The Genetics and the Psychology of The Skinny You vs. The Fat You

When I was in college I sought the help of a counselor to help me overcome some baggage I was carrying around.  One of the very first issues that came up was my weight - yes, sadly it has been a life-long struggle.  Through some probing, we discovered that I thought of myself as having two very distinctive personalities depending on my weight.  The counselor asked me to bring in pictures and the difference was very very clear.  There was a skinny Dolley and a fat Dolley - no two ways about it.

I'd like to tell you that those issues were worked out in the college campus counseling room but I don't think we even began to scratch the surface.  Prior to considering the epigenetics of weight loss, I thought the phenomenon was entirely psychological but perhaps it is more complex than that.  Perhaps it is the expression of genes that is different - not only physical genes but personality genes as well.  

Get out your pictures and look closely.  Do you have a thin you and a heavy you?

I'd like you to consider if this holds true for you.  What do you like about each of them?  How are they different?  How are they alike?  Do they like each other?  Do you look like one side of the family vs. the other side depending on your weight?  Is the Skinny side of you safe?  Who makes better choices?  Who is in charge?

Are the eyes different?  How about the carriage?  The clothing and the colors - do they look like the same person picked them out?  Are they both worthy of love?  Can they live together in a new Healthy You?

From my personal experience, there is a heavy biology on one side of my family.  When I am heavy and expressing the "fat gene", I look like that side of the family.  Strangely and rapidly, within a week of me beginning to loose weight, my face begins to change.  I start to look like the thin biology side of my family.  I used to think it was because I lost weight in my face first but I have begun to consider if it is more than a mere reduction of puffiness.

Fascinating to consider, isn't it?  Does this hold true for you, too?

This is a complex subject on many fronts

These are all things that each of us has to delve into - I promised at the beginning that this wasn't going to be a diary or a "look at me" sort of thing.  Simply a journey we could take together.  This just happened to be around the corner.

The Science of Epigenetics and The New Frontier of Weight Loss

Epigenetics is a new scientific field, only discovered in the last 10 years, and it is blowing the doors off everything we thought we knew about... well, almost everything.  For decades scientists believed that DNA was destiny, that we were hardwired for certain diseases or traits and there was very little to be done about it.  Then along comes the discovery of genetic influences and triggers that seem to act as light switches that turn on or off certain genes and all scientific hell breaks loose.

From disease, to obesity, to learning disabilities, to addiction - the ability to influence haywire genetic signals from our bodies is revolutionary.  To discover and treat genetic triggers that are not firing (methylating) properly through diet, exercise, therapy, drugs, electric shock, or whatever means necessary can change the way we approach cancer, for instance.  Instead of trying to kill the cancer cell, we try to turn on the tumor suppression gene that is not turned on properly.  An addict could potentially find true freedom from the addiction.  Obesity could be cured.

Even more compelling and interesting is that these specific triggers are passed down from generation to generation.  This was demonstrated in Dias and Ressler's study on mice subjected to an electric shock when exposed to a cherry blossom smell.  Their pups and their grand pups, reared completely independent of the initial subjects demonstrated the same fear of the smell as the original test group.

The Science of the genome is well above my expertise but I'll try to explain in common English what I've been able to glean.  Epigenetics actually means above genetics.  If our DNA is the hardware of a computer, then the epigenome is the software telling the hardware how to run.  It can also be explained as words in a paragraph punctuated differently to change the meaning.  The words are the same but the meaning is different.  (Let's eat Grandma.  Let's eat, Grandma.)

Scientists have discovered that the health and the well-being of the mother during pregnancy has a profound effect on the developing baby - not only at birth but throughout the life of the child.  It is staggering to consider that stressed mothers have children that carry the genetic markers of their mother's stress through their lives.

I have lamented throughout my life that sometimes my weight loss efforts work and sometimes they don't.  I've likened it to a perfect alignment of the stars, burying a toad by the October moon, and hopping on one leg 34 times while wearing a birthday hat.  It turns out, I wasn't too far off the map.  It turns out that there is indeed a switch, there is indeed an on/off switch, it's in my genetic material.  They have discovered it is either on or it is off.  There is no dimmer for overweight people, which would explain why we are either losing or gaining.

Part of our journey is going to be to discover what turns it on, how to keep it on, and what turns it off and how to recognize that.  We are on a Quest!

For more about the Science, check out this video and others: