S6:E13 - Nature vs. Nurture: The Obesity Debate Unpacked

Welcome to the show that punches you in the face with information. Welcome to the Enterprise Fitness Podcast. In today's episode, we are going to be talking about perhaps a controversial topic, a controversial question: is obesity a choice? I'm joined today by Aldred, Al, and Master Coach Jacka. Now, this podcast topic came about because Jacka turned to Al saying, is obesity a choice? Or words to effect. And then Al said, let's make a podcast out of it. And I said, why not? So gentlemen, Jacka, do you want to kick us off? Sure. Am I even phrasing the question correctly?

No, you are phrasing the question correctly. And I think where it even came relevant is because the question has been circulating online recently in open online forums. There's been numerous, a lot of division around this particular binary question. Is it a choice, yes or no? But my interest in this lies less in answering the question of is it yes or no and more so a question of what makes it harder for some people to make the choice of being healthier than others, because I think that's actually a more open-ended question and does encourage more discussion and potentially empathy towards anyone who may be struggling with being overweight or obese.

So for those who live fairly sheltered lives from media, AKA me, where is this circulating?

YouTube, Instagram.

So it's pretty hot right now?

Yeah, more in recent months.

Was this because of like the Calvin Klein model thing?

I'm not too sure where the root of this came from. All I know is that there was a lot of, I guess, discussion around what's— where does the individual responsibility of someone maintaining healthy weights healthy lifestyle start and end versus, okay, other factors such as environmental, behavioral upbringing, genetic, educational, and so forth.

Al, what did you say to him off camera? Because I feel like you would have said something to him. He had lots to say.

I just went, next question, and then I just left after that. I— for me, it was more like the pyramid of change. Yes, it's more so with that.

Let me— the pyramid of change, again, it's in the book The Enterprise Diet, but for those who don't know, just because is it's visual, audio, some people this might be the first encounter. But the pyramid of change, or the, it's the DILTS model, at the bottom you have environment, at the top you have behaviors, above that you have skills and skill sets, above skills and skill sets you have beliefs and values, and above that you have identity. That's your pyramid of change essentially, or the DILTS model. You were gonna say?

So basically what I said to Jacko was, it's like there's a lot of factors surrounding that, where that person is currently at in life, right? There's like your environment, Yes, skills and skill sets, behaviors, identity, and also values. And to me, it was more so environment. Are you actually in a— who are you surrounding yourself with? Pretty much, are you surrounding yourself with people who live a certain kind of life, or do they—

yeah, I don't know, like Well, I think fundamentally the question comes down, like Jacka, to a little bit of nurture versus nature, to a degree, right? Correct. So that's what you're saying is, well, are people overweight and obese because there's a genetic predisposition, or for example, they may have been born to an overweight family or parents who have always struggled with weight their whole lives? But at the same time, there are plenty of exceptions to that rule. Like my dad was very unhealthy, very overweight. And it was because of my dad in many ways, my bullying experience as a kid that broke that pattern for me. And it's not the reason why I stayed being overweight in actual many ways. It was the reason why I broke out of it. I think from a scientific perspective, science is basically when you have a theory of science, if this is how gravity works, to prove gravity, you also have to try and find exceptions to that. And when there are no exceptions, then you can say and formulate, this is how it works every time. For example, probably even a better example is law of thermodynamics. There hasn't been a case where the, say, rebuttal of, let's say, the insulin theory as to weight loss, the insulin theory to weight loss has not been proven. It's been shown, insulin has shown to be a factor to people losing weight and gaining weight. But in the context of things, it has not been, law of thermodynamics has not been disproven up until this point. And it is very likely it ever will get disproven. In saying that, If you would approach this from a purely scientific perspective, because there are exceptions to people who have come from overweight families and have transformed their bodies and have changed their lives, you would say everyone has the ability to do so.

I think people have different starting points as well though. So for example, let's say like we do know that different people have different resting energy expenditure, vastly different. And so perhaps someone who at rest is going through less calories does give them less of an advantage or has, will have a harder time getting leaner or potentially getting, losing body fat compared to the person who goes through a lot more expenditure throughout the day, even at rest for the same level of activity. That person's gonna have a much easier time dropping body fat or body weight and potentially maintaining healthier body composition throughout life. So I think it's, yes, there is of course an element of choice, and I think as we get older we have more sovereignty over our own nutritional choices. But I think there are factors which certainly are out of our control. Upbringing is also a big one, like you said. There are exceptions to the rule where, yes, if you were raised in a family which didn't have the right, the favorable nutritional practices to maintain a healthy unhealthy body, then that would carry on to you. And there are exceptions to that, perhaps like yourself. But it's also hard.

James was telling me about the other— I don't know if you saw the stat, it was like 80% of—

it's 1 in 4. I think it was 1 in 4. This is based on 2018 ABS stats. 1 in 4 children, adolescents, are overweight or obese. Into adulthood, it's 2 in 3 in Australia are overweight, which is 33%.

No, 66%. Jesus. Yeah, 33% aren't. So more people are overweight and obese than not.

Correct.

And, but I think James's stat was if you're born into an overweight family or born into an obese family, it's something like 80% likelihood that you'll stay obese. Correct. Yeah.

Is that right?

That's the stat. Yeah.

Which I think is a testament to this whole role of, okay, environment or nature, nurture, right? It's their environment. Now of course you have your ability to maneuver within that, but starting from a much harder place of course puts you at a disadvantage.

Of course. But at the same time, there's also people are born, you know, in genetic families where— I saw this girl online the other day and it's like, geez, you know, jacked, completely jacked, and 21 years old, you know, and at the start of her training career. And most girls would probably spend 10 to 15 years to look half as good as her. That she has done with a little bit of training. So I think as well the reverse is opposite, but I think like the nature versus nurture is, yeah, you can argue these things and say, I don't know, I want to say poor me, but at the same time it doesn't help people. And I don't know if you guys know Sean Croxton, amazing guy. Sean Croxton used to have the Underground Wellness Radio and he's now in a different, completely different space in the US. But he talks about this concept about how if you tell people and reinforce this is the reason why you can't do something, then people use that as the reason why they can't do something. Whereas if you encourage the individual responsibility, people start to say, if the message that we give across, I just think it's unhelpful from someone for myself who's so invested in helping people personally change. I don't want to be on the side of this is your nature because of the fact that it leaves the people with helplessness. Is this is how you were born and there's nothing you can do about it. And yes, you were disadvantaged by having all these problems. My son, He was born with esophageal atresia, right? He didn't have part of his esophagus, had to have— and anyway, we've worked so hard and around these kind of things, and this is in spite of things, and now he's, he's thriving and all these other things. But the point that I'm getting is if the message across this is, is helplessness or learned helplessness of this is the way you are, I don't think it's helpful. It's not a, it's not a message that's positive or encouraging for people to change. And that's why I just don't think the nature versus nurture, it's not a way to go. If, because again, my livelihood, my whole career, my whole business enterprise, it's books and all these kind of things. It's about giving people tools so they can change. And if the message is you can't change, I think it's very defeating.

That's also what I was referring to about in the environmental factors, right? If your environment is quote unquote the social norm, and the social norm is basically what Jack was saying in statistics, do you have to question your identity and also what is normal? Yeah, like, um, when people are saying, yeah, it's fine to do this, it's fine to do that, is it really fine or are you just unaware? Because I myself, like, I also used to be nearly overweight. I had 5 foot 5'9", I was nearly 100 kilos in 2019. And that's not that long ago. Yeah, no, it was. And that was— that comes up as a part of education for me. Then I was training, but I got injured, and my young self was like, hey, let's just eat whatever we want because we don't want to lose muscle mass. And if I had the proper education to actually get myself out of that mindset, like, and this is like the identity aspect of the Pyramid of Change, wait, I would have saved a lot of time because it took me a year and a half to get part of your journey. Yeah, exactly. And yeah, yeah, well, I, I think that's part of your journey, right?

Like, the thing is, I think we're all, whatever, in any area of life, we're all floating around like fish unaware of the fishbowl that we're in and the water that we're swimming in, right? It's just, it's always been there. And culturally, like, if we're born in Australia, whatever, like, this is part of our language. And we go to the US and we say, you got the dunny? Or, what are you doing this arvo? People like, what are you talking about? They don't use those words. But to us, it's so benign. It's part of our culture in Australia and just certain things. So I think we are all, you could say, victims of our culture because we don't We don't see it, but that doesn't mean we can't break out of it. And I think this is where things like travel, reading, going, learning from people, having different experiences and inputting those in your life and starting to question all of those beliefs. And yes, there is a privilege to be able to do that, but I think with the internet, most people have access to different minds and you could go through encyclopedia or the version of an encyclopedia about culture in a matter of weeks really with YouTube and things like this. You can get so much information from— there's a lot of garbage on the web, but you do have the ability and access to this information where you can start to question where these beliefs actually derive. So I think yes, we are all victims of culture, but this is where I think one also needs to adapt the mindset of constant never-ending improving and also growth.

Be a student.

Be a student.

Never-ending student.

Yeah, and especially if it's like you where you had this— and what was actually— it's getting to this, right? Because it's a prime example. But what was the factor, or how did you break out of that mindset? So you were 100 kilos, was it 2019? 2019?

Yeah, I got injured the start of 2019.

And were you a fat kid your whole life or part of your life?

I was definitely a skinny kid my whole life, and then I got into training.

So you got into a bad hole?

Yeah, pretty much. I was a skinny kid my whole life, gone to training, got into pretty good shape, didn't know how to train properly, and then I got injured. And then from that injury resulted in me just eating shoulder bursitis.

Okay.

From that injury resulted in me just forming bad habits. Just eating whatever I want. And at the end of the day, when I look back at it, it was just a bit of miseducation on my part because I was pretty young back then. Pretty young, I was like 22.

Yeah, okay. So what are you now, like 20, 23 now? He's 27. 27. So it's about 5 years fossil.

Yeah, huh?

Yeah, it's fossilizing. So what does— like when you say bad eating habits, like what were you doing to get to that?

I mean, that my mindset was again, right, just me not knowing personally, like, what can my body handle? Like, what's my maintenance calories? Perhaps for me, I had that young mindset of let's just dirty bulk, eat whatever I want to preserve as much muscle mass that I currently have and I've built throughout these years. Sounds, sounds stupid now.

If you just pause on that for a second, the beliefs and values that you brought into your life was that of traditional bodybuilding.

Exactly.

So you weren't doing anything, you were running a code, your beliefs and values, which people do. And unfortunately, the beliefs and values that you had were incorrect from a physiological standpoint of, if I do this, I'm going to preserve muscle. And often we go on these things and it doesn't give the result that we want, and it's the beliefs and values that we don't question or think to question because we grew up in, this is what you do in bodybuilding. And I've seen it time and time again, you've probably seen as well in bodybuilding is that people think this is the natural order of things. I have to do a bulk and I look like absolute crap, I feel like crap, I look like crap, and then it takes me so much longer and it's so much harder to lose all this weight. But I'm doing this excessive bulk to put on muscle, and when people diet down, they really haven't put on any muscle or that much muscle at all, maybe a couple of kilos, but it's not something they couldn't have achieved. They could have actually been healthier the whole time and actually got an even better result. So I don't think it's— it's just an example of the fish that's swimming in water that doesn't even know the water is there.

Yes, I mean, yeah, no, 100%. When I thought I was injured, when I was injured, I thought, yeah, let's just leave it, it'll heal by itself, and it never healed. So it's just that part of education, right? Beliefs, like changing belief. Like, I saw a physio, but then the progress was really slow, so I started following a bit more of a physio slash personal trainer slash coach approach. And that's what actually got me out of it, like actually training.

And the weight?

The weight? Ah, the weight dropped. I think I lost— was it— I was 98 and then I was 92 in 3 months, I think. 79.2.

So you've lost like 21 kilos? Yeah, pretty much. Yeah. And it's been relatively easy to keep that off? Because beliefs and values and identity has changed. And this comes back to— ties directly into the point, nature versus nurture. You had the power to change the whole time. It's just the operating code that you were running on was the, the wrong code for, for looking lean all year round. Do you have things to add? No, I'd agree there.

Um, I think fundamentally, regardless of where people weigh on this side of conversation, I think the resulting message should always be one that's encouraging, like you said. So there should be a sense of, okay, I am in control and I do have the autonomy to choose to live a healthier life. And while I may be at certain disadvantages, there's always something you can do, right? I think for us as coaches, it also provides us perhaps a bit more empathy for someone who maybe— yes, we all struggle with a bit of motivation, willpower, or discipline, but it might not be the only reason why someone has struggled. So I think in terms of an exercise of empathy, it's a good question to ask.

Well, I think, I think on that, weight loss, getting in shape is relatively simple. It's made hard by the story that we tell ourselves. Correct. And the story that we tell ourselves often is, it's hard for me, or I hate this food, or it never works out, or I already always put the weight back on, so what's the point? There are so many stories that people tell themselves and they're dealing with that emotional baggage, which that you need to let go at some point to then move forward. And I also think if you look at trauma, there's only two ways you can really deal with trauma is you can pass it back or pass it forward, right? And I think if you want to have that, if you do have— I'm not saying that weight loss, everyone has trauma and that's why they're— wait, but if there is that component which some people do carry with them, or say a lower degree, it's acknowledging it for what it is. And maybe that was your life and you found all these things hard, but instead of trying to pass it forward— and this is where I think the stats around like that 80% of kids who have obese parents, you pass it for— you pass it back. You pass it back to your mom or your dad who gave it to you and say, I don't want this, I don't want to carry this, I want to bring this forward into my life. That's yours, that's your stuff to deal with. You can only pass it back. And I think that can free yourself and going, how do I want to live? How do I want to look? It doesn't necessarily mean you have to be a 10% bodybuilder who's obsessed with training, but it can certainly mean that a lot of the— because look, the reality is if you grow up in the West, McDonald's is normal. It's normal to go to McDonald's for your kids. It's normal to go through drive-through. It's normal to eat pizza. And these days it's normal to go on Uber Eats. All those things. And I often draw— you've probably heard me me say it, or maybe not. You've definitely heard me say it, but the football field analogy that I give— I think I took this from Laurent Cordain, who wrote— one of the very early adapters of the paleo movement. But basically the analogy is that if you had a football field— so imagine you went down to the MCG, right? Go down to the MCG, the start of the football field to the end of the football field, that represents the timeline that the human being— we as humans have been on the planet. Now people argue how long it's actually been, 5 million years or a million years or 3 million, whatever it is. Let's just say it's, it's 5 million years because it's easy to visualize, right? If we break it up into 5 equal parts, there's a million each. If we look at that gold square represents the last 10,000 years, that's when we essentially brought in industrial farming. So that's when we started bringing grains into our diet and we domesticated our food supply. And we did that for good reason. We did that to create civilization so that we weren't reliant upon hunting and gathering and trying to find ways to eat ourselves without civilizing and domesticating our food supply, we would not have the civilizations that we have today. So it was very much needed. But then we have the last 100 years. The last 100 years is when food became food products. And from the timeline of how long we've been on the planet to how long we've adapted to what we're eating now, that 100 years in comparison is a blade of grass. It's no time at all. So all of these constructs that we have around food, our ideologies around of food is so far removed to what's physiologically normal. So you have what's physiologically normal and ideal, and then you have what's socially normal. What's socially normal is not what's physiologically normal. It usually pulls apart because the reality is we ate things that were hunted, fished, gathered, and plucked. It's only more than the last 10,000 years that we ate things that were farmed, and certainly in the last 100 years only became the modern society commonality that we ate things that were delivered at our door, right? The food product. It is no easy feat of science to create, say, vegetable oils where you rip open a package of whatever it was. What's the one? Twinkies, right? Which are like fresh for 5 years. Like, how does someone do that? That's quite the feat, right? It's no easy thing to do that we have that in today's environment and to make it taste great. Doesn't matter when you open it. That's hard. But it's not normal. It's not physiologically normal. And it's not physiologically normal to not sleep and to smoke and to drink all this alcohol and to have ice cream every day of the week. You know, ice cream predated, it was very hard to make. Cakes took 2, 3, 4 hours to make because they had to make it from scratch prior to 100 years. Now we can walk down to our Woolies or our Coles and it's very easy. You're looking at him like, do you want to get cake later? But it's very easy to get it, right? We can go anywhere, we can get these foods. It's 24-season summer. It's 24/7 summer. And that is just not how from a physiological perspective we adapted as humans. Now we have maladaptation. Now we have maladaptation. The maladaptation to these things is the chronic health problems and the obesity of having constant excess calories in our environment, which we cannot cater to. Now, again, coming back to the conversation about nature versus nurture, I think in many ways it's the cultural aspect that people are bought into. It's the fish in the fish tank that doesn't realize that they're even swimming.

Yeah, it's made harder. I mean, I think now more than ever we have the most access to food at our fingertips, and the choices are endless, and those choices are hyperpalatable, calorie-dense options, right? And it can be a harder choice to make the healthier option, but I think ultimately it's always worthwhile, right? There's also food marketing as well. Right, what's being promoted as the healthier option, and is it actually often not the case as well.

Final thoughts from you, Al? Told you, spreadsheet, guys, he's loading.

Um, it's just taking me a while because I trained before. Yeah, for me it's more so about the education aspect. I feel like if you have the right amount of education, because the way we are born into this world, like, we go to school straight away. That's to teach us how to write, to even cook, um, do math. And I feel like—

what school? If you teach us how to cook at my school, really?

We had a home—

like, in high school they taught us how to make cakes, but no one—

oh yeah, yeah, cooking. I guess that's the normal part of high school and the current education, right? I feel if you have the right guidance and the right education, and I mean, it's pretty hard at the moment because of social media, but if you just have that one person to tell you that, or the two people to tell you like, hey, this is not normal, you should maybe take a step back and have a look at and question your identity. Does it actually still serve you? I feel like it can go a long way, just speaking from experience. Because yeah, I used to think that was normal when I was at that current weight.

Good.

So to answer the question, I present the question to you: is it the choice?

I don't think it's necessarily a choice because I don't think necessarily— unless you're like one of those feeders. Yeah, yeah, unless you're like a feeder. I don't, I don't think, I don't think most people are choosing to be unhealthy, as Al said. And again, I keep coming back to the fishbowl analogy. It's just most people are operating— we never question the beliefs that we believe are true. And if we just have always accepted— I think there is an acceptance that this is just the way I am, this is who I am, and I don't have the power to change it, or even thought about changing it, then you're not going to question that belief, are you? If anything, I think people can— if they're listening to this podcast, it's that Oh, I do have the power to change this if I'm unhappy with it. If you're happy with it, then more power to you, right? If you know you're unhealthy, I think it always comes from the frame of if you smoke, if you drink, if you're unhealthy and you're happy being unhealthy, then more power to you. Don't change on my accord, right? I'm not here to force you to do anything. But if you're in a place where you smoke, you drink, you're overweight, you hate the way you look, and it's not someone saying, you know, you look, you've got to do something, you want to do it, then absolutely. You have the power to change.

I read somewhere where it was summarized quite succinctly, and I've partly agreed with this, where, look, it's not your fault, where you maybe might have had an unfavorable environment, but it is your responsibility.

Yes, 100%. What I want to close on is the Be, Do, Have formula for change, because I think this, for me, again, in terms of personal development and personal change, is really where I sit on the topic, which is most people come into things and they see what they want to have. And you could apply this to money, but let's apply this to physique. They see someone with a really good body, they're in shape, and they say, I want to have that body, I want to have the six-pack, I want to have the bum, I want to have the shoulders. And they start doing a crash diet, and then a week goes by, and then they decide— they see the cakes, or they— their friends are going out for drinking, they decide they want to have a drink. And then they decide they want to have a donut and decide they want to have a kebab, and then they decide again they want to be in shape. But then there's this constant 'I want to have,' and that's one way to operate, which guarantee you will never get you anywhere. The next way is to do a bunch of things, and you see this in the fitness industry when people go and do a challenge. They do an 8-week challenge, they do a 6-week challenge, they do a 12-week challenge, and they do the challenge, and sometimes they get results, sometimes they don't. But They don't sustain those results almost ever. They do the challenge, and then after the challenge, they said it was really hard and they loved it and all that kind of stuff. But ultimately, they go back to doing what they were doing before they did the challenge. That does not sustain someone. The level above that is the B level, is where we focus on the person that we want to become. My mantra is, I am a healthy person who eats healthy foods that builds and nourish my body. I love taking care of the vessel that houses my spiritual essence, aka my body. I take care of my body, I'm able to express that spiritual essence. That makes sense, right? So there's a spiritual construct around it as well that gives it more meaning. And it was the Egyptians who said spirit without meaning is motionless and matter without spirit is meaningless. So in saying that, you can focus on what you want to have, you can focus on to do. But if the thing that trumps the ace card in all of this is if you focus on the person that you want to become, that will transcend the actions that you take. And in time, you will get where you want to go, not because you're trying to have something, but because who you are speaks so loud that what you want will be yours. So I'd like to leave it on that. Gentlemen, where can they find you?

You can find me at Aldril_Enriquez on the Instagram.

And the jacket?

It's Coach Jaka on Instagram.

And my name is Mark Ottobre. I am the owner and founder of Enterprise Fitness. If you've enjoyed this conversation, I'd love to invite you to hit subscribe. We are on all platforms where you listen to your favorite podcasts, whether it's Spotify, iTunes, Apple, iHeartRadio— all of them, we're there. Also, if you haven't already checked out and grabbed yourself a copy, grab yourself a copy of The Enterprise Diet, my new book. You can check it out at enterprise diet.com. Leave us a review on your favorite platform. And until next time, friends, train hard, eat well, and supplement smart.