Several genes have been identified as influencing common obesity.

Notice how the majority of Downs Syndrome children/adults are overweight?

Also many prescription drugs including anti-depressants cause weight gain, some by increasing appetite and others it's not understood why.

There was some controversial research/studies about diet sodas years ago, not a shocker that people who drink diet soda are often obese, since they also eat a lot of junk food but the interesting part of the research is that food/calorie intake was taken into consideration, those participants that had the same calorie intake but drank diet soda remained the same weight as those who drank sugared sodas. So that suggested that the brain was tricked into believing the artificial sweetener was sugar and the body went through the same routine as if the person ingested all that sugar. Again, it was controversial since they couldn't provide the exact mechanism by which it happens.

The brain and body is too complex and incompletely understood to make simple cause and effect statements. Saying that it's also true that for the vast majority of people taking in less energy than they put out all people including the obese will lose weight.

Then there's the neuroscience axiom 'All psychology reduces to biology'.

Hard to speculate MCE, but I'm sure not everyone is a victim of eating too much. I believe there are many different factors playing a role here. Underlying factors that person A is fat can be completely different than for person B apart from calorie intake.

Here's another study on diet soda drinkers actually gaining weight which would seem impossible since artificial sweeteners contain no calories.



What the study found is that artificial sweeteners caused changes in the gut bacteria and metabolism.

The human microbiome is becoming a hot area of research for many diseases/disorders including obesity.

Obese people should drink water, how frustrating it must be to restrict yourself to 1200 calories a day but you can't lose weight because that zero calorie soft drink is fucking up your metabolism.

"influencing".... just as being stressed might "influence" ones eating.. or the weather, or a parent or anything else under the sun.

NOTHING changes the basic fact that in order to gain fat, you must consume more calories than you expend.

YOU HAVE 100% CONTROL OVER YOUR BODY WEIGHT.

These conversations get quite silly and the arguments even more so.

It's like thirst.

We can go on for days about what thirst is.

We can discuss and debate the intricate feedback mechanisms which tell your brain "drink water"

We can discuss and debate for yours how each mechanism might be influenced by another, genetic factors etc etc.

We can discuss all the ways in which a body can more efficiently or less efficiently transport water to cells.

We can discuss all the various functions of water in the body and the massive cascade of effects that a deficiency would have.

We can discuss and debate every role of water in the body and how even slight dehydration might even make you believe you see God.

We can discuss all the various effects of dehydration, some genetically influenced and so on.

the question in this case, however is quite simple

"how do you become severely dehydrated?"
and the answer is equally simple,... "you consistently lose a great deal more fluids than you take in".

"what do you do to become re-hydrated?"
the answer is equally simple
.... "drink more fluids than you are losing"

as with weight loss, the 1,000,000 other discussions, arguments from molecular biology to environment to bad parenting have no bearing on the basic fundamental fact that you have to consume more calories than you burn to gain fat.


to be "morbidly obese" or more to the point "extremely obese" people as the OP put it, you have to be eating WAAAAAAAY more calories than you need just to get there and again WAAAAAAAAY more calories than you need to maintain that body weight.

It's mostly a life style thing... genetics do play a part, but less than 30%, I'd say

As much as I hate agreeing with this guy, he's right. Obesity gene? So what? It doesn't make you fat. Food makes you fat. End of story.

I've been skinny my whole life, metabolism of a crack head and I've never touched crack. Only gained like 5 lbs since I've gotten older. Sure metabolism/health issues affects some people but the others more of video games, facebook, etc... When I was a kid we actually did shit, baseball, football, basketball, rode bikes, etc... Go to any Walmart and watch people, no way that's 100% metabolism that's unactive fucks that sit on their ass all day continually shoving food down their throats and the only exercise they get is walking to the car or to grab another box of twinkies in between liking gay shit on facebook. If the parents are fat asses the kids will follow the same pattern. :2 cents:

Obesity is declining rapidly in the USA and has been for a while.

I guess that "gene" is gone now?

Or maybe people are starting to slow down at the food trough.... and move more as they come to terms with the fact that they have been eating their whole lives like they were just freed from Auschwitz?

That's an awesome KETOGENIC diet

You can burn FAT naturally and effortlessly through fish and low carb veggie diet

I've sworn off rice, pasta, and other starchy white fluffy SHIT

Plus the fish has lots of Omega 3s and DHEA

50 fatty's

Just saying don't know if true but, omega 3 supposedly decreases dhea. Found a few G results, here's one:

DHEA & Fish Oil | LIVESTRONG.COM

So does that mean fish contains lots of dhea ? and in that case do the human body take use of any of it considering they also contain omega 3?

Absolutely.

Fat parents have fat kids because they feed them the same sodas and horse shit they eat

I've seen PIGS at a Disney water park giving their kids giant mountain dews and cokes and giant ice cream buckets

you want to stop the genetic train in your family.. place tape over your mouth for a few weeks and fucking move your ass and you will stop the cycle

Drinking calories has to be a contributing factor to making fat kids. When you suck down and extra 1000 calories of apple juice or soda (or even orange juice) daily, it adds nothing to fullness and extra calories you don't need.

It can be genetic but not for the reasons most think. Generally if you have an addictive personality you will indulge. Whether it is with drinking, drugs and eating. It is obsessive behavior, people will grow up and purposely avoid these things to not have the same problems their relatives have had but find that they have developed other addictions instead such as gambling, shopping, collections or even video games.

I have this problem myself. I have been mindful of it since i was young. Going out of my way not to get addicted to even things like caffeine or sugar. My addiction is food though. I have mostly avoided it becoming a problem because I have always been extremely athletic. But the past couple of years I have had some issues with minor injuries from sport and a bit of depression and that was enough for my eating problem to grab hold of me. I got bigger than i ever have been, really out of shape like i have never been before. I was eating constantly as a release. It wasn't a matter of not having will to stop, it was just that I slowly got larger and that hunger hormone ghrelin was constant because my insulin was constantly running because I was eating all day.

I needed to fix this and any minor steps i was taking really wasn't working. I know more about health and nutrition than most people. I have been studying it as a hobby for over 20 years now so I had the knowledge of how to do it but that damn ghrelin hormone makes it EXTREMELY hard to start for anyone because it is triggered as a defense to protect us from losing any size. You could be 500 lbs and it will set off in attempts to protect your size if you try to cut calories any and is what makes dieting so hard in the first place. I needed to do something drastic. So I did exactly that, i had to treat it like an addict would. I had to stop all of it. I did something called a fasting mimicking diet for about 72 hours. I didn't eat anything more than an avocado with a spinach shake a couple times a day. Going from a tonne of fast food and take out to that was a harsh step, but I got through it. After that I ate modest sized steak with a salad and felt a lot better--but full. Since then I have been doing intermittent fasting from anywhere to 16 hours to 30 hours at a time. I'm keeping my carbohydrates in check but it isn't a full on low carb diet by any stretch. I have had great results with the ketogenic diet in the past but it is very hard to sustain and very unrealistic for the most part. Tomorrow will be a month since I started and I am down about 23 lbs and have lost 6 inches from my waist. The fasting thing is FAR more easier than straight up keto and I normally don't even get really hungry until about 30 hours in these days. I am still somewhat active, so I will do shorter fasts for performance purposes but I am night and day from what I was before both health wise and energy wise. Other than one day at the gym and a bit of baseball a few times a week i haven't been that active yet. So for those of you who insist that it is an exercise issue think again. It helps, but not enough. I am lean enough to get things rolling back in the gym again and even plan on doing a run tonight (for the first time in years).
The reason this works so well is because our bodies were not designed to be eating all day. Insulin running all day from eating makes EVERYONE fat. It slows everyone's metabolism and even makes everyone sick. It is not meant to be done by any of us. When we control that we get back to where we should. Shorten that eating window and your natural hgh goes up, inflammation goes down and your cells recycle and regenerate more effectively (look up autophagy). It's not easy to start off, and you don't necessarily have to do the extremes that i did to begin, but it will work for you.

i swear i have this exchange at least 3-4 times a week

Them: "but i thought orange juice is really good for you"
Me: "It's good for you in the exact same way drinking maple syrup is good for you"