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Home » I knew it all the time: the skinny gene

I knew it all the time: the skinny gene

The New Neo Posted on by

Well, of course. Scientists have discovered that certain people can eat anything and everything and not gain an ounce.

Well, duh. I could have told them that years ago.

In the early 70s I was blessed with three roommates of that sort. It was rather trying listening to them compare notes on the fattening foods they were eating in a vain attempt to pack on the pounds; sort of like eavesdropping on a club I couldn’t join, though I’d have dearly loved to.

Bags of potato chips and candy bars were seeded throughout the house, the better for them to bulk up, but to no avail. They remained very thin—skinny, even. While I? Well, let’s just say I remained “not so very thin”— except when, by force of enormous willpower during my dancing years, I kept my consumption down to one thousand calories a day while exercising like a stevedore.

I can’t really complain, though, because even though I haven’t been blessed with the skinny gene I at least seem to have been blessed with the “more or less average” gene.

At least so far. These things can change, you know. My very own mother was not just skinny but emaciated until she was a young woman. Then she became merely slender, and in midlife she finally reached average, where she has remained. And I have friends who started out skinny and ended up heavy, with no seeming change in eating habits and not even much of a difference in exercise habits. Plus, we’d all do relatively well in a famine.

And those three skinny roommates? Well, I’m still acquainted with them, and guess what? Those genes are holding; they’re still pretty skinny. And think of the fun they’ve had along the way.

Comments

I knew it all the time: the skinny gene — 17 Comments

  3. I married a man with the skinny gene… and my kids both have it. I have the “average” gene so long as I don’t go wild and crazy with eating.

  4. Bags of potato chips and candy bars were seeded throughout the house, the better for them to bulk up, but to no avail.

    I never gained weight from eating unhealthy massive doses of icecream or chips or anything else. The only way I gained weight was through weight training. Women, however, don’t seem to prefer that route for gaining weight. It seems they want the weight or shape of the body, but without the strength…

    So in essence, the only thing they were gaining by eating candy and what not was cholesterol and unhealthy habits.

    And I have friends who started out skinny and ended up heavy, with no seeming change in eating habits and not even much of a difference in exercise habits.

    Their metabolism changed. Metabolism decides how much energy you burn up just by doing nothing. So if your calorie intake did not change and you didn’t change the time of your meals and you did not use up more energy in actions, then your body changed your metabolism.

    And think of the fun they’ve had along the way.

    Not much fun in fights though, Neo. Nor as backups in fights.

  7. No wonder, actually. Simply compare different human races, especially in Africa, where genetical diversity is the reachest: some tribes are skinny, some are fat. This characteristic is obviously inherited. What is more important, basal metabolism is largely determined by carbone acid cycle and respiratory chain, whose genes are located not in nucleus chromosomes, but in mitochondria, so they must be inherited only from maternal line.

  8. In these modern times, skinny equals emaciated. I wonder if the skinny room mates were bulimic. It’s not something people necessarily confide. They may have simply given up the potato chip habit as they aged.

    An efficient way to increase metabolism is through aerobic exercise that works the largest muscles, or so I saw on an old documentary by a biochemist.

    Others have said you live longer if you eat fewer calories. What to do? I don’t think it’s been proven out in humans, the theory is new and likely there’s a few variables to confound the issue. My experience is one feels better with aerobics, and my guess is what’s true for mice who only live a few years and have very high metabolism, isn’t going to work out for people who live much longer.

    If there is a gene that specifically controls for weight, then weight training gives the weight without the fat. Muscle is more dense so there is also less size to go with the weight. This would also strengthen the bones and forestall osteoporosis.

  9. As I see it, people get fat because their bodies think they are in hiberation. After all, if you are sitting in a chair doing office work for hours each day when your body was designed to hunt, travel, and stalk prey for 10-12 hours each day, then when you pig out, your body thinks you are in hibernation/starvation mode. Thus it starts to conserve your resources by lowering your basal metabolism while at the same time increasing hunger paigns to try to motivate the organism to gather more food.

    It would be interesting to see a genealogy study on what happens to the descendents of people that survived famines, such as the Potato Famine in Ireland.

    The skinny gene seems to, and I’m using speculation on this, to prevent the body’s metabolism from going into hibernation or react in any real way to starvation through the formation of fat cells. Perhaps these people’s descendents survived famines or food shortages by kicking themselves into higher gear or something, so they could perhaps travel to more richer pastures or fight more wars for more resources. Their metabolism cannot be hyped up too far when food shortages occur, but as I’ve personally experienced, the metabolism slows down but energy taken in goes into other sources than fat. As Atkins proved, if your body lacks carbs (food shortage), your body will convert fat and protein to carbs, in essence drawing forth more energy. With more energy, your metabolism can go higher.

    Those that get hunger pains and keep eating and then gain weight, are people with metabolisms that don’t change after you get a new source of energy. If your body decides to store energy instead of converting carbs,fat, protein to energy to be used, then you will accumulate fat cells.

  10. Yes…but that’s genetically-driven oft times.

    the DNA does not directly affect the basal metabolism level, as we can see from Neo’s story. Her friends ate more calories, yet they didn’t gain weight. It wasn’t because they exercised and therefore raised their normal metabolism, they were still sitting around and doing regular activities. So it has to mean that basal metabolism increased in response to intake of more calories.

    So based upon that, we can see that basal metabolism is driven directly by outside stimuli. We also know that with meditation practices and trances, you can put your body’s basal metabolism to a lower level. As we see with David Blaine (I think that’s his name, in water bubble for 7 minutes just about).

    I therefore infer that humans, by an act of will, can lower their metabolism and thus it should be possible to do the same thing in raising one’s metabolism.

    Stress with body image tends to produce the need for food or other feel good stuff. Stress is unhealthy and while I’m not sure what it does to a person’s metabolism, I do know it is not good.

    I suspected at the beginning that Atkin’s diet modified a person’s metabolism similar to what some people’s skinny gene did. Regular people convert excess calories to fat. Skinny gene people convert excess calories to something other than fat.

    Atkins wants you to draw down on carbs and raise on proteins and fats. Thus forcing your body to convert calories to carbohydrates, rather than fat. Carbs provide the fuel for your muscles.

    The heat aspect is also interesting. People require calories to maintain their body temperature especially in cold climates. So it might have been useful either way to get fat cells to insulate yourself or to use calories to maintain your body temperature, in certain cold climates. Again, a survival ability.

  11. One should keep in mind that our species for 99% of its evolutionary history just balanced on the brink of starvation. It has no specific genetic adaptation to abundance of food. And signal pathways that control homeostatic response to changing environment are usually long and vulnerable to mutation in every link of the chain. Those who do not accumulate fat when they can, normally must perish first in a famine, so this gene must be relatively rare and became widespread only recently, after agricultural revolution.

  12. The only way I gained weight was through weight training. Women, however, don’t seem to prefer that route for gaining weight. It seems they want the weight or shape of the body, but without the strength…

    There’s a lot of pervasive myth among women that they can’t do real weight training, or else that if they do they’ll look like men, so instead they go through a thousand pointless little exercises with very low weight to “tone”. And, of course, there are those that think that physical weakness is more feminine.

  13. I remember seeing a picture of a woman holding a pullup bar under her chin using only two fingers on each of her hands. She did not look like a man because her musculature was compacted and conditioned for endurance/gymnastics type training.

    In our world however, physical ability is prized less than the appearance of the body. A natural result of not having deathmatches, duels, or anything else requiring the maximization of the human body for survival.

    Women also don’t tend to get into fights, nor know how to, which makes them similar to any other individual in the West, so I suppose they don’t see any survival or qualitative advantage in having a higher power to weight ratio.

    I suppose this goes into the difference between men and women. Men chiefly want more muscles so they can out intimidate or beat the crap out of, other men. Women chiefly go into body shaping because they want to… what, out compete the female competition? Different priorities, even if they all exist for everyone.

  17. Blessed? I have skinny genes and would love to pack on pounds and pack on muscle. Thx to this “blessing” i can’t.

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