Is there a disease to make you overweight?

[SmartyShorts]

You can't let that kind of thing ruin your life completely. Obviously, with me, there's still medicine and chiropractic care involved. You need to look at where you are and what you have. If you don't like what you see, change it for the better.

Totally agree, but it's always nice to hear it said. Especially from someone who seems to have it a lot tougher then most of us. It's motivational to hear.

Anyway, just wanted to show my respect for someone who seems to deal with life as it comes amidst all the, in my opinion, whiny people proclaiming to have lost faith in humanity and bitching about how unfair life is on these forums.

Spoiler: What to do when life gives you lemons...

Spoiler: And...

No no no, when life gives you lemons, you take pictures of Spiderman. Also thank you again.

 

[martin's a madman]

Yes, it's called pregnancy. : D

 

[Vrach]

I keep hearing there is. But if there is I can't find a name or information over google search. All I can find is that some people can have genes that make them gain weight quicker. I'm starting to think its just an excuse for people to allow themselves to keep eating and feel okay about it?

First off, you have the metabolism. A slow metabolism can make it neigh impossible to stay fit, while a fast one will allow a person to eat like a pig and never gain weight.

Second, you have conditions that mess up your hormones. Not sure how it works, but I believe they work with the metabolism, slowing it and again, yes, resulting in weight gain.

 

[Jodah]

Thyroid issues are the most common causes of it. There are, however, many medications used to treat other diseases that can cause weight gain. Prednisone is one of the more common ones. It is used to treat kidney, heart, and lung problems. I should know, I've been on the stuff for 20 years.

 

[MurderousToaster]

In my case, the disease is called "Lazybastardiosis". Sometimes affected by my incredibly rare condition of "Likestoeatcrispsabittoomuchitis".

In all seriousness, I don't think there are many actual diseases that cause weight gain, but there are psychological things and a couple of factors that can add to it such as having a slow metabolism and stuff. To the best of my (limited) medical knowledge, there is no "You're fat." disease, but there could be some that would affect appetite and such.

 

[lacktheknack]

I have a friend who's a nurse, and she told me of one patient who had her thyroid removed.

The twist? The patient was anorexic.

Not only did she gain over a hundred pounds in three months (the hospital forced her to eat), but the sudden weight gain broke her leg bones (which were already weak from malnutrition) and stretched her skin so much that she's left with massive skin bags permanently, not to mention that she was effective immobile and a bunch of twats who saw her moving around the hospital kept making nasty comments about her weight. Essentially, she was in anorexic HELL.

And then, through metabolism-boosting meds, she lost about seventy pounds two months later.

So yes, there are medical cases that cause immense weight gain, but after your metabolism gets fixed the weight typically falls right back off.

 

[Hagi]

No no no, when life gives you lemons, you take pictures of Spiderman. Also thank you again.

Alright, you lost me there....

Don't get me wrong, Spiderman is awesome (though I'd argue for Batman any day, the only man capable of wearing his underwear on the outside and still be dark and gritty) but what's he have to do with lemons?

And to keep this at least slightly on topic:

I'm personally quite lucky to have an insanely fast metabolism. I've got below 5% body fat and no matter what I do I can't get any more and I don't know if it's related but I'm quite incapable of getting hangovers, any alcohol I drink leaves my system before I wake up so besides have to visit the toilet several times I don't notice a thing , of course I hardly ever drink so it's kinda irrelevant[footnote]Anything not related to elephants is irrelephant (sorry, hearing Cave Johnson causes me to spout bad jokes)[/footnote].

Only downside I noticed of my metabolism that that when I tried my hand at semi-professional rowing (training every day for 2-3 hours, no alcohol, 8+ hours of sleep every night etc.) my body simply wasn't able to keep up and I had to eat an extra full plate of carbohydrates at every meal (usually plain rice with ketchup) until I felt like puking. In the end it wasn't even enough and I developed a rather serious case of overtraining [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overtraining] forcing me to give up sporting at that level.

It's not really comparable to some of the more serious conditions out there but it did give me an inkling of understanding on how effing horrible dieting can be.

But overtraining is another 'condition' that can cause serious weight gain. While you're sporting at a high level your body demands extreme amounts of nutrition, and if you're stopping you have to do so slowly. A little less each week so your body can adapt to it's new nutritional demands. But when you get seriously overtrained your body becomes quite literally incapable of sporting (you sleep 14+ hours per day whether you want or not, experience extreme nausea and even fainting when you do exercise etc. at least that's what I experienced) and there's no way for you to gradually build it down. Your body keeps on demanding your previous levels of nutrition and working as if you're doing heavy exercise daily but there's no way you can actually do the exercise required to burn it all so it all just gets stored and in a very short amount of time you can grow very fat.

I luckily didn't experience that, was way too exhausted and nauseous at the time to eat regularly, but there's quite a few ex-top athletes who are now seriously overweight. Either due to this or related causes.

 

[zombie goat fetish]

There are a few things that can cause weight gain.

1. Hypothyroidism. The thyroid is the gland that controls your metabolism. If it stops forcible thyroxine or doesn?t produce enough of it, you will gain weight very quickly.

2. Insulin resistance can cause you to gain weight or slow down your progress in losing weight.

3. Hormonal changes.

4. Stress and depression.

 

[Sarah Frazier]

I have fibromyalgia so I totally know what it's like to gain weight because of a disease. When my legs are killing me, the only thing I can really do is sit on my ass. It still isn't any excuse for weight gain though. I changed up my portion control and stopped eating dairy products and dropped 30 pounds right away.

This is a great personal example of how a change in diet could do a lot of good, even if the body is too stiff, sore, or weak to go through a workout routine that other people could.

And as most if not all of the responses have said, there's no single cause that will cause a person to gain weight out of thin air. Thyroid/metabolism problems can make it harder to lose weight, and some medications can cause water retention, but extreme weight gain can't be blamed on just one those things.

 

[spartan231490]

I keep hearing there is. But if there is I can't find a name or information over google search. All I can find is that some people can have genes that make them gain weight quicker. I'm starting to think its just an excuse for people to allow themselves to keep eating and feel okay about it?

Any disease that affects the thyroid can affect body weight. The thyroid releases the hormones that tell the body to store fat and to burn it, if it releases too many of the former and not enough of the latter it's almost impossible for that person not to end up very overweight. Diabetes also makes weight loss more difficult because you have to keep you blood-sugar up, which makes it more difficult to diet, although it's not as bad as a thyroid problem.

 

[SmartyShorts]

No no no, when life gives you lemons, you take pictures of Spiderman. Also thank you again.

Alright, you lost me there....

Don't get me wrong, Spiderman is awesome (though I'd argue for Batman any day, the only man capable of wearing his underwear on the outside and still be dark and gritty) but what's he have to do with lemons?

And to keep this at least slightly on topic:

I'm personally quite lucky to have an insanely fast metabolism. I've got below 5% body fat and no matter what I do I can't get any more and I don't know if it's related but I'm quite incapable of getting hangovers, any alcohol I drink leaves my system before I wake up so besides have to visit the toilet several times I don't notice a thing , of course I hardly ever drink so it's kinda irrelevant[footnote]Anything not related to elephants is irrelephant (sorry, hearing Cave Johnson causes me to spout bad jokes)[/footnote].

Only downside I noticed of my metabolism that that when I tried my hand at semi-professional rowing (training every day for 2-3 hours, no alcohol, 8+ hours of sleep every night etc.) my body simply wasn't able to keep up and I had to eat an extra full plate of carbohydrates at every meal (usually plain rice with ketchup) until I felt like puking. In the end it wasn't even enough and I developed a rather serious case of overtraining [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overtraining] forcing me to give up sporting at that level.

It's not really comparable to some of the more serious conditions out there but it did give me an inkling of understanding on how effing horrible dieting can be.

But overtraining is another 'condition' that can cause serious weight gain. While you're sporting at a high level your body demands extreme amounts of nutrition, and if you're stopping you have to do so slowly. A little less each week so your body can adapt to it's new nutritional demands. But when you get seriously overtrained your body becomes quite literally incapable of sporting (you sleep 14+ hours per day whether you want or not, experience extreme nausea and even fainting when you do exercise etc. at least that's what I experienced) and there's no way for you to gradually build it down. Your body keeps on demanding your previous levels of nutrition and working as if you're doing heavy exercise daily but there's no way you can actually do the exercise required to burn it all so it all just gets stored and in a very short amount of time you can grow very fat.

I luckily didn't experience that, was way too exhausted and nauseous at the time to eat regularly, but there's quite a few ex-top athletes who are now seriously overweight. Either due to this or related causes.

The spiderman reference was a joke about JK Simmons. He was Cave Johnson and Peter Parker's boss in the Spiderman movies.

Anyway, your story sounds pretty difficult too. I know a bunch of kids who wrestled in high school and overtraining happened a lot.

 

[Doctor Glocktor]

Yeah, its called procrastination.

 

[KnightRider0717]

Metabolic disorders. And there are certain genes that predispose people to be overweight.

For the majority of people however, this is not an excuse. Being overweight is generally caused by eating too much and exercising too little, and a large proportion of the world doesn't seem to care/know about this.

agreed 100%

 

[VanityGirl]

Hypothyroidism. For example, Hashimoto's thyroiditis.

A bit redundant. Hashimoto's Disease is a type of thyroiditis, most health care professionals will call it hashimoto's disease. I have actually seen this disease first hand (I'm in med school).


Most people who gain weight uncontrollably do so because of hyperthyroidism. Hyperthyroidism can caus euncontrolled appetite and a slowed metabolism. The most common type of Hyperthyroidism is Grave's Disease.

Hypothyroidism can (in some cases) cause you to lose weight.

 

[Continuity]

I keep hearing there is. But if there is I can't find a name or information over google search. All I can find is that some people can have genes that make them gain weight quicker. I'm starting to think its just an excuse for people to allow themselves to keep eating and feel okay about it?

Anything that affects the metabolism... but none the less you cant put it on if you don't eat it. So no matter what disease someone has, if they're obese its their own damn fault (unless they're a kid in which case its the parents fault).