Whose Fault Is It if You're Fat?

April 18 -- What determines body weight? Is it just some people's destiny to be thin, while others are fat?

In Boston, members of the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance once held a demonstration they called the Every Body Good Body Festival. They called it that proudly because, they said, there's nothing wrong with being fat, and there's not much they can do about it.

They say some people are thin, while they are fat, because being fat is their genetic destiny. Some obese belly dancers said they went to the demonstration to explain to the public that they cannot lose weight.

"Everyone knows the facts, that we're metabolically different, and the serious research hasn't really been done to figure out why," says one dancer.

Their size is not their fault, they say, so people should just accept them, the way they are.

Addicted to Food

Celebrities tell us that overeating is an addiction. Oprah Winfrey has said, "It's like a crack addict going to crack."

Today Show weatherman Al Roker has the willpower to get up at 4:30 in the morning and freeze in the cold, but to lose weight he had to get his stomach stapled so it's the size of an egg, because, he says, he's addicted to food. "People will look at this and say, 'Oh, what a crock, but it's true," Roker says.

Jeffrey Schaler, author of Addiction Is a Choice, disagrees: "These people are playing or pretending to be helpless. If they want real help, they need to confront the fact that they're lying when they say they can't do something that they can do."

Schaler says we're stronger than we think, and that overeating, smoking and other so-called addictions are all things we can choose to control. Our genes are not in charge, he says, we are.

Schaler says people may process food differently because of their genes. But, he says, "The activity of eating is not controlled by a gene."

Winfrey has demonstrated that she recently lost 33 pounds.

"It's a myth that we have no control over our body weight," says JoAnn Manson, an obesity expert and chief of preventive medicine at Boston's Brigham & Women's Hospital. She says genes do partly determine body shape, but not mostly. "Maybe a third is genetic and the remainder is lifestyle-based," Manson says.