Are fat people just lazy?

Are fat people just lazy? Or is it in their genes?

Let's look at an unlikely place for the answer: an AA meeting. If you get up and say "My name is Jane, and I'm not really an alcoholic, I don't drink that much..." they throw you out. They welcome you back, once you say "My name is Jane and I'm an alcoholic". The same should be true for fat people. And I'm using this politically incorrect term deliberately. Because unless you wake up to the reality, you won't be able to change that reality.

 AA have long ago realized that fact. And they have a 50% long-term success rate. That is, half the alcoholics who join AA stay dry for the rest of their lives. That's way more than what public health, clinical and commercial weight loss programs achieve with obese participants. We are happy if 10% of those who enter these programs achieve a 10% weight loss AND keep it for more than 2 years. It's that bad. Is it because of the genes? A study published recently in Nature Genetics, might supply another excuse to some overweight people. But before we look at this study, let's look at some other facts first.

One thing we all know for sure: if you are overweight, you obviously have taken in more calories than you have expended. Over quite some time, because it takes a while to accumulate all those energy reserves on your waist and hips. Boils down to one of the tenets of a universal law of physics that says: Energy can neither be destroyed nor miraculously created. Not even on your hips.

Now I know all the objections raised by so many overweight people, like "But, I hardly eat anything. How can I be fat? Even my friends say, from what you eat nobody can get fat." Believe me, I've heard them all.  And my heart sinks, when I do, because I know there goes the hopeless case. The Jane who goes to AA and tells them she is different. The study published in Nature Genetics might just deliver her the next excuse. Not because the researchers tell her so, but because some media genius might just read it the wrong way. As they often do. So, let's look a what the researchers say.

The researchers conducted a meta-analysis of some 14 genome wide association studies involving altogether 14,000 children, one third of which were obese. They found 7 genetic markers which correlated with obesity and which also turned out to correlate with obesity in adults. The beauty of looking at genetics in kids is, that they haven't been exposed to decades of lifestyles which may obscure such links. 

So, the results clearly point into the direction of some genetic signature predisposing a person to become obese. But having this signature doesn't mean you'll inevitably become obese. Because most kids who have the signature are not obese. It's only that this signature shows up a little more often in the obese kids than in their non-obese peers.  And there is one more thing, you need to keep in mind. Over the past 20 years the human genetic make-up hasn't changed at all. But the obesity rate in US kids has. In fact it has tripled during that period. And health behavior has changed, too. And so did our environment.

What makes me always frustrated in all this debate about genes vs. environment vs. behavior is my scientist colleagues' and the media's inability to educate their audience about the complete picture. Genes make up the blueprint to your organism. True. But they don't make that organism. Genes make proteins, but whether they make them or whether they are silenced into not making them, that depends on epigenetics, on the interaction with your environment, and on your behavior, which again is influenced by all the others. It is a very complex relationship, and I'm afraid, genetics will not help us, to solve the obesity epidemic. But neither will the stigmatization of the obese. 

What we need, is a way to help those who recognize their fatness as a resolvable reality, resolve it. That's why I'm working on the GPS tochronic health, because I know that once the health behaviors put you on track to chronic health and longevity, your overweight problem will resolve automatically. As a side effect. But only if the obese person works with us. 

So did that answer the question? You decide for yourself.    PrintPDF

The three hidden barriers to chronic health, weight loss and weight maintenance.

Into The Age of Chronic Health

The most amazing thing about modern health care systems is that they let most of us die from chronic diseases which we know how to prevent. So why don't we?

As a public health scientist I have devoted the past 15 years of my life to answering this question. Many of my colleagues outdo each other with doom and gloom predictions of aging societies buckling under the economic burden of aging related diseases. I believe that the age of chronic health and longevity is about to begin. With you. And with a radically new approach to make the prevention of heart attacks, strokes diabetes and cancers finally work.     

Because, until now, it doesn't. But don't just take my word for it, let's look at some of the facts first:

You have probably heard that obesity is the new smoking. In fact for every American who stopped smoking in 2011 another one became obese.   

Today, for the first time in human history there are more overfed than malnourished people walking this planet. And their lifestyles of too much food and too little exercise have become the number one risk factor for the number one chronic disease and killer: cardiovascular disease with its most well-known end points - heart attack, stroke and heart failure. With nasty other diseases on the side: diabetes, kidney failure and certain cancers.

You probably also heard about major studies, like the U.S. government funded Diabetes Prevention Program, and the Look AHEAD trial, which proudly, and correctly, report weight loss and major reductions in cardiovascular risk factors among participants in the lifestyle arms of these trials. What you don't hear so often, is that within 3-4 years after enrollment, most participants will have regained not only most of their weight but also all their risk factors.

Ok then, lifestyle change prevents disease. But what prevents lifestyle change?

Why is it that over the last 30 years of public health efforts we have not seen a demonstration of any program that results in a clinically meaningful weight loss that can be maintained for more than 2-3 years in the majority of participants and at low cost?  That's the question which Dr. Richard Khan threw at an assembly of public health advocates, who had gathered earlier this year under the event's message "Prevention works!".  Dr. Khan, who teaches medicine at the University of North Carolina, was the chief scientific officer of the American Diabetes Association for 25 years. The man certainly knows what he is talking about. 

Now think about the implication. If you chose a lifestyle of which you know might increase risk of disease and premature death, then you make that choice either willingly or it is not your free will which makes that choice.

My money is on the latter. Because how else could we explain that an obese child maintains her fattening habits despite experiencing the same psychological agony as a child with cancer? How else could we explain that obese adults maintain their bulk when it significantly reduces their chances of getting an academic education, a job and a mate? How else could we explain that over the past 20 years the obesity rate in the US went up by 60% when, during the same period, Americans doubled their spending on weight loss products to US$ 60 billion annually? They WANT to lose weight, but they don't. The explanations are called addiction, hormones and hyperbole.  

Food addiction

The neurohormonal architecture which drives an addict to crave and consume his drug, despite knowing and hating the consequences, is exactly the same architecture that keeps us going for the sweet, fatty and salty stuff in restaurants, hawker centers and vending machines. Does that explain, why the food industry adds sugars to so many foods in which you least expect it? You bet. In fact we shouldn't be afraid of calling ourselves food addicts, because this is what Mother Nature intended us to be all along. With this addiction she drove our ancestors for millions of years to what is naturally sweet in the natural human habitat: fruits. They deliver not only the carbohydrates for which we have very little storage capacity in our bodies and without which our brain can't function. Fruits also pack a punch of essential micronutrients. Unlike the cokes and cakes and cookies which deliver more sugar than we need and no other nutrients with it.  

Hormones

Once you have changed your figure into the shape of a beached whale, you will also have changed the way the hormones of your gut and of your fat tissue work. It's a rather complicated picture unfolding in the labs of biomedicine, but one emerging theme is a colossal malfunction of the satiety and appetite signaling pathways. Instead of feeling full, you are now ready to add a tiramisu to a lunch that would have satiated a family of four in rural Bangladesh.

Hyperbole

Actually it's called hyperbolic discounting, and it's a simple mathematical formula, which behavioral scientists have found to neatly describe why we will still grab that tiramisu tomorrow even though we swear today that we won't. It has to do with how we more steeply discount the relatively larger but more distant reward of staying healthy against the relatively smaller but immediate reward of enjoying the tiramisu. It doesn't operate only in humans. The behaviors of rats, pigeons and apes, for example, follow the same formula. Which means, Mother Nature must have found out early during evolution that this principle is a recipe for survival in her species. We simply inherited this survival tool.   

With all these issues stacked in favor of an ever expanding population of chronically ill people, why do I believe that we might be close to the age of chronic health and longevity? For three reasons: Because Wall Street is getting into the act, because we can outfox our brain, and because biomedical science has got the tools ready.

How we will enter the age of chronic health is the subject of the next episode, so stay tuned!

In the meantime, visit my crowd funding campaign, watch the videos, recommend the campaign to your friends and, if you like what you see, participate in our chronic health project: www.indiegogo.com/adiphea

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How to admire obese people? The Token Fat Girl

Yesterday, on a whim, I started searching the web for sites where obese people present themselves and how they deal with obesity. My expectation was:  I won't find much. Boy was I wrong. In fact I was so wrong, that I decided to discuss some of the outstanding people whose sites I have seen. Before I get to The Token Fat Girl, let me explain why I didn't expect to find what I found:

There is a stigma attached to being overweight. Interpersonal and work related discrimination against overweight people pervades our society [1]. Whether it's finding a sex partner or a salary, if you are female and have a BMI north of 30, your weight alone reduces your chances compared with a peer of normal weight. And don't think for a moment that my colleagues from the health and medical sciences are free from such bias. One in 4 nurses reports being repulsed by obese patients [2], and exercise science students show a strong bias against obese people, equating obesity with laziness [3]. The frequently used before-after portraits of successful weight reducers have been found to reinforce the belief that weight loss is a matter of volition, which in turn reinforces the stigmatization of the overweight [4]. This bias has become so pervasive in our society that even obese people themselves now endorse the fat=lazy equation [5]. Uncharacteristically for my otherwise more colloquial blog I include here the references to my statements. For one simple reason: To take the wind out of the sails of those who would otherwise eloquently try to summarily refute my statements.  

Now, what's my point? With this type of agony load, wouldn't we rightly expect the obese person to simply change her lifestyle if this change was really up to her free will - her volition - to make? Yes we would. The fact that most obese people really WANT to be slim but never seem to get there should, however, make us question the power of free will over our health behaviors, particularly the dietary and exercise behaviors. Let me illustrate that point a little more.

If the volition-behavior assumption was true, children would change their fattening behaviors once the agony load from being obese crosses a threshold at which they would be motivated to actively pursue weight loss. This agony load is indeed high for the obese child. In fact it has been found to be equal to that of child cancer patients receiving chemo therapy [6]. Yet the percentage of obese children and adolescents has more than tripled over the past 40 years.

So my question to the stigmatizers, to those who believe in the fat=lazy equation, is: if obesity was a result of behavior, and if health behavior is a matter of choice, then why do children and adults choose to be ostracized, stigmatized and victimized?

Obviously our health behaviors are driven by something more powerful than volition alone. I will address this issue in a separate blog entry.

What I want to highlight here is the extraordinary guts of people like The Token Fat Girl, who proudly present themselves and address their weight openly and publicly. Not only is her courage admirable, but so is the frankness with which she approaches her life. I quote from her site: " I've struggled with being overweight or obese my entire life and while I don't agree that I can be obese and healthy, I do believe that it shouldn't stop me from living a pretty decent life." Here is a girl with an admirable sense of reality. A girl with that attitude would certainly solve her weight issues if those were solvable by volition only. 

This issue is at the core of my work. I have a pretty clear model about what drives our health behaviors. That model was part of my dissertation work. I also believe that our strategy of helping people to train a 6th sense for their daily calorie balance is a promising alternative to diets and weight loss fads. I would love to enroll people like the Token Fat Girl into our chronic health project. So if you know somebody who fits this description, give them my contact.  

   

1.           Carr, D. and M.A. Friedman, Is obesity stigmatizing? Body weight, perceived discrimination, and psychological well-being in the United States. J Health Soc Behav, 2005. 46(3): p. 244-59.

2.           Puhl, R. and K.D. Brownell, Bias, Discrimination, and Obesity. Obesity Res, 2001. 9(12): p. 788-805.

3.           Chambliss, H.O., C.E. Finley, and S.N. Blair, Attitudes toward obese individuals among exercise science students. Med Sci Sports Exerc, 2004. 36(3): p. 468-74.

4.           Geier, A.B., M.B. Schwartz, and K.D. Brownell, "Before and after" diet advertisements escalate weight stigma. Eat Weight Disord, 2003. 8(4): p. 282-8.

5.           Wang, S.S., K.D. Brownell, and T.A. Wadden, The influence of the stigma of obesity on overweight individuals. Int J Obes Relat Metab Disord, 2004. 28(10): p. 1333-7.

6.           Schwimmer, J.B., T.M. Burwinkle, and J.W. Varni, Health-Related Quality of Life of Severely Obese Children and Adolescents. JAMA, 2003. 289(14): p. 1813-1819.

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