The Role of Hormones and Environment

The problem is likely that there's something wrong with the message we're giving people the information we're giving people and the food environment that we're finding ourselves in which is dominated by this sort of calories in calories out thinking And what's really unfair of course is that we put the blame on the obesity or overweight on the individual And we say well they let themselves go and they didn't watch themselves They weren't careful It's their fault And that's the stigma that comes with this whole calories in calories out thinking because we say it's their fault because they could choose what they eat It's like yes they could choose what they eat But they didn't choose the food environment that is telling them to eat all this ultra processed food that is making all this ultra processed food available to them that is telling them that all this ultra processed food is good for you So leptin is this hormone that essentially brings down my hunger makes me less hungry Is it therefore possible that People are becoming leptin resistant There is leptin resistance The question again is why And the way to think about it is it's sort of this sort of balance right So insulin if you give people insulin like if you think about causes of obesity what causes people to gain weight Well if I give you insulin you'll gain weight If I give me insulin I'll gain weight So insulin causes weight gain whereas leptin will cause the opposite So it's sort of this seesaw Body fat is nothing more or less than a store of energy right And you only store energy when your body tells you Our entire body runs on hormones right Nothing happens without the hormonal system being activated So insulin is pushing us to gain weight leptin is pushing us to lose weight and what's happening is that one is sort of overcoming the other Insulin is overcoming the leptin If obesity isn't about a lack of willpower and it isn't just a case of people being lazy or all those things that sometimes some people stereotypically assert I've also heard the counter-argument that obesity is a function of our genetic makeup and we inherit obesity from our parents you know Is there any truth in merit in that It's yes and no so yes There is a very strong genetic predisposition to obesity So if you take somebody with a family history and look at the genetics about 70 percent of your risk of becoming obese is due to genetics And we know that from twin studies for example What do we know from twin studies If you take twins and raise them in different environments you know they actually turn out very similarly So we know that there's a genetic component to obesity