Diet if you want. You can lose weight, sure. But unless you want to live like a starving person, it’ll come back.
You pretty much are who you are, weight-wise, according to Gina Kolata’s new book, Rethinking Thin: The New Science of Weight Loss — and the Myths and Realities of Dieting.
In her New York Times article, Kolata cites research that suggests that it’s your DNA that decides your weight. We’ve all heard that people who lose weight dieting gain it back. But it also seems that people who go on diets to gain weight will lose it again when left to their own devices.
It may also be a myth that getting thin makes you feel great.
In a live-in study at Rockefeller University Hospital, the subjects were put on a strictly controlled diet. Not surprisingly, all of them lost weight. But the researchers noticed something else happening.
The Rockefeller subjects also a psychiatric syndrome, called semi-starvation neurosis, which had been noticed before in people of normal weight who had been starved. They dreamed of food, they fantasized about food or about breaking their diet. They were anxious and depressed; some had thoughts of suicide.
Plus, all the subjects regained their lost weight after they left the hospital. The studies were repeated and repeated. The results were the same.
And that led [the researchers] to a surprising conclusion: fat people who lost large amounts of weight might look like someone who was never fat, but they were very different. In fact, by every metabolic measurement, they seemed like people who were starving.
It’s research we’d rather not believe. We’d rather think that if we just commit ourselves, we can shrink down to a size 6 — or 3 — or zero, and be happy.
Maybe all the emotional effort we spent worrying about dieting should be spend on changing our body image instead. That may sound like emotional claptrap, but here’s cold science suggesting it.
Although, I have a question for Ms. Kolata: if it’s genes, then why is there such a growing obesity problem?
My theory of why we’re fat:
Because we can be.
Animals spent a huge amount of their energy finding food. It’s only natural that you would eat your fill whenever you can.
But for us, rich Americans, getting food is effortless. We don’t have to chase it and kill it. We don’t have to grow it. Or even cook it. Getting it means going to the cabinet and tearing open a bag. Or getting into the car and pressing the accelerator.
And we don’t even have to walk into a restaurant. We just glide over to the drive-thru. And forget using our arm muscles to roll down the car window. We just press a button, and then say, “Big Mac, fries, large Coke.”
Most animals have to be hungry enough to expend the effort required to get their food. You’d have better luck walking past a lion who’s eaten all the zebra he can get down, than a hungry one. It’s not worth the effort of chasing you, killing you, etc. Maybe later, when he’s hungry again. But for us, how much effort does it take to open a box of Pop Tarts? It’s always worth it.
I used to just blame comfort foods, now I know the real culprit. Time to put my parents on a diet!
I beleive we can make some slight modifications to our weight but I am afraid the study is correct. It (weight) will always come back. The only way for us to lose weight AND KEEP IT OFF, is to change our eating habits..forever!!! We have to quit liking food so much, shrink our stomachs and focus on something else in our lives.
Jorge:
Putting your parents on a diet won’t change your genes. Oh well. I guess we have to adapt to a world in which eating is easy and moving around is hard. Backwards for our genes.
Eleanor
I’m just glad to know that being thinner doesn’t necessarily make you happier!
But I think you ask a really excellent question, Eleanor, about obesity in this country. Maybe Gina Kolata’s new book is speaking more or less theoretically about maintaining a weight dictated by our genes. Maybe = under perfect conditions - that’s true. But in our real world - our actual American culture - maybe obesity is just a symptom of some greater cultural imbalance.
I knew this in my heart….but never read it.Thank you. Must be true.
My younger brother thought I ate a lot to intimidate him up when we were little…. it was just my DNA and I got the blame about that and that my eating well would help all the hungry people in the world.
I think weight gain in America and in other countries in the world can be attributed to the way we prepare our food, if we prepare it at all. All the past generations in my family prepared home cooked meals mostly from what grew in their gardens. I was raised in this atmosphere and still cook a home cooked meal each evening. By taking the time to prepare meals, you think about food combinations, nutrition and portions. This is not to say that all home cooked meals are low on calories, but at least they don’t have all the preservatives, dyes, etc. that are found in prepackaged store bought meals, fast food restaurants, or even regular sit down restaurants. Maybe it is time that we TAKE THE TIME to prepare what we put in our bodies. We want quality gas and oil for our car engines to keep them running smoothly. Don’t our bodies deserve the same quality.
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A small percentage of overweight people may have “damaged” their body’s metabolic response, and or thyroid function with their overeating. With these two systems in an irregular state it could become very difficult for an overweight person to loose and/or maintain the loss of excess weight, no matter how strict they were with their diet and determination. In extreme cases this can lead to diseases like Adult onset Diabetes, hypertension, etc.
That being said, the vast majority of overweight individuals out there do not have “broken” metabolisms. Everyone wants to use their genetic, or parents as a crutch…. “oh well mommy was fat, so I am supposed to be fat too”. Yes, one’s DNA does dictate to a certain extent how they use and store food they consume, to a point. However, just because discontinuing a diet makes you gain back the weight does not mean you were meant to be fat to begin with, it just means that you diet and food choices were flawed to begin with. Let’s say you are a 200lbs woman and you consume 4,000 calories a day, if you suddenly overnight switch to consuming 2,000 calories a day, yes you will loose weight, but your body will go into shock, not because you are supposed to be fat, but because you care forcing a rapid change on your body. The key is to gradually change your food choices and ease into it, it requires a dietary lifestyle change, that when done slowly overtime will lead to a healthier happier you. Everyone wants a magic pill, an overnight solution, that type of attitude is a surefire way to failure. If you give your body appropriate time to slowly adjust to less food, and healthier food, it will, and it will adjust to your new weight as well and eventually that weight will be very maintainable.
The same thing can happy with skinny people. I have a lot of client that are men, that come to me wanting to bulk up and add some muscle, and to do that you need to eat more food, especially protein, but I don’t just have them start eating a truckload of food overnight, their body will go into shock, and eventually they would just loose the weight and go back to where they were. I preach a gradual dietary change, that gives the body time to adjust, which makes falling into relapse much more unlikely.
In the end I say this, if you are happy with how you are then that is the best thing, good for you I wish you the best, however if you are not, don’t feel that because of genetics there is no hope for you, the human body is very adjustable and by educating youself about your body, foods, and exercise you CAN get to where you will be happy!
Low Calorie Diets DON’T WORK.
You won’t lose weight using a Low Calorie Dieting Plan either. In fact, eating low calories is the worst thing that you can do to your body, since that will only slow down your body’s fat burning engine and ruin all chances of losing weight (low calorie diets may allow a few pounds of weight loss for the first few days, but then after that all weight loss comes to a halt -known as a dieting plateau). You can never get slim by starving yourself.Click Here! to learn more…
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Work Hard,
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