I hear all sorts of excuses for not making the change; but that’s exactly what they are, excuses. However, I do agree with DR on his point regarding making instant changes. Some people need to go cold turkey, others need to make incremental changes. The trick is finding out who belongs to which group.

Good post.

Jay

During my 19+ years of helping people transform their bodies, one of the most important things I learned was to ignore most dietitians / nutritionists.

Up here in Canada, dietitians/nutritionists are paid by their respective provincial health care system. The client does not pay. As a result, the client’s results are not tied to the financial success of the practitioner.

As a result, each patient gets essentially the same advice: Follow Canada’s food guide
http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/fn-an/food-guide-aliment/index_e.html

That’s it. period. no room for discussion

Atkins.bad, juice fast. bad, protein supplements.bad, protein cycling, caloric cycling, no grains, organic….not necessary, destroys your kidneys, etc….

I would love to see the research your nutritionist relied on to arrive at his premise - “that if one goes from eating fast food, ice-cream, candy, chips, and soda every day to trying to eat an all-natural vegan diet, you will fail. Period”

Not every dieter is the same. Some may thrive under this philosophy, while others will fail and just never go back to the doctor.

I always smell B.S. when someone makes an absolute statement like your nutritionist.

http://www.t-nation.com/article/diet_and_nutrition/superfood_super_recipes&cr=

I recently saw a talk by a nutritionist who continually used the phrase “Think big, start small.” His basic premise was that if one goes from eating fast food, ice-cream, candy, chips, and soda every day to trying to eat an all-natural vegan diet, you will fail. Period. But if you start small, like drinking enough water every day and having an extra serving of vegetables and a ten minute walk, that’s the kind of start you can stick with.

Another thing he pointed out is that you can still have ice-cream. If that’s your favorite food, denying it to yourself entirely will only make you binge on it. But if you have it in reasonable amounts at reasonable times and choose an ice-cream that’s better for you, i.e. all natural ingredients and the fewer ingredients the better, then you’re satisfying your cravings and improving your diet where you can.

Again, I think many obese people want a change, but the idea of instantaneous change is daunting.

for him.

because he can pull it off.

MizFit surely could not

Your quote -

This is my first post in a series I’m doing to help disprove the widely held belief that obesity is “caused” by genetics

Caused being the operative word

So, obviously, we’re sympatico on this.

Damn, I was looking forward to a good debate.

You said “I disagree because on the most basic level dis-ease occurs at the cellular/genetic level.”

To what are you disagreeing with?

I don’t believe a disease that starts at the cellular level is always genetic in cause (if that’s what you’re saying). If by the fact that our genes are not strong enough in design to keep our bodies perfect and impervious to any and all disease, then yes, everyones genes are flawed.

But the very simple definition of disease is “an impairment of health or a condition of abnormal functioning”.

You make other good points though that reminded me of some stuff that I forgot to include. I’ll have to add a bit more to the end.

Based upon my research into the subject (theory & practice), I both agree and disagree with your central argument.

I disagree because on the most basic level dis-ease occurs at the cellular/genetic level.

A physical condition like insulin insensitivity is most likely a result of our ancestors genes being the best suited to our former hunter-gatherer lifestyle.

Note - (science by its very nature never ‘proves’ anything, it just disproves other theories)

Change in the human genome is verrryyyy slow and our switch from a H-G lifestyle to an agrarian lifestyle to today’s Bagel-ful lifestyle has happened quickly as our technology has progressed.

Back in the day, it made more sense that when food was plenty, we were efficient at storing excess fuel as fat instead of burning it as energy.

On the other hand, I completely AGREE with your argument because, genetics is not destiny.

As our technology towards producing easily available, calorie dense food stuffs increased, so did our knowledge that putting that ‘modern’ food into our ‘ancient’ bodies made us FAT.

We know that cancer has a genetic component. Two people could both smoke cigarettes for 20 years, and one will get lung cancer, while the other doesn’t. The one with cancer was probably genetically predisposed to cancer.

Now, if the one disposed to cancer had realized that smoking causes cancer, he would have had the opportunity to NOT smoke and avoid the lung cancer altogether.

The same holds true for obesity.

We all know our own bodies. If you can eat whatever you want and never get fat; congratulations. You are built to thrive in this era of plentiful food.

If, however, you gain five pounds, just looking at a bowl of ice cream; DON’T EAT THE ICE CREAM DUMMY!!!!

It’s not rocket science.

Fruits, vegetables, lean protein, water are #1

Nuts, seeds, tea are #2

Basically, the farther away from ‘natural’ that you get, the more likely it will make you fat.

Especially if you are already fat.

For those unlucky people, you need to lose most of the fat (stick to # 1). Once the fat is gone, your insulin sensitivity should be better and you can splurge a little bit.

Genetics isn’t destiny

Great post McBloggenstein