Are You Fated to Be Fat?

Is it true that anatomy is destiny?

There are 41 million obese people in India.

The statistics are quite sensational. There is a tripling of the number of people who are overweight or obese in India and the developing world since the 1980s.

It’s a big fat epidemic. Everyone knows obesity is bad for our health; it’s the underlying cause of premature deaths, heart diseases, cancers, diabetes and hypertension. In India, 1 out of 5 people are obese or overweight.

A conversation on obesity always boils down to the fact that obese people are eating themselves to death and are too lazy to workout. So is it always a matter of personal responsibility? Do fat people always have the capacity to control their weight? But if people did have the capacity to control their weight, wouldn’t they already have?

Have you ever paused to think that body weight may not always be a matter of will power? That it might not be as simple as calories in, calories out?

Genes and Obesity

Before you mentally roll your eyes and say shut up, read:

This is proven by science. There are “thin” genes and the “fat” ones. Some of us, despite doing almost everything right, are destined to be fat, thanks to our genetic makeup.

The genetics of obesity is not well understood. Research says that 50 to 70% of our weight variability depends on our DNA. If you’re loaded with the bad genes, it does not mean you will inevitably become fat. But you will have a much harder time putting off the weight.
– Dr Lakdawala, Obesity Surgeon

These unlucky people have what is called the “caveman metabolism” that is designed to conserve calories. In times of famine, those people who had the most fat stores were at an advantage. Only the fat survived.

But this does not imply they are helpless. It means that losing or maintaining weight, for some, can often seem impossible. It also means that unknown numbers of the obese deserve more sympathy than scorn, and more scientific research into their condition.

But taking utmost care of food, including a lot of cardio-workout in your lifestyle can help beat the odds to become a calorie burning machine.

Are We Being Set Up To Eat Too Much?

Look around in food halls, it’s stacked with junk, cream calorie dense food, sugary foods and beverages. They are ubiquitous, cheap and marketed relentlessly.

Let’s do a little experiment. Look at the image below, what do you notice first:

Chances are you see the cake and then glance at the hat. Keep looking at the cake for a couple of minutes and you might start feeling hungry! People are wired to look at calorie-rich food and feel hungry.

And it is this ability which the food industry exploits.

They know exactly how vulnerable we are to food and therefore they spend millions on food placement and availability. They pay retailers extra money to put food where we can’t ignore it, and when they put food in these places like end-aisle displays and near the billing counter in supermarkets, the sales of these items increase by 50% or more! (Source: ASSOCHAM)

So whatever they put in those locations, influences what we eat. Even if we know we have to make a different choice, or eat healthy, it is not always in our control. Definitely not easy.

Some Bodies Refuse to Shrink!

There are genes and then some bodies just burn fewer calories than others, sitting or working. To compound the injustice, fat people burn fewer calories than muscular people of the same weight.

If you’ve ever been overweight then you have more fat cells, which shrivel when you diet but wait to swell when the diet’s over. Some diets fail because too many enzymes promote fat storage or too few enzymes use up calories. Some people lack a hormone that turns off appetite. These findings are tentative but they indicate that brain and body chemistry may be the key to weight control.

What’s a fat person to do? Fad diets seldom work; if they did, there wouldn’t be a new one every season. Science may be closing in on the problem. For now, there’s no escape from eating less, or much less and working out more.

But many who truly diet and exercise without losing enough fat ought at least to stop feeling guilty.

(26 November is the Anti-Obesity Day – an international day to raise awareness around obesity as a public health hazard. This article was originally published on 1 October, 2015 and has been republished from The Quint’s archives.)