and here
Single gene mutations are being identified in a few morbidly obese people; however, the common genetic predisposition for obesity may relate to more subtle variations in regulatory controls.
They are not saying that diet and exercise DONT work, they're saying it's less effective and that in some cases it may be necessary to take more extreme measures.
Education and availability of lower-energy foods may help, but more radical approaches may be needed, such as environmental restructuring to increase physical activity.
This isn't a damning study showing that genetic factors take the control out from most obese people. Many other articles I've read on the subject form much the same opinion. Genetic factors confound the simple formula of "+Activity-Food=Healthy" but in general that formula is going to work, you just need to adjust as needed.
Amirox said:
And telling people to eat healthy and exercise is nice (and we absolutely should try to do this in more active and engaging ways), but someone with some of these issues will have an infinitely harder time of it. A comparison would be the way institutional racism works (bear with me - I'm not comparing obesity to racism, but the statistical probability of success in either case). Yes, an individual of color can still possibly achieve success despite the road blocks that make it significantly harder to achieve that success. But telling that person it's easy if you just do X, Y and Z is nonsense. It's just not true. They live by a different set of factors than you do. For someone with these issues, it is exponentially more difficult to be successful in not just losing the weight but keeping it off. That's indisputable science. That's why it's important to actually be able to take yourself out of the equation and put yourself in someone else's shoes.
Let's just bulletpoint some of the issues at play:
● Genetic (More than 400 different genes have been implicated in the development of overweight or obesity)
● Physiology (metabolic rate or how fast you burn calories for ex.)
● Behavior (types of foods you choose to eat, for ex.)
● Satiety (your ability to feel "full")
● Your level of mobility (some people physically cannot be more active for one reason or another; heart problems, disabilities, access to safe environments for play)
● Your family history ("If both of your parents have obesity, your likelihood of developing obesity is as high as 80%.")
● Environmental (access to types of foods, the way a country advertises or prices certain foods, your level of economic prosperity)
And the issue is you and everyone else have no clue where someone falls on this spectrum. Much like one person may be able to quit drugs easily and another may fight the disease their entire life, it shows a profound lack of empathy to not understand just how different the human experience is from person to person. And this is why it's important we teach that skill of empathy. Because there is so little true understanding people have for life experiences outside their own narrow sphere.
What it comes down to isn't the idea that diet and exercise shouldn't be recommended but that we should be sympathetic toward the effort given by those who may have confounding genetic issues and I will go ahead and speak for everyone who may be fat-shaming in this thread and say that yes, we all agree. If someone is trying to lose weight and finding it difficult based on their genes and their environment then we cannot simply tell them to try harder. We have to encourage and prop them up with support and understanding.
But they do have to try harder.
Some people are going to have to work harder to lose weight but it can and will be accomplished in almost every case given enough time and work and education. The issues you list affect EVERY case of weight loss and not all of them may even be correlative to weight gain.
I may be being optimistic and naive here but I don't think most adults lack the empathy required to see that someone who is struggling to lose weight needs to be built up, and not torn down.
We absolutely can. Because the first thing we should be teaching everyone on this planet is not to be a hateful little shit. We must punish the perpetrators, not the victims. If someone makes a poor life decision that is inflicted harm to themselves, the appropriate response is not being an asshole to them. Not only does this usually make the situation worse, but it's just a gross way to be to people. So, teaching people to be kind to others is actually part of helping improve the odds of weight loss or quitting drugs or whatever issue there is. Until the day you have superhuman mental capacity to see what precise issue made someone obese, this whole behavior needs to be squelched in the most dramatic way possible. Yes, we'll never stop it completely. But the reason it is this bad is because society as a whole has made it acceptable. Kids see their parents fat shaming people on television or discussing impossible standards of beauty. They internalize it. And then they become the monsters themselves.
Everything else follows. If you have empathy, you will create proactive campaigns of weight loss where the entire community might be lovingly involved. You can create systems of improvement wherein it is understanding for the individual suffering (few people actually want to be obese), rather than trying to say such hurtful things like "it's easy." It's not much of the time: science proves it. And I believe in the research, not my gut feeling.
My point was that we cannot let our need for empathy get in the way of sound medical advice. A doctor shouldn't have to consider his patient's specific genetic makeup before he advises the overweight 45 year old man who just wandered into his office.
Eat right, activity. That's the start. Do that and then we can see where you need to go from there. Eventually you may need pharmaceutical help to maintain your cholesterol or diabetes but eat right, activity is what you need every day of your life for the rest of your life. You and everyone else reading this thread need that.
It's not bullying or fat-shaming to proclaim this from the mountaintop.
It is bullying or fat-shaming to look at a specific poster, though, and say "you obviously didn't try hard enough and are fat now because you choose to be". That's not helpful.
Nobody is saying don't give healthy advice. We're saying that giving the advice is just a reduction method; many will remain obese, and many of those people will be obese for either reasons completely out of their control or for reasons of it being incalculably more difficult to lose and keep off the weight than it is for you.
So we can and should have these campaigns for healthy living while coming down fucking brutally hard on people who think it's OK to be awful little shits to their fellow human beings.
There actually were people saying to not give healthy advice.
