Thorough studies and extensive research have determined that you may be overweight or obese due to heredity. Everyone from doctors to dietitians proclaim that you gain weight and/or get fat due to genetics. Even though your parents, grandparents, and even great grandparents were healthy and at an ideal weight, you can inherit this "genetic fat gene". *enter sarcasm here* They reason, "it's not your fault", to make you feel better.
How does that strike you? This should down right anger you that they are spending millions of dollars to "prove" that you are genetically predisposed to be heavy with the inability to lose weight. You've literally been brainwashed by leading officials in the "health care industry" that you gain weight due to a genetic disposition. On top of that, they want to create a drug to combat this "genetic fat gene". This is along the same lines as, "if heart disease run in your family, there's a great chance you'll get it too". I'm sorry, but that's a load of crap. Families inherit eating traditions and unhealthy lifestyle habits. If you follow an unhealthy eating pattern, you will suffer the same risk factors and consequences as your parents and grandparents. If you change your eating, you can change your health and well-being.
When the "health care industry" tells you that you have a "genetic fat gene", you will be more likely to tolerate weight issues and accept prescribed drugs to "balanced" the condition for the rest of your life. What a brilliant marketing plan. They take themselves and you out of the equation, and blame weight issues on something beyond your control.
My primary question is, if obesity began to increase at an alarming rate in the last 25 years, where was that fat gene then? Why did it all of a sudden become an issue? Is the fat gene contagious? Is there a fat gene epidemic?
When the pharmaceutical industry funds certain "studies" and "researches", drawing out conclusions that are beyond one's control without the aid of drugs, something is wrong. There is a lack of true science involved in most researching, simply because they are focused on the result they want. By manipulating time, subjects, amounts, etc., ANY study can be created with any result they want.
Breaking the Silence
Granted, heredity can play a great role in weight issues, but it does not determine whether you will be skinny or fat. These factors can be broken down into body types and body shapes. What I can say is your diet and exercise can be based on these two factors to create the type of body you desire.
Some causes of weight gain can be contributed to overeating, carbohydrate abuse (past or present), eating too much processed food, lack of exercise, etc. As you can see, these are learned or acquired behaviors. You don't pop out of the womb with these traits.
There is another side to the equation, such as medical issues, including metabolic challenges due to hypothyroidism, sluggish liver, improperly functioning pancreas, sluggish digestive track, medications, and so on. I will tap on a few of these later.
How to Battle the Bulge
Dietitians, physicians and other "experts" declare that to lose weight you must eat fewer calories and exercise more. Burn more calories than you eat. Of course, that sounds logical.
Another panel of "experts" suggests that to lose weight you have to reduce the amount of fat you eat, because we all know that fat makes you fat, right? This too sounds logical.
So there you have it. In order to lose weight you have to lower calories and fat, and exercise more. Now, if we lower calories and fat, we are left with eating only carbohydrates and protein. Pardon my sarcasm, but isn't the latest trend in the weight loss and fitness industry, that carbs make you fat?
Therefore, we are left with cutting calories, fat, and carbs, and doing a lot of exercise. That must be the secret to weight loss. I'm sure many of you have tried this method only to lose muscle and energy and ended up a smaller version of your previous fat self. Right?
After a quick scan of our top "expert's advice", we realize that they are all wrong.
Statistics show that what we are being taught about weight loss is not working. Rather than giving us true facts about how to master fat loss, we are being told that it's in our genes. How absurd is that? Look at all the success stories of people who were over weight and even obese that ate right and exercised and lost fat. What happened to their fat gene?
Revealing the Truth
No matter what, the truth is usually the hardest thing to face. So, what's the truth about fat loss? Technically, it's your body's chemistry. Your body chemistry determines how your body responds to food. The benefit to this is that you can alter your body chemistry and make it work in your favor. The detriment is that you can also alter your body chemistry and make it worse, causing weight gain.
This is where it's important to know how to play the weight loss game. The secret is in understanding how your body responds to certain macronutrients (protein, fat, and carbs) and using that information to manipulate the body into burning fat.
There are many factors affecting one's weight loss, and many of these issues have not even surfaced through the media or magazines. Specifically engineered diet foods and other processed foods are one of the leading causes you may be overweight or have a difficult time losing weight, not a genetic fat gene. The majority of the population is consuming chemically altered substances called, food. These man-made food imitations are loaded with various toxins, such as sugar, artificial sweetners, MSG, and many other chemicals that prevent the body from breaking them down to use or dispose of. These toxins literally clog your body's systems, alter your body's pH, and virtually pollute your body to the point where it can't lose fat or retain muscle. To make a bad story worse, these chemicals (additives) causes illness and diseases.
Today, people are eating diet foods by the truck loads for that extra weight loss advantage. These foods are labeled, "fat-free", "low-calorie", "cholesterol-free", "sugar-free", ""low-carb", "carb-free", etc. Why aren't people losing weight on this stuff? It is marketed to those interested in losing weight. These diet food products to lose weight and be healthy that couldn't even be manufactured 50 years ago. The dirty little secret about these wonderful diet foods is that the food industry is putting ingredients in food products to make you hungry and make you addicted. Now, it's not just diet foods only. Anything processed contains chemicals to work against the body and cause adverse reactions.
Envision this. You are composed of 73 trillion cells that are engineered to be healthy. Cells perform all the fundamental functions of life. These cells carry out daily tasks to keep you healthy and alive. A healthy and clean diet rich in natural foods produced by Mother Nature will equal healthy cells that function optimally. On the other hand, a polluted diet composed of processed and commercial diet foods including deli cuts, anything boxed or canned, fast food, and such will yield polluted cells that don't function as they were engineered to.
Simply stated, your body is designed to breakdown and digest natural foods, those you can hunt, gather, fish, and pick. When you put a foreign food in your body (processed), your cells don't have the ability to break it down and digest it. This foreign matter can't be used to rebuild the body's tissues, and these toxins just hang around in your body, clogging up your system and altering your pH. When your body can't rebuild itself with a toxic diet, it will turn on itself to feed its needs. This literally means that your body will rob your bone and organs to get the enzymes it needs to survive.
Therefore, when you develop osteoporosis at a young age, look at your diet. Is your diet high in processed foods, which lack and rob calcium? Are you eating enough natural vegetables that are calcium rich? Osteoporosis is not genetic, it's acquired. When you develop heart disease before the age of 40, take a good hard look at your diet. Your body doesn't care where it gets the enzymes, as long as it gets it. If this means robbing Peter to pay Paul, it will do it! Before you go blaming your parents and grandparent's, take a look at your own eating habits first. It's not your fault. "Conventional-wisdom" has deceived you.
Failure to Inform
Why isn't this in the news? Why isn't our doctors' telling us this? With the cost of insurance and doctor visits, you would think they would enlighten us rather than telling us we have inherited a genetic fat gene.
Well, one reason your doctor doesn't tell you this is because they are taught very little, virtually two clock hours of nutrition in medical school. Doctors are taught how to write prescriptions and do surgical procedures in medical school. If our bodies survive on food, which is comprised of vitamins, minerals, enzymes, then why do they dismiss the very essentials that we are built on and our bodies thrive on? They simply don't know.
The United States is number 37 on the World Health Index and in the top 5 in technology. With all our technology, why are we so overweight, out of shape, sick and diseased? Why is our health at stake? A new drug is not the answer. Obviously all their studies and research aren't doing much good. The public is being kept in the closet on fitness, nutrition, and health. The true scientific facts are being suppressed, at the cost of your waistline and health. Angry yet?
Metabolic Weight-Loss Challenges
Earlier I mentioned certain conditions that could be hindering your weight loss endeavors, such as a poor functioning liver or pancreas and such. Not always, but generally your filtering and metabolic organs can become toxic and prevent them from functioning optimally. Usually people go straight to their doctor to get the latest drug or surgery, but before you do, give detoxifying a try. Often times our bodies run under par due to the amount of toxins we receive from processed foods, personal hygiene, and/or polluted air and water. Toxins need to be flushed out because they get trapped and stored in fat cells. They can bloat you, alter your pH, prevent fat loss, and cause a whole host of illnesses and diseases. A simple detoxifying program can purge all the impurities out of your body and allow it to operate as it was intended to do.
Bust out of Those Phat Genes
Now that you know that you are not genetically predisposed to be overweight, you can look into eating more natural foods and detoxifying your system to get your body to work with you, and not against you.
About The Author
Karen Sessions has been in the fitness industry since 1988 and is a certified personal fitness instructor and specialist in performance nutrition. She is a nationally qualified natural female bodybuilder, holding numerous titles in the southern states including two overalls.
Karen has written six e-books on fitness. She also writes articles for several fitness websites, and distributes two monthly newsletters regarding weight loss and female bodybuilding.