Physical Activity Can Affect Genetic Susceptibility To Weight Gain

By Javierlayus - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=15900701

One often hears the excuse that genes makes someone overweight (note of course that humans have not undergone some sort of rapid genetic change precipitating the obesity epidemic).  It is therefore useful to know that a study has shown that to the extent that genetic differences between people can influence weight gain, that the weight gain can be "diminished by increasing physical activity."  Of course, controlling diet is usually the greatest factor in weight control, even taking genetic differences into account.  Again, genetic differences influencing weight gain have always existed; the skyrocketing expansion of waistlines and BMIs cannot be attributed to genetics as the major factor. Excerpted from the abstract:

Whether change in physical activity over time modifies the genetic susceptibility to long-term weight gain is unknown…In the combined cohorts, 4-year BMI change per 10-risk allele increment was -0.02 kg/m2 among participants with greatest increase in physical activity and 0.24 kg/m2 among those with greatest decrease in physical activity (P[interaction]<0.001), corresponding to 0.01 kg versus 0.63 kg weight changes every 4 years (P[interaction]=0.001). Similar but marginal interactions were observed for the BMI-GRS (P[interaction]=0.045). Our data indicate that the genetic susceptibility to weight gain may be diminished by increasing physical activity.