Dur­ing the Mid­dle Ages the Pima Indi­ans split into two groups. One group set­tled in South­ern Ari­zona and the other set­tled in North­ern Mex­ico. In the 1970s the Ari­zona Pima Indi­ans were forced out of farm­ing and adopted an Amer­i­can diet and lifestyle.

Now the Ari­zona Pima Indi­ans have one of the high­est inci­dences of obe­sity reported any­where in the world and half of their pop­u­la­tion devel­ops type 2 dia­betes by the time they reach 35 years of age. This clearly demon­strates that the Pima Indi­ans have a genetic pre­dis­po­si­tion to obe­sity but are the genes alone the cause?

To do this you have to look at the Mex­i­can Pima Indi­ans who are genet­i­cally iden­ti­cal to their Ari­zona rel­a­tives. The Mex­i­can Pimas still farm, lead an active and phys­i­cal lifestyle and eat a more Stone Age type diet full of veg­eta­bles, grains and seeds. The dif­fer­ence between the Mex­i­can and Ari­zona Pimas is remarkable…

Mex­i­can Pimas are on aver­age one inch shorter and 57 pounds lighter than their Ari­zona rel­a­tives and dia­betes is rarely heard of in the Mex­i­can com­mu­nity (1). The fact that the Mex­i­can Pimas remain lean despite shar­ing the same genetic pre­dis­po­si­tion to store excess fat is clear proof that your genes are NOT the deter­min­ing fac­tor in how fat you are.. the dif­fer­ence is due to your lifestyle. it also indi­cates that the typ­i­cal Amer­i­can and West­ern lifestyle is ter­ri­ble for peo­ple with a genetic pre­dis­po­si­tion to store fat.

In con­clu­sion it was found that your genes deter­mine how much fat you can store but they don’t deter­mine how fat you get. Oth­ers fac­tors that are all under your con­trol deter­mine how fat you get.

Well why does obe­sity seem to run in families?

This is because you do inherit some things from your fam­ily mem­bers but it is not genetic. The biggest thing that you inherit from your fam­ily is their lifestyle habits. if you choose to adopt sim­i­lar eat­ing and lifestyle habits as your obese rel­a­tives, then of course you are going to be obese.

For Amer­i­can and other West­ern coun­tries to halt the increas­ing plague of obe­sity they need to change their lifestyle. The good news is that lifestyle changes don’t have to be dramatic…small sub­tle changes to many areas of your life can make mas­sive changes.

One sim­ple change is to change what your focussing on. Don’t focus on try­ing to lose weight because your weight is not an accu­rate indi­ca­tor of your health. For exam­ple, you will be health­ier if you lost 5 pounds of fat and put on 7 pounds of mus­cle yet you will weigh 2 pounds heavier.

There are three healthy indi­ca­tors that you can focus on:

1) You can focus on per­cent­age body fat if you have access to an accu­rate way to mea­sure it. Local health clubs, per­sonal train­ers or Uni­ver­si­ties often have the appro­pri­ate mea­sur­ing tools.

2) Your body dimen­sions or clothes size. This is more accu­rate because one pound of mus­cle takes up less room than one pound of fat so if you are los­ing size it is a sure sign that you are los­ing fat.

3) Your energy lev­els. This is the most con­ve­nient and more accu­rate guide to healthy weight loss because your energy lev­els are affected by many dif­fer­ent sys­tems in your body so if your energy is improv­ing it means that your body over­all is work­ing more effectively.

Ref­er­ences

1)     Ravussin, E. “Effects of a tra­di­tional lifestyle on obe­sity in Pima Indi­ans” Dia­betes care 17, no.9 (1994): 1067-107