OMG I am a scared-to-die health conscious freak!!

That just hit me when I was sitting in class yesterday. I thought about my diet and exercise habits and I realise the reason for them is not because I want to get rid of my flabs but rather coz I'm worried I might end up half paralysed on the hospital bed 30 years down the road. It's not that I think I have a perfect figure already. Truth is far from that. It's just that when I feel fat, I would end up skipping meals and making sure I eat just enough not to faint. I choose not to eat that oily fried chicken or force myself through that 3km of treadmill because of health reasons, even though I usually claim to people that it's coz I wanna diet when asked why I'm going to the gym.

Now that I'm on the topic, I never believed that hitting the gym alone will slim a person down anyway. I admit that it does help u achieve a better body, even for the slimmest person. It tones the muscles if you do it the right way. But exercising will have little or even negative effect if one does not curb the eating habits. I know of many people who push their food around the plate and barely touch them with their lips when I meet them for a meal. But once they step out of the restaurant, they start looking at gelatos, tidbits, and the lot, and began stuffing their mouth with these unhealthy snacks, at irregular hours. And when they grumble about their size, they claimed its genetics coz they don't eat much during meal times. That's true you don't eat much during meal times, but remember it's not only the food you eat at meal times that count towards your fats.

The bf and I actually got into a heated debate over this topic once (throughout the train ride from cityhall to tampines) and he is sympathetic towards these "genetically" obese people. The genetics arguments derived from the observation that the parents are thin and so are the kids, the parents are fat and so are the kids. Now, I'll tell you why it's genetics. When the parents are big-sized, it comes from their eating habits. As their children, they acquire the same lifestyle and diet (say frequent suppers and fatty meats). I mean if the parents say hey let's buy dessert after dinner! Naturally the kids will be having them too.

Obviously there have been various studies on hereditary obesity. Most of the research are done on grown-ups that were adopted since young and the findings have been that their weight were closer to their biological parents'. But closer sounds inconclusive to me. How about those that were "genetically" fat but stay slim or those that were "genetically" slim but grow fat somehow? Based on my personal experience, even those I know whom everyone else thought was hereditary obese, had successfully curb their compulsive eating habits and shed those excessive weight!

Perhaps, the only "genes" I believe in is the lack of self-restrain when it comes to eating. But it does not mean that if you have your parents' "obese genes", even if you stop eating altogether, your fats will not go away. THIS IS UNTRUE! You do not grow fats out of nothing. Trust me. Fat or slim, healthy or sickly, it's all up to you.

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