YOU on a diet - The Heavyweight Fight: Genetics Versus Environment

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The Heavyweight Fight: Genetics Versus Environment It's easy to argue that lifestyle choices and the lack of willpower are responsible for weight problems (it's the argument that lean people tend to make). But it doesn't explain the 95 percent failure rate after two years of people who have lost fifty pounds or more; they had plenty of willpower to lose but regained the weight nonetheless. Researchers argue that obesity is more genetically linked than any other trait except height - and at least 50 percent of obesity cases clearly have genetic components. Our take: The waist control game requires two players - environment and genetics. Even if your genes have made you predestined for a life of taking up two seats, that doesn't mean you should abdicate control over you body. When you make the right behavioral and biological changes that we outline, you'll be able

to stay healthy and avoid the bad side effects of excess weight, like diabetes, high blood pressure (hypertension) , and arterial inflammation. While 10 percent of the obese population has genetic challenges that may make a supermodel contract impossible, the bigger risk with these genes is not in the weight itself but in the predispositions for risks associated with obesity. For example, one genetic problem associated with being overweight is called leptin deficiency (leptin is a hormone associated with satiety, which we'll discuss in the next chapter). Folks who either don't produce leptin or block its signals usually become morbidly obese, and their problem is surely genetic. While some people have these abnormalities, they tend to be the minority of the population. If you need to worry about losing twenty-five, thirty-five, even fifty pounds, your problem is not likely to be genetic. Only when your excess

weight exceeds one hundred pounds would most doctors consider testing for genetic abnormalities. Still, the example of leptin is only the tip of the scientific iceberg as far as genetics and obesity are concerned. As the fight against obesity continues, we'll see more and more drug companies target genetic reasons for weight gain - that is, drugs that attack the genetic biochemical problems that may be contributing to your weight problem. That said, the onus of waist management still falls on you, to improve your environment and your behaviors so that your genetics can work for you, not against you. You Test Remember Your Ancestry Some people say their family has big bones or big cells. Some say their family has big appetites. Some say their family just has big beer coolers. If you gained weight as an adult, you can get a relatively accurate picture of what your ideal size should be by thinking back about what you looked like when you were eighteen (for women) or twenty-one (for men); a time when you were at your metabolically most efficient and when you weren't stapled to an office chair for sixty hours a week. Most people gain their weight between the ages of twenty-one and sixty, so by looking At your size at

eighteen or twenty-one, you'll have a good, though not quite scientific, idea of your factory settings. It's not perfect, but it's a thumbnail sketch of where you want to be. You can record your waist size (or closest guess) from when you were eighteen, but,more important, think about your shape. Ask your parents about their body sizes - of find pictures of them - when they were eighteen, to help give you a good idea of what you're supposed to look like. YOU Test Stand in front of the Mirror. Naked. Without Sucking in Your Belly. For some of you, this assignment may feel natural, but for most, the exercise is as uncomfortable as a coach-class airline seat. We're having you do this not to benefit the neighborhood peepers, but for two other reasons. First, we want you to realize that we're emphasizing healthy weight. Not fashion-magazine weight, not featherweight, but healthy weight. And we thing that means you have to start getting comfortable with the fact that every woman isn't as light as a kite, and every man won't have the body of McCanoughey. Where you want to be may not be exactly where you body wants you to be. We're not saying you

need to accept a belly that looks like four gallons of melted ice cream, but we want you to get closer to your ideal health-and that means physically and emotionally. Second, we want you to look at your body. Now draw an outline of your body shape (both from the side and front views). Ask a partner or close friend to look at the shape you drew and tell you - honestly - if that's approximately what your body looks like. (Your clothes can be back on at this point.) This is just a quality-control check to make sure you have an accurate self body image. (Those with eating disorders have very distorted body images, making it an obstacle for getting back to a healthy weight.) This might be the first time you've every had to articulate things about what your body looks like-and that's good.