Glynda
TUG Member
- Joined
- Jun 8, 2005
- Messages
- 3,874
- Reaction score
- 2,684
- Location
- Charleston, SC
- Resorts Owned
-
Bluegreen Points Lodge Alley Inn.
Brewster Green (two weeks).
Genetics
I am one of nine children. Only the last three were raised together and they were raised by our birth mother, who died at thirty-nine, and two step-mothers. Six of us were privately given up for adoption at birth or shortly after. We were raised up and down the East Coast and in California. Our heritage is primarily Northern European. Icelandic, Swedish and Irish.
Our birth mother was obese. Upon discovering each other as adults, it was learned that seven of the nine are/were obese. Of the two who had never been obese, one was asthmatic from childhood and had her first heart attack in her thirties. She died after her seventh heart attack last year. The other possibly spent years in the drug culture and is now overweight. I can not help but believe genetics are strongly at play here and wonder had the circumstances of those two been different they too would have also been obese at some point in time. One may still achieve that status.
I have struggled with my weight from the birth of our daughter onward. At one time I was considered obese. I am now somewhere towards the lower end of overweight. However, it is a daily battle and I weary of it. As I think the articles pointed out, and some here have tried to state, at some point the level of dieting and exercise which has proved successful no longer does. The metabolism adjusts. One must then must either eat even less and/or move more. At what point as we age and/or develop physical problems is this no longer possible to maintain? Have we done more harm to ourselves by the "yo-yo dieting" over the years than had we maintained an overweight status at some point rather than diet ourselves either to obesity or diet and exercise ourselves to deprivation and possible physical injury only to find more is required to maintain the status? I wish I knew how to just maintain the status quo at this point.
I am one of nine children. Only the last three were raised together and they were raised by our birth mother, who died at thirty-nine, and two step-mothers. Six of us were privately given up for adoption at birth or shortly after. We were raised up and down the East Coast and in California. Our heritage is primarily Northern European. Icelandic, Swedish and Irish.
Our birth mother was obese. Upon discovering each other as adults, it was learned that seven of the nine are/were obese. Of the two who had never been obese, one was asthmatic from childhood and had her first heart attack in her thirties. She died after her seventh heart attack last year. The other possibly spent years in the drug culture and is now overweight. I can not help but believe genetics are strongly at play here and wonder had the circumstances of those two been different they too would have also been obese at some point in time. One may still achieve that status.
I have struggled with my weight from the birth of our daughter onward. At one time I was considered obese. I am now somewhere towards the lower end of overweight. However, it is a daily battle and I weary of it. As I think the articles pointed out, and some here have tried to state, at some point the level of dieting and exercise which has proved successful no longer does. The metabolism adjusts. One must then must either eat even less and/or move more. At what point as we age and/or develop physical problems is this no longer possible to maintain? Have we done more harm to ourselves by the "yo-yo dieting" over the years than had we maintained an overweight status at some point rather than diet ourselves either to obesity or diet and exercise ourselves to deprivation and possible physical injury only to find more is required to maintain the status? I wish I knew how to just maintain the status quo at this point.