Hi, Folks -

My father was skinny throughout most of his life. My older brother also had a tendency to stay lean. Both of them actually worked hard to put on weight, at one time or another.

But my mother tended toward overweight for most of her life, or at least most of her life that I was alive to know about. :) She may have been glamorously lean before I was born. I don't know.

Mom and I both went on doctor-guided fasts when I was about 14. I shed about 40 pounds in 7 weeks. I don't know how much she lost - probably about the same amount - and she looked quite comely at the end of that time. :)

In later years, I always -felt- like I was fat, regardless of what the scale actually said. Apparently that self-concept had been burned into my brain, thanks to the occasional notification by my peers that "Hey, you're fat!" when I still was.

Looking back on it, I don't think I was a hog or glutton as a youngster. I think I was eating whatever was put in front of me or offered to me by my elders. I don't know how physically active I was. I don't recall avoiding physical activity. But perhaps, on the whole, I was less physically active than my older brother had been at the same age. I do know food was not a pre-occupation for me. Yet I was fat when puberty came around.

Then there's this: We think my father probably was of Scottish lineage, while my mother was probably of German lineage. Is that reason enough for my brother to have been lean while I tended toward overweight?

Forward. Decades later I think I weighed about what I had weighed before embarking on that medically-guided fast, though now distributed differently on my older frame. The weight was there but I don't know that it amounted to being overweight.

One day we abruptly shifted our diet from whatever we had been eating to organic or 'natural' food as much as possible. We even shifted to organic coffee, and turbinado instead of white sugar. I think we cut back on salt for awhile, and/or shifted to sea salt. And I think we stopped most anything that could be thought of as 'dessert', for awhile.

And here's the thing: With no other changes than what I've just described, we began losing weight like crazy and without any intention or effort to do so. When that finally tapered off, I weighed just about what I had weighed decades earlier, after that medically-guided fast.

I think it may have been like this: My body went, "Oh goody, real nutrition is coming in and without all those toxins I had to stash somewhere! Here's my opportunity to clear out all the fat I had 'sequestered' those previous toxins in!" :)

So, ponder this: At about age 14, somehow I was fat. I got un-fat by seriously cutting back on food intake while still maintaining nutrient intake by way of something called ViCalTein tablets supplied by the pharmacist, shedding about 40 pounds. Decades later, I did -not- cut back on food quantity but altered food quality, and again shed about 40 pounds.

The most noteworthy thing that was cut back on both occasions was "white sugar".

Then one day the 'experts' tell us, "Carbs are the thing. Go low fat and high carbs, and all will be well." Ya think? I note that the "obesity epidemic" followed upon that advice.

Presently they're finally realizing that dieting doesn't work. It actually encourages one's body to store fat, because the radical diminishing of food intake signals "famine!" to the body and it begins storing fat as a survival measure. I think genetics makes a difference, such that "just cut back" may work quite easily for one person and perhaps not at all for another. Some people routinely go up and down over time. That was true for me for awhile, so that eventually I stopped worrying about it altogether. :) I knew one fellow who began losing weight simply by making a point of walking a little faster, wherever he was going.

Seems to me there are a lot of factors potentially involved. And it would be mistaken to look at an overweight person and feel sure that "it's his/her own fault". It might be. It might not. :)

Blessings, all.

--hobie

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