<<I have thin friends who say they can eat whatever they want and never gain a pound and it's true, because their version of 'whatever they want' and my version of 'whatever I want' are two very different things>>
It occurs to me that "those people" have the same attitude toward food as I do toward alcohol. I have a glass of wine with dinner almost every night and really enjoy it, but I never have (or wish to have) more than two glasses, even when celebrating with friends. I can keep any kind of alcohol in the house (fine wine, beer, hard liquor, liqueurs) for weeks or even months on end without giving it a thought. I guess I don't have addictive tendencies when it comes to booze. (Let us be thankful for small blessings.) Perhaps it's because my body categorically rejects excess alcohol by making me nauseous, dizzy or outright sick.
F.
Last edited by freelancemomma; 01-25-2012 at 01:07 PM.
One of my best friends has always been teeny tiny and still is after two children. She would always call me back in high school and say "I'm STARVING and picking you up to eat!" then she'd order an appetizer plus a big unhealthy meal and eat a half a chicken finger and a french fry and she was done.
We often have sleepovers with our children so that they can play while we can talk and catch up.
At her house, I tend to eat too many calories because I get entirely too hungry. I'm a volume eater and I have to have vegetables to fill me up without filling me out
She doesn't cook unhealthy foods, but they are starch-centered Guyanese foods: rice and peas, stewed chicken, roti, and all kinds of bean dishes. She can eat a small bowl of something and feel satisfied. I can't.
I don't try to fight my natural hunger anymore. I just find a way to satisfy myself while staying within my meal plan.
Sure they may be able to eat what they want. But they don't want to eat as much as we do
LOL Love it.
Anyways I have a naturally thin friend, who is sure thin around 98 to 105 pounds who doesn't gain weight from anything. She drinks alot, smokes pot all the time and and eats completely unhealthy. Never have I been jealous of her because she can eat whatever she wants because in the long run she looks very unhealthy on the outside as I'm sure she is on the inside. Don't get me wrong I love this girl to death she is my soulmate friendship wise...but damn I would not give anything to be that "naturally" thin. I never had to work at losing weight until I hit my 20's. I was ALWAYS skinny **** when I was in grade 10 I ate burger king everyday for lunch with friends (disgusting I know LOL it took me 11 years just to eat burger king after that. I had my first whooper last year LOL). Two burger's fries...and lets not talk about the amount of pop I consumed a day because water? ewww.... I never ate breakfast, I always at a "healthy" dinner because my parents made it and people always said I was "naturally" thin because of it. But then my wonderful 20's hit and it ALL caught up to me!
The point is sure it sucks that I gained all this weight but the truth is I can lose it as fast as a gained it. My body sucks like that (or thats good) as long as I continue to excerise and eat smaller proportions. So for me to be jealous of these "naturally" thin girls, I never really am. But the girls who have nice curves and a wicked body who claim they don't do anything to keep their figure...that's another story.
I was very skinny all my life. I could and did eat lots of food, sometimes two plates full. But I do have a few hormonal imbalances and perhaps that accounts for some of it. I ate and ate and was bony. I had the problem of having a negative self image because complete strangers felt free to tell me how skeletal I was. But that was just me.
I eventually filled out and now that I'm middle aged, I'm fighting to keep my weight at a good level. Most people would say my excess weight is "vanity pounds", but I"ll tell you that I just feel so horrible and uncomfortable this way. My body doesn't like it.
So I do think some people, for some period of their lives, can eat without gaining weight. But I also think many of them succumb to middle-aged spread, like me.
I once had an enlightening conversation with two coworkers, both of whom were doing Weight Watchers. I told them how horribly uncomfortable I feel when I overeat. That stuffed feeling is really miserable for me. One of them said, "Oh, my stomach likes that feeling" and the other one said, "I just ignore that feeling."
That was the first time it over occurred to me that the way people's bodies experience something could be so drastically different. This might explain why some naturally thin people don't overeat as much, because their bodies feel really horrid afterwards. That horrid feeling is all that stops me sometimes, but it does stop me.
At the same time, my research supports the view that basal metabolic rates do not differ widely in people of the same age, gender, height, weight, and lean body mass -- perhaps by 5 to 10 percent at the most.
If you look at the data from whence the caloric calculators were derived you will see that for the most part this is true but there are data outliers.
Quote:
Originally Posted by freelancemomma
What I read recently is that metabolism slows down temporarily when you're losing weight, but revs back to normal when you bring your calories up to maintenance levels. (In other words, years of yo-yoing do not permanently damage the metabolism.) Of course, the new normal (BMR) will be lower than the old normal, but that's simply because it takes more energy to keep 250 pounds alive than to keep 150 pounds alive.
Also very true but there is a component of that is not accounted for by weight. Take a look at the work by James Kreiger he has a good article in the free section of his web site on this topic. Essentially it disusses how people who have lost weight do not tend to have the same BMR that others of the same height/weight. As to the cause of this or if it was present all along we don't know.
I think it takes all kinds. I have never been overweight, but that's because, from the day I hit puberty and started developing hips and a butt, I have paid attention to what and how much I ate. I have paid perhaps too much attention. And so, although my friends and family probably think I am naturally thin, I am pretty sure that is not the case.
I can't say I never eat too much. I can put it away like nobody I know. If I didn't know I would gain weight, I would eat all day and start again the next day. And some days I do. I can sit down at a fancy meal and walk away having consumed 4,000 calories. I never actually reach a point where eating any more would physically hurt. But I have always watched the scale creep, and have compensated by cutting back to a more normal intake and working out that much more intensely for a week, which kept me at about 129 for the 20 years of my adult life.
Am I naturally thin? I am pretty sure that I am not. My brother is: He has never—not one day in his life—had to worry about how much he ate. My boyfriend is: At 50 he is still under 135 at 6', despite eating constantly and consuming his fair share of alcohol. I work and live with him. I have a pretty good idea what he eats, and he doesn't work out enough to counter that. But I am not like that. If I overeat, I gain. So I am vigilant. And although I love to eat, I also love exercise, so I work out hard. It isn't an astronomical metabolism that keeps me at my goal weight. And it also isn't that I couldn't eat more. I always can.
Last edited by Petite Powerhouse; 01-25-2012 at 09:26 PM.
You just don't know. That person you see pick at her food may go home and eat a large meal later on, then dessert, and then go to the gym for four hours the next morning to work it off. Nobody sees everything a person does. SO, yes, some people are naturally thin. They are. It's a fact. But a lot of those never-been-overweight people are more like I am. They indulge—sometimes a lot—but they also are aware of what they are doing, and they compensate, make up for it. Maybe they count their calories on a big day, and then scale back the next couple of days and boost their workouts, too. You just never know.
I don't know what the deal is with your friend, but in general, my "naturally thin" friends seem like they can eat whatever they want because they do eat whatever they want. The difference is that they don't have an unhealthy relationship with food, so "whatever they want" might be a pastry or some ice cream, but they're not adding that to a week or a lifetime of shoving entirely too much unhealthy food in their mouths like it is for me. They eat intuitively and they only eat until they're full, so yea, they're eating whatever they want, but that doesn't have the same effect on them as on me because "whatever we want" is vastly different.
<<They eat intuitively and they only eat until they're full, so yea, they're eating whatever they want, but that doesn't have the same effect on them as on me because "whatever we want" is vastly different.>>
I think we're in agreement here. That's exactly my point: that naturally thin people may have the luxury of eating what they want, but they generally want a lot less than you or me. So the "unfairness," if we choose to see it that way, lies more in their smaller appetites/cravings than in their faster metabolisms.
Sometimes I get really frustrated because it's almost as if I can look at food and gain weight but my boyfriend can eat whatever he wants and be rain thin. However, rail thin does NOT equal healthy!
Sometimes I get really frustrated because it's almost as if I can look at food and gain weight but my boyfriend can eat whatever he wants and be rain thin. However, rail thin does NOT equal healthy!
Even when rail thin IS healthy, it isn't necessarily desired by the one whose cross it is to bear. My boyfriend would love to put on weight, but his metabolism resists. He is all lean muscle, but he will never be at all broad. He's 128 at 6'—and he hates it. He has tried all the tricks personal trainers suggest and none of it works. To even try to put on weight he has to eat so much that he gets sick.
We all face challenges when it comes to how we look.
Last edited by Petite Powerhouse; 01-31-2012 at 12:47 PM.
Personnally, as a featherweight, I keep my weight down without counting calories because I just stop when I'm not hungry anymore. Hey, a stomach is small, and it's not long until it feels full, you just need to listen to it.
<<Hey, a stomach is small, and it's not long until it feels full, you just need to listen to it.>>
I agree on the wisdom of listening to your stomach, but I also think that fullness signals vary tremendously among humans. There are people who would be physically unable to eat a 400-g jar of Nutella -- they would feel bloated, nauseated, and on the verge of throwing up -- while I've done it several times without feeling any discomfort or hearing any obvious "stop" signals.
There are people who would be physically unable to eat a 400-g jar of Nutella -- they would feel bloated, nauseated, and on the verge of throwing up -- while I've done it several times without feeling any discomfort or hearing any obvious "stop" signals.
That is really interesting, Freelance. It just goes to show you how different our bodies are. The older I get, the more I see how very different we each are. We each have our own histories, experiences, and bodies. I was at the beach once and my boyfriend wanted me to play in the surf with him. I didn't want to. I am really small and fine boned and the surf knocks me on my butt. He was having such a good time one day that I went down and he saw how the same surf that barely touched him almost knocked me over. That's when he realized that we're not all the same and don't experience life the same.
While it is true for some it is not true for all. My sister is 4'11" and weighs 80-85 lbs. She eats more than my brother and I combined. At one sitting she can eat at least 2 big macs, 10 pieces of nuggests and a super sized fries and would be hungry again after an hour.
