Obesity: The Final Answer

I recently found myself in a friendly argument over the origins of the obesity epidemic. It (the argument, not the epidemic) started with a post on my Facebook page (scroll down to January 2), which itself came from this article on weight loss in the New York Times Magazine.

The argument was over how much of the rise in obesity can be attributed to genetics vs. environment. Anoop Balachandran, a fitness professional studying for his Ph.D. in exercise science, argues that it’s virtually all genetics, and makes his case on his blog in this post and this one. His biggest point is that the people who are obese today are the people who would’ve been obese anyway, and what we call an epidemic is a rise in their weight,…

Tags: Tags: body fat, dual intervention point model, energy balance, fat loss, genetics, lifestyle, obesity, set point theory, Weight Loss