If you feel like you've been dealt a bad genetic hand when it comes to weight gain, science suggests sure, it's possible. Numerous genes—especially one known as FTO—can contribute to obesity. But your genes are not your destiny, finds a new study published in the journal Scientific Reports. You can overcome that FTO influence with an active lifestyle.
Hudson Reddon, a PhD student and lead researcher of the new study, worked with colleagues at McMaster University to analyze activity and genetic data collected from 17,423 people. Reddon followed up with 9,228 of the men and women about 3 years later, and he found that leading an active lifestyle could blunt the genetic effect of the FTO gene by as much as 75%. "That's important, because FTO has about two times the impact on weight gain of other obesity genes."
The news gets better: Reddon's findings suggest it only takes a little activity to gain protection.
"People who walked briskly for the equivalent of about 1 hour a week could reduce risk of weight gain by 36%," he says. The most active people in the group were doing the equivalent of running for an hour, weekly. Or—to break it up—they were getting about 15 minutes of vigorous exercise 4 days a week. (Discover how to transform your body in just 10 minutes a day.)
Reddon points out that the study was done using people from six distinct ethnic groups in 17 countries, so he's confident that the results can be applied to nearly everyone. "The results make it clear that you can overcome your genetic blueprint when it comes to weight," Reddon says.
