Why do us apies tend to gain weight?

Post Reply New Topic

Evolution wants to keep fat on your body. Native Americans (Indians) have a
thrifty gene that allows better use of food. That was fine for thousands of years
but now when there is ample food and machines doing the hard labour obesity
is very high in Native Americans. Thats not a real choice to be fat. What
we do can not be explained by real choice. Laziness is evolutionary. Burn enough
energy to get more food then rest. To tell your body to burn energy when it wants
to store it is trying to fight a billion years of evolution. In the US the natural
execise has been completely removed. People use cars more than anywhere.
That means to get any exercise you must tell your body to burn energy for no
reason and your biology thinks thats crazy and it will try to stop you. If you try to
strave yourself your biology will lowwer its metabolic rate.

I was on Risperdal for 8 years, and I gained a lot of weight. Tomorrow I am going to be put on a weight loss medication, and a different med. to where I won't gain weight.

Cortisol. It changes all your metabolic functions.

And since Aspies tend to suffer from Depression and Anxiety Disorders, we're under stress much more often than NTs. Chronic stress causes cortisol highs and lows.

I'm not trying to make excuses for anyone, I was only making an observation about why a higher percentage of aspies might be overweight (though I have no evidence to suggest that more aspies than NTs are overweight, I was only answering the initial question). What I was getting at with my post was the fact that many people are overweight simply because they eat more than they need to and don't get enough exercise to burn off those excess calories, and social anxiety can (but doesn't necessarily have to) lead one to not get the exercise they need. If a person is overweight and knows the reasons why as well as the necessary steps to deal with the problem but still does nothing about it then they are making excuses, but first they need to identify the critical factors which lead them to be overweight. In my post I was intending to only illuminate what one of those factors could be.

Excuses and explanations are similar but different in an important way. An excuse is an explanation which denies any personal responsibility.

Eating food that is high in fat and sugar makes you feel good.

Given that humans are essentially pleasure seekers, pain avoiders, then basic pleasure seeking can lead to eating too much of the now readily available high fat and sugar foods. And the more you have of it the more you want. And the fatter you get, the less well your appetite works ie you never feel full. And then you get diabetes, and the whole system is completely stuffed.

People who get depressed are more prone to seek this kind of quick pleasure than others, and of course, if you get really fat, that itself will make you depressed and want to eat.

The trick here is to displace the urge. Going for a nice brisk walk for 30 minutes will also make you feel good. So do that instead of eating.

But once you're in the over eating bad food rut, it is really hard to get out by yourself.

And there is definitely truth about the thrifty gene - anyone who came from an ancestory that regularily had food shortages, ie American Indians, Irish peasants, Spanish peasants, Portuguese peasants, Polynesians, Africans - will likely have the gene that metabolises your food extremely efficiently. You so much as sniff a deep fried potato and it goes straight onto your hips. You can watch your friend with the inefficient genes pig out on high fat food and stay skinny but you can't eat the same and stay skinny. This gene does make you a very efficient endurance athlete, and it also means that if you're stuck in a life boat without any food you will live and your inefficient friend will die.

So if you've got the thrifty gene, and you want to eat whatever you want, consider taking up triathlon competition as well.

I never got fat.

I concur. All of the aspies I know in real life are thin (I don't live in the U.S.), so maybe being fat is common in the U.S. for both NTs and aspies?

I have never weighed more than 130 lbs.

And I'm 6' 0"

I don't think it has anything to do with AS. Now if you are depressed, that can be connected to weight gain (or weight loss, depending). And then not nearly all people with AS are depressed.

It's going to have much more to do with your metabolism, eating habits and exercise (but primarily metabolism). Personally, my metabolism is extremely high, so I have to lift weights because muscle is the only kind of weight I can retain (and even that is really tough to keep if I don't stay at it).

So it's nothing to do with being AS? Ok then so does Depression and meds get you to gain weight?

Yeah, in so much as depression can impact your exercise and eating habits, while meds could also impact both those things plus your metabolism. That's what I mean; I think the issue is too multi-faceted to shoulder the blame on one thing (AS). The question is, what is the main factor and which of the other factors are just aggravating the situation.

The first thing you need to ask yourself is, does being overweight run in the family and or why? This can tell you if it's just something in the culture of the family or if it's a genetic problem. If your metabolism is based on genetics, then it's going to be somewhat difficult. Running, aerobic exercise and eating right is not likely going to be enough and you probably won't ever be small -- if that's the case, then it's just not in the cards.

But it doesn't have to be a total loss, because in that case you are also capable of becoming a muscular behemoth of man. Weightlifting and some minor aerobics while eating right would be the order of the day. The easy side to this is, aerobics and running can be much harder than weightlifting. The down side to weightlifting is getting started and maintaining through the early stages, primarily because you're going to have to admit something that few men can -- that you initially aren't very strong. It's okay, because every guy has to do this to some extent when he starts weightlifting. Everybody has to start somewhere. You do that by saying, "Hey, someday I'm going to be a muscular juggernaut. It won't happen tomorrow, but it will happen if I stay at it." Eventually, the weightlifting becomes an activity you look forward to. But it's important (more so than aerobics or running) that you do your research and do it right, because it is easier to injure yourself weight training if you don't know what you are doing. I would recommend you find a caring person who has a facination for weight training just for the science itself, who's not going to make you feel bad about being weak innitially, but rather propel you to accel. There are trainers, particularly more on the medical side who are like this.

If the rest of your family is midsized, then it's some genetics with the primary factors either being depression or meds. If everyone in your family is really thin, then that's a huge red flag that it could be something you are taking in, not just food (i.e. meds), because some outside factor has blown the hell out of your innate metabolism. In that case you figure out if it's the depression and or the meds. You may want to speak to your doctor about trying something else, if that hasn't been attempted and failed. Even if that somewhat helps, that innate metabolism may not ever be achievable again, in which case proceed back to the muscular juggernaut model.

The key is there are lots of factors that you have to recognize and attack simultaneously. Then you have to accept a positive image you can achieve (there is always something for everyone). Then you have to realize it's going to take a lot of hard work. Work you aren't going to think you are capable of, but then you push yourself only to find you've got more then you realized.

It's a process. Whether you give up or not is the deciding factor in which you have control.

Thanks phoenixjsu you're a life saver.

Anytime.

I'm at a good weight for my height now (120 lbs at 5' 2"), but I was very underweight as a kid because I was on medication for my nonexistant ADD that caused me to lose all my appetite.

Mostly I forget to eat, but when I do I tend to eat healthily (my favorite snacks are celery and rice-cakes). I know I need to exercise more and eat more regularly!

When I was on Paxil (3 terrible weeks), I gained a lot of weight.
When I was on Lorezepam, I lost a lot of weight.

I'm on Buspar now, and I've been steadily losing it.


...even though I'm at the point where I don't want to weigh any less.

I find indoor exercise absolutely mind numbing. If I do it for any period of time, I feel like I'm on some unnecessary stimulant (bad feeling) or I get head pressure. I can go for walks but I get tired of an area quite quickly and lose motivation to do it. My only outlet has been hiking, but because I need fresh, rewarding scenery and I live around DC, I have to drive over an hour to get anywhere worthwhile and do so at most twice a week. (And still the gas money kills me!) It's also a way to get away from most anything human or social -- very attractive. During warm periods I tend to maintain my weight, but during winter and "lock downs" to get procrastinated homework done I pack on the pounds. I guess I've tacked on about 10 new pounds each year for the last 3. That is, my last major weight loss was when I contracted "walking pneumonia" and starved myself for a couple weeks until I coughed blood. The main reason for my gains is that I'm a very anxious, self-critical person, who habitually eats when nervous (although I try to count calories on most days).