Since my birth, I have never been obese. My weight always seems pretty stable. I have watched countless documentaries of obese individuals, and it's so heart-breaking to see them gain weight despite the conscious attempts of diet and exercise. As I look back at my life, I try to find aspects that protect me from obesity and possible reasons why I have an easier time maintaining weight than gaining weight.
1. My Heritage
My mother and father were both thin individuals when they were growing up. My mother's side of the family were mostly thin. My father's side of the family were relatively thin. They mostly ate a plant-based diet with very little added oil, sugar, and salt; and they had a lot of manual work and physical activity. Meat was rationed by the government, so my father's family (and probably everybody else) could only get less than 1 pound of meat per month. Only on Chinese New Year, families would gather and have a big feast day, using the meat that they had preserved the past year. Obesity was impossible in that kind of environment. Food was scarce. My mother's side of the family was a bit well off than the majority of the population, because they were urban dwellers and part of the educated class. Even so, my mother grew up very thin. I think this is a case where it pays to have a naturally slow metabolism regardless of diet and exercise. My mother was, apparently, biologically maladaptive to her calorie-low environment.
2. My Time In The Womb
My mother was 29 when she married and 30 when she had me. It's quite unusual for a woman at that age to marry in her country. But that's nothing, compared to my maternal grandmother. My mother's mother was sent to medical school, like her brothers, and practiced modern medicine. That's before the second wave of feminism in the United States. Anyway, my mother was thin, young, and attractive when she married. When she became pregnant with me, she ate a lot of fruits and vegetables.
The mother's age and physical health at the time of pregnancy are predictors of obesity in the child.
3. My Early Years
I was born as a heavy baby with a big head. The big head was so big that my mother had to go through a caesarean section to get me out. By weight, I was slightly on the heavy side. I'm not sure whether my heaviness was caused by my bigger bone mass or my chubbiness as a newborn, but it's pretty clear that I was slightly heavy.
As a baby, I was breastfed. The breastfeeding likely contributed to my relative resistance to obesity.
4. My Culture and Lifestyle
Growing up, I was accustomed to seeing plates of vegetables for dinner. My mother joked one time about how I was easier to raise than other kids (from other families) by the mere fact that I was never a picky eater. I actually ate everything on my plate, including the rice, meat, and vegetables. My mother cooked the family meals. We rarely went out to eat. Sometimes, we would buy store-bought processed goods, like sweet snacks and juices, but having sugary foods in the house always carried the stigma of rotting teeth, which would then make me feel guilty if I wanted seconds.
5. My Palate
I have a bland, boring palate. I do not like extreme saltiness, extreme sweetness, extreme sourness, extreme bitterness, extreme spiciness, or extreme greasiness. Potato chips tend to be salty and heavy in flavor. I found the plain kind more tolerable than other flavored versions. But I didn't really like eating potato chips, because eating too much of them meant I would get a canker sore on my mouth. The fear of getting a canker sore prevented me from eating potato chips regularly. I didn't have a sweet tooth, which prevented me from experiencing real sugar cravings. Fruits were usually sweet enough for me, and I ate those in moderate amounts. Some fruits were sour and sweet, like grapefruit. Peeling the skin removed the bitterness. I avoided foods that were extremely bitter, like the bitter melon or coffee. I drank coffee before, but only with a great helping of sugar and milk. However, my consumption of coffee was relatively infrequent, so I never developed a caffeine addiction. When I found out that an excessive amount of sugar is bad for my health, I eliminated coffee altogether. I could tolerate foods with mild bitterness, like unsweetened tea. A little bit of jalapeno peppers is tolerable, but a lot of them becomes intolerable. I never really enjoyed food at a fast food fried chicken restaurant. The greasiness made me feel uncomfortable and forced me to drink just water afterwards. I remember tasting the sweet and sour sauce that was poured over the fried chicken. The flavor was too heavy for my taste, so one time was enough for me. Being Chinese, I also didn't like having sweetness and saltiness in the same food.
Therefore, I didn't develop a food addiction or craving for most calorie-dense foods.
6. My Food Capacity and Level of Satiety
My stomach only has finite capacity. I can certainly push myself beyond the fullness threshold, if I am told to eat or if I want to eat as much as possible in order to get my money's worth of food. When I was a child, my parents would occasionally take me to an all-you-can-eat buffet, which was either a friendly gesture to guests or a convenient outlet while we were traveling. To get our money's worth of food, I was told to refrain from avoiding the soda drinks. Soda drinks were too costly and too gassy. The gas in the drinks would prevent the amount of food that I was able to hold. Ordering water was free, did not produce any gas, and could cleanse my palate after eating the heavily flavored food. When I grew up, I went to my university's alumni social networking event and paid $20 for the drink tickets. I later found out that the "drink tickets" meant 2 tickets for 2 alcoholic drinks. I never acquired the taste of alcohol. So, the 2 drink tickets were a waste of money, as sugary drinks and water were free. I still wanted to eat my money's worth of food, even though I knew my stomach had finite capacity, so I ate until I felt sick and involuntarily vomited in the trash can. I ate a great helping of those vegetable mini burgers, because they were unpopular for some reason, and I didn't like seeing would-be wasted food.
I know I have a finite capacity of food in my stomach. I know external cues (getting my money's worth of food), not internal cues (hunger), pushed me beyond my fullness threshold.
7. My Daily Allowance of Purchasing Ready-Made Foods
School lunches were relatively cheap and convenient. In elementary school, school lunch was $1.25 or five quarters. Everybody had the same meal. In high school, school lunch was $2.50, and there were many choices. I usually ate the wraps, which were most palatable. To get my money's worth and match my mild palate, I often selected all the raw vegetable toppings and avoided the flavor-heavy sauces. So, my wrap was usually bigger than other people's wraps, and it had mostly vegetables than meat and cheese. In university, I initially brought food from home for the first year. But in the following years, I decided to buy store-bought ready-made foods. It was a slow transition. First, I bought food alongside what I brought. Then, I bought food from the cafeteria. I think I tried almost every single cafeteria in the university at least once. When I found a convenient location, I would eat there regularly. I usually counted the dollars I had to spend for food. My father had a ten-dollar limit for me, and my mother had a five-dollar limit and never saw ready-made foods as the optimal choice. So, I usually bought one item for the day. This not only reduced the amount of dollars, but also reduced the amount of calories I consumed for lunch.
8. My Psychological Health
I have been sad or mad before, but the sadness or madness never extended more than one day or a few hours. And when I experienced a negative mood, the negative mood usually decreased my appetite to eat. This might have prevented me from using food as a source of emotional comfort. In addition, my parents used words and gestures to comfort me as a child, not food. So, I didn't really associate food with comfort.
Why This Matters
As I analyze myself more deeply, I realize that I am just very fortunate. I have many things in my favor for optimal health and fitness. So, weight maintenance is relatively easy for me, and if I do gain weight, it's not incredibly difficult to lose it again.
I realize that not many people are as fortunate as I am. This is a problem, because these people are more likely to become obese or gain weight very easily, especially when they are not paying attention to the foods they are eating. On top of that, obese people, especially obese women, face emotional stigma and social discrimination due to their weight and size. This judgmental cruelty is not acceptable and not productive, because it sets people up and pushes them to achieve unattainable ideals. Some people, even when they are fit and healthy and have a normal BMI, are just not petite or may not have the right body shape. I know my clavicle bones and neck muscles make a desirable shape through my skin, giving the appearance of fitness. I know that look is very desirable; if it weren't, then make-up artists wouldn't try to replicate that look with contour make-up. Instead of pushing people to look a certain way or have a certain body, I believe that everyone should be encouraged to live a healthy lifestyle, irrespective of their looks, and a healthy weight for that person will follow as the natural result. Everybody is different. The more diverse humans are, the more variation they have in the gene pool. Obese people are often thought of as stupid and lazy. In reality, many obese people are the products of an unhealthy environment, and they succumb to that environment. In a calorie-low environment, people with a naturally slow metabolism may be better adapted at conserving energy and thus are more likely to survive and reproduce. It's only in the modern world when calorie-dense food becomes plentiful, and the trait that once helped people to gain weight is now making people struggle to lose weight.
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