Fat is not an accident

Newsweek is running an article in their online edition suggesting that obesity is caused primarily by genetic factors, in honor of our new surgeon general who is clearly overweight, prompting many discussions about an overweight surgeon general making medical suggestions to an overweight nation (apparently because being fat somehow impairs someone’s ability to doctor and such).

Quote:  Although our high-calorie, sedentary lifestyle contributes to the approximately 10-pound average weight gain of Americans compared to the recent past, some people are more severely affected by this lifestyle than others. That's because they have inherited genes that increase their predisposition for accumulating body fat. Our modern lifestyle is thus a necessary, but not a sufficient, condition for the high prevalence of obesity in our population.

Here’s the skinny on the fat issue.  Just as alcoholism, and smoking, and any number of other addictions and bad physical issues can be attributed to genetic factors, the fact remains that if you never touch a bottle of alcohol you will never succumb to alcoholism.  If you never touch a cigarette (or any other tobacco product), you will never become addicted to smoking.  It doesn’t matter how fertile you are, if you don’t have sex you will not get pregnant (one notable historical exception aside) and, on a related note, no matter how susceptible you are to STDs, if you do not have sex you will not get one of those, either. 

 

I suspect that I am somewhat likely, based on my genetic and physiological makeup, to suffocate inside a plastic bag.  Granted, I’ve never tested that theory, but let’s just call it an educated hunch.  Therefore, I further suspect, if I stay out of plastic bags I shall be relatively safe from suffocating within one.  It’s just logical.

 

Now, back to the issue of big fat fatties.

 

Sure, genetics will determine how and where your body collects and stores fat.  That’s kind of a “duh” statement.  Your genes, however, do not determine how much fat you put into your body in the first place.  Two hands connected to two flabby arms shoveling all kinds of garbage into a gaping mouth hole (that complains about genes making the host body fat) is what determines how much fat and other garbage is put into the body.  The two highly neglected legs protruding from beneath the mountains of fat largely determine how many calories are burned in a day.  The giant, bulbous, ass that is sat upon all day long also determines how much of that food turns into mountains of fat laying on the couch, in front of the TV, where most of the disgusting, poisonous meals are shoveled into that gaping mouth hole.

 

Yes, genes may determine how much of that food is stored and accumulated.  But it’s a personal decision to feed that body garbage that the genes then turn into big, fat, heaping mountains of fat.

 

Quit blaming it on genes.  Fat, lazy, garbage eating people with good genes get fat just like fat, lazy, garbage eating people with bad genes.  The difference is that people with good genes may only top out at 500 pounds, while people with bad genes may top out at 1000 or more.  There is no such thing as genes that can turn bad food into good bodies.