'Why are thin people not fat?'
 

Found this programme on Youtube and thought it quite interesting, as I am sure some of you will.

It demonstrates what can happen when 'naturally thin' people eat consistently extreme amounts of calories over time and why.

Part 1 is here : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_6-A0iHSdcA

Thin people aren't fat cuz a good portion of them are LUCKY.

Take my husband- eats probably 3,000 calories a day, eats tons of carbs, drinks a soda each day, eats HUGE lunches, eats chips and whatever else, and yet is not overweight.

His typical day:
Breakfast: 2 special K bars and a yogurt
Lunch: 1 bottle of soda, two sandwiches on white bread (rotates between meat and mayo or pb and j), small bag of chips, a pack of fruit snacks, a bowl of chili or mac and cheese (his coworkers call his bag the never ending lunch)
Dinner: Whatever I cook- this is his healthiest meal of the day, yesterday was whole wheat pasta, marinara sauce, meatballs, and parmesan cheese- and a HUGE plate of it.

If I ate like him I'd EASILY be 300 lbs. Eating like him is what made me gain so much weight IMO.

Some are lucky, that's true...but most thin people who say "I eat and eat, but can't gain weight!!" really aren't eating as much as they think.

I've been around a lot of "naturally thin" people. It's about 20 percent good genes, I think. Most of it is that they just don't eat more than they need most of the time. My husband's thin...he eats when he's hungry, and most of the time just eats as much as he needs. He's also really active, so what he does eat gets burned off.

They don't stuff themselves, they're more active. I really don't think this is a big mystery, in my experience! Anyway, this is really interesting, I'm going to finish watching it. :)


**ew, the part where he's looking at the bovine fat...I'm just imagining how all my extra fat would look in a big glass bowl. :(

while I think some of it has to do with the fact that naturally think people are lucky, thin people just have smaller stomachs and only eat when they want to eat, they don't eat when they're bored or they lead very active life styles.

and if they are lucky now, they wont be later in life.

I don't understand the term "naturally thin"? I have been thin and I have been fat. I am fat because I eat too much. I was thin because I ate a normal amount. Wouldn't most of us be "naturally thin" if we just didn't overindulge?

I can't compare myself to a husband who can put away mass amounts of food and still be thin because he's 19 inches taller than me, male and has much more muscle. He's still just eating what he needs and there is no law that says he couldn't get fat too if he ate more than he needed.

I think the meaning of "naturally thin" is a person who is thin without thinking about it at all. They will "naturally" adjust their eating to what their bodies need. For example a person who over indulges at a dinner party and the next day feels very little hunger and does not eat much at all.

My husband is like that. He can eat a shocking amount of food in one sitting, then the next day he won't be hungry at all and forgets about food completely until dinner.

Crazy...I like the last part where it talks about losing weight. how their brain and body regards the proper amount of food and goes into starvation mode when they don't overeat, and that when you're obese your body tries to stay that way because it sees that as the weight you should be.

So I'm not crazy, my body really is fighting with me. :p



this one's pretty cool too.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pOx9u...eature=related

For those of you who don't want to watch the video it basically makes the following points. (Which aren't new to anyone who has been reading about this topic).

Some people are "naturally thin" for some of following reasons. Not all apply to thin people.

1) They have a tendency not to over eat in the first place. This means they stop eating when they are full even if there is more tasty food in front of them. There appears to be a genetic component to this.

2) They increase their spontaneous energy output. As in, they fidget or move around more. Also appears to have a genetic component. (Although the video didn't mention it fat people have a tendancy to become more effecient with their movements faster than skinny people which is also genetic.)

3) They partition calories differently meaning over eating builds muscle and not fat stores even without exercise. Definately genetic.

Finally they touched on the setpoint theory which is our bodies want to be a certain weight which helped the skinny people return to their previous skinny selves quickly.

The video did touch one point I had not heard before that people can potentially become fatter due to viral infection. In one group tested 20% had this virus.

My theory is that "naturally thin" people do not love food like heavy people do. I have two obese friends and two thin friends at my gym. The two obese (and me!) talk about recipes, restaurants, what we are dying for; while the thin ones talk about their families, exercising, the news, the weather.

thank you for the summary!

what do you think of the setpoint theory?

I have two of those "naturally thin" people among my close colleagues.
Both are males (around 45), both are smokers.
Colleague No. 1 eats any and every junk food you can imagine: burgers, fries (even fries with poutine - eeeew!), pizza, regular Coke, etc. He LOVES his junk food. While I don't much about what they eat at home, I know that he has 3 kids and his wife is a stay at home mom, so I would imagine there is some "corner cutting" when it comes to food. He also hates whole wheat pasta so if they have pasta it would be white.
No matter what he eats, he doesn't gain an ounce.

Colleague No. 2: He is single and I don't know if or what he cooks or what he eats. But quite regularly, I see him bring a Timmie's breakfast sandwich (= engish muffin + sausage + egg + cheese) to work. At lunch time, the breakfast sandwich still sits on his desk, only half-eaten.
I really don't know how he does it. I would not be able to sit and stare at the food all day long (not to mention that if I had only half of the sandwich for breakfast, my stomach would rumble very loudly by 10 a.m.).

I just don't know.

I think something is going on hormonally but that habitual behavior and enviornmental factors are more to blame for difficulty in losing weight.

I know a serious foodie (the guy is OBSESSED with food, he loves to make it and he loves to eat it), who eats (according to my estimates when we worked together and I was staying at his house, therefore seeing everything he eats) about 3400-4000 cals/day, and is super skinny. There are people with ridiculous metabolisms, and they may love food just as much as heavier people. His partner goes on WW, makes 4 serving recipes...and this guy eats 3/4 servings while his partner eats one. And he still maintains his weight.

I know other thin people who don't eat all day, run around like crazy, forget about food, and then eat what seems like a lot at night, but that really equates to 1600-2000 calories worth of food for the day.

I know other thin people who do the stopping when full, but eat throughout the day. They just have a strong "off" button when full.

There are as many kinds of "thin people" as there are "fat people". They have in common that they eat a number of calories appropriate to what their metabolism burns. They vary widely in how they eat those calories, their relationship to food, the speed at which that metabolism burns and therefore how many calories they can actually eat. Just as heavier people have many reasons and ways for becoming fat (some ate more healthy foods, some have genuinely slower metabolic rates ie with PCOS or thyroid disorders, some get stuck in binge/starve cycles, etc), thinner people have many reasons and ways that they maintain normal weights.

Which is why debates like this make me crazy. There is no one "naturally thin" archetype, and to me it's just as offensive as assuming that every fat person got fat by watching too much TV and eating Twinkies.

Just finished watching the full documentary and while I found it interesting I also found it disheartening since it practically told me there is no way I will be able to keep my weight off. I took two one month breaks from my weight loss journey once when my father diet in August and once when I ripped a muscle early December and I did not gain any weight during either of those breaks but actually lost a couple of pounds even though my eating habbits especially the one in August were rather bad. Not sure if that means my set point changed or if it was just left over weight loss from when I was losing but I haven't worried much about maintaince until now. Eeeek.

That is not even slightly true! Statistics are simple statistics! What the video really told you is that you are never going to be able to eat whatever in want in any portion size you want and stay skinny. You already knew that though. The vast majority of us on this site are never going to be swimwear models either! So what? Don't let the lucky genetics of a lucky few get you down. You're learning good healthy habits and you can maintain them.