kaplods, You rock my world! I have to admit that I didn't read every word you wrote, but I will after I get my kids to bed.

OP, What would it mean if it was a "cop out"? Then do they deserve to be fat and unhappy and die young because it is their own damn fault? I can't quite imagine not having sympathy for anyone going through a problem as difficult as being overweight. It is obviously a very, very difficult problem to overcome. If it were not, why would anybody be fat? We're all just copping out? And does that mean that we really want to be fat? I just don't get it.

What I got from this thread was the question of how much merit there is to obesity being genetic. I know that for a long time I had the mindset of "My whole family is fat, its just my natural weight and there's nothing I can do about it." To me, that's a cop-out and an excuse to not even try.

That doesn't mean that I got fat from being lazy, I just had an excuse to not care about it. I don't think anybody on this website believes that fat people deserve to be fat and unhappy...

The idea that "Weight problems run in our family" could be used as an excuse to not take action - in that case, it could be called a "cop out".

But otherwise, it's just information. "Everyone in my family is overweight, and perhaps I will need to be aware of that or perhaps use some more specific strategies in order to successfully lose".

I know that my weight is (mostly) within my control - I can't change my body type to be long and lean, but I can get to a healthy zone for me. That didn't stop me, when my wife and I were looking for a donor for the baby we're expecting in May, from ruling out anyone with a family history of weight issues. I do believe that genetics play a role, and I'd rather help my future child overcome my own genetic legacy in this area by picking a donor who is less likely to pass on the genes for a thrifty metabolism.

So true, and though I remind myself of it all the time, I especially love this analogy! Another great post, but this really stuck out.

Agreed. In my family- well, my mom's side- it's used as a cop-out. Everyone on that side is obese or mobidly obese with diabetes and high blood pressure... and if you came to Sunday "supper" with them you'd see why (thirds, fourths on biscuits/gravy, pie, fried chicken, etc... with no activity or exercise in sight).

Yet my mother, who has gained a few pounds in recent years, has told me repeatedly she hates that she's gained weight, but it's "inevitable, because look at my parents and aunts and uncles?" I also remind her to look at what they eat each meal as well. We have no idea what size each would be if they ate proper portions.

However, I think it can also be used to manage realistic expectations. I do not come from a family of slender women; my mother and her mother (before she gained tremendously) have big thighs. My thin sister and I do as well. Realizing this genetic, rather than anything I have control over and thus have the responsibility to change, is hugely important in me coming to terms with my body as unique and quirky as it was designed.

The adoption studies of addiction are actually quite similar to the adoption studies of weight (as an adoptee, I'm fascinated with adoption studies - especially since I'm such an "odd duck" in my family - it makes me wonder whether I inherited some of the quirks, or whether they're completely unique to me).

Adoptive children's weights (like the potential for addiction) are correlated more closely with biological parents than with the adoptive parents. There is a loose correlation with adoptive parents, but a much more significant/strong correlation with the bio-parents. The fattest bio parents had the fattest children, regardless of the slimness of the adoptive parents.



Turning down a drink, "because addiction runs in my family" (whether or not I've ever displayed a problem myself) is more socially acceptable than a fat or a thin person turning down food, "because obesity runs in my family."

And no one would accuse me of "making excuses" for myself or for my addicted family members if I did the former, but many would if I said the latter.



What I think is so odd, is that no one blinks an eye anymore when someone with substance abuse issues says "alcoholism and addiction run in my family." In fact, we tend to assume that the person is more aware and prepared to fight the addiction when they know there's a propensity for it - and even though there's obviously a environmental component as well (when children are raised by their bio-parents, at least).

Yet we almost never make that same assumption about obesity. Even when there's evidence to the contrary. Even though I didn't start gaining control of my obesity until I understood and addressed the physiological (possibly, even probably partially genetic) issues, I'm still often told I'm "making excuses" whenever I mention the connection.

Well, I guess then - in my case - making excuses has helped me to lose weight, when being "brutally honest" (meaning blaming myself) kept me fat. So, hurray for making excuses.

I think you're misunderstanding me. I certainly would *never* think that someone deserves "to be fat and unhappy and die young." Hearing those words from my mom just struck me in the moment, and maybe it's because I know my mom so well. I know she knows how to lose weight, and I also know that she eats a lot of junk and then threw out to me that there's a history of weight problems in our family. It makes me realize that in that moment, what she was telling me wasn't about me and my journey at all, but was about her making herself feel okay about where she is right now.

If you saw my next post, you saw that I realized that it's pretty dependent on the person and the situation. Yes, there's a history of weight problems in my family, but I know now that I don't have to follow in that path anymore.

I think this is a really interesting point. One of the things that I've realized is that I really do have an honest-to-goodness addiction issue, and to be successful long-term I'm going to have to deal with it as such.

That was the numbers I red about back in the days, and I'm not the type of person to throw numbers I've heard from some kind of guru on a weird wesbsite.

They might not be the EXACT numbers (because, like I said, I red this review study a long time ago) but the take home message from the paper was still that, YES, there IS genetic factors going around in family that might make weight loss harder. But the big point was that instead of taking the best of it by saying ''okay, it might be harder for me and I have to take the good mesures to make this lose weight process works'', people blame the ''science'' and genetic issues behing weight loss by making excuses as ''it's just genetic and there's nothing I can do about it'' instead of realizing that one of the big reason of being overweight is mostly du to bad eating and fitness backgrounds.

There is no ''obesity genes''. There is genes expression of genes mutations that can lead to PREDISPOSITION to obesity. Some of those genes can be from parents heritages, some other not. And sometimes even having the genes doesn't mean that there will be a phyiological outcome to that (exemple : 40% of the people having mutations X on the gene W are known to get physiological outcome Z).

Don't get me wrong here, epidemiolgy and genetic studies are wonderful and can truly help understand diseases. Obesity is truly a problem in the society right now, especially for kids. It's just that to me, the solution is not to put so much emphasis on the genetic portion when simple changes concerning the food and exercice could already make such a big difference, whereas since gene therapy isn't totally accepted and prooved safe right now.

It was never my intention to say ''it's 1% and that is the number''. It was from the memory I had from the article.

The point I was trying to make is that in the society, the genetics issues is frequently and badly used as an excuse to not even TRY to lose weight, and that we should put much more attention to our environment instead of focusing on the genetic when, like you said, we can't do much about it.


I will finish on saying that this was an open discussion, I joined it, and I honestly felt like you were just throwing in my face ''you don't know what you are talking about but I do, go read science, I have the right answer''. The truth is that nobody really does have the right answer, not even the science people that you quote. So why not just try to help each other out in our weight loss journey instead of bringing people down?

So why not just try to help each other out in our weight loss journey instead of bringing people down?

Is ironically, exactly what I was trying to say - not throwing anything in anyone's face.

I'm just saying that there are genes that make weight maintenance easier and those that make it more difficult (both to folks who are trying to lose fat, and folks who are trying to gain muscle or even fat), and that it's somehow sacrelige to point to, or even consider genetic or physiological factors.

Obesity gene is an inprecise and misleading term - but so is "eye color genes" and "hair color genes" and scientists and non-scientists still use the terms. "Genes regulating appetite, and fat storage," would have been a better term.

The 1% number has been used since the 60's, and it's still being used, even though it's no longer accurate (and therefore actually never was, because our genes haven't changed in 50 years). We know a lot more about the inherited aspect of obesity than we did then, and every year we learn more.

This is an open discussion, and that's why it's ok to disagree,if it weren't, I could just as easily be upset that you were using your posts "throw it in my face" that I was wrong.

I don't believe that of either of us, I believe we were both stating our opinions, and trying to back them up with facts. Yes, I am suggesting to you that you might want to check your facts - but you certainly don't have to, and even if you do, you may come up with different interpretations.

My main point is that for decades we've dismissed the possible role of genetic and physiological factors. We've told obese folks that their belief that weight loss is "harder" for them for some reason is "all in their heads" that it's simply a matter of willpower and mind-over-matter, and that if they can't manage their weight on their own, it's due to a severe defect in character or mental fortitude, and that they're all simply 'making excuses.'

For years I believed that crap, and it kept me fat - because for more than 30 years, I've been looking inside my brain for the answers and it wasn't there. Only when I started addressing the physiological factors (that everyone told me didn't exist - or only existed for 1% and therefore probalby not for me) did I start having success - albeit with a body so damaged that even maintaining my weight was more of a battle than losing had ever been. I had to find a way to lose weight when the calorie level at which I lost weight rapidly in my 20's now maintains my weight.

We spend a lot of time telling obese folks, "it's all your fault, now do something about it," and then criticising everything they attempt to do as insufficient for success, and a reflection of their "just making excuses." And now with the "Biggest Loser" style shows, it's becoming even worse, because if the people on the shows can lose 15 lbs in a week, and you're not losing at least 2 or 3 lbs a week, you're "doing it wrong," and "making excuses.

Environment and genetics both affect the expression of obesity - but we can't escape either, and can't seperate a person from either their genetics or their environment, so trying to use a number doesn't make sense on either side of the argument, especially since it's a number we cannot verify at this point, not even in the science, but there certainly is a lot of science that makes it look to me - that 1% is an extremely outdated number.



The tools we give people to lose weight, and the weight loss traditions are inadequate. If they were not, the success rate for weight loss would be much greater. In many ways, I'm succeeding despite myself, just by "unlearning" most of the crap I was taught about weight loss. Not only about whose "fault" my obesity was, but also the best strategy to combat the weight.

I was told that "willpower" (ideally fueled by self-recriminations) was the answer, and thank God I learned that something works a lot better, because I burned out my willpower and any energy I had for self-contempt 20 years ago.

I think that it is a cop-out, but not necessarily in the negative way.

My parents became overweight as they got older and I think we all assumed that was the natural progression of things. My mother had arthritis and started losing weight very slowly. My father was then diagnosed as diabetic and he lost about 50-70 lbs in less than six months. My mother followed suit.

It's been years now and they haven't gained the weight back and continue to maintain, although my mother wants to lose a few more pounds.

Both of them could have said, "Genetics rolled the dice for me, I'm destined to be overweight." My father's father was overweight. My mother's mother was also chubby. But when they went to heal themselves through their diet, they discovered that even if their genetics made them more susceptible to being overweight (insulin resistance my father has, the suspected IR I think my mother has, combined with her immobility), they also found ways around those genetics.

My own journey has been similar.

Yes, I have IR/PCOS and I gain weight very quickly and easily and it's taken forever to take it off.

But I didn't know what PCOS/IR and diabetes in my family REALLY meant. I could have sat here gaining weight every year, assuming that because my family was chubby, the same fate awaited me. I did that for many years too.

We don't get enough information about how our environment and food affect our weight. I never got a nutrition class in school! We all know we don't get good information in the general mass media outlets about diet and nutrition and health! I get plenty of HCG ads, though.

Anyway, my genetics do make predisposed to being overweight. But I had to find out, through experiment and information, ways to go around those genetic patterns.

I think the people that say "Well, my family is all overweight, it runs in the family" is a cop out, but I think it's also because there's no other information out there that really tells you it can be different. Like others have said, you try to get information and what you get is a lot of junk and a lot of people telling you that you ARE to blame for being overweight and you'll fail anyway even if you try.

Think of how often the media attacks celebrities who gain weight (again)...

I wish we could educate people better about how to get started on their journey. The Biggest Loser show doesn't do it. Celebrity Fit Club doesn't do it. Cosmo magazine doesn't really do it. Medical doctors aren't even trained to help patients figure this out!

I do think that everyone, with very few exceptions, can be a relatively normal weight and fit level. But I think it takes a lot of energy, resources, and determination to get past those obstacles.

And like the mother/grandmother who don't see their mistakes in how they ended up overweight, I can't blame them either. They don't know any better. They do what they were taught to do -- whether by her own mother or by society/friend/family.

This journey isn't about counting calories, really. We can all count really easily. It's the stuff that happens in our heads/emotions/real life that really make or break these journeys.

I think that "weight problems run in our family" IS a strong existence for some people/families. As in "LEARNED BEHAVIOR" -more so than genetic problems. After all, it's quite clear that kids learn what they learn from their parents, grandparents, etc. So when you see a whole family that's fat/overweight/obese, you can safely assume that the kids have learned their eating habits from those who are teaching/feeding them.

This is not to say that any one person (or a whole family) cannot learn to eat better, adopt a healthier lifestyle, and therefore lose weight. But when habit becomes nature, and habits are passed down from generation to generation, this is what you get.

My own family is mostly made up of thin or "normal" weight people. Within my IMMEDIATE FAMILY (parents, grandparents, brothers, aunts/uncles/1st cousins) there are only about 20% that are overweight or have been overweight, and I am one of them. My mother and father, while both have carried EXTRA weight on their frames at one time or another, in general, neither have ever been fat. I've been fat. Two aunts on my dad's side, one aunt and two uncles on my mom's side, 4-6 cousins from both sides - have been or are currently fat. To my knowledge, no one in my immediate family has been grossly obese (by grossly, I don't mean vulgar or disgusting, I mean big, bulky, as in 300+ pounds). One uncle (mom's brother) died of complications due to adult on-set diabetes, and that was largely due to his eating habits.

So yeah, I do think weight problems can run in families. But it's LEARNED BEHAVIOR more so than GENETIC PROBLEMS.

Reminds me of a Talk show where the State wanted to take a Womans 500 pound son.She Insisted that he was so big because of Genetics and that her WHOLE family was Obese.She went to Dr's and everything so she just felt like it was destined to happen(her son being obese)..The son went to live with his Aunt and 2 years later he had lost 200lbs!!! Yea,Genetics...Eating habits is more likely...

Yes! Some of us are 'more likely" to be Overweight due to genetics..but MOST of us are overweight because of the habits we learned from our families.My parents have 6 kids..4 of us are fat...the two that are slim exercise daily and eat way different than the rest of us...

Part of the problem is that people talk about this issue as if it's an "either/or" argument. It's not either genetics or learning/environment, it's a combination, and the percentage of each probably varies not only between people, but even for a given person it may vary over the course of their lifetime.

Even at 5, I understood that I ate more than most children and often even more than some of my adult family members (even the obese ones). What I didn't understand was why food was more important to me than to anyone else in my family, or why I was hungry all of the time, often even after I had just eaten, sometimes even to the point that my stomach hurt, but I was still hungry.

Mind and body don't work independently of each other - and neither do genetics and environment. But when it comes to weight loss in our culture, integrative methods aren't the standard treatment. "Mind-over-matter" is the predominate view of dieting, and hunger generally isn't really taken into account at all. "Suck it up and suffer through it" tends to be the prevailing view.

Until I discovered the physiological aspects of my weight issues (whether they're "genetic" or not, I have no way of knowing without seeking out my bio-family which I really have no interest in doing), I constantly failed at conquering or ignoring my hunger, and blamed myself for it (because that's part of the tradition of weight loss as well).

Even at 5, I knew that there was something wrong with me, the weight was all my fault, and that "all I had to do" was eat less and move more. By eight, I was reading diet books in the adult section of the library, trying to find ways to gain the illusive "willpower" that everyone said was vital to mastering weight control.

My physiological issues were never addressed, because "everyone knew" that weight loss was 99% a "mind game." I'm surprised at how little respect or attention the role of hunger is given in weight loss. It seems intuitive that hunger (regardless of the source) and cravings can be incredibly important, and yet most plans - even today - don't address the issue head-on.

The first sustained-success I had was with prescription stimulant diet pills at 14, and while it addressed the hunger, and I lost weight - the effects were only temporary (I was lucky that the effects lasted 5 to 6 months, rather than the three months that is the average).

Now I know that a low-carb diet and the right birth control almost completely conquer my hunger. Unfortunately, my metabolism is now so slow, that the calorie-level it takes to get one to four pounds off per month, once consistently netted me weight loss of 5 to 8 lbs per week. God, how I wish I'd discovered this formula at 10 or even 16, but virtually no one was looking for the physiological components of weight loss.

The effects of genetics and even environment are largely inescapable - but that doesn't mean that "nothing can be done," about either.

There are genes that actually predipose folks towards antisocial and even criminal behavior. It doesn't mean that if inherited the "aggression" gene and come from a long line of murderers and serial killers that I have no responsibility for my own behavior.

If you think that a genetic predisposition to obesity means you don't eat any more than anyone else, and that you're doomed to be fat no matter how little you eat - you don't have a very good understanding of genetics or even basic physiology. Using it as an excuse only works if you don't have all of the facts (or are deliberately choosing to ignore them).

The genetics and the environment interact. Take my brother who had difficulty gaining weight as a child, and me who had difficult losing weight - if we had been raised 1,000 or even 300 (heck even 60) years ago - and we both would have been much thinner. In fact, I very well might have had a better chance of surviving to adulthood.

You can only change parts of your environment. I could make weight loss easy by moving (without taking any money) to a part of the world where food is in extreme short supply and a great deal of physical activity is required just to survive...

but I don't value weight loss enough (above my family, friends, and all the benefits of living in the midwestern United States) to do that, so changing my environment is a little more complicated.

Sadly, the history of weight loss, has been to focus on the individual making changes only to their thoughts and behaviors - and not addressing either the genetic/physiological issues OR the environmental issues.

We're essentially expected to change neither our physiology nor our environment - and so are left with trying to change our internal behavior (thoughts) and external (actions).

In fact, until relatively recently, if you couldn't "change yourself" without changing your environment, you faced quite a bit of scorn (if you couldn't keep ice cream and chips in your home, you were failing).

That idea thankfully is changing, and more and more people are being encouraged to change their environment to make it easier to change their behavior, rather than being told they just need to exercise more willpower.

Genetics, physiology, environment, learning - they all interact to create obesity, and often all four have to be addressed or at least acknowledged, but until recently only the latter was considered at all (and even then - it has often been assumed that you could and should do all that learning entirely on your own).

The shame and blame has to be eradicated from weight loss, because it's not helping. Weight loss needs to be addressed earlier and it needs to be addressed on multiple levels, and it needs to be addressed without shaming, ostracising, and alienating the person who is struggling, and perhaps most importantly it has to stop being so taboo that it's socially painful to even mention, let alone discuss a problem (that everyone can see, and talks about behind a person's back anyway).

I once (mostly jokingly) told my husband that I was destined to be the size I am because all the women in my family are basically built the same... my sister and I could be twins even though we are 5 years apart, and my mom could almost be as well... all the women on my moms side are basically built the same... 5'4ish, 190ish lbs... so I said well, I'm pretty much doomed... Then he pointed out something else we all have in common: eating too much of the wrong food... and something else we all have in common: basically zero exercise... so... hes like well, no wonder you guys all look the same, you eat the same garbage food and you do the same amount of exercise... zero... I thought that was a pretttty good point... lol..

I have - HAD - an awful diet, I rarely eat breakfast and if I do its usually a candy bar and a coke... a few months ago I was visiting my parents and we were going out early (7 am-ish) to run some errands, my mom stopped for gas and came back to the car with an assortment of candy bars and passed them out... I had never really thought about it before but it kind of made me laugh, like wow, its no wonder.. this is where I got it from...

I know that in my situation - I did have a large weight gain after using the birth control shot Depo Provera - but I never tried to lose the weight and I continued gaining due to crappy eating and lack of exercise etc... I don't - to my knowledge - have any medical reason that would cause me not to be able to lose weight except for my own laziness ... so now that I have challenged myself, lets see!