Size, genetics and whether it's all our fault.

[OrmIrian]

How much importance does genetics play in your size(how fat you are, not build) as you age. It seems to me that the older I get the easier it is for me to keep weight off. I was expecting to end up like my mum - apple-shaped and increasingly big as the years go by. But it seems that I am taking more after my dad's family - tall, large built and quite slim. With no real attempt to do anything about it. And I've got friends who seem to get bigger as they age so that they resemble their mothers/fathers. Even though they don't eat hugely and take reasonable amounts of exercise.

Does it really make a difference? Or is it just down to your lifestyle.

I think it's probably a mixture of both. We can't do much about where our bones are or what shape we fall into, but we can have a bit of influence over the size of that shape.

I'm quite a lot bigger than I was, not like my mum at all, although I am pretty active and don't eat all that much. My dad is quite overweight, but I think he enjoys his food and drink too much.

I reckon a lot of it probably is genetic, but we find our lives in situations which can change things!

blabebla - thanks for the lone reply

Of course lifestyle contributes something. But I do think that it's easier for some than others. At least that's how it seems to me.

Interesting, this one. Were you, like me, not an absolute slip of a girl? I've never, I now realise, been as fat as I thought I was - but the real difference has been that I'm not massively bigger now, at 45, than I was at 25; I weigh much the same - maybe a few pounds more - although obviously age and sodding children have played havoc with my norks and waistline.

Mind you, I can't ascribe it to my mother, who is bloody tiny, has (I now realise) major Food Ishoos and was always distinctly embarrassed about my alleged heffalumpitude.

The big difference has to be lifestyle, people are getting fatter and fatter, on average, and they have inherited genes from their far slimmer ancestors.

The people I know of my age who are the same size and fitness, more or less, as when they were 18, are the ones who exercise. I'm the same shape and weight and fitness as at 18 (but like MI, perhaps, I wasn't a waif at 18).

Oh never, never been a 'slip'. Rofl at the thought Being 5'11" and large of shoulder I could never be that. But apart from a period after my 3rd baby i have never been overweight. I'm slimmer than I've ever been since I was in me late teens. And like you looking back I realise I was never as fat as I thought. Whilst friends around me are expanding year by year, I have got thinner. It just seems odd, counter-intuitive somehow.

fennel - exercise has to be the key. Running in my case. That has made the difference for me. But it doesn't always make so much difference for everyone.

Very genetic, I think.

Just comparing self with partner can demonstrate it - dh doesn't eat (proportionally) masses more than me, and he takes lots more exercise (at the moment), but he is still stuck with A Tum that is patently that of his ancestors.

(I don't claim to not have one, obviously, but with care mine can be disguised - not his.)

Thinking about DH's family. All the women get big after the age of about 30. Without exception. Despite dieting and exercise.

Oh, yes, I was going to agree about different effects of exercise - I think the differing effects (where it gets you, how quickly, etc.) are genetic too.

So when dh exercises, he gets biceps and thighs and so on (but not materially less tum); when I exercise, I get hollows under my ribs from the first class but it takes my bum months to be affected.

But these expanding friends, are they running several times a week and still expanding? IME, people who do take exercise properly don't really expand. (having children doens't count, or breastfeeding, those are Expanding Activities for many of us). But, having children aside, most of the people who I see expanding are not the ones running marathons or training for triathlons or cycling miles to work.

Arses are exercise proof IME. When I've been running a lot by arse looks as it belongs to a different woman. And she didn't want it.

I agree fennel. It tends to be once a week classes or a few gentle gym sessions. Plus normal walking and housework. But according to the govt that's all that's needed. Like f* it is!

Ahem: Bink, you look much the same size to me as you were at 20. And I cannot say you have ever struck me as a Major Bum-owner.

Well that's just not true, that a bit of gentle walking and housework will make you fit and slim. The government knows it but is trying to get people to be not totally sedentary without scaring them.

And for the dieting, we know that diets don't work, so it's not surprising that people constantly dieting are expanding. That's expectable. (and it's why I harp on about exercise not dieting).

I think the amount of food one eats has a lot to do with it (that sounds more obvious and 'dumber' than I meant it to! )...

What I mean is, our metabolisms change as we age, so that eating the same amounts as you did in your mid-twenties might be too much in your forties, regardless of how much exercising you do (unless you do Olympian quantities of exercising, like Michael Phelps, or something...).

My dad, for instance, doesn't eat more than he did when he was younger, but he looks like he's about to give birth!

Some medication has an effect too: again, my dad is on steroid inhalers for asthma, and recent studies have shown that people on this type of medication tend to put on weight and struggle to lose it.

Diets don't work in the sense of drastic or weird crash-dieting doesn't work; but exercise on its own doesn't tend to lose you weight, not unless you're really up to serious-athlete standards.

Mr Inferior has a Generic Bengali tum.

Also, I think people radically underestimaate the cumulative effect of just a little too much over a long time...

I drank - too much, a couple of glasses a night - for 3 years, and wondered why, when I stood on the scales, I was suddenly 11.5 stones. I cut out the booze, pretty much entirely, and within a year I was down to 9.5 stones.

I think the difference between dieting and exercise is that one is about denial, and the other is about doing something positive. It's hard to feel positive about constantly saying no to yourself and it will come to grief eventually. But a good long run will make me feel fantastic.

BTW MI I am not up to serious athlete standard. By any means.

I think a lot of it is genetics, although obviously it can be fought. There was a study recently looking at adults who were adopted and comparing their BMI with both their adoptive parents and their birth parents which found that it is the BMI of the birth parents that significantly affected the BMI of the adult adoptees. The BMI of the adoptive parents had no significant effect at all.

All my aunts and female cousins on my Dad's side are a very similar shape to me, we all find it hard to loose weight and have huge skeletons (big wrists, shoulders, rib cages etc). It's interesting that I've been loosing weight, but my shape hasn't changed at all (big tummy, tiny hips and bum, average boobs).

Proper amounts of Exercise and Healthy sensible eating without dieting, is my boring but sustainable answer.

But that doesn't sell many magazines does it? the boring facts.

I have read that metabolism doesn't actually slow down much with age, the difference is mainly due to lifestyle and activity levels.

anyway, I still think that people do blame genetics or metabolism when really it's inactivity. I don't have brilliant skinny genes, not at all. If I don't exercise and eat reasonably sensibly, I get fat.

Oh - ok! Have clearly been suckered in!

I try to re-state the boring facts as often as I can

While working so many hours at my current sodding job writing about Healthy Exercise that I can't do my thrice-weekly mile swim and watch my thighs expand

The alcohol metabolism thing is yet another genetic proof: I'm currently quite a bit slighter than I have been for ages, and I am, ahem, not drinking less - if you counted it up, probably (a bit too much) more. I have a friend who thinks giving up drinking for Lent is all a big sell - because she always does, and she gains weight!

fennel - perhaps you can answer this question for me. If I exercise quite hard regularly, is it possible that I will lose weight/maintain even when eating quite a lot? Because that is my experience. It took me a long time to accept that weight loss was just happening - I even went to the GP to see if their was something wrong . Does it effect the metabolism on an ongoing basis?

No, I will need better evidence than these anecdotes. Occasionally I give up wine, sort of, to see if it will make a difference, and I never lose weight. Because when I don't pour myself a glass of wine I nibble instead on cheese and biscuits, or chocolate, or crisps. So I substitute calories. Other people will give up wine and not fill in with the cheese. It's not metabolism. It's my evening urge towards nibbling or drinking.