Your weight is not your destiny – Part I

The benefits of a healthy body are well-known. But only a minority of people can achieve them.
Hardly anybody really knows, in which way his body is affected by the way he eats and acts during his daily life. There are, sadly, quite a lot of common misconceptions about nutrition and the reasons of gaining or losing weight.  Science and logic can help to fight those misconceptions, unravel the mysteries of the body and build a strong foundation for a better, healthier life. This is the first part of a series. The topic is quite extensive, and I think it’s better to break it down into smaller, more enjoyable pieces to read.
In this part, I'm going to tell you a bit about myself and the beginnings of my own journey to a healthier body. If you want to know about the science, just skip this one and wait for the next parts.   

Oh, you skinny boy!
During my whole childhood and the first years of being an adult, I always was this tall, skinny boy, who could be glad to withstand the next stronger wind gust. It was weird, because according to others, I was able to eat large amounts of almost anything, but my weight wouldn't change at all. Besides that, when I was six years old, I started to train different kinds of martial arts, but for more than a decade my muscle growth was hardly recognizable.
How was this possible? How was I able to eat a lot, train up to five times a week and my body weight was almost the same for several years? Something didn’t seem right.
Quite a few people told me, I should be happy, because I had “good genes”. Obviously, I was able to eat anything without getting fat – something I was envied for a lot. But I wasn’t happy, I was annoyed.
Lucky me, I was already at a point of my life, when my craving for scientific knowledge was more intense than anything else (trust me, it took me quite while to get to this point…). And so, I started reading. I searched for studies and articles about nutrition, weight, genetics, human biology, diseases, etc.  
What I found was beyond my expectations.

(Source)

Insults, lies, rage
There I was. Hours and hours, I dug myself deeper into the rabbit hole called “human weight gain and loss”. Out of curiosity, I started to read not only scientific material, but media articles, blogs and comments as well. Of course, I knew, people on the internet can be toxic as fuck, but, wow, that was some heavy shit going on there. It seemed like an outright war between two kinds of people was going on: fat-activism vs. fat-shaming. Although I think, the two terms are quite self-explaining, I’m going to summarize them for those, who want some more information.
Fat-activism: The belief, there is a “health at every size” (why this is a quite cynical statement, I’ll tell you later) and being fat is not related to any health problems at all. Scientists who say otherwise, are biased by a white, privileged, thin-thinking society. Every piece of evidence is therefore shaped in a biased way and cannot be considered for discussion. The mere thought of changing your current (obese) weight, is perceived by the community as an existential threat and you will be marked as a traitor of the cause. The open hostility towards everybody with different ideas is remarkable. But they are not alone, because their greatest enemies aren’t better by any means.  
Fat-shaming: The belief, everybody with a supposedly unhealthy amount of too much weight, deserves to be insulted, ridiculed and mocked in every suitable way. It doesn’t happen very often, that I’m witness to so many judgmental people, just because of the life choices of other ones. It seems like sport, to search for (mostly women) on social media and start attacking them for their appearance. 4chan is one of the most notorious places, where those “raids” are organized. Fat-shaming is not so much about science, but the sadistic fun one can get out of mocking other people.
If you were forced to take sides, you could argue, that fat-shaming is, according to nutrition science, the healthier approach. But this would totally disregard the impact, harassment has on the victim’s minds. Mental health is a big issue here and you won’t do any good, if you treat people like shit, because their physique is unhealthy.
Therefore: Step back, take a deep breath and wait for the next part, in which I will cover some of the biggest myths about nutrition and proper solutions for them.


Feel always free to discuss my ideas and share your own thoughts about the things I’m writing about. Nobody is omniscient and if we all walk away a little bit smarter than before, we’ll have achieved a lot.   

Thanks for reading!
Ego