I got home yesterday from spending almost a week with my biological grandparents. The trip was okay, albeit a bit too long for my taste. I can only play board games so much before I get to missing home.
Anyway, something that bugged me on the trip, and bugged Kwiddens as well, is how much we ate. Actually, I should be more clear: it was how much more my (thin) grandparents ate compared to how much Kwiddens and I ate.
I felt like at every meal I would eat normal portions of the foods set on the table, and even not eat some of the foods, such as the potato chips we had with our hot dogs. Instead I ate more fruit and vegetables. And then my grandparents would go for seconds, and Kwiddens and I would just sit there and wait for them to finish. And they're the ones that are thin.
I've been thinking for some time about how genetics can play a huge role in how your body treats and processes food, and I've been wondering where in the world it could have come from. Kwiddens and I are overweight, but Em and Jorg aren't, and are able to eat anything they want and not gain weight. All of Mim's family are tall and thin, and I was wondering if it came from my biological dad's side of the family, but now that I've spent some time with them and seen that they 1) are thin and 2) eat so much more than I do, I realize that it isn't from them, either.
So what could it be? There must be something different between Em and Jorg and Kwiddens and me.
The first thing that comes to mind...stress.
Kwiddens and I were treated badly growing up. I won't go into detail, as that's really a story for another time (when I'm ready to talk about it, I suppose), but I'll just point out that Kwiddens had a worse time growing up than I did, and she's a bit more overweight than I am.
I know stress causes bad chemical imbalances in your body, and that can lead to weight gain, particularly around the stomach, and that's the bad fat that will cause problems later in life. Who knows, maybe it's causing problems now. It definitely hasn't done good things for my self-esteem, that's for sure.
But what happens when you go through 20+ years of intense stress and unhappiness? This.
I'm convinced that part of it is the combination of medications I'm on. I was always a bit on the heavy side (although, looking back, I wish I were the weight I was back when I thought I was fat), but I didn't become "overweight" until I started taking birth control before I got married, and I didn't become "obese" until I started taking an antipsychotic. I don't think that's a coincidence.
One of the many, many frustrating things about it is that I've since gotten my life under control, and I'm no longer under the intense stress I was growing up. I mean, yes, there are definitely stressful things in my life, but I'm not unhappy. I'm (mostly) handling it pretty well. There are bad moments, but they are far outweighed by the good moments.
Back to the stress of growing up, though. It's a well-known fact that stress changes your body's chemistry, both in the brain and in the rest of your body. So what does 20 years of unhappiness and emotional abuse and neglect do to a person? It's frightening to think about how badly your environment can affect your body.
Another interesting thing Kwiddens and I read in the Reader's Digest on the plane ride home yesterday was about different strains of bacteria in the intestines of fat and thin people. There are apparently two different types of bacteria, and how much you have of each appears to be directly correlated to how well your body metabolizes food. And wouldn't you know it, stressed-out people tend to have more of the "fat" bacteria than thin people do.
One last thing I'd like to add into this one-person discussion is this: when I was trying really hard to eat right and exercise, I wasn't seeing results, and once I gave up and decided to eat whatever I felt like, I didn't gain a damn pound. So honestly, what's the point?
It seems like it's totally out of my control. And every once in a while, I get the urge to try again, especially when I see all the cute clothes in my closet that don't fit me right now, but then I think about how much work it is and how I've never been able to get permanent results before, and I don't feel like wasting effort doing something that probably won't work anyway.
I guess what it comes down to, in the end, is that it's not important enough to me for me to put any major effort into it. And that may change someday for all I know. But for now, all I want to do is do what makes me happy and hope for the best.
That was frustrating. And it always has been frustrating to have people who eat far more than I do and are skinny little things. Pfft. I thought I was fat in high school. And I was eating healthy foods and working out very nearly every day. Honestly, it's a wonder I haven't completely given up and ballooned to 500 lbs and binged on heroin and frosted bacon.
ReplyDeleteI so know this. and i think that you're right about the stress. we may carry a gene but it isn't fully expressed if we don't have the environmental trigger. but add in the right trigger and all hell breaks loose.
ReplyDeleteadd in meds and you have yourself a whole host of triggers. and not in a bad way, just in a...that's what meds do.
there are a host of people in my life that eat more than i do or eat worse things than i do and are way thin. it drives me nuts sometimes. but then i just figure i'll be warmer in the winter.