Originally Posted by
Veyne
Never? Sweeping generalizations ahoy!
I'm overweight and take full responsibility due to years of a sedentary lifestyle and over-consumption of soda.
But they're not entirely wrong. Genetics and other factors do play a pretty big part in weight gain. Even running the heat during winter and the air during summer causes our hypothalamus to not have to work nearly as hard to regulate our body temperature, which is a pretty substantial contribution to our basal metabolic rate.
The studies are there to find. The same conclusion has been reached by multiple sources. First and foremost, despite what the media makes it out to be, it's not just an American problem. ALL first-world countries with the same modern conveniences and factory-food as America has shown dramatic increases in the obesity rates across the whole population, and studies indicate that we, as a whole, are putting on weight much more quickly than the average daily lifestyle and caloric intake suggests we should, so other things outside of just over eating and lack of exercise are contributing.
This being said, genetics DO NOT make a person MORBIDLY OBESE. If you're so fat that you can't walk, and you don't have some kind of freak metal condition which causes humongous tumor growths, you have no one to blame for yourself. Genetics and other outlying factors simply make it easier to put the wait on and harder to take it off. There are also the psychological factors. Some people can become addicted to food. And yes, while addiction is almost always the addicted person's fault, once that addiction clicks, it becomes considerably harder to break those bad habits.
I've been working at it for 2 years now, and have lost about 30 pounds total. Every day my coworker that's as thin as a toothpick and does nothing but lounge around outside of work comes in each morning with McDonalds breakfast and leaves to get more fastfood for lunch. And these are not small meals by any means. And he's always sipping on soda and usually makes two trips to the vending machines per day to grab a bag of chips.
And here I am, eating no more than 1600-1800 calories a day and try to get at least 20-30 minutes of physical activity in a day, and I'm still pretty hefty. Of course, people tell me all the time I look nowhere near as heavy as my weight indicates, but I also have a large frame and I lift weights, which might account for a LITTLE bit of it, but with all this effort, I should definitely have lost more than 30 pounds so far in the last year or so.
But hey, at least I AM making progress. Slowly, but surely.
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At the end of the day, though, personal accountability should be a part of everyone's life. Not just for certain things, but for everything.