I used to hear this all the time growing up, because in this country our health is just not something that people prioritize. We prioritize what we consider healthy habits, but really it’s just our way of allowing ourselves our indulgences. “I had a salad for lunch.” Which means I can have pizza for dinner on Friday night and a whole box of it too. “I had just a banana for breakfast.” Which means I can have as many drinks as I want at happy hour Thursday night. It’s really behavior like this that puts us in trouble, and once we’re there, we LOVE to blame...our parents. It’s always their fault, right? Growing up in a Mexican culture, people LOVE to blame genetics. “I can’t lose weight, it’s just my genetics.” We would love giving ourselves permission to be overweight. I used to think that was such a cop out. It never made sense to me. I had cousins who thought this way. Well, if it was a genetic fault, then why aren’t the rest of us overweight? I mean - we all came from the same set of grandparents. I always knew there was more to the riddle. Well, just LAST MONTH a study was done in Germany. If you like reading through these type of things...be my guest. For those of you that don’t, I’ll summarize it all in one key sentence: 5 of 56 obesity single-nucleotide variants were statistically significantly associated with changes in body weight, however, ONLY TO A MINOR DEGREE. In this study, ENVIRONMENTAL, SOCIAL, AND BEHAVIORAL factors seem to play a SUBSTANTIAL role in obesity treatment. Weight loss is about one thing and one thing only. Are you consistently eating the right quantity AND quality of foods? That’s it. You can talk until you’re blue in the face but the data just does not bear that out. There’s only 2 genetic mutations that cause weight gain no matter what. Prader Willi syndrome and Bardet-Biedl syndrome. If you have one of those, then yes, your genetics will prevent you from losing weight. The rest of us need to consistently eat a diet of meat and vegetables, nuts and seeds, some fruit, little starch and NO sugar. We need to also weigh and measure (or appropriately portion) our food so we eat enough to support exercise but not body fat. That is it. If you aren’t losing weight, you simply aren’t doing that. To learn more about how you can get your food and nutrition in check to help benefit your everyday life and living, contact us.
