Lil
Well-Known Member
Lil. The research is showing that it is hormonal. That the body is geared to replace the lost weigh. It is not a matter of self-control.
Yeah. Sorry. Not buying it.
Is there a large genetic component? Yes. Do hormones play a part? Of course. When you are stressed you will hold on to weight. When your metabolism changes, you will hold on to weight.
But to say it's not a matter of self-control and personal responsibility sounds like something our kids would spout. "I'm an alcoholic because it's in my genes! I can't help it!" Well if you never started drinking, you wouldn't have become an alcoholic, regardless of your genes.
My mom was fat, my grandma was fat. My family is largely made up of big people. But my mother also cooked breakfast every single day that consisted of sausage or bacon or ham, eggs, hash browns, some kind of bread; toast, biscuits, sweet rolls, fruit, and milk! Dinners were much the same, meat, potatoes, at least two veggies, bread and butter and always desert! We had a saying that if we ate every single thing on the table - not cleaned our plates, cleaned the table! - that tomorrow would be a good day.
Mom grew up eating that way, because when you do hard physical labor every day on a farm, (in other words, exercise) you burn off enough calories to do that. But we didn't do hard physical labor. We had a farm, but it was small and dad did most the work alone. Dad wasn't fat. I've always been extremely sedentary. I'd rather sit and read a book than play outside as a kid and I sit on my butt all day now. If I didn't still eat like a farmhand, or if I worked as hard as one, I would not weigh 280+ lbs.
To maintain, calories in need to = calories out. To lose, eat less than you burn, to gain - eat more than you burn.
Quite simply, I eat more than I burn.