Metabolisms fluctuate, although granted not by much. But what really varies is your response to food. And it's not just genetics. It's food scarcity, early childhood, your environment.
The (maybe) sad reality is that there will be people skinnier than you will ever be who have put in zero effort. Nada. That's life. Just like there's people who can sing better than me off the rip and I took vocal lessons for 10 years. Life's not fair.
But the bright side is, I can drink and not be an alcoholic. Maybe they're just lazy or something. Or, maybe this mentality is one people feed themselves (ha) to feel better about the circumstances of their life.
Wouldn't we all like to believe we're the way we are because we're strong, brave, and hard-working?
Or do you think that somehow genetics don't play one of the largest roles in your ability to be disciplined when it comes to food?
Also look at obesity rates across time within the same country. It’s clearly not an issue of discipline, it’s an issue of what’s being eaten.
> How do you explain correlations in obesity across cultures? Genetic superiority?
Every developed nation in the world except Japan has been seeing obesity and overweight rates rising at significant rates, including countries that have fairly similar cultures, such as Korea. You also see people move to America and stay in relatively isolated pockets of their culture and still gain weight.
So no. It's a matter of access to hyper palatable calorie dense food. The more of it around, the more likely people are to get fat. The fatter you get, the more of a feedback loop you end up in for a wide variety of known and relatively well understood mechanisms. GLP-1s help short circuit that feedback loop.
