even infant morbid obesity is pretty uncontroversially linked to corn syrup, or more specifically, glucose fructose, which the liver can't process and just converts directly into fat. And because of corn's subsidizing after the 70's (which is a fucking kafkhaesque mess), we have a surplus of corn syrup, which makes its way into fucking everything, like the goverment supplied baby care packages, which is filled to the brim with corn syrup, particularly the juice. Ergo, the recent scourge of morbidly obece 6 month olds. So there you go.
Reminder that this study is specifically talking about severe obesity and weight loss in early childhood, not people getting fat when they're adults/nearing adults. If you weren't fat until high school or later, then that's not genetic, as this study makes note of.
Anecdotally I've felt this to be true with the skinny part. I've always eaten the same or more as my peers and I'm still skinny despite being almost 30.
Yeah, I've got a good friend who can put down nearly 3000 calories a day or more. He's stayed skinny as a twig and about 150lbs for years now. Wheras if I eat half an oreo I immediately gain seven pounds and it takes weeks to get that back off.
It... really hasn't. Hence why it's been so popular to shit on fat people for entirely "choosing" to be that way, instead of "just losing the weight." And why doctors are pretty eager to go "hm, the issue is you need to lose weight." I mean, anyone who actually bothered to look into this knew already. There's even jokes about it, "nobody runs in your family," etc. But people would genuinely keep hating people for being fat instead of just realizing that a gooood chunk of them, literally are screwed by genetics.
Hasn't this been always known tho? I touch anything that even resembles something unhealthy i start to gain weight. Useful "trait" to have if you're bulking doe.
i'm fat and this is cope. a genetic predisposition towards gaining fat might mean you have to work harder to lose weight but it doesn't make being fat any better.
I used to be chubby, then in high school I got very skinny, and now I'm just skinny in a normal way. I bet I'll become a fat fuck in a decade
What? But it’s not like they’re doomed to be fat just because they’re genetics make them gain fat easier. Sure it sucks they(and myself) might have to work harder than other, but it’s still a choice. Life inherently isn’t equal. Even this articles states you’re still not gonna be obese unless you’re eating like shit. There’s a reason there’s been a rise in obesity in places like America, where food is riddled with sugar and shit.
I was obese from 7 years old until around September last year and now I'm finally only classified as overweight. 48 pounds down so far! Hard to see the physical changes though...
Also people need to keep in mind that skinny =/= healthy. I see people enviously posting how their friend can eat like shit and be skinny, but just a heads up that doesn't mean they are not negatively affected by their diet. In fact, being extremely skinny generally shows that while you are eating a lot, you are not eating the RIGHT things to gain weight. My 100 pound gf doesn't realize this and will eat a whole assortment of shitty foods and while she is skinny I think a strong wind could kick her ass, she has no bone/muscle strength and it terrifies me how when she is older they naturally weaken as well. The key here is balance, and everyone has a different balancing point that they have to figure out. People look at me enviously when I tell them it is hard for me to gain weight, but it is because I am a type 1 diabetic and I have to be careful about my carb intake. So I have to diet and exercise (exercise is basically required for a diabetic, you WILL have circulation problems later in life even if you do) and deal with all these other problems my malfunctioning body has, yet people see skinny/toned and think "Oh he's perfectly fine!!" No one is exempt from eating healthily, and what you put into your body WILL affect you whether it is now or 20 years from now.
I sit on my ass all day and eat up to 3000 calories a day. I have actually lost 2 pounds. This probably explains it
its really up to what you enjoy doing as well. I enjoy walking miles, I try to walk 2-3 miles on a treadmill at least 3-4 times a week. My parents and siblings are allergic to exercise though.
Doctors are pretty eager to tell you to lose weight because: A) You need to lose weight
This is actually because you're losing muscle and replacing it with fat. Calories are not the only thing you need, you need natural fats, proteins, vitamins and other things you are probably not getting into your body so yes you're losing weight but that weight is your body breaking down previous nutrients in your body (muscle/fat stores) since it is not getting them out of what you eat. For example if I do not take my insulin properly I will start to lose a lot of weight because my food is not being broken down into proper nutrients so my body has to "eat" itself for lack of a better term. While yours will never be anywhere near that extreme it does not mean you are anywhere near healthy if you do what you say you do.
Facts, I've floated between 140-160 for about 6 years regardless of my eating habits, I can pound back an obscene amount of food and just have it do nothing to me. I've slowly developed a minor six pack in the last couple years and all I do is smoke weed and play video games with my boys, I'd love to see further looks into this phenomenon
Your heart is thanking you, keep up the good work
I think if I were to choose, I would rather put weight on easily than the opposite. Muscle mass takes a long time to put on, losing fat is pretty fast by comparison.
I see this article would appeal a lot to Facepunchers
Makes me wonder how much healthier a person's diet can be if they just cut out the corn syrup.
The genetic component is there as with any trait, but how strong of an effect is it actually compared to trans-generational hormonal influences, epigenetics, etc? These are interesting things to study, but most laypeople are going to misinterpret these studies and try to explain their poor health by claiming that they have a heavier genetic "set point" or some such nonsense. Lifestyle and diet will always be a stronger influence on body composition than genetics, with extreme exceptions.
Except my muscle mass has actually stayed the same or actually increased
Ratings show it seems like no one buys into gene editing but it really is the next huge leap to come along with AI
What I'm wondering is if there is a psychological factor to obesity that may very much be genetic as well? Yes maybe you can't blame your genetics for why you're fat, it's still your "choice" of lifestyle that matters the most, but maybe some people just don't have the proper genetics in regards to brain structure and hormones that deal with things like hunger, taste buds, self-control and routine that make it a lot harder to avoid obesity.
Caffeine can help lots with suppressing appetite, I used to take caffeine pills and alone they suppressed my appetite superb. If amount of caffeine in pills is too high then you can just split em and no problem (unless they're Extended-Release/Sustained-Release type of pills which you shouldn't split). Eventually I also combined caffeine with stimulants like Edronax/Bupropion, my appetite was practically nonexistent (used to take them as part of narcolepsy/hypersomnia treatment though, not just on a weight loss whim). And as time passed I shifted from obesity, overweight to normal weight and atm im slowly closing in to underweight range
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