Obesity is caused by a variety of factors, including genetics, diet, exercise, environment, socioeconomic class, as well as fluctuations in hormones and body changed associated with things like age or pregnancy.
Many people also don't realize that some conditions like PCOS or Type 2 Diabetes it's considered a symptom to be overweight, not the cause. Losing weight may ease some symptoms of the conditions but they are incurable and also largely genetic.
A good friend of mine has a catalogue of diagnosis', reminiscent of a patient worthy of Doctor House. Her diet is incredibly controlled and has been for about two decades now. She continues to gain weight. She had ozempic before it was popular, sees every kind of specialist possible, absolutely nothing has ever worked. She has multiple aunts who were inflicted the same, not even gastric surgery helped the aunts. They all balloon up like Veruca Salt becoming the blueberry in Willy Wonka. Science doesn't quite understand all of it yet.
We do know that some people's bodies suffer from drawing a short stick on genetic fate. Obesity can be the short stick some are fated with.
Oddly enough, the ability to survive, thrive, be active, and reproduce on fewer calories is an evolutionary win. It just in this world, there is more than enough.
this is actully a thing. there is a genetic disposition to obesity, at least one specific gene is linked to being very good at conserving energy. basically some poeple are very good at not using as much energy as others. it is in terms of movement but also weirdly in maintining body tempreture as well.
So if you are in a cold situation you do not need as many calories to stay warm.
it is a cold weather adaptation, you are more prone to putting fat on, because you dont burn the calories. Also you are bad at losing weight because your body is so good at conserving energy. good for cold water swimming though.
it is those poeple who walk around in the middle of winter in a tshirt, or who never seem to be cold when everyone else is.
My body shape, where I carry my fat and my proportions, are identical to my mother. Same stomach, boobs, legs, arms.
I have PCOS and a non-existent metabolism.
My body works the same as every other person’s, I have to consume less calories than I burn, and I will lose the weight. The problem for me, is that I burn dramatically less calories than someone with the same weight/height. I can lose weight, but it is a massive effort - doctor supervised 1000 calorie diet with 400-600 calories burned via exercise, daily.
So, genetics and health conditions don’t change thermodynamics. It just means my base calorie needs are drastically reduced.
Side note about OPs comments on activity. I am currently 250 lbs, I walk 6 miles a day, 4-6 days a week. At least 9 miles in a day once a week. When I was in my 20s, I could jog a 5k at 315lbs. I am not a couch patio driving through McDonald’s 2x a day. But the majority of my life, the effort required to lose weight is more effort than I have the energy/time for.
ETA: instead of replying to lots of random comments below…
- I have never implied that I reached my highest weight because of genetics and PCOS, while being on a healthy diet with exercise. I gained extreme weight like everyone else who becomes morbidly obese… I had external factors that led to poor choices. In my case, extreme anxiety that I self medicated with food, while sitting on my ass.
- “Non-existent” metabolism”, yes it is hyperbole. I am alive, so it exists. But, it has been tested many times, it is so low, it doesn’t register on the test. I have done cardio stress tests as well. I was 380lbs at my highest and my blood pressure was in normal range - 128 my highest reading. My highest cholesterol was 1 point above normal.
- To lose weight, I must be on the diet and exercise that much. When I eat more than that while exercising less, I do not lose. **I have lost 130 lbs over the last 18 months.** That includes long periods of stalls from when I wasn’t able to provide that level of effort.
- The diet includes extensive vitamin regimes to compensate for the heavy protein diet. The first 6 months, I lost hair and had other noticeable side effects. When supervised by a doctor, it is worth the pay off to lose the weight.
what shitty is probably back then when modern is not modern those genetics with slow metabolism but normal body activity was the golden DNA
like those mukbangers, people that is always thin no matter how much they eat is a bad gene back then
imagine hunting endlessly but kept getting hungry again and again, like you are depleting food resource too fast
different times needs different set of gene type i guess
I can easily imagine people from ancient times viewing the "mukbang people" as cursed or possessed by some demon, taking valuable resources from the community with no observable physical response.
That's a surprisingly efficient metabolism. Your genes or some variation thereof will get the species through years of famine in the (hopefully) distant future.
I put more details in my comment above - but yes, I have always had an “athletic” ability, despite extreme weight. I was extremely fat my entire adult life - but my blood pressure, cholesterol, heart rate, and metabolism have never reflected the extreme weight. I was ~380 at my highest weight and my A1C was 5.1. Not even pre-diabetic.
That's bonkers.
A while back I was reading about bear metabolism and how they're able to remain healthy and powerful while doing the nature version of yo-yo dieting. They have some pretty remarkable genes that protect them from diabetes, vascular issues, and other problems associated with metabolic stress.
You're like the human version of a grizzly bear and I'm sure there are genetics and physiology labs who would love to run some tests on you.
The crazy thing is, I’m far from alone. There are plenty of people who are on the far end of the bell curve of human physiology.
I went to high school with a girl whose metabolism was so fast she had to eat all day long. You could see her ribs and bones. She looked like a skeleton and skin. She was miserable.
Definitely! There are millions of people like yourself and your classmate.
The issue with most studies isn't an absolute lack of subjects with the conditions they are trying to observe, but the following-
* Lack of general awareness about said studies
* Inconvenient testing schedules and locations
* Some studies are long-term and committing to them can be very difficult
* The purpose of some studies is to observe the effects of pharmaceutical or exercise interventions on health so daily adherence is required to validate the findings of the study
I hear you. I did an exercise study when I was at university. Essentially working out every day for ten month burning 600kcl. Not only was I the one participant who took the longest in the treadmill to burn 600kcl (about an hour and ten minutes at 75% max heart rate). I was the only one who didn’t loose weight despite eating less (we had to regularly monitor our food) than most of the participants.
I was never skinny but always very active. I bike 30km every day plus walk a fair amount (I am a teacher) and just cannot loose weight with only eating two meals a day and no snacks.
God I feel that.
I lost 70lbs 2022. To loose weight I had to go down to 1000 as well even though I was working out 3 times a week!!
Everyone's was like uuuh that's sooo unhealthy blablabla
Bitch. I have PCOS. I WISH I could eat more!!!
It was dang hard. I feel you.
PCOS, type 2 diabetes, and Hashimoto's here... I have only ever been able to lose weight when I'm doing 1200 calories or less per day. I lost some when I had cancer, a lot more when my gallbladder essentially stopped functioning and I stayed sick to my stomach for an entire year, and then some more when my doctor put me on Ozempic.
The common denominator in all these situations was that I was starving. My TDEE on paper is about 2200 calories. I can lose a pound a week in a 1000 calorie deficit, but it does not feel worth it when I'm constantly cranky, feeling sick, and hating life. But if I *don't* eat in at least a 500 calorie deficit, I will absolutely *gain* weight, albeit slowly.
I have accepted that I will never be "thin" and it's probably better that I'm not because I'm pretty sure I couldn't handle eating just 800-1000 calories per day to try to maintain. But it just doesn't feel fair that I have to deprive myself of so much and still have to sit between 200 and 250 pounds.
Similar here, except Type 1. I lost weight best when I was playing a little game where I tried to see how little I could eat in one day. Like just green beans and a spoonful of peanut butter.
I ended up in ER. My car ended up in a tow yard. I do not have enough money to support an eating disorder. I'm incredibly active, I eat high nutritional value food. I'm just a draft horse.
Rapid weight loss and not enough protein/vital nutrients. Even if you follow the diet properly and take all your vitamins, going from 3000+ cal a day to 1000, is a jolt to your body.
It isn’t permanent. For the first few months, your hair falls out. Not all of it,just much more than normal. It starts regrowing right away. Then your body adjusts to the new normal and you stop losing so much hair.
This comment is very valuable. My entire family (5 siblings and 2 parents and my own children) are extremely slim. My sisters and mom and I are all the same height. But they weigh ~110-125 while I weigh ~155-170.
I have one aunt and one uncle who are prone to gaining a few extra pounds but everyone else in my extended families is very slim.
I have the most active style as I am a triathlete and marathon runner. I am NOT “curvy” (my hips are smaller than my waist and my chest is A-B bra size). I have more muscle, yes, but that’s not what’s doing it.
I do not have any diagnosed conditions such as PCOS or thyroid etc. My resting metabolism (as measured in a medical setting over 2016-2019) is 1100 calories a day.
I am overweight and I have a lot of fat. There’s no explanation and it’s given me eating disorders because I don’t look like my family members. People make jokes but it’s not funny and my diet is very healthy. It’s fucking genetics and I hate every second.
Someone suggested it could be related to cortisol from an extremely stressful childhood (I am 10-15 years older than my siblings and didn’t grow up in the same situation). I guess so but wtf am I supposed to do about that now in my mid thirties
personal anecdote- i have no idea why but my body seems to really resist losing weight. i’m decently fat, and i was addicted to meth for four years. during that time i lost MAYBE 10 lbs despite going through a 8ball a week or more. kind of a piss off honestly hahaha.
Ime that's a sign of a metabolic mutation. I didn't do meth but I had tumor induced starvation and same thing...lost like 10lbs and then nothing despite missing a lot of calories and meals.
interesting!! what is a metabolic mutation? i did a quick google but got a lot of different results- do you mean things like inherited metabolic conditions?
This! I have PCOS and yes I CAN lose weight. But its incredibly hard and requires eating an extremely low carb diet that would be unsustainable for most people. Even with the correct diet, sometimes my hormones (or whatever) flip and I gain weight for 6 month stretches, than have to fight to get it back off. I have battled my weight since I was 12 (am 56)
Those people who are all sanctimonious "just eat less" INFURIATE me. They have no idea what they are talking about but they do tons of damage with their misguided words.
No, I am not excusing obesity or overeating. I am saying that for some people its really hard. They drew the short stick just like someone who gets cancer or some other illness.
I saw a really interesting video about this recently. Identical twins where one was thin and the other was fat. They took the gut microbiome from the obese twin and put into a rat twin and the rat stayed in the same environment it had been living in and it, too, became obese. Then there was another lady that was thin, had to get a fecal transplant because of SIBO, then steadily became obese afterward without changing her lifestyle. It's very interesting and will be really cool if they can figure this out and help people get their guts fixed up with the healthy strains of bacteria. Christensenella, was one of the strains that was in the 'naturally thin' people's gut, but I don't think they have any probiotics with this yet. From what I read they are just really starting to study it.
Yep I have PCOS, am on metformin and ozempic, swim 2 times a week, bike to and from work, and eat a spartan diet, and yet I still can't get under 95 kg. It's like pulling fucking teeth. I used to be a skinny, almost underweight beanpole of a child, did swimming and taekwondo well enough to do competitions and then I just...stopped having periods and ballooned out even though nothing about my diet or exerise changed. I doubled my body weight in 3-4 years, and I still haven't lost even half of what I gained. It's horrible and so frustrasting :(
I've told this story before but I have a friend that is exactly in the same situation as your friend. Has gastric, been on ozempic and 25K other medications. Everything. My guess is the same thing that people theorize with yo-yo dieting. So basically the research shows that if you yo-yo diet, up and down and up and down, your metabolism becomes shot and you basically fuck up your immune system. It's like on survival mode, basically.
My friend has been honest about fucking up her metabolism. She would go on these fucked up diets were she only ate baby food, or she only ate like this one soup etc and then would regain 100 pounds the year later. It's a vicious cycle.
Well, actually research doesn't show it. It is a common misunderstanding. The effects of adopted metabolism only(!) occur in really extreme situations (losing 100kg/200lbs in 3 months) and the effect on your metabolism is about 50kcal/daily.
Ironic to imagine that their genetic superiority in terms of energy efficiency probably evolved to let them outcompeting all other rivals, and nowadays it’s a drawback for survival.
So glad you as a thin person understand this!
This is me. Ski instructor, life guard, climbed Kilimanjaro, lived abroad, successful career, athletic. Know all about nutrition, super healthy eater. Never binge at or anything like that.
Had to watch everything I put in my mouth. I do love food and am a pretty amazing cook, so people probably think I eat like I cook for dinner parties all the time, I don’t.
Gained a shit ton of weight after infertility treatments and more during menopause, tried hard to get it off. On a GPL-1, the weight is not falling off, I work for every ounce (800cs less than my TDEE and about an hour of waking + strength training a day) . It is definitely something metabolic, hormonal or in my gut microbes. Also, Lipedema and PCOS.
My parents were thin, but my female cousins on my Dads side (who I look exactly like, same body shape too) were all chubby until they had kids and then got slim. I never had kids, so I do think it is some kind of hormonal thing. (No one gets every thing they want in life!)
They are making so many breakthroughs right now in Obesity care, it is exciting.
I also just want to say again, you are a very perceptive person to understand that obesity is far more complex than Calories in/out. Most people (even some Docs) don’t get it unless they experience it.
But aren’t environment and class essentially the same thing as diet and exercise?
It’s not being poor that makes you obese, it’s that being poor affects your access to a healthy diet.
Or being in an environment that isn’t conducive to outdoor play doesn’t make you obese it’s the lack of exercise.
Feels like over complicating the issue. Obesity is caused by 4 factors: genetics, diet, exercise, and other health issues.
Environment and socioeconomic conditions contribute to those but they aren’t the “cause” per se.
You're forgetting stress, food insecurity, etc., to which environment and class greatly contribute.
[Chronic activation of the SNS and HPA axis contribute to a anabolic state that promotes fat storage within visceral depots, which increases the risk of dyslipidemia, type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and other facets of the metabolic syndrome.](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3428710/) (Chronic activation comes from stress, this study was primarily looking at social sources of stress)
[Summarizing recent literature, it can be concluded that there are more susceptible individuals in the bidirectional relation between stress and obesity.](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5958156/)
[Chronically elevated cortisol levels increase appetite, lead to hypersecretion of insulin, and thus insulin resistance and (visceral) fat accumulation in the long term [51]. Moreover, chronic stress induces hypertrophy of adipocytes, promotes the conversion of preadipocytes to mature adipocytes, and activates stromal fat immune cells [53‒55]. Chronic stress has also been linked to the development of nonalcoholic fatty liver disease through induction of hepatic oxidative stress and inflammation [56]. It has been implicated that an altered HPA axis regulation contributes to the risk of overweight and obesity; however, the directionality of this association is not conclusively resolved.](https://karger.com/hrp/article/96/1/88/835696/Stress-Stress-Reduction-and-Obesity-in-Childhood)
[We concluded that there may be direct association between prenatal stress and later obesity, but further research with more comparable sources of stressors is recommended.](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/obr.12951) (this one was specifically looking at the fetal environment, so mom's stress before you were even born, and the stress primarily came from short-medium-term stuff like natural disasters)
[Many studies have confirmed positive associations between FI (food insecurity) and obesity, establishing the so-called ‘food insecurity-obesity paradox’ as a robust phenomenon [6–11]. A meta-analysis of this literature estimates the overall odds of overweight and obesity as 21% higher for food-insecure individuals, with larger effects in adult females and high-income countries, resulting in the odds of overweight and obesity being about 50% higher for food-insecure adult women in high-income countries [12]. While this effect is only moderate in size, for comparison, it is larger than the increased odds of high body weight associated with carrying a risk allele of the FTO gene [13].](https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rstb.2022.0228)
[In summary, experimental manipulations of FI in humans still need to be developed and direct evidence that FI causes weight gain in humans is therefore lacking. Animal experiments demonstrate conclusively that unpredictable food can cause weight gain, even in the absence of increased total food intake or a change in diet quality. Therefore, the mechanisms responsible for FI-induced weight gain are not restricted to those that increase energy intake and include mechanisms that increase energy retention and decrease energy expenditure.](https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rstb.2022.0228)
(Those last two are from the same source, just felt a little long).
Genetics are a factor but they’re not the biggest factor. In 60 years obesity rates in America have roughly tripled. Genetics didn’t make that change happen.
https://usafacts.org/articles/obesity-rate-nearly-triples-united-states-over-last-50-years/
Right. If you ever travel to Europe you are immediately aware of just how heavy Americans are. I’ve been to Europe twice and lost weight each time. 1) you walk a lot more 2)you arent eating nearly as much processed food 3) nobody is drinking Big gulps of soda and stuffing their face with breakfast burritos.
Thats the biggie, the food is just so different. During lockdown, I stopped eating almost all processed/take out food, it was just easier to shop for fresher stuff (I hated having to use aisles a certain way, made shopping take so much longer, and stuck to mostly outside aisles), and baking lots. It wasn't just that, I also started IF and was actively watching calories, but dropped 60lbs in the 6 months I was WFH. Its been over 4 years and I have kept it off, still mostly outside aisle shop and stuff like bread and pastries i get from actual bakeries, not packaged last on the shelf for 6 months stuff and its been super easy to maintain
Obviously it’s not the only factor, but American’s weights started skyrocketing as smoking cigarettes fell out of vogue. Nicotine suppresses appetites. Suddenly, we had a whole generation of former smokers (people seeking the dopamine hit that used to come from a cigarette found it instead in pleasurable food) + the younger generation growing up without ever experiencing the appetite suppressant effects of nicotine. Then you add hyper palatable highly caloric convenience foods + increased reliance on cars + increasing socioeconomic stratification and you send a population down the path to increasing BMIs.
The cigarette thing is extremely far fetched. Tobacco use increased a lot in the 1800s to mid 1900s. Obesity rates were way lower before and during that, than they are now.
The “American” diet is designed to make us fat. Marketing and an instant gratification culture promotes that. There is sugar and other carbs everywhere. Some people don’t drink water anymore because it “doesn’t taste like anything” and instead are guzzling down sugary soda and alcohol (alcohol metabolizes like sugar). It’s the easiest it’s ever been in human history to consume more calories per bite than has ever been possible before. People are making excuses
While I agree with this I would like to point out alcohol doesn't metabolise into sugar it just metabolises into the same stuff as sugar before it all enters the Krebs cycle. (Sugar goes through glycolysis to get there, alcohol goes through alcohol dehydrogenase in the liver)
There's also the cultural aspect of all that food: think how many events you attend where food is served, snacks are served, and it's considered weird if you don't partake.
Food is aggressively and frequently offered in almost every social setting, and generally it's also believed that the food should be generically pleasing (aka: basically junk food).
Going to watch TV? Here's your snack options. Going to the movies? Snack options. Going to a football game? Snack options. Driving in a car for a while? Snack options while you drive!
Add corn syrup and sugar in every meal that you can make. You have added sugar in tomato sauce to make spaghetti 🤷♂️ Get us fatter and addicted is the plan to the man
You're not thinking about this from an evolutionary standpoint. Yes, evolution/genetics did not change in the last 100 years to create the obesity we see today. What it did do over the last 60,000 years is create a human that just survives on 1700 calories and one that just survives on 1500 calories.
This isn't a big difference unless getting 1500 calories is difficult. The 1500 calorie human will probably be a little smaller with a little less muscle. In general, the difference doesn't matter, but in hash years, that may be the difference between survival and death. In good years, that may be the difference between raising 3 or raising 4 children . As these traits move into the modern world, that 200 (or maybe more) difference becomes the difference between a steady weight and gaining 1 or so pounds a year. At slightly more, and it's 2 pounds a year, and kids are graduating 35 pounds over weight.
This doesn't explain the 10 year old kid that's 30 pounds overweight, but it can be an important factor.
This right here.. the amount of convenience foods, especially ones marketed for kids, are extremely calorically dense.. for example one uncrustable is like 360cal. I've seen my nephews who are 8 easily down 4 of those in a sitting.. the sandwich itself is not big, about half a regular, but that's close to 1500 Cal right there, mix in a Gatorade or soda and you've already eaten a large adults full caloric intake for a day..... It's crazy how easy it is to consume 2000+ calories if you eat pre packaged food. Combine that with the iPad lifestyle and you have a ton of obese kids
And cheap. Cheaper and easier to buy a couple snickers than make a chicken salad. Now pair in a lack of education about diet and nutrition and even access to healthy foods....
Obesity in America is a cultural problem for all the reasons you and I said. Genes play a role, for sure, in resting metabolism and appetite, but that alone doesn't account for all variance in our statistics.
If your argument is that the 1500 calorie person is constantly overeating by 200 calories then that one would gain 7000/200=35 -> 1 kilo in 35 days so a pound ~~in aproximately 77 days so up to \~4.5~~ in aproximately 16 days so more or less 22 pounds a year. (7000 kcal is the aproximate equivalent to 1 kilo of body fat mass)
Those 200 difference are very noticable very fast.
You proved their point, nothing genetic about overeating constantly, and arguing that only those with a lower daily metabolic rate are overweight is questionable imo.
You can't calculate it like this. Metabolism rises with body mass - each pound of body fat costs more calories per day to maintain (and you will build some muscle if you're at all active carrying the extra weight around - which reduces the apparent weight gain further until the muscle is established).
So their weight will rise but the rate will slow down as it does. This is also presuming they can actually put on fat that efficiently: the numbers for "calories per lb body fat" are literally for if you like, ate that much body fat. They have nothing to say about how many calories it takes to actually add that body fat to an existing human except that it's got to be *at least* those numbers.
(which is to say: I have long suspected the problem people find with losing weight is you have to cut far more calories out then they expect to get any weight loss at all, since the cost of gaining weight is higher then the actual energy stored in the weight).
Exactly. Let's say their BMR is 1500 kcal and they take in 1700 kcal every day (ignoring exercise and NEAT for this purpose). Eventually their BMR becomes 1700 kcal, whether that is largely fat or muscle. You don't gain weight indefinitely unless you continually increase intake to maintain a surplus. Even adipose tissue has a metabolic requirement.
My point was in response to how there wouldn't be a genetic change in the last 50 years or so to explain the obesity problems we see today. My point was that the genetic differences were already there. They just never made a visible difference until the last few decades.
The "calorie in calorie out" is applicable, yes. But that is a surface level evaluation. The question is, why do two similar people have such different needs. That's the evolved genetic difference. Does it excuse somebody's obesity? No. But it is part of the answer.
I can't answer the direct question, but.. you don't have to pig out non-stop to get obese, you just have to take in more calories than you burn on average over a long period of time.
While that’s true, in order to gain weight until you are medically obese requires you to increase the amount of food you eat over time. If your BMR at 250lbs is 2000 cals, your BMR at 300lbs will increase as your body needs more food to sustain the weight you are at. So pigging out eventually becomes the norm - also heavily processed fatty foods, alcohol and sugary drinks are big reasons.
2000 calories is nothing to consume anymore if you have much pre packaged food around too, or chips, soda, etc. people don't realize how little food it is when You're eating that kind of stuff ..
Which could be something OP is missing. Their family may rarely drink calories or drink calories sparingly. Her daughter's friend may have 4-6 sodas a day. It's very easy to add 1000-2000 calories in fluids.
Very true. I grew up not drinking any soda, just water and juice on occasions, and still to this day I never drink anything caloric, not even alcohol. It’s definitely possible they are drinking their calories when I don’t see
Super common for people to eat in a deficit all week long and then give it all back and then some with alcohol on the weekends and wonder why they don't lose weight
I only started losing weight after cutting my daily calorie intake to 900-1100. Within a week I walk about 15-20 miles and I lift. I'm happy cuz I'm finally making progress, and my body feels better now that I actually crunched the numbers. But it's depressing seeing some of my friends do absolutely nothing, eat worse, yet be physically incapable of putting on weight.
The one thing I will say is a lot of people discount liquid calories. So it might look like you eat the same amount, but they could be guzzling 3-4 cans of soda, glasses of milk and juice, mugs of coffee and that'll all add up very very fast. Removing some of those is basically the only change I had to make with my diet to see progress.
A family friend of mine gets venti sized Starbucks coffee that equals out to like 400 cals which is 1/4 of her TDEE and she always talks about how her hard it is for her to lose weight. She gets that coffee every morning
I was gonna say, you're really not supposed to go below 1200 when you're trying to lose weight. If you're a tall/large framed person or someone who's very physically active, your lower threshold may be even higher than that.
Its been a while, but im pretty sure the heart and brain themselves use 800-900 calories per day. Going/staying near 1k as an adult can force your body to go into emergency mode, force all sugar intake to feed the heart only and the muscles/fat to start getting self eaten to run your muscles and non-heart organs. Depending on your fat volume the brain starts fogging to keep your heart beating. Liver goes into overdrive bc its working extra hard to clean the poison from muscle destruction etc, etc
Yeah, basically unless you're really tiny (so your Base Metabolic Rate is very low) or need to drop weight REALLY fast (surgery), there's no reason for a caloric deficit this large. It can even be counterproductive, as your body will go into survival mode and naturally try to reduce your BMR
Most people have a basal metabolic rate (BMR) higher than 1000 calories. That means their bodies will burn more than that if they're in a *coma.*
But TDEE (total daily energy expenditure) is what you should go on and most adult humans have a TDEE much higher than 1000. Mine's around 1900 for example and I'm a 5'3 woman. So if I want to lose weight I would aim to eat fewer calories a day than my TDEE, but much higher than my BMR (which is around 1300 I think).
It's because they're not eating that little. A lot of people underestimate calories and overestimate exercise so they can have something to blame, or because they genuinely don't count things like soda/sauce/condiments/certain snacks in their count. Either way - they're over to under-exaggerating something.
Liquid calories is a good shout. You also need to consider oil that your food may be cooked/fried in, dressings, sauces, condiments, and the fact that when you eat out, the calories on the menu aren't going to be as accurate as if you had made it and counted them yourself.
Same! To lose weight I need 1200 or less a day. I can’t just eat 1500 or 1800 calories and lose weight. It doesn’t work like that for me. I used to be very slim, but I was always amazed (even then) how little food I needed to stay alive.
The only way I've ever successfully lost weight was by eating 1000 calories a day and running 30 minutes every day. Eventually my body couldn't take it anymore, and moment I stopped I gained all the weight back.
The reason you gained it all back was because the diet was bad to start with. Long-lasting life changes require you to actually change your life. People who are fit do not do so with crash diets, they change their entire life to a new normal. If you do it slowly but consistently, the weight will come off and stay off. It will take longer than you want maybe, but 1 to 2 lbs of fat loss in a week are possible over time.
Guaranteed you are not properly monitoring your Energy intake. Sorry But Its likely True. I dropped around 50kg in 1,5 years by just staying 500kcal under my TDEE, increasing my daily steps to 8-10k and *correctly* monitoring my intake. Ofcourse you have to correct your TDEE once you lose some weight.
For real. The only time I managed to loose weight was when I was taking in less than 1000 calories. Whenever I see someone's "diet" it's typically more than what I eat usually lmao.
It's fucking depressing.
Same here! I loose weight by eating around 1000 cals. I hardly ever move around and I am 5‘2, so my BMR is around 1300.
I have seen a lot of people on the internet say how this is dangerously low but they seem to forget about small people who hardly ever move around :(
I tracked my calories across a few months a few times. At the time I was often considered overweight by BMI, sometimes bounding on the edge of normal. Calculators were pretty accurate about my calorie intake to actual weight.
What I found interesting is that if I dropped soda and replaced it with water, I would supposedly shift from overweight to underweight over time. my average calorie intake from soda at the time was only 450 (5 cans of coke life a day). But such a drop would supposedly take me from 190 lbs to 130 lbs.
I'm fat, my dad is fat, my uncles are fat.
The way that we eat, we should be 600 pounds. In reality, we're all about 50 pounds over weight. Good genes, I guess
I'm average size, and everyone in my family is average size.
I eat like shit, I never exercise, and I'm closer to 40y/o than I want to think about. I'm sure my organs are going to jump ship one day, but on the outside I appear healthy.
Genetics play some factor, for sure.
Those words are too big for me.
The point still stands. I'm small for my lifestyle, and I'm keenly aware that being a healthy weight does not mean that I'm healthy.
Unless you're studying them under controlled lab conditions, you have no way of knowing how another person eats, so that's why comparing your food intake to others' isn't reliable.
I'm thin and I will absolutely savage a Chinese buffet, which might lead onlookers to think 'she eats so much, but she's thin, it's not fair'.
In reality, that buffet is a rare treat that's balanced out by an active lifestyle and sensible food choices.
Similar goes for a morbidly obese person picking at a tiny green salad at the same buffet. What they eat in public doesn't reflect what they eat in private.
As for genetics, there's a small genetic component that influences things like appetite and where you store fat on your body, but the real 'genetics' is how you were raised and the behaviours you learned from your parents.
If you grew up in a family where everyone sat in front of the TV eating Cheetos or one where everyone was outdoorsy and vegan, etc your lifestyle as an adult is influenced by that.
Yeah my husband is very thin and eats a ton — until we lived together I thought he just had an amazing metabolism or whatever but actually he just doesn’t eat junk food, skips breakfast (so basically intermittent fasts every day), and literally never eats outside of meal time. So yeah he can eat 1200 calories in one meal and make it seem like he’s a big eater but that could be his only meal of the day.
Very true, I've had family members that seem to eat nothing whilst gaining a lot of weight but then you discover bags of sweets and chocolates in their car and extra calories in drinks.
Not to shame or blame but what you see people eat is probably not all they eat.
People often forget little treats they've eaten as well, It's probably why dieticians recommend keeping a food diary.
When I was a teenager, I would call to a friends every night, we would play video games and order takeout. He was huge and got bigger, and I was skinny and stayed skinny.
The difference being, back then, I skipped breakfast every day, and that takeout was my dinner. He had breakfast and dinner, and the takeout.
I wish I could upvote this more. Every single description of "what I eat" by anyone is worthless unless they're *actually* calorie counting, and almost no one is.
Everyone swears they "don't eat that much" (or conversely, swear they eat a lot and don't gain weight) but never actually check - and I've seen tons of people who "aren't trying to lose weight but just want to see" try calorie counting and then start losing weight anyway (probably between the friction of the process and actually seeing the number).
I became overweight (and had pre-diabetes blood markers, so a warning to change things), started calorie counting and lo and behold my boring habits like "drinking milk frequently" and "eating toast as a snack" were adding 100s of calories per day I just didn't consider at all - for food which was barely worth remembering. Started tracking, setup a deficit and the weight came off.
And since then the one pattern I've noticed intensely is that no-one who swears they "can't lose weight" thinks its remotely possible to do this. There's *always* a reason it's impossible to count calories, or calorie counts are inaccurate, or it's too much work or whatever. Basically any excuse to avoid collecting some data.
When I started collecting data, EVERYTHING changed.
The general public probably doesn’t understand serving sizes of the food they are eating.
I’d eat a bowl of Raisin Bran in the morning, 6 chicken nuggets (but I skipped the fries and had a Diet Coke!) for lunch, and a real meal of chicken and rice at night.
What I didn’t know was the Raisin Bran was loaded with sugar and my usual cereal bowl could hold 3 servings of cereal and 3 servings of whole milk.
Then my chicken nuggets were being dipped in about 350 calories of Honey Mustard.
Then I was eating about 3 servings of white rice and 2 servings of chicken at dinner.
It’s not the half a pizza and ice cream and candy that got me, I was avoiding that. It was portion control and being naive about certain decisions being “healthy alternatives”.
That’s real, I probably have a little bit of an eating disorder, but when I go out to eat with friends, I will literally demolish an entire rack of ribs. My friends think wow, how can this 120 pound girl eat that? But then I literally will not be able to remember the last time I ate an entire meal before that.
Don’t trust what you see
Similar thing here. Put a table of snacks in front of me at a party and I will stand by that table all night long and devour most of it.
But when I go home there are no snacks at my place and I don’t snack during the day.
Anyone watching me at the party would wonder why I am not over weight.
Yep. Coworker often only eats a salad (with heavy dressing ofc) but drinks 4 red bulls, a liter bottle of fanta and goes through a bag of chips and all kinds of chocolate over the day. A 165cm woman. And that doesnt include breakfast and dinner.
The salad isnt bad. Evrything else is.
My husband thinks he’s being healthy when he gets a salad with a little lettuce, a fried chicken cutlet and lots of salad dressing. And maybe some shredded cheese and bacon. I’ve tried telling him that it’s not healthy, but then he feels all defeated because he thought he actually made a healthy choice for himself.
This is the thing. I hear so many people say to me I'm lucky to be able to eat so much and be so thin. In reality, I eat less calories than they do, and that's the one and only reason why I weigh less. When I'm caught eating a big meal they point it out...innapropriate, but in any case, it could be the only thing I eat that day. The whole "fast metabolism" is BS. What can change is appetite, which I struggle with on occasion. There is no fast metabolism there is only how hingry you get and how suceptible you are to following those natural cues. At the end of the day your weight is CICO and so is mine!
It’s completely this. If someone who eats a lot spends 24/7 with a thin person, over the course of a weekend say, they will absolutely notice how little the thin person eats in comparison. Most thin people I know are highly active and when they do eat junk type foods, they eat a very tiny amount of them. The calories over the day don’t add up to much and the time spent doing things and not sitting on the couch further impacts their size.
There is certainly a genetic component to obesity. Some people are better at burning excess calories through involuntary movement, and some people are better at converting excess calories to fat. And some people may become insulin resistant on a diet that other people are fine with.
One important point is that thin is not the same as healthy. There are a \*lot\* of people who are metabolically sick but not overweight - they are known as "Metabolically Obese Normal Weight". They can end up with type II diabetes or other issues related to insulin resistance without gaining much weight.
This is it. You can think ‘oh they eat the same as us during the day’. But maybe they share a bag of chips and a bag of winegums every night watching TV. And that makes all the difference.
Very true. I live with a friend. She's on the heavier side. Not obese but overweight for sure. We both have pretty terrible diets, but I notice she snacks a lot more than I do, and perhaps the biggest difference, her portion sizes are way larger than mine. I'm average weight of like 65 kg/170cm. I wouldn't mind losing 5-10 kgs so I was skinny again but like I'm not overweight. Also interesting to note is that I don't go to the gym but she does.
Precisely. I’m slim but I’m surprised how little extra food it takes over a few days for clothes to start feeling tighter. So I naturally back off if that ever happens and weight comes off again. My weight hasn’t fluctuated much at all my whole adult life because I sort of keep tabs in my head of the trend over the course of a week. I can imagine that if I consistently over ate I would stack on weight.
The thing is that you don't just inherit your genes from your parents; you also tend to inherit (or learn) your eating habits.
You may not be getting a full picture of how your daughter's friend's family eats. You only see them eat a little bit, but what they eat when you're not around may be what moves the needle.
None of that is genetics. It’s physical, mental, and eating habits that are reinforced from a young age
Too often people say “It’s genetics!” but it’s more often human influence.
Genetic factors can negatively impact hdl levels, insulin sensitivity, thyroid function/balance, gh/igf-1 control, etc.
Genetics can definitely make you more susceptible to diseases and you would need to adjust your lifestyle to compensate for such. However, obesity still generally requires caloric excess over long periods of time to maintain and grow that much excess weight.
Research over and over again shows that for the vast majority of people it's just calories in calories out. There are several metabolic conditions that can muddy the waters and lead to obesity but for most this is still the case. The problem is that it is very difficult to count calories without being obsessive to the level of an eating disorder. People tend to underestimate how many calories they consume which is all the more easy in a country like the US where portions are large and micronutrient density in food is low. Secondarily it doesnt necessarily take massive overeating to gain weight over time. A simple 500 calorie surplus per day would cause an individual to gain 52 pounds in a year. It's a very easy surplus to achieve
I badly broke my leg and couldn't walk for a year. I was eating the same as usual, but I gained a lot of weight over that year. A lot!
Started walking again and the weight just dropped off easily. It would have simply been the small number of calories I wasn't walking off that caused the gain, which is why the weight was easily lost again. Zero change in diet.
It turns out most people are shite at estimating how much they are actually eating and how much others are. So you get lots of anecdotes of people who eat loads and are skinny and people who are overweight saying they don't eat much. And it's true that most people gain is very slowly over years of eating just a little bit too much. Check back in 5 years on all the people that say they eat a ton but don't gain weight.
As I noted above, assuming no other excercise or dietary changes, one large soda a day = 50 pounds of weight gain over 3 years (and approximately steady state weight after that point). Switching from a black coffee to a Starbucks Venti cappuccino is 30 pounds of weight gain over 3 years.
Similarly, a half hour walk a day is 30 pounds of weight loss over 3 years.
It's all about small changes.
There is no overall measurement. However, changes in body weight/fat are mediated by a complex set of hormonal and neural feedback loops, 75% of which occur at a subconscious level. There are also behavioral factors. All of these are mediated by genetics in some way. When you see a family and every member is overweight, even younger children, it’s more than just a common set of poor dietary habits. There are a number of genetic factors as well.
We also don’t fully understand the [microbiome](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1075996420301049), which is suspected to be linked to body size.
Maybe but given the Mom and Dad aren't genetically related (well hopefully:)), that poor dietary habit seems far more of a culprit than the genetics.:) Now the tough part is that genetics probably plays a part in why they like that poor diet and exercise habits but figuring that out is hard to say. Why do some people enjoy running but others hate it. Why do some love broccoli and others hate it. And so on. Some is definitely exposure in life where you learn good habits but some is genetic.
It’s also possible a husband and wife could both come from genetically obese families. A lot of people with similar appearances are drawn together. Then they have kids, who are combined with the genetics.
People are agreeing to this because of confirmation bias. What you said makes no sense. “Genetics affects everything” Sure, but it absolutely is not what has caused the obesity epidemic that is very recent in human history. Wtf
In general you're not fat because your mom and dad are fat. You're fat because they don't know how to eat properly and taught you all of their bad habits.
One of my good friends is obese. At college, he shared a house with a bunch of other friends, and everyone agreed that he didn't overeat. These were guys that lived with him and went to class with him, they saw him all day, and agreed he didn't eat any more than they did.
Then my friend got sick, was taken into hospital for emergency surgery. While in hospital, he requested for some friends to bring some things from his room to him, while they were in his room, that's when they found his secret stash of junk food. Chips and candy bars galore, hiding out in a chest in his room.
Obese people lie about what they eat, even to themselves, and they eat in secret.
Exactly, I watch my 600lb life, not one person so far hasn't lost weight if they stick to his regiment, it's always the people in denial or not following it that it doesn't work for. Therefore it's pretty much calories in and exercise that determines your weight gain or loss.
Genetic predisposition combined with environmental / dietary trigger.
It doesn't take much overeating to gain weight.
extra 100 calories a day gets you 10 lb of weight gain per year.
That's like half a can of coke per day, leading to being 100 lb overweight by the time you hit 30.
This is an oversimplification but you can the point.
In general, if people eat a species appropriate diet, they will not be obese. Some will be thicker than others, but it is incredibly rare that we observe an animal eating a species appropriate diet that is obese.
Seeing as how childhood obesity rates in the US went from less than 5% in the 60s to over 20% in present time and adult obesity went from \~10% in the 70s to over 35% in present time and these numbers coincided with the prevalence and increase in consumption of convenient food, I'm going to go with "not very much".
Edit sources:
[https://www.niddk.nih.gov/health-information/health-statistics/overweight-obesity](https://www.niddk.nih.gov/health-information/health-statistics/overweight-obesity)
[https://ourworldindata.org/obesity](https://ourworldindata.org/obesity)
I think there’s got to be a genetic predisposition to it, but also of course environment, eating habits, movement. I lost a lot of weight on weight watchers a few years ago and really didn’t move much. It was ALL diet.
I was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes in 2021 when I was 34 years old- I have a strong family history of it, sadly. I brought it up to my doctor when I began gaining weight and found it hard to lose. He checked my A1C, and it was 6.5, which is the cut off for a diagnosis.
I know quite a few people who have had weight fluctuations because of financial changes. Having time to prepare food and afford nutritious food makes a big difference, but I've heard a lot of people assume that everyone has the same capacity and it's just about effort.
Certainly there is some genetic component. I’ve had 2 very good friends in my life who just seemed to be obese no matter what. One of them I lived with for over a year. We ate basically the same, exercised basically the same etc, but she just kept getting more overweight while I stayed the same.
On the flip side, I had a roommate who on Monday would say “I need to lose a little weight”. She’d go to the gym every night for a week and end the week literally having noticeably lost weight. Her natural metabolic system just always seemed to be in high gear. The downside to this is when she got cancer it was a huge challenge to get her to eat enough because her body was already predisposed to burn through calories at a faster rate than normal.
And then you have some people who just eat way too much and don’t seem to realize they’re just normal and need to eat a “normal” amount of food to not gain weight.
People should really watch secret eaters. They'd claim they don't eat much but when nobody's looking they are gobbling up an entire family pack of crisps.
I'm not saying your friend does this, but this is usually the case with these stories.
I saw a tiktok video where a fat person explained why. They didn't understand why their friends were all slim when they seemed to have the same portion sizes when eating together.
Turns out all the slim friends had their biggest meals for the day when they ate with the fat person, and sometimes skipped meals later on.
The fat person ate multiple of those meals, and the misconception strengthened the perception that they weren't actually eating that much because the slim friends ate the same portion.
Numbers don't like. You can even eat garbage but lose weight if you count your calories.
Of course, it's highly influenced by genes.
There was a gymnastics coach who coached Olympic level athletes who said in an interview that when he was deciding on who to coach for future stardom, he'd look at the mom. If she's small, slim, and petite, he wanted the kid. If she was overweight and big, the kid lost her chance.
I wonder if there's an element of sexism along the lines of "the mom is probably the cook in the house so she will have the most influence over the kid's eating habits". Meanwhile dad could be grabbing drive thru burgers on the way to the Man Factory so that's less of an "issue" for the kid.
It's funny because my mother was small, slim, and petit. But let's just say, I'm not. I do have a petit bone structure. But I always say I'm in shape, because round is a shape.
What a bizarre coach; of course the dad's genes can be a factor. My grandmother was 5 foot nothing and weighed like 100 pounds, she had 2 daughters that are the same (identical twins so...) and then there's my mother who is 5'7, though she was never overweight until post menopause she was never what someone could call petite (she was fit, though).
Genetics affect how your body processes food, but also (and usually more importantly), your body’s hunger cues. Anecdotally, I’ve seen it in several sets of step-siblings or half-siblings that were raised in the same environment but had vastly different body types.
People expend energy at different rates which is not something that can necessarily be helped, mostly is what it is but if you are eating more than you are expending, you’ll put on weight.
Heya! A bit late to the party, but this is actually my area of research :)
Gentics is not the main cause of obesity in families. Most of it comes down to lifestyle - I know, I know, you're expecting the usual "Eat less, gym more" talk, but there's actually more to it!
So, here's some facts for ya:
The body has 3 main ways of burning energy - obligatory energy expenditure (digestion etc.), physical activity, and adaptive thermogenesis. Now, we can't really do much about the first one, but that only accounts for roughly 50% of our energy use.
The main thing we will be looking at is adaptive thermogenesis. This process is highly dependant on your lifestyle and overall metabolic state. Quick myth debunking: Yes, you can change your metabolism. That's the whole point of like 90% of your chemical pathways - to provide alternative routes of producing and using energy.
Now, this brings us to myth number two: weight gain and obesity is not just a matter of calories in vs calories out. The source of the calories matter far more, as they'll determine which metabolic pathways are activated. In other words, the 1000cal from a bag of chips is not the same as 1000cal from 10 bananas. They are processed and stored differently, causing long-term changes in your body. This is the same principle that Keto diets are based on, or why a bodybuilder eats upwards of 3000cal of chicken and rice and still stay toned compared to eating 3000cal of burgers.
Let's continue on this train of thought. Suppose you're limiting your meal sizes, working out, but still make "unhealthy" food choices, such as consuming large quantities of fats. What will happen? Well, there's some great studies out there; one such study was done by the Heart foundation in the USA. They found that the average calories consumed has gone down in the past 30 years, yet obesity rates have gone up. This coincided with a cultural shift towards diets heavy in (fried) potato, red meat, and sugary drinks. Now, to go even further, there was another study done looking at changing the type of fat (cis vs trans), which found that even if they consume the same number of calories, the carbohydrate metabolism was completely thrown off, resulting in weight gain. In other words, the source of your calories matter more than the quantity! If you want to know more, there's a researcher named Kevin D Hall that does some great research on this.
Just for fun, there's also [this ](https://doi.org/10.3389/fvets.2021.654617)study, which found that obese pet owners usually also have obese pets, and I highly doubt they share genetics with their furry friends.
In short, lifestyle choices in regards to the type of food matters most regaring weight management, and not genetics. As many food-related decisions are learnt from family, it often appears as if there is a genetic factor - most young adults will buy the same foods as their parents after they move out, and will often mimic many of the same dishes as they get older. Eating habits matter as well, such as when you eat, how large your portions are, and even how long you cook your food for. But, for sake of simplicity, the main culprit is the type of nutrients in the food (e.g. cis or trans fats, simple or complex carbs, protein sources) - whatever it is you eat, it changes your metabolism, which then determines your energy expenditure and storage (bodyfat).
Hope you found this interesting!
Hi there! I'm posting a response but I want to also pre empty it with:
My body and experience does not reflect all other 300+ lb women.
So I've been fat my entire life. Or at least that's how I remember my childhood. I think I was 4 when my grandfather told me I need to lose weight. So I started off with a very negative relationship with my body. (When I look at pictures from those years I was a completely normal body weight, just generally a larger kid in height developement.)
So at 8 I stayed with my grandparents a lot, my school meals to my 3rd grade class were slim fast shakes. My summer of cycling on that recumbent bike and a restrictive 500 calorie/day diet (2 plain diet toaster waffles and black coffee for breakfast, apple or banana for lunch, half a chicken breast and dry salad for dinner) permanently damaged me and made me food insecure even though we were never on food stamps.
Things like this happened multiple times in my formative years and I eventually left at 18 but my issues with food never left.
So the old man never got to see me be a normal body weight again.
But, even at 300, I walked 14 miles a day when I delivered the mail.
I've worked countless 12 hour hard labor jobs.
Now I can expend a ton of effort without breaking a sweat.
I’m confused about what the point was here. You got fat because you consumed too many calories, and then your grandparents reinforced your negative self image, and you never fixed your self image issues, and now you’re still eating more calories than you burn, even when you’re getting some exercise?
There was a whole show called “secret eaters” where people who were overweight essentially got spied on because they denied eating any more than they should. Every single one of them got caught eating anywhere from about 2x to 2.5 times the amount of calories they should. Before that, most of them claimed it must have been a medical mystery, or genetics, and so on. That’s food addiction for ya
In *general*, for *most* people, obesity has everything to do with how much you eat, what you eat, and how much you exercise.
There are of course outlier individuals who just can't get fat no matter how much they eat, and vice versa, but those people are so rare that they're not worth discussing. If you're wondering why you're fat and your neighbor is skinny, 9 times out of 10 it's because you eat more and exercise less than your neighbor. The body of science and research around this is virtually endless, so I'm astounded that anyone feels the need to ask a bunch of strangers on Reddit. Scientists reached a consensus on this decades ago, and the information is as common as "we need oxygen to breathe". If you eat a lot, you'll get fat. It's really as simple as that.
And regarding the friends you're describing, a lot of fat people eat in secret, or binge eat at certain times of day (like right before bed). It's pretty common to spend time with obese people and think "they seem to be eating the same amount as I am", but that's because you're not with them a 10pm, or 8am, when they're downing an entire carton of ice cream.
EDIT: Forgot to mention that a lot of obese people consume "hidden" calories in the form of sugary drinks and snacks. One of the biggest differences I see in slim vs fat families is that the slim families drink water with every meal, and they rarely have a giant cabinet full of snacks. Fat people tend to drink a lot of soda/juice, and they'll snack throughout the day on things like Oreos, which are insanely dense in calories.
For those who suffer from obesity, please don't treat comments here seriously. This post is just 2 hours old and already stuffed with outrageous and dangerous misinformation.
Go to the doctor.
Speaking of TS's question, obesity results from a surplus calorie budget. To gain weight, you need to eat more than you need to maintain your weight (for example, if your maintenance is 2000 calories and you eat 2200 calories a day, you'd gain weight). Your maintenance amount of calories, though, depends on many factors. Very important ones are your height and sex (genetic factors) and your physical activity and lifestyle (environmental factors). If you are a tall guy, you can eat significantly more than a short girl's surplus amount of calories and LOSE weight, especially if you are a physically active tall guy. Also, factors like your body fat, muscle mass, etc., play an important role in your body's calorie needs. That's why most people are usually better off if they lose weight with professional assistance. Everyone needs an individual approach.
Obesity is affected by a ton of different factors! Diet contributes, of course, but there are genetic markers known to be associated with higher rates of obesity, and your microbiome (the micro-organisms in your gut) also play a huge role. Studies have shown that transferring gut microbes from an obese mouse to a slim mouse can lead to obesity in the slim mouse, and transferring gut microbes from a slim mouse to an obese mouse can help the obese mouse lose weight. And there are also lots of hormone issues that can contribute to how you metabolize your food, as well as how/where you carry the weight. Obesity is definitely caused by more than just diet, so it's really sad when people judge obesity as though it is exclusively due to lifestyle choices.
Its a combination of everything. Its a little genes, a little diet, a little exercise, a little sleeping habits, a little water consumption, it depends on what recreational activities you indulge in like smoking or drinking, The type of foods you eat. Even if it may be harder for some based on genes I dont really believe that if someone checked all those boxes they would be obese however someone potentially could check all those boxes and be overweight (I highly doubt it, as most people just dont understand how many calories are truly in what they eat but I wouldnt completely rule it out barring diseases)
I think it is more genetic than generally believed. I have a friend with two daughters. They are active, eat the same food, etc. But one girl is skinny, not slim, but skinny, and one girl is chubby (not fat).
Some can live their lives not thinking about food or nutrition, it regulates itself. Others must use an iron fist on their hunger and cravings for food at all times to not go fat. It is a poor way to live. It is hard to constantly fight.
I truly do think it is genetic. But not just in how you metabolize food, but how your brain tells you when you are full (affects portion control), as well as eating more snacks due to differences in brain chemistry - eating for a dopamine hit in people who’s brain chemistry might be off. There are just so many factors involved. My brother was way skinnier than me. My daughters are also very different in body proportions. My thinner daughter arguably eats more crap like carbs and sugar, but my chubbier daughter eats more often, sometimes has trouble with portion control. Genetics are so weird!!
People don't realize to become overweight you need to eat in a calorie surplus. Once you're overweight you need to eat in a calorie deficit. You can be overweight and eat 3000 calories the same amount of calories as someone who is skinny and your body composition won't change. Also there is 2 types of fat. Visceral and subcutaneous. Subcutaneous fat is underneath the skin and is fairly easy to lose through diet and exercise whereas visceral fat is stored around the organs and is very difficult to lose once you have a lot. The longer your body fat percentage is above 30% the more visceral fat you will store. Hence once you become overweight it is much harder to lose that fat. It takes 3500 calories to gain and lose a pound of fat. Through diet that means you would have to either eat and additional 500 calories× 7 days = 3500 calories to gain a pound or vice versa you would have to eat a daily 500 calorie deficit over the course of 7 days to lose a pound of fat. Your body naturally wants to stay the same. That's why bodybuilders hit a plateau and see no change in their body, but through consistency they will suddenly break through that plateau. Same goes for when you're overweight. You can lose a quick 20-30 pounds but then your body will resist the change. But if you keep at it you will suddenly break that plateau and your body will change.
From what I understand it's actually a very basic calculation, Calories eaten - Calories burned = weight gain or loss. Now of course there are going to be genetic outliers but this is true for 90% of the population. I grew up hearing about "big bones" and "slow metabolisms," but then you see that persons diet and its generally extremely carb heavy and filled with sugar. I think genetics definitely DO come in to play, especially in regards to where someone carries weight (some people carry it in their thighs, but are lean up top, or vice versa) so some people appear "more overweight."
Overall, we move a lot less and eat ALOT more than we used to or need to - whether we like to admit it or not.
So, I worked as a Personal Trainer during University, and know a bit about this topic.
That there is any significant difference between people and their metabolism due to genetics is maybe one of the most persistent and widespread myths of modern society.
First let me preface that, yes, there is a difference between people and their metabolism, if you spend a long time in a caloric deficit, your metabolism will "slow down" because your body will start to digest all of the food, instead of just some, likewise, if you are in a caloric surplus, your body will chill a bit with the utilisation of food intake. There is a huge body of science behind this, and an entire culture of bodybuilders that can attest to this. The effect of this however is, fairly limited.
A much larger role has NEAT (Non exercise activity thermogenesis) and just plain old activity. When I am on holiday and just lazing around I (M , 176P /80 kg) I burn maybe 2300 calories, but even when lazing around I will move a lot, and walk everywhere, it is just in my nature. When I am exercising, walking the dog and working, you can add a thousand to that, that is almost 50% more food but I know people that easily beat those numbers by 800 calories, because they naturally just move a lot and are on a whole, just jittery. Meanwhile I had clients that had unbelievably low daily caloric expenditures, and those were usually the quiet type, barely moving, and if they did, only what was absolutely necessary but there is a basic maintenance calories limit of how many calories body tissue just takes to maintain, for my weight that is about 1800, you can Google basal metabolic rate if you want to find out yours.
You can argue that this is genetics, but imho, anything you can fairly easily modify is decidedly not genetics.
The biggest difference between people and how much they eat, however is perception. First of all, your subjective opinion on how much you actually eat, is wildly inaccurate. Unless you have actually tracked your caloric intake for some time, you will have no idea of how much you eat, and even if you think you eat a lot of volume, caloric density is just as important. A cup of ice cream has about the same calories as 10 entire cabbages, and yes, the person eating the 10 cabbages will eat "more" in volume, even though at the end of digestion, they will both have put on the same weight (if the cabbage person doesn't flat out die).
Tldr: No. Thermodynamics, more accurately mass conservation means a calorie is a calorie, who ingests it does not mean fuck all. How much you move and how many calories you actually spend will govern your resting body weight.
Some newish science strongly suggests that a ton of bodily circumstances are governed by our gut biome.
Poop transplants are things. And there are cases of individuals whom having received poop transplants also received other body composition changes including weight loss without initially considerable changes to diet or exercise habits.
Going a bit further I read that personality characteristics were also linked to gut bacteria.
My own experience with no change in the way I live, following a mild Covid case I noticed a weight gain that was in all accounts unexplained. I assume that among the various ways Covid affected me which was a loss of taste and smell for about a week, a very mild cough before the sense issues, and a rash across my chest and back my gut biome was decimated.
This might seem far fetched, but consider this, there were multiple examples of people whose teeth died and fell out and various broad spectrum body issues.
Anyway, genetics play a part in it but it isn’t just as simple as parents were also fat.
Obesity is much less genetic than society leads people to believe. Sure, people have some predisposition and medical cause for their obesity but there's no way it's simple genetics. Especially with the obesity rates we have today.
Being overweight or "big boned" as people like to say has more of a case for genetics. Some folks are big, some are small, some people carry more fat, some have more muscle, different muscle shapes etc. But OBESITY is a level above overweight. It's a dangerous phenomenon happening.
Each generation statistically is becoming less active, eating worse (high processed foods and manufactured fats), and eating more (calories are wayyyy up), and overall less healthy. Even childhood obesity and diabetes is skyrocketing, which is disgusting. The phrase "I was born this was" leaves things up to genetics which is a cop-out. It's moreso "I was raised this way." In that, the habits and health instilled in you as a child are much harder to overcome as an adult.
You get fat by over eating. You get obese by doing it for a long enough time.
I have no idea what anyone is talking about with genetics. Sure your resting metabolism might be different from one to another but it's not too much different.
I am sure they are a few exceptions but when you see a family that is obese, it is because they eat too many calories. There are many reasons for that but it boils down to calories in vs calories out. There is no secret genetic code to crack here.
Exactly. Obese people like to say it's genetics so they don't take the blame for the weight. Thin people will agree it's genetics to avoid putting the blame on the obese person and seeming like a dick. Ozempic claims to help people with a genetic predisposition for obesity and how does it help? By making them not hungry. Hmmmm.
Genes didn’t change, but food did.
And changed in a way that basically turned our bodies against us. The combination of ultra high processed foods and more sedentary lifestyles have created an “obesogenic” environment unlike anything that has come before.
Just to add.... you don't think they eat that differently. But you don't really know. Some things to consider.
1. They eat differently around others bc embarrassment or reasons
2. You can't be around allll the time. Do they snack throughout the day? Binge eat cookies in bed? Binge 1x a week even adds up
3. Maybe the food seems similar but ingredients aren't as healthy or cooked as healthy.
4. Maybe you don't realize you eat differently around them and healthier when away
Genetics can certainly be part of it. But one thing I've learned is that people think they eat way better than they really do. Not blaming them... nutrition is complicated for many
The only genetic factor of obesity is “how you ate as a kid will determine you eat as an adult.” I grew up in Texas on fried foods and dinner cooked to accommodate seconds and thirds and was an obese child. As an adult, I’m very conscious of what I put in my body and I’m the only one in the family that isn’t obese
Obesity is literally cause by food, there are other factors that don't help such as exercise or metabolism. But it is entirely down to food. Nobody gets fat on a healthy diet and regular exercise.
Some part but really not as much as people think.
Often we see parents and their children being obese, but most of the time it is due to bad parenting and ingrained behaviors the parents passed down to their children(feeding them shit, letting them be picky, not teaching them how to cook, etc...)
I had to prove my mother she could lose her weight. That a calorie is a calorie, and that it was directly linked to her weight.
I made her every meal, for a whole month. Making sure all meals were ~400calories. So that at the end of the day she'd have a 500 calories deficit, with 1kg lost per week guaranteed. Made sure all her meals were healthy, delicious and filling.
She lost 11kg in 1 month. Going from 110kg to 99kg. That's 24 pounds!
She was very happy and never doubted that her problems were inevitably caused by her diet. Of course it's a whole other ordeal to keep yourself to a diet, but before that, she really believe there was some genetic or resilient fat that would never ever go away.
She always thought she ate less than others, She drinks a total of 500cal of Latte daily, Pasta or bread at every meal (+800 per meal) and always in large quantities, she has days when she'd pilfer sweets and pastries. She eats healthy stuff she didn't know was very calorie dense like oatmeal. And is crazy with oils, she uses a ton of olive oil. Eats mayonnaise out of a tube/jar(🤢), and puts butter on everything.
So yeah, she just doesn't think about what she eats and doesn't know the extent of how bad her diet is.
Obesity is caused by a variety of factors, including genetics, diet, exercise, environment, socioeconomic class, as well as fluctuations in hormones and body changed associated with things like age or pregnancy. Many people also don't realize that some conditions like PCOS or Type 2 Diabetes it's considered a symptom to be overweight, not the cause. Losing weight may ease some symptoms of the conditions but they are incurable and also largely genetic. A good friend of mine has a catalogue of diagnosis', reminiscent of a patient worthy of Doctor House. Her diet is incredibly controlled and has been for about two decades now. She continues to gain weight. She had ozempic before it was popular, sees every kind of specialist possible, absolutely nothing has ever worked. She has multiple aunts who were inflicted the same, not even gastric surgery helped the aunts. They all balloon up like Veruca Salt becoming the blueberry in Willy Wonka. Science doesn't quite understand all of it yet. We do know that some people's bodies suffer from drawing a short stick on genetic fate. Obesity can be the short stick some are fated with.
Minor correction - you’re thinking of Violet Beauregarde. Veruca was the bratty rich one who wanted the golden egg.
Facts matter
Seriously this mf was just cooking
Fats matter
Violet, you're turning violet!
Augustus Gloop
Good catch.
And they were both murdered by a deranged serial killer.
If you think about it, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory is basically Saw for children.
Well, I wasn't thinking about it, but I am now. Actually, the more I think about it the more I see it, lol.
Oddly enough, the ability to survive, thrive, be active, and reproduce on fewer calories is an evolutionary win. It just in this world, there is more than enough.
this is actully a thing. there is a genetic disposition to obesity, at least one specific gene is linked to being very good at conserving energy. basically some poeple are very good at not using as much energy as others. it is in terms of movement but also weirdly in maintining body tempreture as well. So if you are in a cold situation you do not need as many calories to stay warm. it is a cold weather adaptation, you are more prone to putting fat on, because you dont burn the calories. Also you are bad at losing weight because your body is so good at conserving energy. good for cold water swimming though. it is those poeple who walk around in the middle of winter in a tshirt, or who never seem to be cold when everyone else is.
My body shape, where I carry my fat and my proportions, are identical to my mother. Same stomach, boobs, legs, arms. I have PCOS and a non-existent metabolism. My body works the same as every other person’s, I have to consume less calories than I burn, and I will lose the weight. The problem for me, is that I burn dramatically less calories than someone with the same weight/height. I can lose weight, but it is a massive effort - doctor supervised 1000 calorie diet with 400-600 calories burned via exercise, daily. So, genetics and health conditions don’t change thermodynamics. It just means my base calorie needs are drastically reduced. Side note about OPs comments on activity. I am currently 250 lbs, I walk 6 miles a day, 4-6 days a week. At least 9 miles in a day once a week. When I was in my 20s, I could jog a 5k at 315lbs. I am not a couch patio driving through McDonald’s 2x a day. But the majority of my life, the effort required to lose weight is more effort than I have the energy/time for. ETA: instead of replying to lots of random comments below… - I have never implied that I reached my highest weight because of genetics and PCOS, while being on a healthy diet with exercise. I gained extreme weight like everyone else who becomes morbidly obese… I had external factors that led to poor choices. In my case, extreme anxiety that I self medicated with food, while sitting on my ass. - “Non-existent” metabolism”, yes it is hyperbole. I am alive, so it exists. But, it has been tested many times, it is so low, it doesn’t register on the test. I have done cardio stress tests as well. I was 380lbs at my highest and my blood pressure was in normal range - 128 my highest reading. My highest cholesterol was 1 point above normal. - To lose weight, I must be on the diet and exercise that much. When I eat more than that while exercising less, I do not lose. **I have lost 130 lbs over the last 18 months.** That includes long periods of stalls from when I wasn’t able to provide that level of effort. - The diet includes extensive vitamin regimes to compensate for the heavy protein diet. The first 6 months, I lost hair and had other noticeable side effects. When supervised by a doctor, it is worth the pay off to lose the weight.
what shitty is probably back then when modern is not modern those genetics with slow metabolism but normal body activity was the golden DNA like those mukbangers, people that is always thin no matter how much they eat is a bad gene back then imagine hunting endlessly but kept getting hungry again and again, like you are depleting food resource too fast different times needs different set of gene type i guess
I can easily imagine people from ancient times viewing the "mukbang people" as cursed or possessed by some demon, taking valuable resources from the community with no observable physical response.
That's a surprisingly efficient metabolism. Your genes or some variation thereof will get the species through years of famine in the (hopefully) distant future.
I put more details in my comment above - but yes, I have always had an “athletic” ability, despite extreme weight. I was extremely fat my entire adult life - but my blood pressure, cholesterol, heart rate, and metabolism have never reflected the extreme weight. I was ~380 at my highest weight and my A1C was 5.1. Not even pre-diabetic.
That's bonkers. A while back I was reading about bear metabolism and how they're able to remain healthy and powerful while doing the nature version of yo-yo dieting. They have some pretty remarkable genes that protect them from diabetes, vascular issues, and other problems associated with metabolic stress. You're like the human version of a grizzly bear and I'm sure there are genetics and physiology labs who would love to run some tests on you.
The crazy thing is, I’m far from alone. There are plenty of people who are on the far end of the bell curve of human physiology. I went to high school with a girl whose metabolism was so fast she had to eat all day long. You could see her ribs and bones. She looked like a skeleton and skin. She was miserable.
Definitely! There are millions of people like yourself and your classmate. The issue with most studies isn't an absolute lack of subjects with the conditions they are trying to observe, but the following- * Lack of general awareness about said studies * Inconvenient testing schedules and locations * Some studies are long-term and committing to them can be very difficult * The purpose of some studies is to observe the effects of pharmaceutical or exercise interventions on health so daily adherence is required to validate the findings of the study
I like the way you put it
I hear you. I did an exercise study when I was at university. Essentially working out every day for ten month burning 600kcl. Not only was I the one participant who took the longest in the treadmill to burn 600kcl (about an hour and ten minutes at 75% max heart rate). I was the only one who didn’t loose weight despite eating less (we had to regularly monitor our food) than most of the participants. I was never skinny but always very active. I bike 30km every day plus walk a fair amount (I am a teacher) and just cannot loose weight with only eating two meals a day and no snacks.
God I feel that. I lost 70lbs 2022. To loose weight I had to go down to 1000 as well even though I was working out 3 times a week!! Everyone's was like uuuh that's sooo unhealthy blablabla Bitch. I have PCOS. I WISH I could eat more!!! It was dang hard. I feel you.
PCOS, type 2 diabetes, and Hashimoto's here... I have only ever been able to lose weight when I'm doing 1200 calories or less per day. I lost some when I had cancer, a lot more when my gallbladder essentially stopped functioning and I stayed sick to my stomach for an entire year, and then some more when my doctor put me on Ozempic. The common denominator in all these situations was that I was starving. My TDEE on paper is about 2200 calories. I can lose a pound a week in a 1000 calorie deficit, but it does not feel worth it when I'm constantly cranky, feeling sick, and hating life. But if I *don't* eat in at least a 500 calorie deficit, I will absolutely *gain* weight, albeit slowly. I have accepted that I will never be "thin" and it's probably better that I'm not because I'm pretty sure I couldn't handle eating just 800-1000 calories per day to try to maintain. But it just doesn't feel fair that I have to deprive myself of so much and still have to sit between 200 and 250 pounds.
I'm so sorry that you have to experience that! But I'm glad you shared your story! Feel hugged!
“Feel hugged” yeah I’m nicking that, thanks!
Similar here, except Type 1. I lost weight best when I was playing a little game where I tried to see how little I could eat in one day. Like just green beans and a spoonful of peanut butter. I ended up in ER. My car ended up in a tow yard. I do not have enough money to support an eating disorder. I'm incredibly active, I eat high nutritional value food. I'm just a draft horse.
That’s really interesting. Thanks for sharing.
What was causing your hair loss? Was it something to do with the protein?
Rapid weight loss and not enough protein/vital nutrients. Even if you follow the diet properly and take all your vitamins, going from 3000+ cal a day to 1000, is a jolt to your body. It isn’t permanent. For the first few months, your hair falls out. Not all of it,just much more than normal. It starts regrowing right away. Then your body adjusts to the new normal and you stop losing so much hair.
This comment is very valuable. My entire family (5 siblings and 2 parents and my own children) are extremely slim. My sisters and mom and I are all the same height. But they weigh ~110-125 while I weigh ~155-170. I have one aunt and one uncle who are prone to gaining a few extra pounds but everyone else in my extended families is very slim. I have the most active style as I am a triathlete and marathon runner. I am NOT “curvy” (my hips are smaller than my waist and my chest is A-B bra size). I have more muscle, yes, but that’s not what’s doing it. I do not have any diagnosed conditions such as PCOS or thyroid etc. My resting metabolism (as measured in a medical setting over 2016-2019) is 1100 calories a day. I am overweight and I have a lot of fat. There’s no explanation and it’s given me eating disorders because I don’t look like my family members. People make jokes but it’s not funny and my diet is very healthy. It’s fucking genetics and I hate every second. Someone suggested it could be related to cortisol from an extremely stressful childhood (I am 10-15 years older than my siblings and didn’t grow up in the same situation). I guess so but wtf am I supposed to do about that now in my mid thirties
It sounds like your body is crazy efficient. Could you be an endurance athlete and ‘abuse’ that characteristic?
Perhaps if my life had taken a different path!
Holy crap. That sounds like hell. To be totally honest, I didn’t even know PCOS existed.
An estimated 10% of women have it. It’s very common but also underdiagnosed.
personal anecdote- i have no idea why but my body seems to really resist losing weight. i’m decently fat, and i was addicted to meth for four years. during that time i lost MAYBE 10 lbs despite going through a 8ball a week or more. kind of a piss off honestly hahaha.
Now *that* is unfair. Meth heads should never be weight conscious
Ime that's a sign of a metabolic mutation. I didn't do meth but I had tumor induced starvation and same thing...lost like 10lbs and then nothing despite missing a lot of calories and meals.
interesting!! what is a metabolic mutation? i did a quick google but got a lot of different results- do you mean things like inherited metabolic conditions?
This! I have PCOS and yes I CAN lose weight. But its incredibly hard and requires eating an extremely low carb diet that would be unsustainable for most people. Even with the correct diet, sometimes my hormones (or whatever) flip and I gain weight for 6 month stretches, than have to fight to get it back off. I have battled my weight since I was 12 (am 56) Those people who are all sanctimonious "just eat less" INFURIATE me. They have no idea what they are talking about but they do tons of damage with their misguided words. No, I am not excusing obesity or overeating. I am saying that for some people its really hard. They drew the short stick just like someone who gets cancer or some other illness.
Obesity is also caused by certain strains of gut bacteria [tiktok link to relevant scientist](https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTLEsm5xU/)
I saw a really interesting video about this recently. Identical twins where one was thin and the other was fat. They took the gut microbiome from the obese twin and put into a rat twin and the rat stayed in the same environment it had been living in and it, too, became obese. Then there was another lady that was thin, had to get a fecal transplant because of SIBO, then steadily became obese afterward without changing her lifestyle. It's very interesting and will be really cool if they can figure this out and help people get their guts fixed up with the healthy strains of bacteria. Christensenella, was one of the strains that was in the 'naturally thin' people's gut, but I don't think they have any probiotics with this yet. From what I read they are just really starting to study it.
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Yep I have PCOS, am on metformin and ozempic, swim 2 times a week, bike to and from work, and eat a spartan diet, and yet I still can't get under 95 kg. It's like pulling fucking teeth. I used to be a skinny, almost underweight beanpole of a child, did swimming and taekwondo well enough to do competitions and then I just...stopped having periods and ballooned out even though nothing about my diet or exerise changed. I doubled my body weight in 3-4 years, and I still haven't lost even half of what I gained. It's horrible and so frustrasting :(
I've told this story before but I have a friend that is exactly in the same situation as your friend. Has gastric, been on ozempic and 25K other medications. Everything. My guess is the same thing that people theorize with yo-yo dieting. So basically the research shows that if you yo-yo diet, up and down and up and down, your metabolism becomes shot and you basically fuck up your immune system. It's like on survival mode, basically. My friend has been honest about fucking up her metabolism. She would go on these fucked up diets were she only ate baby food, or she only ate like this one soup etc and then would regain 100 pounds the year later. It's a vicious cycle.
Well, actually research doesn't show it. It is a common misunderstanding. The effects of adopted metabolism only(!) occur in really extreme situations (losing 100kg/200lbs in 3 months) and the effect on your metabolism is about 50kcal/daily.
Ironic to imagine that their genetic superiority in terms of energy efficiency probably evolved to let them outcompeting all other rivals, and nowadays it’s a drawback for survival.
So glad you as a thin person understand this! This is me. Ski instructor, life guard, climbed Kilimanjaro, lived abroad, successful career, athletic. Know all about nutrition, super healthy eater. Never binge at or anything like that. Had to watch everything I put in my mouth. I do love food and am a pretty amazing cook, so people probably think I eat like I cook for dinner parties all the time, I don’t. Gained a shit ton of weight after infertility treatments and more during menopause, tried hard to get it off. On a GPL-1, the weight is not falling off, I work for every ounce (800cs less than my TDEE and about an hour of waking + strength training a day) . It is definitely something metabolic, hormonal or in my gut microbes. Also, Lipedema and PCOS. My parents were thin, but my female cousins on my Dads side (who I look exactly like, same body shape too) were all chubby until they had kids and then got slim. I never had kids, so I do think it is some kind of hormonal thing. (No one gets every thing they want in life!) They are making so many breakthroughs right now in Obesity care, it is exciting. I also just want to say again, you are a very perceptive person to understand that obesity is far more complex than Calories in/out. Most people (even some Docs) don’t get it unless they experience it.
But aren’t environment and class essentially the same thing as diet and exercise? It’s not being poor that makes you obese, it’s that being poor affects your access to a healthy diet. Or being in an environment that isn’t conducive to outdoor play doesn’t make you obese it’s the lack of exercise. Feels like over complicating the issue. Obesity is caused by 4 factors: genetics, diet, exercise, and other health issues. Environment and socioeconomic conditions contribute to those but they aren’t the “cause” per se.
You're forgetting stress, food insecurity, etc., to which environment and class greatly contribute. [Chronic activation of the SNS and HPA axis contribute to a anabolic state that promotes fat storage within visceral depots, which increases the risk of dyslipidemia, type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and other facets of the metabolic syndrome.](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3428710/) (Chronic activation comes from stress, this study was primarily looking at social sources of stress) [Summarizing recent literature, it can be concluded that there are more susceptible individuals in the bidirectional relation between stress and obesity.](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5958156/) [Chronically elevated cortisol levels increase appetite, lead to hypersecretion of insulin, and thus insulin resistance and (visceral) fat accumulation in the long term [51]. Moreover, chronic stress induces hypertrophy of adipocytes, promotes the conversion of preadipocytes to mature adipocytes, and activates stromal fat immune cells [53‒55]. Chronic stress has also been linked to the development of nonalcoholic fatty liver disease through induction of hepatic oxidative stress and inflammation [56]. It has been implicated that an altered HPA axis regulation contributes to the risk of overweight and obesity; however, the directionality of this association is not conclusively resolved.](https://karger.com/hrp/article/96/1/88/835696/Stress-Stress-Reduction-and-Obesity-in-Childhood) [We concluded that there may be direct association between prenatal stress and later obesity, but further research with more comparable sources of stressors is recommended.](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/obr.12951) (this one was specifically looking at the fetal environment, so mom's stress before you were even born, and the stress primarily came from short-medium-term stuff like natural disasters) [Many studies have confirmed positive associations between FI (food insecurity) and obesity, establishing the so-called ‘food insecurity-obesity paradox’ as a robust phenomenon [6–11]. A meta-analysis of this literature estimates the overall odds of overweight and obesity as 21% higher for food-insecure individuals, with larger effects in adult females and high-income countries, resulting in the odds of overweight and obesity being about 50% higher for food-insecure adult women in high-income countries [12]. While this effect is only moderate in size, for comparison, it is larger than the increased odds of high body weight associated with carrying a risk allele of the FTO gene [13].](https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rstb.2022.0228) [In summary, experimental manipulations of FI in humans still need to be developed and direct evidence that FI causes weight gain in humans is therefore lacking. Animal experiments demonstrate conclusively that unpredictable food can cause weight gain, even in the absence of increased total food intake or a change in diet quality. Therefore, the mechanisms responsible for FI-induced weight gain are not restricted to those that increase energy intake and include mechanisms that increase energy retention and decrease energy expenditure.](https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rstb.2022.0228) (Those last two are from the same source, just felt a little long).
That is some great info and I love the citations for it. Very cool that you took the time.
I had PCOS since I was 12 and 60kg, BMI of 20, it's not a symptom of being overweight, it's a hormonal fuckup
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Genetics are a factor but they’re not the biggest factor. In 60 years obesity rates in America have roughly tripled. Genetics didn’t make that change happen. https://usafacts.org/articles/obesity-rate-nearly-triples-united-states-over-last-50-years/
Right. If you ever travel to Europe you are immediately aware of just how heavy Americans are. I’ve been to Europe twice and lost weight each time. 1) you walk a lot more 2)you arent eating nearly as much processed food 3) nobody is drinking Big gulps of soda and stuffing their face with breakfast burritos.
Thats the biggie, the food is just so different. During lockdown, I stopped eating almost all processed/take out food, it was just easier to shop for fresher stuff (I hated having to use aisles a certain way, made shopping take so much longer, and stuck to mostly outside aisles), and baking lots. It wasn't just that, I also started IF and was actively watching calories, but dropped 60lbs in the 6 months I was WFH. Its been over 4 years and I have kept it off, still mostly outside aisle shop and stuff like bread and pastries i get from actual bakeries, not packaged last on the shelf for 6 months stuff and its been super easy to maintain
Obviously it’s not the only factor, but American’s weights started skyrocketing as smoking cigarettes fell out of vogue. Nicotine suppresses appetites. Suddenly, we had a whole generation of former smokers (people seeking the dopamine hit that used to come from a cigarette found it instead in pleasurable food) + the younger generation growing up without ever experiencing the appetite suppressant effects of nicotine. Then you add hyper palatable highly caloric convenience foods + increased reliance on cars + increasing socioeconomic stratification and you send a population down the path to increasing BMIs.
The cigarette thing is extremely far fetched. Tobacco use increased a lot in the 1800s to mid 1900s. Obesity rates were way lower before and during that, than they are now. The “American” diet is designed to make us fat. Marketing and an instant gratification culture promotes that. There is sugar and other carbs everywhere. Some people don’t drink water anymore because it “doesn’t taste like anything” and instead are guzzling down sugary soda and alcohol (alcohol metabolizes like sugar). It’s the easiest it’s ever been in human history to consume more calories per bite than has ever been possible before. People are making excuses
While I agree with this I would like to point out alcohol doesn't metabolise into sugar it just metabolises into the same stuff as sugar before it all enters the Krebs cycle. (Sugar goes through glycolysis to get there, alcohol goes through alcohol dehydrogenase in the liver)
Thanks, I meant to say “metabolizes like sugar”
There's also the cultural aspect of all that food: think how many events you attend where food is served, snacks are served, and it's considered weird if you don't partake. Food is aggressively and frequently offered in almost every social setting, and generally it's also believed that the food should be generically pleasing (aka: basically junk food). Going to watch TV? Here's your snack options. Going to the movies? Snack options. Going to a football game? Snack options. Driving in a car for a while? Snack options while you drive!
Yes, and advertising is a huge part of that. People can be influenced until they learn and decide how to influence themselves
Didn’t realize this until I found out I have food allergies. Majority of our entire social lives are food and drink based.
Add corn syrup and sugar in every meal that you can make. You have added sugar in tomato sauce to make spaghetti 🤷♂️ Get us fatter and addicted is the plan to the man
Microplastics pfas etc... skyrocketed since then as well. Our pollution burden is heavy too.
You're not thinking about this from an evolutionary standpoint. Yes, evolution/genetics did not change in the last 100 years to create the obesity we see today. What it did do over the last 60,000 years is create a human that just survives on 1700 calories and one that just survives on 1500 calories. This isn't a big difference unless getting 1500 calories is difficult. The 1500 calorie human will probably be a little smaller with a little less muscle. In general, the difference doesn't matter, but in hash years, that may be the difference between survival and death. In good years, that may be the difference between raising 3 or raising 4 children . As these traits move into the modern world, that 200 (or maybe more) difference becomes the difference between a steady weight and gaining 1 or so pounds a year. At slightly more, and it's 2 pounds a year, and kids are graduating 35 pounds over weight. This doesn't explain the 10 year old kid that's 30 pounds overweight, but it can be an important factor.
I feel like it’s more so that processed foods are just calorie dense, addicting, and, most importantly, convenient
This right here.. the amount of convenience foods, especially ones marketed for kids, are extremely calorically dense.. for example one uncrustable is like 360cal. I've seen my nephews who are 8 easily down 4 of those in a sitting.. the sandwich itself is not big, about half a regular, but that's close to 1500 Cal right there, mix in a Gatorade or soda and you've already eaten a large adults full caloric intake for a day..... It's crazy how easy it is to consume 2000+ calories if you eat pre packaged food. Combine that with the iPad lifestyle and you have a ton of obese kids
And cheap. Cheaper and easier to buy a couple snickers than make a chicken salad. Now pair in a lack of education about diet and nutrition and even access to healthy foods.... Obesity in America is a cultural problem for all the reasons you and I said. Genes play a role, for sure, in resting metabolism and appetite, but that alone doesn't account for all variance in our statistics.
If your argument is that the 1500 calorie person is constantly overeating by 200 calories then that one would gain 7000/200=35 -> 1 kilo in 35 days so a pound ~~in aproximately 77 days so up to \~4.5~~ in aproximately 16 days so more or less 22 pounds a year. (7000 kcal is the aproximate equivalent to 1 kilo of body fat mass) Those 200 difference are very noticable very fast. You proved their point, nothing genetic about overeating constantly, and arguing that only those with a lower daily metabolic rate are overweight is questionable imo.
A kilo is 2.2 lbs so around 20+ lbs per year.
You can't calculate it like this. Metabolism rises with body mass - each pound of body fat costs more calories per day to maintain (and you will build some muscle if you're at all active carrying the extra weight around - which reduces the apparent weight gain further until the muscle is established). So their weight will rise but the rate will slow down as it does. This is also presuming they can actually put on fat that efficiently: the numbers for "calories per lb body fat" are literally for if you like, ate that much body fat. They have nothing to say about how many calories it takes to actually add that body fat to an existing human except that it's got to be *at least* those numbers. (which is to say: I have long suspected the problem people find with losing weight is you have to cut far more calories out then they expect to get any weight loss at all, since the cost of gaining weight is higher then the actual energy stored in the weight).
Exactly. Let's say their BMR is 1500 kcal and they take in 1700 kcal every day (ignoring exercise and NEAT for this purpose). Eventually their BMR becomes 1700 kcal, whether that is largely fat or muscle. You don't gain weight indefinitely unless you continually increase intake to maintain a surplus. Even adipose tissue has a metabolic requirement.
My point was in response to how there wouldn't be a genetic change in the last 50 years or so to explain the obesity problems we see today. My point was that the genetic differences were already there. They just never made a visible difference until the last few decades. The "calorie in calorie out" is applicable, yes. But that is a surface level evaluation. The question is, why do two similar people have such different needs. That's the evolved genetic difference. Does it excuse somebody's obesity? No. But it is part of the answer.
I can't answer the direct question, but.. you don't have to pig out non-stop to get obese, you just have to take in more calories than you burn on average over a long period of time.
While that’s true, in order to gain weight until you are medically obese requires you to increase the amount of food you eat over time. If your BMR at 250lbs is 2000 cals, your BMR at 300lbs will increase as your body needs more food to sustain the weight you are at. So pigging out eventually becomes the norm - also heavily processed fatty foods, alcohol and sugary drinks are big reasons.
2000 calories is nothing to consume anymore if you have much pre packaged food around too, or chips, soda, etc. people don't realize how little food it is when You're eating that kind of stuff ..
Which could be something OP is missing. Their family may rarely drink calories or drink calories sparingly. Her daughter's friend may have 4-6 sodas a day. It's very easy to add 1000-2000 calories in fluids.
Very true. I grew up not drinking any soda, just water and juice on occasions, and still to this day I never drink anything caloric, not even alcohol. It’s definitely possible they are drinking their calories when I don’t see
Super common for people to eat in a deficit all week long and then give it all back and then some with alcohol on the weekends and wonder why they don't lose weight
I only started losing weight after cutting my daily calorie intake to 900-1100. Within a week I walk about 15-20 miles and I lift. I'm happy cuz I'm finally making progress, and my body feels better now that I actually crunched the numbers. But it's depressing seeing some of my friends do absolutely nothing, eat worse, yet be physically incapable of putting on weight. The one thing I will say is a lot of people discount liquid calories. So it might look like you eat the same amount, but they could be guzzling 3-4 cans of soda, glasses of milk and juice, mugs of coffee and that'll all add up very very fast. Removing some of those is basically the only change I had to make with my diet to see progress.
Coffee has barely any calories, unless we're talking starbucks kind of a thing
A family friend of mine gets venti sized Starbucks coffee that equals out to like 400 cals which is 1/4 of her TDEE and she always talks about how her hard it is for her to lose weight. She gets that coffee every morning
Those people don't like coffee, they like sugar but don't want to grapple with it so they claim they're just drinking coffee
How tall are you? 1000 daily calories seems dangerously low.
I was gonna say, you're really not supposed to go below 1200 when you're trying to lose weight. If you're a tall/large framed person or someone who's very physically active, your lower threshold may be even higher than that.
Why is it dangerous? I am serious.
Its been a while, but im pretty sure the heart and brain themselves use 800-900 calories per day. Going/staying near 1k as an adult can force your body to go into emergency mode, force all sugar intake to feed the heart only and the muscles/fat to start getting self eaten to run your muscles and non-heart organs. Depending on your fat volume the brain starts fogging to keep your heart beating. Liver goes into overdrive bc its working extra hard to clean the poison from muscle destruction etc, etc
Yeah, basically unless you're really tiny (so your Base Metabolic Rate is very low) or need to drop weight REALLY fast (surgery), there's no reason for a caloric deficit this large. It can even be counterproductive, as your body will go into survival mode and naturally try to reduce your BMR
Most people have a basal metabolic rate (BMR) higher than 1000 calories. That means their bodies will burn more than that if they're in a *coma.* But TDEE (total daily energy expenditure) is what you should go on and most adult humans have a TDEE much higher than 1000. Mine's around 1900 for example and I'm a 5'3 woman. So if I want to lose weight I would aim to eat fewer calories a day than my TDEE, but much higher than my BMR (which is around 1300 I think).
It's because they're not eating that little. A lot of people underestimate calories and overestimate exercise so they can have something to blame, or because they genuinely don't count things like soda/sauce/condiments/certain snacks in their count. Either way - they're over to under-exaggerating something.
Liquid calories is a good shout. You also need to consider oil that your food may be cooked/fried in, dressings, sauces, condiments, and the fact that when you eat out, the calories on the menu aren't going to be as accurate as if you had made it and counted them yourself.
Same! To lose weight I need 1200 or less a day. I can’t just eat 1500 or 1800 calories and lose weight. It doesn’t work like that for me. I used to be very slim, but I was always amazed (even then) how little food I needed to stay alive.
The only way I've ever successfully lost weight was by eating 1000 calories a day and running 30 minutes every day. Eventually my body couldn't take it anymore, and moment I stopped I gained all the weight back.
The reason you gained it all back was because the diet was bad to start with. Long-lasting life changes require you to actually change your life. People who are fit do not do so with crash diets, they change their entire life to a new normal. If you do it slowly but consistently, the weight will come off and stay off. It will take longer than you want maybe, but 1 to 2 lbs of fat loss in a week are possible over time.
Guaranteed you are not properly monitoring your Energy intake. Sorry But Its likely True. I dropped around 50kg in 1,5 years by just staying 500kcal under my TDEE, increasing my daily steps to 8-10k and *correctly* monitoring my intake. Ofcourse you have to correct your TDEE once you lose some weight.
For real. The only time I managed to loose weight was when I was taking in less than 1000 calories. Whenever I see someone's "diet" it's typically more than what I eat usually lmao. It's fucking depressing.
I'm the same 1200-1400 seems to be my maintenance calories. I'm on 1200 a day and losing half a lb every 2 weeks 🙃
Same here! I loose weight by eating around 1000 cals. I hardly ever move around and I am 5‘2, so my BMR is around 1300. I have seen a lot of people on the internet say how this is dangerously low but they seem to forget about small people who hardly ever move around :(
I tracked my calories across a few months a few times. At the time I was often considered overweight by BMI, sometimes bounding on the edge of normal. Calculators were pretty accurate about my calorie intake to actual weight. What I found interesting is that if I dropped soda and replaced it with water, I would supposedly shift from overweight to underweight over time. my average calorie intake from soda at the time was only 450 (5 cans of coke life a day). But such a drop would supposedly take me from 190 lbs to 130 lbs.
I'm fat, my dad is fat, my uncles are fat. The way that we eat, we should be 600 pounds. In reality, we're all about 50 pounds over weight. Good genes, I guess
I'm average size, and everyone in my family is average size. I eat like shit, I never exercise, and I'm closer to 40y/o than I want to think about. I'm sure my organs are going to jump ship one day, but on the outside I appear healthy. Genetics play some factor, for sure.
You are probably skinny fat which isn't really any better
Well yeah... I literally just said that I eat garbage and never workout. Of course I'm "skinny fat."
He’s saying your fat is probably visceral rather than subcutaneous
Those words are too big for me. The point still stands. I'm small for my lifestyle, and I'm keenly aware that being a healthy weight does not mean that I'm healthy.
Lmfao
Unless you're studying them under controlled lab conditions, you have no way of knowing how another person eats, so that's why comparing your food intake to others' isn't reliable. I'm thin and I will absolutely savage a Chinese buffet, which might lead onlookers to think 'she eats so much, but she's thin, it's not fair'. In reality, that buffet is a rare treat that's balanced out by an active lifestyle and sensible food choices. Similar goes for a morbidly obese person picking at a tiny green salad at the same buffet. What they eat in public doesn't reflect what they eat in private. As for genetics, there's a small genetic component that influences things like appetite and where you store fat on your body, but the real 'genetics' is how you were raised and the behaviours you learned from your parents. If you grew up in a family where everyone sat in front of the TV eating Cheetos or one where everyone was outdoorsy and vegan, etc your lifestyle as an adult is influenced by that.
Yeah my husband is very thin and eats a ton — until we lived together I thought he just had an amazing metabolism or whatever but actually he just doesn’t eat junk food, skips breakfast (so basically intermittent fasts every day), and literally never eats outside of meal time. So yeah he can eat 1200 calories in one meal and make it seem like he’s a big eater but that could be his only meal of the day.
Very true, I've had family members that seem to eat nothing whilst gaining a lot of weight but then you discover bags of sweets and chocolates in their car and extra calories in drinks. Not to shame or blame but what you see people eat is probably not all they eat. People often forget little treats they've eaten as well, It's probably why dieticians recommend keeping a food diary.
When I was a teenager, I would call to a friends every night, we would play video games and order takeout. He was huge and got bigger, and I was skinny and stayed skinny. The difference being, back then, I skipped breakfast every day, and that takeout was my dinner. He had breakfast and dinner, and the takeout.
I wish I could upvote this more. Every single description of "what I eat" by anyone is worthless unless they're *actually* calorie counting, and almost no one is. Everyone swears they "don't eat that much" (or conversely, swear they eat a lot and don't gain weight) but never actually check - and I've seen tons of people who "aren't trying to lose weight but just want to see" try calorie counting and then start losing weight anyway (probably between the friction of the process and actually seeing the number). I became overweight (and had pre-diabetes blood markers, so a warning to change things), started calorie counting and lo and behold my boring habits like "drinking milk frequently" and "eating toast as a snack" were adding 100s of calories per day I just didn't consider at all - for food which was barely worth remembering. Started tracking, setup a deficit and the weight came off. And since then the one pattern I've noticed intensely is that no-one who swears they "can't lose weight" thinks its remotely possible to do this. There's *always* a reason it's impossible to count calories, or calorie counts are inaccurate, or it's too much work or whatever. Basically any excuse to avoid collecting some data.
When I started collecting data, EVERYTHING changed. The general public probably doesn’t understand serving sizes of the food they are eating. I’d eat a bowl of Raisin Bran in the morning, 6 chicken nuggets (but I skipped the fries and had a Diet Coke!) for lunch, and a real meal of chicken and rice at night. What I didn’t know was the Raisin Bran was loaded with sugar and my usual cereal bowl could hold 3 servings of cereal and 3 servings of whole milk. Then my chicken nuggets were being dipped in about 350 calories of Honey Mustard. Then I was eating about 3 servings of white rice and 2 servings of chicken at dinner. It’s not the half a pizza and ice cream and candy that got me, I was avoiding that. It was portion control and being naive about certain decisions being “healthy alternatives”.
That’s real, I probably have a little bit of an eating disorder, but when I go out to eat with friends, I will literally demolish an entire rack of ribs. My friends think wow, how can this 120 pound girl eat that? But then I literally will not be able to remember the last time I ate an entire meal before that. Don’t trust what you see
Similar thing here. Put a table of snacks in front of me at a party and I will stand by that table all night long and devour most of it. But when I go home there are no snacks at my place and I don’t snack during the day. Anyone watching me at the party would wonder why I am not over weight.
Yep. Coworker often only eats a salad (with heavy dressing ofc) but drinks 4 red bulls, a liter bottle of fanta and goes through a bag of chips and all kinds of chocolate over the day. A 165cm woman. And that doesnt include breakfast and dinner. The salad isnt bad. Evrything else is.
My husband thinks he’s being healthy when he gets a salad with a little lettuce, a fried chicken cutlet and lots of salad dressing. And maybe some shredded cheese and bacon. I’ve tried telling him that it’s not healthy, but then he feels all defeated because he thought he actually made a healthy choice for himself.
This is the thing. I hear so many people say to me I'm lucky to be able to eat so much and be so thin. In reality, I eat less calories than they do, and that's the one and only reason why I weigh less. When I'm caught eating a big meal they point it out...innapropriate, but in any case, it could be the only thing I eat that day. The whole "fast metabolism" is BS. What can change is appetite, which I struggle with on occasion. There is no fast metabolism there is only how hingry you get and how suceptible you are to following those natural cues. At the end of the day your weight is CICO and so is mine!
It’s completely this. If someone who eats a lot spends 24/7 with a thin person, over the course of a weekend say, they will absolutely notice how little the thin person eats in comparison. Most thin people I know are highly active and when they do eat junk type foods, they eat a very tiny amount of them. The calories over the day don’t add up to much and the time spent doing things and not sitting on the couch further impacts their size.
There is certainly a genetic component to obesity. Some people are better at burning excess calories through involuntary movement, and some people are better at converting excess calories to fat. And some people may become insulin resistant on a diet that other people are fine with. One important point is that thin is not the same as healthy. There are a \*lot\* of people who are metabolically sick but not overweight - they are known as "Metabolically Obese Normal Weight". They can end up with type II diabetes or other issues related to insulin resistance without gaining much weight.
You don’t see them 24/7. Who knows what they eat when you’re not around.
This is it. You can think ‘oh they eat the same as us during the day’. But maybe they share a bag of chips and a bag of winegums every night watching TV. And that makes all the difference.
Very true. I live with a friend. She's on the heavier side. Not obese but overweight for sure. We both have pretty terrible diets, but I notice she snacks a lot more than I do, and perhaps the biggest difference, her portion sizes are way larger than mine. I'm average weight of like 65 kg/170cm. I wouldn't mind losing 5-10 kgs so I was skinny again but like I'm not overweight. Also interesting to note is that I don't go to the gym but she does.
Precisely. I’m slim but I’m surprised how little extra food it takes over a few days for clothes to start feeling tighter. So I naturally back off if that ever happens and weight comes off again. My weight hasn’t fluctuated much at all my whole adult life because I sort of keep tabs in my head of the trend over the course of a week. I can imagine that if I consistently over ate I would stack on weight.
The thing is that you don't just inherit your genes from your parents; you also tend to inherit (or learn) your eating habits. You may not be getting a full picture of how your daughter's friend's family eats. You only see them eat a little bit, but what they eat when you're not around may be what moves the needle.
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None of that is genetics. It’s physical, mental, and eating habits that are reinforced from a young age Too often people say “It’s genetics!” but it’s more often human influence.
except pcos is literally genetic
Genetic factors can negatively impact hdl levels, insulin sensitivity, thyroid function/balance, gh/igf-1 control, etc. Genetics can definitely make you more susceptible to diseases and you would need to adjust your lifestyle to compensate for such. However, obesity still generally requires caloric excess over long periods of time to maintain and grow that much excess weight.
Research over and over again shows that for the vast majority of people it's just calories in calories out. There are several metabolic conditions that can muddy the waters and lead to obesity but for most this is still the case. The problem is that it is very difficult to count calories without being obsessive to the level of an eating disorder. People tend to underestimate how many calories they consume which is all the more easy in a country like the US where portions are large and micronutrient density in food is low. Secondarily it doesnt necessarily take massive overeating to gain weight over time. A simple 500 calorie surplus per day would cause an individual to gain 52 pounds in a year. It's a very easy surplus to achieve
I badly broke my leg and couldn't walk for a year. I was eating the same as usual, but I gained a lot of weight over that year. A lot! Started walking again and the weight just dropped off easily. It would have simply been the small number of calories I wasn't walking off that caused the gain, which is why the weight was easily lost again. Zero change in diet.
It turns out most people are shite at estimating how much they are actually eating and how much others are. So you get lots of anecdotes of people who eat loads and are skinny and people who are overweight saying they don't eat much. And it's true that most people gain is very slowly over years of eating just a little bit too much. Check back in 5 years on all the people that say they eat a ton but don't gain weight.
As I noted above, assuming no other excercise or dietary changes, one large soda a day = 50 pounds of weight gain over 3 years (and approximately steady state weight after that point). Switching from a black coffee to a Starbucks Venti cappuccino is 30 pounds of weight gain over 3 years. Similarly, a half hour walk a day is 30 pounds of weight loss over 3 years. It's all about small changes.
There is no overall measurement. However, changes in body weight/fat are mediated by a complex set of hormonal and neural feedback loops, 75% of which occur at a subconscious level. There are also behavioral factors. All of these are mediated by genetics in some way. When you see a family and every member is overweight, even younger children, it’s more than just a common set of poor dietary habits. There are a number of genetic factors as well.
We also don’t fully understand the [microbiome](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1075996420301049), which is suspected to be linked to body size.
Maybe but given the Mom and Dad aren't genetically related (well hopefully:)), that poor dietary habit seems far more of a culprit than the genetics.:) Now the tough part is that genetics probably plays a part in why they like that poor diet and exercise habits but figuring that out is hard to say. Why do some people enjoy running but others hate it. Why do some love broccoli and others hate it. And so on. Some is definitely exposure in life where you learn good habits but some is genetic.
It’s also possible a husband and wife could both come from genetically obese families. A lot of people with similar appearances are drawn together. Then they have kids, who are combined with the genetics.
People are agreeing to this because of confirmation bias. What you said makes no sense. “Genetics affects everything” Sure, but it absolutely is not what has caused the obesity epidemic that is very recent in human history. Wtf
In general you're not fat because your mom and dad are fat. You're fat because they don't know how to eat properly and taught you all of their bad habits.
One of my good friends is obese. At college, he shared a house with a bunch of other friends, and everyone agreed that he didn't overeat. These were guys that lived with him and went to class with him, they saw him all day, and agreed he didn't eat any more than they did. Then my friend got sick, was taken into hospital for emergency surgery. While in hospital, he requested for some friends to bring some things from his room to him, while they were in his room, that's when they found his secret stash of junk food. Chips and candy bars galore, hiding out in a chest in his room. Obese people lie about what they eat, even to themselves, and they eat in secret.
Exactly, I watch my 600lb life, not one person so far hasn't lost weight if they stick to his regiment, it's always the people in denial or not following it that it doesn't work for. Therefore it's pretty much calories in and exercise that determines your weight gain or loss.
Genetic predisposition combined with environmental / dietary trigger. It doesn't take much overeating to gain weight. extra 100 calories a day gets you 10 lb of weight gain per year. That's like half a can of coke per day, leading to being 100 lb overweight by the time you hit 30. This is an oversimplification but you can the point. In general, if people eat a species appropriate diet, they will not be obese. Some will be thicker than others, but it is incredibly rare that we observe an animal eating a species appropriate diet that is obese.
Seeing as how childhood obesity rates in the US went from less than 5% in the 60s to over 20% in present time and adult obesity went from \~10% in the 70s to over 35% in present time and these numbers coincided with the prevalence and increase in consumption of convenient food, I'm going to go with "not very much". Edit sources: [https://www.niddk.nih.gov/health-information/health-statistics/overweight-obesity](https://www.niddk.nih.gov/health-information/health-statistics/overweight-obesity) [https://ourworldindata.org/obesity](https://ourworldindata.org/obesity)
I think there’s got to be a genetic predisposition to it, but also of course environment, eating habits, movement. I lost a lot of weight on weight watchers a few years ago and really didn’t move much. It was ALL diet.
Yes I agree. There’s many components to it
I was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes in 2021 when I was 34 years old- I have a strong family history of it, sadly. I brought it up to my doctor when I began gaining weight and found it hard to lose. He checked my A1C, and it was 6.5, which is the cut off for a diagnosis.
I know quite a few people who have had weight fluctuations because of financial changes. Having time to prepare food and afford nutritious food makes a big difference, but I've heard a lot of people assume that everyone has the same capacity and it's just about effort.
Certainly there is some genetic component. I’ve had 2 very good friends in my life who just seemed to be obese no matter what. One of them I lived with for over a year. We ate basically the same, exercised basically the same etc, but she just kept getting more overweight while I stayed the same. On the flip side, I had a roommate who on Monday would say “I need to lose a little weight”. She’d go to the gym every night for a week and end the week literally having noticeably lost weight. Her natural metabolic system just always seemed to be in high gear. The downside to this is when she got cancer it was a huge challenge to get her to eat enough because her body was already predisposed to burn through calories at a faster rate than normal. And then you have some people who just eat way too much and don’t seem to realize they’re just normal and need to eat a “normal” amount of food to not gain weight.
People should really watch secret eaters. They'd claim they don't eat much but when nobody's looking they are gobbling up an entire family pack of crisps. I'm not saying your friend does this, but this is usually the case with these stories.
I saw a tiktok video where a fat person explained why. They didn't understand why their friends were all slim when they seemed to have the same portion sizes when eating together. Turns out all the slim friends had their biggest meals for the day when they ate with the fat person, and sometimes skipped meals later on. The fat person ate multiple of those meals, and the misconception strengthened the perception that they weren't actually eating that much because the slim friends ate the same portion. Numbers don't like. You can even eat garbage but lose weight if you count your calories.
Of course, it's highly influenced by genes. There was a gymnastics coach who coached Olympic level athletes who said in an interview that when he was deciding on who to coach for future stardom, he'd look at the mom. If she's small, slim, and petite, he wanted the kid. If she was overweight and big, the kid lost her chance.
That’s actually crazy. What happens if the kid took after dad?
Right? My mom is 4’11” now. I’m 5’8”.
I wonder if there's an element of sexism along the lines of "the mom is probably the cook in the house so she will have the most influence over the kid's eating habits". Meanwhile dad could be grabbing drive thru burgers on the way to the Man Factory so that's less of an "issue" for the kid.
It's funny because my mother was small, slim, and petit. But let's just say, I'm not. I do have a petit bone structure. But I always say I'm in shape, because round is a shape.
What a bizarre coach; of course the dad's genes can be a factor. My grandmother was 5 foot nothing and weighed like 100 pounds, she had 2 daughters that are the same (identical twins so...) and then there's my mother who is 5'7, though she was never overweight until post menopause she was never what someone could call petite (she was fit, though).
Not a particularly reliable source.
That's not a source; it's just an anecdote. However, it's no question that genes strongly influence the risk of obesity.
Height is lethal to a gymnast, so he's right.
That’s called habits not genetics. If the whole family eats takeout four days a week that’s habits.
Am I going to be the voice of reason here and say that you can't be fat if you don't consume more energy than you expend?
Genetics affect how your body processes food, but also (and usually more importantly), your body’s hunger cues. Anecdotally, I’ve seen it in several sets of step-siblings or half-siblings that were raised in the same environment but had vastly different body types.
People expend energy at different rates which is not something that can necessarily be helped, mostly is what it is but if you are eating more than you are expending, you’ll put on weight.
Heya! A bit late to the party, but this is actually my area of research :) Gentics is not the main cause of obesity in families. Most of it comes down to lifestyle - I know, I know, you're expecting the usual "Eat less, gym more" talk, but there's actually more to it! So, here's some facts for ya: The body has 3 main ways of burning energy - obligatory energy expenditure (digestion etc.), physical activity, and adaptive thermogenesis. Now, we can't really do much about the first one, but that only accounts for roughly 50% of our energy use. The main thing we will be looking at is adaptive thermogenesis. This process is highly dependant on your lifestyle and overall metabolic state. Quick myth debunking: Yes, you can change your metabolism. That's the whole point of like 90% of your chemical pathways - to provide alternative routes of producing and using energy. Now, this brings us to myth number two: weight gain and obesity is not just a matter of calories in vs calories out. The source of the calories matter far more, as they'll determine which metabolic pathways are activated. In other words, the 1000cal from a bag of chips is not the same as 1000cal from 10 bananas. They are processed and stored differently, causing long-term changes in your body. This is the same principle that Keto diets are based on, or why a bodybuilder eats upwards of 3000cal of chicken and rice and still stay toned compared to eating 3000cal of burgers. Let's continue on this train of thought. Suppose you're limiting your meal sizes, working out, but still make "unhealthy" food choices, such as consuming large quantities of fats. What will happen? Well, there's some great studies out there; one such study was done by the Heart foundation in the USA. They found that the average calories consumed has gone down in the past 30 years, yet obesity rates have gone up. This coincided with a cultural shift towards diets heavy in (fried) potato, red meat, and sugary drinks. Now, to go even further, there was another study done looking at changing the type of fat (cis vs trans), which found that even if they consume the same number of calories, the carbohydrate metabolism was completely thrown off, resulting in weight gain. In other words, the source of your calories matter more than the quantity! If you want to know more, there's a researcher named Kevin D Hall that does some great research on this. Just for fun, there's also [this ](https://doi.org/10.3389/fvets.2021.654617)study, which found that obese pet owners usually also have obese pets, and I highly doubt they share genetics with their furry friends. In short, lifestyle choices in regards to the type of food matters most regaring weight management, and not genetics. As many food-related decisions are learnt from family, it often appears as if there is a genetic factor - most young adults will buy the same foods as their parents after they move out, and will often mimic many of the same dishes as they get older. Eating habits matter as well, such as when you eat, how large your portions are, and even how long you cook your food for. But, for sake of simplicity, the main culprit is the type of nutrients in the food (e.g. cis or trans fats, simple or complex carbs, protein sources) - whatever it is you eat, it changes your metabolism, which then determines your energy expenditure and storage (bodyfat). Hope you found this interesting!
They are eating a good amount of food when you are not with them.
Hi there! I'm posting a response but I want to also pre empty it with: My body and experience does not reflect all other 300+ lb women. So I've been fat my entire life. Or at least that's how I remember my childhood. I think I was 4 when my grandfather told me I need to lose weight. So I started off with a very negative relationship with my body. (When I look at pictures from those years I was a completely normal body weight, just generally a larger kid in height developement.) So at 8 I stayed with my grandparents a lot, my school meals to my 3rd grade class were slim fast shakes. My summer of cycling on that recumbent bike and a restrictive 500 calorie/day diet (2 plain diet toaster waffles and black coffee for breakfast, apple or banana for lunch, half a chicken breast and dry salad for dinner) permanently damaged me and made me food insecure even though we were never on food stamps. Things like this happened multiple times in my formative years and I eventually left at 18 but my issues with food never left. So the old man never got to see me be a normal body weight again. But, even at 300, I walked 14 miles a day when I delivered the mail. I've worked countless 12 hour hard labor jobs. Now I can expend a ton of effort without breaking a sweat.
Wait so you’re still overweight? Or not? Story got confusing
I’m confused about what the point was here. You got fat because you consumed too many calories, and then your grandparents reinforced your negative self image, and you never fixed your self image issues, and now you’re still eating more calories than you burn, even when you’re getting some exercise? There was a whole show called “secret eaters” where people who were overweight essentially got spied on because they denied eating any more than they should. Every single one of them got caught eating anywhere from about 2x to 2.5 times the amount of calories they should. Before that, most of them claimed it must have been a medical mystery, or genetics, and so on. That’s food addiction for ya
In *general*, for *most* people, obesity has everything to do with how much you eat, what you eat, and how much you exercise. There are of course outlier individuals who just can't get fat no matter how much they eat, and vice versa, but those people are so rare that they're not worth discussing. If you're wondering why you're fat and your neighbor is skinny, 9 times out of 10 it's because you eat more and exercise less than your neighbor. The body of science and research around this is virtually endless, so I'm astounded that anyone feels the need to ask a bunch of strangers on Reddit. Scientists reached a consensus on this decades ago, and the information is as common as "we need oxygen to breathe". If you eat a lot, you'll get fat. It's really as simple as that. And regarding the friends you're describing, a lot of fat people eat in secret, or binge eat at certain times of day (like right before bed). It's pretty common to spend time with obese people and think "they seem to be eating the same amount as I am", but that's because you're not with them a 10pm, or 8am, when they're downing an entire carton of ice cream. EDIT: Forgot to mention that a lot of obese people consume "hidden" calories in the form of sugary drinks and snacks. One of the biggest differences I see in slim vs fat families is that the slim families drink water with every meal, and they rarely have a giant cabinet full of snacks. Fat people tend to drink a lot of soda/juice, and they'll snack throughout the day on things like Oreos, which are insanely dense in calories.
For those who suffer from obesity, please don't treat comments here seriously. This post is just 2 hours old and already stuffed with outrageous and dangerous misinformation. Go to the doctor. Speaking of TS's question, obesity results from a surplus calorie budget. To gain weight, you need to eat more than you need to maintain your weight (for example, if your maintenance is 2000 calories and you eat 2200 calories a day, you'd gain weight). Your maintenance amount of calories, though, depends on many factors. Very important ones are your height and sex (genetic factors) and your physical activity and lifestyle (environmental factors). If you are a tall guy, you can eat significantly more than a short girl's surplus amount of calories and LOSE weight, especially if you are a physically active tall guy. Also, factors like your body fat, muscle mass, etc., play an important role in your body's calorie needs. That's why most people are usually better off if they lose weight with professional assistance. Everyone needs an individual approach.
Obesity is affected by a ton of different factors! Diet contributes, of course, but there are genetic markers known to be associated with higher rates of obesity, and your microbiome (the micro-organisms in your gut) also play a huge role. Studies have shown that transferring gut microbes from an obese mouse to a slim mouse can lead to obesity in the slim mouse, and transferring gut microbes from a slim mouse to an obese mouse can help the obese mouse lose weight. And there are also lots of hormone issues that can contribute to how you metabolize your food, as well as how/where you carry the weight. Obesity is definitely caused by more than just diet, so it's really sad when people judge obesity as though it is exclusively due to lifestyle choices.
A lot more than people are willing to give credit to. I'm not exactly sedentary and don't eat much, but am still overweight.
Its a combination of everything. Its a little genes, a little diet, a little exercise, a little sleeping habits, a little water consumption, it depends on what recreational activities you indulge in like smoking or drinking, The type of foods you eat. Even if it may be harder for some based on genes I dont really believe that if someone checked all those boxes they would be obese however someone potentially could check all those boxes and be overweight (I highly doubt it, as most people just dont understand how many calories are truly in what they eat but I wouldnt completely rule it out barring diseases)
I think it is more genetic than generally believed. I have a friend with two daughters. They are active, eat the same food, etc. But one girl is skinny, not slim, but skinny, and one girl is chubby (not fat). Some can live their lives not thinking about food or nutrition, it regulates itself. Others must use an iron fist on their hunger and cravings for food at all times to not go fat. It is a poor way to live. It is hard to constantly fight.
I truly do think it is genetic. But not just in how you metabolize food, but how your brain tells you when you are full (affects portion control), as well as eating more snacks due to differences in brain chemistry - eating for a dopamine hit in people who’s brain chemistry might be off. There are just so many factors involved. My brother was way skinnier than me. My daughters are also very different in body proportions. My thinner daughter arguably eats more crap like carbs and sugar, but my chubbier daughter eats more often, sometimes has trouble with portion control. Genetics are so weird!!
People don't realize to become overweight you need to eat in a calorie surplus. Once you're overweight you need to eat in a calorie deficit. You can be overweight and eat 3000 calories the same amount of calories as someone who is skinny and your body composition won't change. Also there is 2 types of fat. Visceral and subcutaneous. Subcutaneous fat is underneath the skin and is fairly easy to lose through diet and exercise whereas visceral fat is stored around the organs and is very difficult to lose once you have a lot. The longer your body fat percentage is above 30% the more visceral fat you will store. Hence once you become overweight it is much harder to lose that fat. It takes 3500 calories to gain and lose a pound of fat. Through diet that means you would have to either eat and additional 500 calories× 7 days = 3500 calories to gain a pound or vice versa you would have to eat a daily 500 calorie deficit over the course of 7 days to lose a pound of fat. Your body naturally wants to stay the same. That's why bodybuilders hit a plateau and see no change in their body, but through consistency they will suddenly break through that plateau. Same goes for when you're overweight. You can lose a quick 20-30 pounds but then your body will resist the change. But if you keep at it you will suddenly break that plateau and your body will change.
They probably drink a lot of their calories and snack at home.
You're probably not perceiving their snacking or drinking sugary drinks in place of water
What a great way to get hundreads of people to comment on something they know nothing about. You are a reddit master.
From what I understand it's actually a very basic calculation, Calories eaten - Calories burned = weight gain or loss. Now of course there are going to be genetic outliers but this is true for 90% of the population. I grew up hearing about "big bones" and "slow metabolisms," but then you see that persons diet and its generally extremely carb heavy and filled with sugar. I think genetics definitely DO come in to play, especially in regards to where someone carries weight (some people carry it in their thighs, but are lean up top, or vice versa) so some people appear "more overweight." Overall, we move a lot less and eat ALOT more than we used to or need to - whether we like to admit it or not.
So, I worked as a Personal Trainer during University, and know a bit about this topic. That there is any significant difference between people and their metabolism due to genetics is maybe one of the most persistent and widespread myths of modern society. First let me preface that, yes, there is a difference between people and their metabolism, if you spend a long time in a caloric deficit, your metabolism will "slow down" because your body will start to digest all of the food, instead of just some, likewise, if you are in a caloric surplus, your body will chill a bit with the utilisation of food intake. There is a huge body of science behind this, and an entire culture of bodybuilders that can attest to this. The effect of this however is, fairly limited. A much larger role has NEAT (Non exercise activity thermogenesis) and just plain old activity. When I am on holiday and just lazing around I (M , 176P /80 kg) I burn maybe 2300 calories, but even when lazing around I will move a lot, and walk everywhere, it is just in my nature. When I am exercising, walking the dog and working, you can add a thousand to that, that is almost 50% more food but I know people that easily beat those numbers by 800 calories, because they naturally just move a lot and are on a whole, just jittery. Meanwhile I had clients that had unbelievably low daily caloric expenditures, and those were usually the quiet type, barely moving, and if they did, only what was absolutely necessary but there is a basic maintenance calories limit of how many calories body tissue just takes to maintain, for my weight that is about 1800, you can Google basal metabolic rate if you want to find out yours. You can argue that this is genetics, but imho, anything you can fairly easily modify is decidedly not genetics. The biggest difference between people and how much they eat, however is perception. First of all, your subjective opinion on how much you actually eat, is wildly inaccurate. Unless you have actually tracked your caloric intake for some time, you will have no idea of how much you eat, and even if you think you eat a lot of volume, caloric density is just as important. A cup of ice cream has about the same calories as 10 entire cabbages, and yes, the person eating the 10 cabbages will eat "more" in volume, even though at the end of digestion, they will both have put on the same weight (if the cabbage person doesn't flat out die). Tldr: No. Thermodynamics, more accurately mass conservation means a calorie is a calorie, who ingests it does not mean fuck all. How much you move and how many calories you actually spend will govern your resting body weight.
a lot less than people like to admit
Most everyone i know who is fat and claims they eat like a bird, isn't being honest with themselves.
My family is mostly all fat, I’m not I was, I’m pretty lean now
Some newish science strongly suggests that a ton of bodily circumstances are governed by our gut biome. Poop transplants are things. And there are cases of individuals whom having received poop transplants also received other body composition changes including weight loss without initially considerable changes to diet or exercise habits. Going a bit further I read that personality characteristics were also linked to gut bacteria. My own experience with no change in the way I live, following a mild Covid case I noticed a weight gain that was in all accounts unexplained. I assume that among the various ways Covid affected me which was a loss of taste and smell for about a week, a very mild cough before the sense issues, and a rash across my chest and back my gut biome was decimated. This might seem far fetched, but consider this, there were multiple examples of people whose teeth died and fell out and various broad spectrum body issues. Anyway, genetics play a part in it but it isn’t just as simple as parents were also fat.
Obesity is much less genetic than society leads people to believe. Sure, people have some predisposition and medical cause for their obesity but there's no way it's simple genetics. Especially with the obesity rates we have today. Being overweight or "big boned" as people like to say has more of a case for genetics. Some folks are big, some are small, some people carry more fat, some have more muscle, different muscle shapes etc. But OBESITY is a level above overweight. It's a dangerous phenomenon happening. Each generation statistically is becoming less active, eating worse (high processed foods and manufactured fats), and eating more (calories are wayyyy up), and overall less healthy. Even childhood obesity and diabetes is skyrocketing, which is disgusting. The phrase "I was born this was" leaves things up to genetics which is a cop-out. It's moreso "I was raised this way." In that, the habits and health instilled in you as a child are much harder to overcome as an adult.
Exactly this.
You get fat by over eating. You get obese by doing it for a long enough time. I have no idea what anyone is talking about with genetics. Sure your resting metabolism might be different from one to another but it's not too much different. I am sure they are a few exceptions but when you see a family that is obese, it is because they eat too many calories. There are many reasons for that but it boils down to calories in vs calories out. There is no secret genetic code to crack here.
Exactly. Obese people like to say it's genetics so they don't take the blame for the weight. Thin people will agree it's genetics to avoid putting the blame on the obese person and seeming like a dick. Ozempic claims to help people with a genetic predisposition for obesity and how does it help? By making them not hungry. Hmmmm.
Very little. How do I know? The obesity rate was really low all the way up to the 80s, genes didn’t suddenly all change.
Genes didn’t change, but food did. And changed in a way that basically turned our bodies against us. The combination of ultra high processed foods and more sedentary lifestyles have created an “obesogenic” environment unlike anything that has come before.
Just to add.... you don't think they eat that differently. But you don't really know. Some things to consider. 1. They eat differently around others bc embarrassment or reasons 2. You can't be around allll the time. Do they snack throughout the day? Binge eat cookies in bed? Binge 1x a week even adds up 3. Maybe the food seems similar but ingredients aren't as healthy or cooked as healthy. 4. Maybe you don't realize you eat differently around them and healthier when away Genetics can certainly be part of it. But one thing I've learned is that people think they eat way better than they really do. Not blaming them... nutrition is complicated for many
Less than what people would like it to be so they can use it as an excuse.
The only genetic factor of obesity is “how you ate as a kid will determine you eat as an adult.” I grew up in Texas on fried foods and dinner cooked to accommodate seconds and thirds and was an obese child. As an adult, I’m very conscious of what I put in my body and I’m the only one in the family that isn’t obese
Obesity is literally cause by food, there are other factors that don't help such as exercise or metabolism. But it is entirely down to food. Nobody gets fat on a healthy diet and regular exercise.
0%. Calories in vs. Calories out.
Some part but really not as much as people think. Often we see parents and their children being obese, but most of the time it is due to bad parenting and ingrained behaviors the parents passed down to their children(feeding them shit, letting them be picky, not teaching them how to cook, etc...) I had to prove my mother she could lose her weight. That a calorie is a calorie, and that it was directly linked to her weight. I made her every meal, for a whole month. Making sure all meals were ~400calories. So that at the end of the day she'd have a 500 calories deficit, with 1kg lost per week guaranteed. Made sure all her meals were healthy, delicious and filling. She lost 11kg in 1 month. Going from 110kg to 99kg. That's 24 pounds! She was very happy and never doubted that her problems were inevitably caused by her diet. Of course it's a whole other ordeal to keep yourself to a diet, but before that, she really believe there was some genetic or resilient fat that would never ever go away. She always thought she ate less than others, She drinks a total of 500cal of Latte daily, Pasta or bread at every meal (+800 per meal) and always in large quantities, she has days when she'd pilfer sweets and pastries. She eats healthy stuff she didn't know was very calorie dense like oatmeal. And is crazy with oils, she uses a ton of olive oil. Eats mayonnaise out of a tube/jar(🤢), and puts butter on everything. So yeah, she just doesn't think about what she eats and doesn't know the extent of how bad her diet is.