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the beginning of one new year Tradition requires us to set goals for the coming months.
For many, this may mean thinking healthier diet and lose weightEspecially after indulging in it during the festive season.
While eating well and exercising is a good place to start, lose weight It’s not necessarily all willpower and self-control. Scientists have proven that some people lose weight more easily than others, and it all depends on your genes.
Dr. Giles Yeo, Professor of Molecular Neuroendocrinology at the University of Cambridge, Genephagyand independent About how your genetic makeup affects your attitudes foodand your weight.
“Simply put, some people are forced to eat for a variety of different reasons,” he said. “So they find it harder to say no, they eat more and they get bigger than others.
“So, by the same token, some people find it more difficult to lose weight.”
Dr. Yang said, “There are more than 1,000 Gene” is involved in our eating behavior and has a clear impact on our weight. The most studied is the melanocortin 4 receptor (MC4R) – a key brain receptor that helps regulate appetite, weight and energy balance.
In 1998, scientists first discovered that genetic mutations in this receptor are associated with childhood obesity. Dr Young said today that about 0.3% of the general population is known to have one of the many mutations in the gene. If extrapolated to the UK population, this figure would be over 200,000 people.
“There are over 200,000 people in this country who may have a damaged fat sensor,” he said. “This means they think they have less fat, when in fact they do.”
Dr Young explains how this mutation can have a huge and proven impact on people’s weight. “When people with this mutation reach the age of 18, they are on average nearly 18 kilograms heavier than people without this mutation,” he said. “That’s 5 BMI points.”
Notably, he said, among people battling “severe obesity”-related health problems and being treated in clinics, the proportion of those carrying the MC4R mutation jumped to 2 to 10 percent.
“So if you look at severely obese people, you see a real increase in the number of people carrying this mutation,” he added.
Hunger signals are another factor that affects how easy it is for people to lose weight, Dr. Young said. he told independent Generally speaking, the brain needs two pieces of information to influence your hunger signals – how much fat you have, and what you are currently eating and what you just ate.
It gets this information by sensing hormones in the gut, but people’s brains sense these hormones differently, which is why some people feel hunger signals differently than others.
But Dr. Young points out that genetics doesn’t tell the whole story. According to the Health Foundation’s 2025 report, around 60% of UK adults are overweight, with this figure rising steadily over the past decade.
Our food environment (essentially our food choices and access to processed foods) and our built environment (such as the prevalence of office jobs) are also major contributors to some people’s efforts to lose weight, he said.
“This has contributed to the obesity epidemic, but not everyone is obese,” he said. “Genetics explain why some people have such a hard time saying no to this energy-rich environment that we have.”
As a result, Dr. Young said narratives about self-control and willpower can be “unhelpful” in conversations about how to help society as a whole become healthier.
Instead, he thinks we need to “fix the food environment” — or so he puts it new government ban Placing junk food ads online at any time and on TV before 9pm can help.
But Dr Young acknowledged that individuals do not have the right to choose to make fundamental changes to supermarket products. Instead, he encourages people to focus on the food environment they have control over—their own homes.
“If you want to lose weight, you need to be honest with yourself about why you’re eating,” he says. “Some people eat because they are hungry, others eat because they are stressed.
“Then you need to know what you like to eat. What are your weaknesses? If you understand what you like to eat in this situation, you can try to reduce those specific foods in your home.”