From Twitter.
is it weird that as i got through the tweet my understanding of it lessens?
If you had a recent ancestor who went through starvation it actually altered their genetics and may have passed down genes to you that make you hold on to fat. So this tweet is more accurate than you’d think.
Seriously, my body is expecting the next ice age.
OH MY FUCKING GOD.
MY FUCKING GREAT GRANDFATHER LITERALLY FLED LEBANON DUE TO A FUCKING FAMINE AND MY GRANDMOTHER AND DAD AND I ARE ALL FAT AS FUCKING HELL.
FUCK ME RUNNING I DID NOT KNOW THIS.
…That’s going to apply also to anyone whose recent ancestors voluntarily dieted a lot, isn’t it. Diet culture long-term causes more obesity. Sure, it takes decades to show up, but anything you’d hear today about childhood obesity would reflect that. Exercising is still very good for most people, but trying to lose weight shouldn’t be the goal for most people, because a) it usually doesn’t work very well or it comes back and b) your kids or grandkids could end up with extra wonky metabolisms. (And while fat itself is actually not that much of a problem if you keep your fitness up, it can be hard on your joints. That’s actually the biggest health risk if you’re “small end of fat,” under 40, and active–joint problems.)
THAT MOTHERFUCKING ARTIFICIAL FAMINE THAT’S IT I’M GONNA FIGHT THE ENGLISH
Honestly, “I’m gonna fight the English” is a good reaction to a lot of things.
the ‘obesity epidemic’ in america is probably due to a combo of our grandparents living through the great depression and our parents being teens and young adults during the days of twiggy and heroin chic and the rise of diet culture.
combine that with the fact that gen x was the last generation allowed to play outside, pretty much, and the fact that everybody nowdays is working service jobs that exhaust them without working their muscles, and there is basically no way on earth you’re going to get a fit and healthy population without changing the basic structure of our society.
don’t fall for the hype. don’t focus on weight. it’s actually far more dangerous to be underweight than overweight. even with what is clinically defined as ‘morbid obesity’ it’s possible to be healthy as a horse, if your bone structure and metabolism are set up for it and you’ve got lots of muscle to support it.
on top of that, the charts for ideal weight are at least a generation out of date. they were compiled based on a population that didn’t regularly get enough dairy and fresh produce, at a time when girls didn’t do athletics in school. young women in the 1960′s were measurably smaller than young women today. their bones were thinner, they had less muscle mass, their shoulders were more sloped, they had a smaller lung capacity – society discouraged them from being physically active past the age of ten or twelve, and they finished their physical development in a sedentary setting.
boys were plenty active, but just like the girls, they were eating just about nothing but red meat and starch and some mushy greens with the vitamins boiled out. the thing where the poor get fat because sugar and fat are cheap wasn’t really happening yet, especially in rural areas; a farm kid’s diet was beef and wheat in the north, pork and corn in the south. “eat your vegetables” was such a hard sell because everything else was expensive and bland and overcooked. you’ve seen the godawful cookbook excerpts from that time. mushy green beans and fried spam on a bed of mashed potatoes, seasoned with nothing but a pinch of white pepper.
sorry, that was kind of a tangent. i guess my point is, even the people who ate well by the standards of the time were malnourished compared to the standard of today. your lunch of a matcha cucumber smoothie and a cobb salad with one ounce of ham, one ounce of turkey, and 15 kinds of fresh vegetable, would give them the explosive shits because they’ve never had that much fiber in one place before. there’s more vitamins and antioxidants in your black bean fajita dinner than they saw in a week.
so first of all, the idea of trying to be the same size and shape they were is absurd.
and second, if malnourishment in one generation primes the next two for protective fat retention, the combination of that and the incredible wealth of nutrition we have available to us today is obviously going to make us HYUGE.
instead of fighting it, we should embrace it. we could all be HUMAN BOULDERS OF MIGHT.
Seriously. I’ve been underweight most of my life (childhood/growing years) and I have heart problems now. Like eating is no joke. I have difficulty identifying being too full as opposed to just full and although i love food and eating I will simply forget to eat because the hungry feeling is familiar and doesn’t register as important. And it’ll send me out of whack I miss one or two meals and I get physically sick. I can’t dance for more 3-5 minutes at a time without a twice is long break. (I love dancing-its my prime exercise)
Like I’ve know people on all sides. I knew someone struggling with being overweight and those problems right alongside mine. This adtitude hurts alot of people, I have been told I look great and beautiful, while 5 minutes before I had been light headed from walking up a flight of stairs.
Its scary when you faint in public and they give you an apple to go on your way. And someone that same day or next is like… You look so great!
I feel like shit! Thanks! It reinforces bad habits and thoughts for everyone.
I’m gonna add in some of my two cents bc I recently took a class on nutrition.
The main things that influence weight are diet, exercise, sleep habits, genetics, mental health, and environment.
The environment is the biggest one because it 1. influences how you view yourself (mental health) 2. dictates what kind of food you can buy i.e. fast food/food desert (diet) 3. Where and how you can be physically active (exercise) and 4. the times at which you’re able to wind down, which for Americans can be very inconsistent and brief (sleep).
A disruption in sleeping habits, diet, and mental health can stimulate the increased production of cortisol, a hormone that encourages weight gain and other problems. It’s always made in response to stress, so worrying about your appearance while working out is counterproductive lol
I’m 5’2 and about 180. Statistically speaking, I’m obese by every standard out there. I should be a textbook case of someone with a whole slew of conditions, but I’m not. I’m not a diabetic, my cholesterol checks out fine, and I have a normal blood pressure. Even when I eat poorly, I make sure to at least watch portion size and what I drink when I’m thirsty. I’ve been 180 for 3 years, but my environment has changed and so has my job, I can now lift 50 lb boxes to stock on a shelf no problem. My fat has only redistributed slightly, I’ve gone down one pants size and my face is a little thinner. It’s become apparent that it is exceedingly hard for me to lose weight and keep it off. Weight loss happens differently for everyone.
On a tiny note tho, if you exercise please make sure that you do cardio AND weights, bc cardio burns carbs but weights add protein! (That’s also why I haven’t seen any change in weight, I used to break my back over a 24 lb box lmao) so if you don’t see a change in appearance, that’s normal. Just figure out what you’re physically capable of, and work it up to something better.
Small correction: the recent ancestor thing affects epigenetics, which is basically whether a gene is turned “on” or “off” and is not considered an actual genetic change.
Also, epigenetics are also affected by things like what chemicals your recent ancestors were exposed to, and in the 1950s there were a lot of chemicals floating around that are now known to cause obesity 2 generations later.
Thanks for the clarification about the epigenetics! I saw you mention 1950s chemicals in another post, but could you elaborate on that a bit? I’ve not seen anyone else talking about them, and am not sure where to begin reading about them.
I do know my grandmother lived on a farm in the depression and wasn’t terribly malnourished, but may have been when living in New York City during the war. My mother was constantly dieting in college during the 1970s, including a form of Atkins, and told me she never ate more than a boiled egg for breakfast and a 2"wide hamburger every night in an attempt to not look like my grandmother’s cello-like shape. She failed. As a child I was malnourished from poverty and abuse, as a teenager I was homeless and then anorexic, so I’ve pretty well doomed myself anyway, I’m just curious what else might be going on.
Does it happen in cats also?
Tag: obesity
Everything You Know About Obesity Is Wrong
A highly emotional but immensely relevant and personal read.
wupacing 