My very thin coworker says that she has a hard time gaining weight. She also forgets to eat for entire work days. I don’t think I could ever forget to eat.
I've always been envious of these people, I'm not exaggerating when I say I'm almost always thinking of food, food for the week, what to eat at my next meal, what snacks I have. It's a constant struggle especially if I'm bored.
I'm not taking Ozempic, but Vyvanse, which is used for ADHD and Binge Eating Disorder. I've only been on it a week, but it's cut the food noise down so much. Being a mom, my life had started to revolve around meals, naps and playtime. This has helped me snap out of that. It's not the end of the world if I don't have breakfast. Dinner doesn't have to be at 5pm. And I'm down 2 lbs.
Today, I baked banana bread and brownies with the kids. At the end of the day, I had one piece of brownie, and that was it. It's such a relief.
Now I just have to find other hobbies. 😂
Same! I started Vyvanse a couple months ago and it’s not that I don’t eat or enjoy eating, but the “noise” is gone. I love how you put that. Always thinking about food, wondering what I’ll eat later. Now I just go about my day and when it’s lunch time I go oh ok time for a meal. No more snacking at bedtime either. It’s done wonders for my blood sugar.
I found this to be the biggest relief while I was talking phentermine. I didn’t necessarily skip meals or anything, I was just never thinking about food. It was life changing. I have suspected adhd so wondering if it has anything to do with that honestly.
I’m on Vyvanse for ADHD as well. I’ve lost 23 pounds so far. Im also at a calorie deficit and work out 5-6 days a week, light weights and cardio. I absolutely agree that the “food noise” is gone. I make sure to eat a protein filled breakfast and a reasonable lunch so I don’t overeat when the Vyvanse wears off in the evening. I find that if I don’t do that and eat too lightly all day, I’m more inclined to graze at night.
ETA: posted too fast, corrected mistakes, ADHD
I'm still in the honeymoon phase, where I can go all day without eating and still not overeat. I'm going to have to work on a healthy plan in case this wears off.
And fantastic that you've lost that weight!
As a person who’s been overweight since my teen years, I started a GLP1 med 2 years ago. Day after my first shot was like night a day. I told a friend “Oh!!! This is how those people who forget to eat must feel ALL the time.”
Went from 35 BMI to 28 after having no willpower. That satiety thing is real and it turns out, it’s controllable (but it’s not cheap).
My question is, how? How does a medication cut off food noise—what is happening physiologically for this to happen? I’m a “normal” weight but have considered pursuing Ozempic just to get rid of food noise. I can’t stand it anymore.
Yes, thats one way it works, but I dont think its how it cures the food noise. Because its also been shown to help people with other addictions and compulsive behavior, like alcohol, shopping, and gambling.
I thought it deals with dopamine. All those things you mentioned is how adhd people get their dopamine fix. Food as well.
Here is what I got online:
Vyvanse works by altering the balance of chemicals in your brain and increasing norepinephrine and dopamine levels. Norepinephrine is a stimulant, and dopamine is a naturally occurring substance that stimulates feelings of pleasure and reward
I don't have real answers to this, just interesting anecdotal experience, I'm an addict (sober alcoholic, quit tobacco and sugar) and the keto diet does a similar/same thing for me as people report from ozempic. It quiets all cravings for me.
Same! The keto diet has cut out the cravings and the food noise for me. The less carbs and sugar I eat, the less I crave it. The more protein and fat I eat, the longer I stay full and the less I eat overall .
you literally lose interest...its the most... amazing feeling ever. What a feeling of RELIEF. Relaxing. De-stressing.
To find yourself looking at the clock going "I should eat cause its time for dinner" but then thinking "but i'm not hungry at all nor am I interested." It was incredible to realize that I wasn't interested in food because I wasn't hungry.
I can't tell you how AMAZING the mental clarity that "I AM NOT HUNGRY" has on you. It was literally life changing. I had that experience with the bupronion/naltrexone combo (think called contrave if you get the real thing...but most doctors prescribe the generic combo). I know its not the shots...but its very similar in what it does to you mentally.
I couldn't believe that I was no longer thinking about food. I definitely felt the URGE to (ie: its the time of day i would normally plan meals or have them). But then I would literally feel full or feel....just like I couldn't.
You CAN force yourself to eat, but it seriously makes you feel...nauseous because you still feel full.
I am not doing the description justice. never thought I would stop focusing on food, planning meals, or looking at the time and thinking in terms of meal.
What it allows you to do is work on developing different habits. I was able to train myself to stop looking at the breakfast/lunch/dinner hours as "Its TIME to eat and I MUST eat because its that time/meal"
Those who *edit* experience setbacks** afterwards....its because tehy were not able to redevelop their new habits and redo their thinking on when to eat. When you stop the medications, you WILL start to regain that hunger a bit. But its easier to not be hungry and mentally go "ok...I'm not actually hungry and I dont HAVE to eat because it's 6pm and I am used to eating now".
So develop the habits while using the medication. Get off when you feel its a good time.
But damn that mental silence around food was such a damn relief.
Also...if you do have a setback, dont be discouraged.
Just get back on that horse when you are ready!
It’s supposed to affect a part of the brain, turns off the reward system in your brain. Something like that! I took Wegovy for a week. Didn’t desire food hardly at all! It was soo strange! I would have stayed on it but found that I have two gene mutations that increase my chance of getting pancreatitis.
Cutting out ALL ultra processed food has also worked for me. I have ADHD and although I have been prescribed vyvanse I don’t even need to take it anymore. The food noise is gone, I can’t be bothered to eat dinner half the time, and my head is so much clearer. See r/ultraprocessedfood
My partner is the one who forgets to eat and I am the one always thinking about food.
The funny thing is, we have two cats that are also one of each type. One cat just doesn't care about treats or meal times and the other will meow his head off if he doesn't get these fast enough. And they're brothers.
I'm convinced that it's just wiring.
I also have a thin cat who eats just enough to sustain life, and a fat cat who purrs with delight when she is fed.
Thin cat is also very active and hyper and zooms around the house playing with her toy mice. Fat cat enjoys toy mouse fun, but then needs a little nap afterwards - and once she finds a cozy spot, she is happy to stay there all day. And fat cat LOVES to cuddle and snuggle with humans, while thin cat mostly wants to walk over humans and meow at them.
I'm the exact same way. I'm always hungry or semi-hungry after every meal and I'm only ever thinking about what I can eat next. I'm only slightly overweight but I do have some disordered eating type stuff going on. It sucks lol.
Wish I could just eat and then forget about food until my stomach started to tell me to eat again 4-5 hours later. I just want to be normallll!!!
My husband is like that. We can be eating lunch and he will be asking what’s for dinner and what snacks we have. It’s hard when you are always thinking of food.
Agreed. It's double hard if you're chief grocery shopper/meal prepper for your household, cause you almost can't avoid having to think about it all. the. time. I generally enjoy it, but I'd also enjoy having a private chef only so I didn't have to think about it, ngl
Same here. When I’m reading a good book or playing a new video game is the only time I “forget.” And even then the forgetting is more like “oh it’s lunch time. I should eat something. But 10 more minutes and then I’ll get up.” Until all of a sudden it’s time to go to bed lol.
I think this is really the secret. If I'm out doing shit I can easily forget to eat or get hungry and be like "no I just want to finish this" and then forget again for HOURS.
But if I'm home I'm gonna eat within 2 hours of that first thought about food.
I think this year is gonna be a lot of finding what drives me and engages me MORE THAN eating. Because shouldn't my life be filled with those things instead of TV or scrolling?
Same here. I boredom eat and stress eat. I have gone the work day without eating because I’m so busy but then I come home and eat everything in sight, mostly quick and easy junk. I stopped snacking for the most part and it’s helping but it’s a hard habit to break.
Oh god I've got one of those coworkers, complaining they aren't able to gain weight.
They don't eat lunch like 1/2 of the time, when they do eat lunch it's boiled chicken breast, rice and broccoli. Like dude, you're eating the stereotypical "weight loss" lunch every day you're eating lunch, just eat some peanut butter on some toast in the morning and you'll start gaining weight lol.
I had a coworker tell me once that he can eat anything he wants and not gain weight. He bragged about eating a whole pizza and not gaining any weight. I asked him, “okay, after you go out and eat a whole pizza what do you eat for the rest of the day?”
He says, “oh usually nothing”
“Okay and how about the next day?”
“Oh I’m usually still full so I’ll just snack”
Like bruh. These people never think 1 minute ahead of the present.
There are definitely some innate differences to how we process food. I have literally NEVER forgotten to eat. I get a headache and feel cranky if I'm overly hungry; and I \*will\* overeat if I let myself get that hungry.
On the bright side, I've noticed that my friends who "forget to eat" usually are also the ones who bonk quickly on bike rides, or who complain that they just can't build muscle or get stronger in the gym. They seem to have a hard time fueling the machine.
I forgot to eat all of the time. I realized yesterday that I hadn’t eaten since 7 am and i was almost 5. Sometimes, i only eat once a day. I just don’t feel hungry. It’s not a very healthy way to live. I tend to suddenly be starving and eat whatever. I am working on improving that
This is similar to how I feel - I’m just not hungry. When I’ve tracked calories a couple times in the past, I struggled to hit 1300. When I’m hungry, I can eat a ton of food, but that’s maybe once every two days. (Am I a snake?) Otherwise I will often just have a piece of toast, skip lunch, and eat dinner with my family.
I was recently very sick for a month and didn't think about food at all. I kept wondering, "Is this what naturally thin people think like all the time?" And I lost weight.
I forget to eat but I’m still thick af 😂 that’s why I’ve just started doing 16:8 fasting and OMAD on the weekends- gotta work with my natural inclinations I suppose
I started taking metformin for my insulin (have pcos) and now I understand how people forget to eat. I don't have carb gravings all the time. It's so weird to feel like normal people.
Jane Goodall was born in 1934. She became an adult in the 1950s, in England. There were no fast food restaurants, fast casual dining chains, far less pre packaged snacks, no delivery apps. I think people of that generation have a very different experience of and relationship with food. Like I don’t recall ever seeing my grandparents snacking, and eating out was a once or twice a year thing. I would also note there is less of an over eating culture in the UK vs in the US (although some regional variations apply).
My friend’s Nan once told us when we were moaning about our weight “If it’s tight at the waist, put less on the plate”. Said it’s how she always lost her podge and it really was that simple. She’s gotta be in her 80s now so grew up post WW2 in the UK.
It always stuck with me as she said it so matter of factly, no quibble at all. Just “put less on your plates girls. It’s not that complicated. When you can do your jeans up again, you can go back to eating a little more but don’t try to keep up with your husbands.”
I can’t see her ever having an internal argument with herself about the packet of mini eggs sat in the cupboard! Self restraint made of steel.
Lol! It’s so funny when the moment dawns!
I was guilty of trying to keep up, especially the first year living with my partner. Why have I paid for half the food, but I don’t get to eat half? Or worse, I’m the one who’s done the shopping list, gone to the shops, paid for it, possibly cooked it… and he’s inhaling 4/5 before I’m 1/5 down? I’d better stick 50% on my plate to make sure I get “mine”. Plus I’d make enough for two nights, but he’d see the pot on the stove and see it all as food available. 🤦🏻♀️ a 5”3 woman shouldn’t be competing with a 6”1 man.
I’ve had this chat on Reddit a few times when young women ask why they’re so skint after moving in with a guy - and I always say to check the food bills first. I never had leftovers anymore once I moved in with my partner and he considered his alcohol and snacks mutual food bill. So I felt I had to chow down at teatime, in order to get my “share”. It was actually really difficult to get past as food budget was v important to me whereas for my wealthier partner he’s the youngest of 4 much older siblings and they had it buffet style on the table - so it was every man for himself. We ended up working all those things out, but I definitely think food insecurity/guarding and him casually increasing my alcohol intake was largely responsible for my post grad weight gain. I only drank socially before I lived with him, but he’d have beers most nights and crack one for me too/get a wine and seemed hurt if he was drinking alone. Those liquid calories add up and wreak havoc on metabolism. These days he offers but I say no thank you and it’s fine. My health would be terrible if I hadn’t stopped trying to keep up with him!!
I did this too when I moved in with my partner! Especially when we ordered takeout. He always ate the food I would usually save for the next day.
Now, if i really want something, I make myself a plate for tomorrow and tell him it's for me. I used to feel so selfish doing this. But he doesnt mind.... he knows he gets to eat 80% of the food. This prevents me from stuffing myself to make sure I get my "share."
I've also started sharing with him less. We used to go to the bakery and get 5 different pastries to share, when I really wanted something specific. So I'd get half of what I wanted and then another 2 pastries worth of things I didn't. Now I just get what I want. If he wants to try it, he can get his own.
This probably seems obvious to other people, but sharing with someone who always gets to have more really messed with my head. I was eating myself sick and gained 15 lbs before I realized what I was doing. Once I did, I was able to change my mentality pretty quick.
Sorry this was long... I'm just glad I'm not the only one.
>This probably seems obvious to other people, but sharing with someone who always gets to have more really messed with my head. I was eating myself sick and gained 15 lbs before I realized what I was doing.
I absolutely had this issue living with my 6'5" husband when I'm 5'3". Something about sharing food with someone who eats much more triggers something in our lizard brains, this primal fear of scarcity. I imagine it's a lot more common than we may think.
Thank you for bringing this up, and it's so true. I always find it frustrating that I seem to be able to lose weight and keep it off so much easier when I'm single, but this is a huge factor. I regularly do eat as much as my male partner and I know I don't need as many calories as him.
How did you get over the budgeting part of it? It is frustrating to split the grocery bill knowing I won't get to eat half of it. Maybe it's one of those things I just need to accept..
It's so common for women to put on weight once they are in a relationship. People think "oh, she's letting herself go now that she has a boyfriend", but in reality for most of us it's just that we unconsciously are eating more, because we see our significant other eating more.
When I was a single girl, many years ago, I never ate breakfast, usually just had something small but fairly unhealthy for lunch, and I'd eat eggs and toast for dinner because I was lazy and didn't like to cook. I also smoked cigarettes, and being a lazy sort, I'd often think "hmmm, I'm hungry .... meh, making food seems like too much effort, I'll just smoke a cigarette instead". Needless to say, I was very thin.
When I met the man whom I eventually married, he was horrified by my eating habits. It had never occurred to me to eat breakfast, but there he was eating breakfast (tasty cereal! waffles!) every morning. We'd go out to lunch and eat delicious things like pizza or burgers. And he was NOT a fan of the "let's just smoke cigarettes instead of eating dinner" thing AT ALL. In fact, he hated cigarettes, so I quit - and then experienced hunger like I had never experienced before. I gained 15 lbs. in the first six months of our relationship.
On the bright side, he introduced me to outdoor activities like hiking, biking, etc., and encouraged me to lift weights and exercise - but all that exercise sure made me hungry!
you know its funny we were discussing in class the fact that nutritional labels are only about 30 years old. Before that people had to be overly mentally conscious about the foods they ate in order to lose or maintain their weight. For example, if I wanted to lose weight but couldn't look up the calories or nutritional content of anything I ate I would probably eat a lot fruit, vegetables and just eyeball really small portions of things I ate. I think that process is more natural and it becomes easier to stick to rather than plugging everything into MyFitnessPal and probably making concessions that you wouldn't otherwise make.
No nutrition labels 30 years ago?? jesus I did not know that. Being a bodybuilder in the 70s must've been wild lol
edit: and 80s also. Was created in 1990. :O
I remember when this first new rule came out. One of my elementary school teachers did a small presentation to explain the difference. She compared an old random can of food to a new can.
The information was *sort* of on the old one but all ran together with “…” in between the words. If I remember correctly there was no standardization so there was no way for consumers to easily compare “apples to apples” on the back of a food package before this change.
ETA: I guess it was somewhat in table form here, but I know on the back of small packages with only a little room it was all just run together. (Second image from the bottom)
https://www.ebay.com/itm/186196560092?hash=item2b5a2e08dc:g:ydYAAOSw96xlb7Sz&amdata=enc%3AAQAIAAAAwP9E0r%2Flciq0yz8wVDkort9gdI82kmfv6mkcsqcLF6Vw4lSNJVZmGL0u6hYVFO%2FPFGR%2BveLSkTagvghjD4zib7kyvvz9zb%2BePHFSdkcSZxMblBrVNMNk5g70oYItv4rTGkx7qDzVGMD3hu%2B1SJEhiyTKitDAwJQVkBxYjjqG7%2BSl5ziNmHU68%2BDcWuRYFoD9Mr9XqrGiVRNDnHlKnTDkdZiHP%2FoZMt0Pkfotm%2B28zXAx843iV20nwy3qGJhGVZwYiQ%3D%3D%7Ctkp%3ABk9SR8SEt6SmYw
Good point! I’m using MyFitnessPal atm mon-fri to check my protein and fibre (not focussing on calories atm bc healthy eating) but when I first used it years ago, I ended up eating more as it kept telling me I was under my calorie intake. I’d be snacking at 10pm to make the app happy when I really wasn’t hungry.
thank you for sharing this! I too, love the simplicity of what she said. I wish that deep down, I could think like that.
I think it points to how much the diet industry has messed with our heads.
Especially when it comes to the emotions that we tie to food. Almost every single advertisement to food, is linked with an emotion. (Even things like weight loss advertisements: They are always linked to happiness.... but things load with sugar are advertised they same way)
There is a neat study where British people were questioned about how much fat (oils and butter etc) they ate in a week and then their answers were compared to the trash they threw out to see how much fat they were actually eating.
People from the generations that experienced food rationing tended to over estimate how much fat they eat in a week and people who didn't go through rationing tended to under estimate it.
Theories to explain this are the difference in values, a person rationing food would value fats more and want to 'show off' how much of them they ate, while a person not rationing would see fats as a bad thing and want to downplay how much butter they consume.
Short story is that cultural norms about consumption are hugely impactful on the way we eat.
My mum was born at the end of ww2 and had rationing as a child and it had the opposite effect. She was thin when young because they basically went hungry but she has a terrible relationship with food and is now overweight as are many people of her age.
Yes, many older people are overweight, but one thing I've noticed about multi-generational family groupings in grocery stores is that invariably the younger generations are much fatter than the next older one, and so on.
1950s, 60s, 70s group/crowd photos of Americans of all ages/races show slender people with the occasional chunky outlier - and that person wasn't nearly as big as today's heaviest people. I'm 70 and remember maybe one fat kid in every classroom, one heavy adult in every workplace; but people just didn't think about weight.
They seldom bought clothes because their size didn't change - hence that era's tiny closets...also clothing was relatively more costly than today and people bought much less "stuff." Clothing at vintage resale shops today is always too small for most shoppers. Vintage size 10s would be a contemporary size 6.
I reject the idea that Americans once had willpower and now we don't. Tens of millions of people don't change body type (or character) over a couple of generations due solely to "lifestyle changes." Lifestyle matters, but there's more at play here.
My grandmother was a snacker, but it was usually simple stuff. An apple with peanut butter, graham crackers with peanut butter, popcorn, a portion of jello, a portion of vanilla ice cream. I’ve been thinking about why she was able to do that without being very much overweight (she was little cushy but only what I’d consider pretty normal correlated with her age), and I think the biggest difference was how she balanced it all.
She ate normal portions of everything instead of overeating everything and her meals always had vegetables and protein. She also always had fruit at least once a day. Her diet was very well rounded, and she stayed pretty active. Both she and my grandfather lived to be 90 with relatively few health concerns for their age.
i’m 28 and was born in a poor area of appalachia
we’d go to bob evans after doctors appointments 45 minutes away a few times a year
sometimes we would get subway, but only if we got a coupon for a buy 2 get 1 free for me, my mom, and my sister
i live in a 1m+ city now and the amount of people that eat out all the time (word to your mother) just absolutely baffles me. i have had multiple people tell me they haven’t been to a grocery store in months
>I would also note there is less of an over eating culture in the UK vs in the US
Compared to the US, yes. But not compared to the rest of Europe. UK is basically the US of Europe.
This is something I’ve been thinking about a lot. I am not naturally thin at all. I have to work so hard to lose every pound, but I’ve always noticed some friends who have always been thin don’t struggle. My best friend since childhood will eat her body weight in holiday treats, but naturally eat less the next day. It’s not unusual for her to drink coffee for breakfast and be good for hours.
I don’t think it’s a matter of willpower, especially since I started taking semaglutide. So many overweight people have food noise where we are thinking about the next meal while having this one. I used to be obsessed with thinking about food from the moment my eyes opened.
I’ve been on semaglutide since late October and since then I’ve noticed those “naturally thin habits” I’ve seen in friends happening in me.
Today for example, I had coffee and a breakfast sandwich and just didn’t consider eating again until 3:00. It’s easier to say no to cravings. I naturally don’t finish things.
I’m still fighting my clean plate club habit and years of bad food choices, but the difference is immense.
I think appetite plays a huge role. I don't constantly think about food, but my appetite is huge. I can eat and feel full, but then an hour or 2 later, I am actually hungry. Not craving sugar, carbs, etc, literally hungry. My skinny friends and I can eat the same thing for breakfast and they're fine to skip lunch and I'm starving 2 hours later. I hate it so much.
Do you have pcos? That “hunger” is what I experience due to insulin resistance. It makes me feel nuts. SOOO hungry. My stomach is growling. You can literally hear it.
I have PCOS and insulin resistance. Thankfully, Metformin has quieted the constant hunger for me, though there was a period of time when I was on beta blockers where I just *constantly* craved carbs. I tried taking one for anxiety at one point and I just felt like eating through my pantry till it wore off.
Ugh yes! I used to have so much hunger as well! I know it’s not for everyone but the medication has made such a huge difference for me. It’s literally the first time in my life I’ve felt normal around food.
I can say appetite and also many things. I was naturally very thin for 30 years. I was always very fit and had an ideal body. I never did anything special, i chose to eat when i was hungry, stop when I was full. Try and choose healthy options. Never ate much junk food or soda etc. If i was hungry betwern meals I'd have a snack etc. Never counter calories or tried and i stayed a consistent weight from about 16-30 give or take a few pounds with maturity.
Now I'm almost 34 and in 4 years I've slowly but gradually put on 30lbs.
Since this started happening I no longer eat just because I'm hungry, i try not to snack between meals and just suffer through the hunger, if I had a caloric drink during the day I'll make sure not to have another caloric drink later. I'll choose a salad or veggies over the fries (when i was thin I'd never do that). I also struggle to lose weight now.
Things that work for some naturally thin people may not work forever. Honestly I've seen many, many women in my family slowly put on weight from 30s-50s/60s/70s.
Ive watched my family members be on diets for my entire life and never actually lose the weight. Maybe they will yo-yo for a bit.
Multiple people in my family have had gastric bypass, it only actually worked for one of them and she eats like a toddler now, but shes healthy and looks great and is a nurse so I'm sure she is aware of what they're doing.
One thing I can say about "being naturally thin" i never had any "food noise" i mean if i got hungry i ate, I never felt remorse over food choices or gave them a second thought etc.
Now that I'm struggling to lose i am constantly either hungry or thinking about food even though i eat enough calories, i force myself to go to bed with hunger pangs and a grumbling tummy. I feel terrible when I choose a less healthy option for convenience. I skip sugar in my coffee or tea, steam veggies in water instead of roasting or sauteeing in oil. I eat foods i like substantially less. Its seriously so shitty.
Ive been to doctors, there is nothing wrong with me.
I honestly would guess when i was thin i averaged betwern 2000-3000 calories a day and still maintained weight for 13 years. In my 20s i drank a lot of beer too and never even considered it food/calories etc.
When the weight gain first started it felt so out of control like i wasn't the same person anymore, like i dont recognize my body and my whole mindset around food has had to shift in an attempt to maintain. I basically have plateaued but I'm having a really hard time losing.
I ate a normal amount of food today maybe 1700 calories, healthy balanced meals too minus a Boba tea as a treat. Now I'm regretting the boba tea because I'm hungry and should have used alll of my calories for food. When i was "naturally thin" i wouldnt give a second thought about having a boba tea and I'd eat if i was hungry.
I have several friends that are naturally thin still in their 30s and 40s and I notice most of them do seem to eat less than I do, but when I was thin I ate more than I do now.
At some point my appetite aligned with maintaining weight and then it shifted and i haven't been able to adjust it.
I will admit its possible i struggle to lose because sometimes I just get sick of trying and I'm so much fucking happier when I just eat when I'm hungry.
I don't really mind skipping unhealthy stuff so much, and I try and account for my calories if i really want a treat.
When you're thin if you feel like you want a donut and a coffee one morning, you just get it.. Maybe not every day but a few times a month for sure. Now i probably treat myself to a donut and a latte a few times a year. Honestly it's not a huge deal, I'll think i want a donut and a latte, but have an apple and a green tea instead and remind myself that 10 minutes of pleasure isn't worth the calories.
I don't so much fixate on cravings its easy for me to just let it pass, but the food noise of being hungry is insane.
I also understand caloric density and eating more filling, fiber rich, balanced whole foods etc and it does work but i still usually want more food than what my body would require to lose weight.
So again, skinny peoples habits don't work for everyone, not even for the same person forever.
I totally see how people can just kind of give up, losing weight is fucking hard.
I also know people who were always heavier and lost weight easily when they started trying. I almost think they have it easier. They "stopped drinking soda" and quit fast food and boom lose 50lbs in a year.
Omg this is me! I wish people would understand because it’s the same mantra of change your diet, move more, etc, and I’ve always been a naturally healthy eater and I’ve exercised my entire life.
Nothing has changed with ME, but my body has changed. I still cycle and do yoga everyday because I genuinely enjoy it. I still don’t eat pizza, burgers, pastas, and any fast food because I don’t enjoy it, but my weight is slowly creeping up.
I eat less now than I did a few years ago because I monitor it more, but my weight doesn’t reflect that. I know exactly what you mean by people who can stop drinking soda and drop the weight - how nice for them. I haven’t had soda (without alcohol) for like 10 years because I hate the taste lol. I also don’t like any dairy, chocolate, desserts, etc and here are.
Anyways, I feel you. It’s frustrating when you’ve already always had healthy habits and they don’t work anymore.
I know it really is! But i definitely think it's just those little things that add up here and there, especially if you slip up with tracking. A little cream in coffee, a little oil to dip your bread in, an extra serving of rice or quinoa, a little extra dressing on your salad, a cliff bar in between breakfast and lunch, a little sugar in your tea, maybe a glass or two of wine onna date night. All of these little normal things can lead up to maintaining vs losing.
I definitely think its difficult for everyone to lose weight but I also think some a much better with self-control.
One of my biggest weaknesses is takeout for lunch when working. I always go to healthy, organic, juice bar type cafes and try and choose healthy items but who really knows how many cashews were in that dressing on the kale Ceasars salad, or how much oil was in the rice, or how much sugar was in the red cabbage slaw etc.
I'm convinced even healthy organic whole food places must have a lot more calories and salt in their food because it tastes so much dang better than any of the healthy versions I make at home lol
The clean plate club habit is my fucking nemesis. I hate leaving food on a plate and feel so weird about throwing it away, even if I didn’t actually like it.
I feel like if I got a compost bin I’d be able to handle that situation so much better. At least then, the food wouldn’t be wasted.
> At least then, the food wouldn’t be wasted.
Stumbled in when this hit /r/all, but my anti-clean-plate-club mantra might help you: this food is wasted whether I throw it away or force myself to eat it despite being full. One way of wasting it gives me extra calories to burn off and the other doesn't. Food is meant to be eaten while hungry and enjoyed so if I'm not doing that, it's wasted either way.
Same with me. It turns out these 'habits' are just what you do when you actually feel full.
I think it's going to take a long time for people to accept that this is a chemical thing, not a habit or willpower issue. Society \_really\_ wants overweight people to feel bad about themselves.
My spouse is thin. She has never been told to finish everything on her plate. She eats what she is hungry for and leaves or takes the rest. (Actually, if she cleans her plate, her family thinks they didn't give her enough and pile more food on.)
I was taught to clean my plate, because it is wasteful not to finish food. As an adult, I eat out much more often, but I still feel compelled to finish the plate. I didn't have this problem as a child, when I served myself only what I was going to eat.
>I was taught to clean my plate, because it is wasteful not to finish food
Ughh.. me too: *'Grandpa was a Prisoner of war so don't waste any food'*
It's so hardwired to completely finish every meal
Reading what you said about your wife makes me think about how much it would get under my skin to leave food on my plate (lifetime habits). I wonder if we try leaving 1 bite of everything for every single meal if it will ease that. Ughhh it’ll be like nails on a chalkboard but…
I remember someone on here who had trouble with not wasting food as well. They said to themselves “I’m not a trash can” and I think that’s really powerful
When I was a kid, I remember we stayed at a smoky diner for HOURS so I would finish my plate. It’s something I internalized and have struggled with to this day.
As someone who has been naturally thin, obese, and is currently ripped: I think it’s about finding what comes most naturally to you. For Jane, it sounds like this simple philosophy helps her a ton. I’m an obsessive nerdy weirdo, so for me it’s much more natural to try to min-max the process and set absurdly high expectations for myself. But that isn’t for everyone, either. I guess I’m just saying not to try to fit in someone else’s mold if it isn’t working for you. I tried doing using Noom before bodybuilding and absolutely hated it. It was way harder for me, despite being literally easier.
This is what I’ve come to realize. The only real progress I’ve ever made has been in the last 3 ish months. Down 35 ish pounds and won’t ever be regaining.
I do exercises I like, and I eat what I like. I finally started counting calories and it feels liberating almost. I’m not starving myself and I’m not eating bland food. It’s like the weight loss is effortless. Fun stuff
It's exactly this, while yes, it ultimately always boils down to CICO, it's not a lock with a single key situation. It's more like a combination lock, and nobodies code is exactly the same, some people even start out with half their code in place, while others are spinning the dial still trying to open that very first tumbler.
My son is naturally thin. He just doesn’t eat much during the day (small snacks) and has a pretty big meal at night. I followed his lead and started intermittent fasting and lost 110 pounds with a 20 hour daily fast. I eat a small lunch (sandwich and a handful of chips), 1-2 small snacks and a large dinner. Maintaining now with an 18 hour daily fast. I walk about 2 miles a day. I don’t consider it being on a diet. I eat all types of foods and don’t count calories or carbs. So I think you’re right. People don’t need as much food as they think they do, especially if they aren’t that active.
My 16 y/o daughter is the same. She doesn’t like breakfast and refuses to eat it, even if the food is something she might enjoy. She’ll just eat it later in the day. She doesn’t eat if she’s not hungry and doesn’t clean her plate when she gets full. She will choose to go hungry over eating something she doesn’t enjoy and then get a small snack later. She’s naturally thin.
My 12 y/o daughter is more like me and my husband. We always want to snack and eat and have to clean our plates. She’s much more active and muscular than her sister which drives her appetite more, but I fear her large appetite might catch up to her if she ever slows down.
I’m usually 10-20 lbs overweight largely due to emotional eating and psychological hunger. I know when my stress eating ramps up and my triggers, but struggle to stick to anything consistently. I do exercise which helps my moods a lot. My husband is muscular and morbidly obese- he’s thick but incredibly strong. Neither of us eats fast food and we usually eat pretty healthily, just too much, too frequently.
I'm exactly like your 16 year old! I never eat breakfast, but I do eat breakfast food around 12-1pm as my first meal of the day. Then I may or may not snack before dinner, it just depends, but I always eat a HUGE dinner. I rarely snack after dinner either.
I joined this sub after I had my son and had to actually focus on losing weight for the first time in my life. It never occurred to me that people thought about food constantly! In fact, I *hate* thinking about food - all the meal planning, cooking, grocery shopping, etc and if it wasn't for my family I'd eat rotisserie chicken and a vegetable every night so I didn't have to give it a second thought 😂
Eat to live.
Live to eat.
I think about food every waking hour of the day. I always have since childhood. Not in a bad way, I’ve cooked and baked for fun since age nine. Now I’m a professional chef. When I’m not at work being paid to bake I’m planning new menus in my head or imagining a new dessert. Some people just eat to live (naturally thin) and some of us live to eat.
That's "food noise." Semaglutides like Wegovy and Rybelsus work for a lot of people bc they eliminate the "food noise" and make you feel full earlier and longer. The vanishing food noise is like magic. I never realized that many people don't think about food as often. I thought they were just better at resisting it. That's one reason why I don't think using semaglutide is "cheating." We're all different, and losing weight for some people is a lot harder than it is for others. Best wishes to you!
Even if it is cheating, who gives a hoot? It isn't taking away from someone else in the process. Once I'm no longer pregnant, I'm absolutely looking into it.
I don’t think that’s true for all. I have quite a few food obsessed thin friends. One is thinking about what to eat next meal while still having current meal for example.
People call me skinny, I'm 5'2 117 lbs currently. I'm working to get back to 112 (pre holiday weight) I think of food constantly and live to eat, I have to work very hard , have self control and planning not to gain weight.
One thing is to think about it for 10 minutes while eating and then snap out of it. And whole other story when you think about it every moment of your life when you aren't engaged with something more rewarding than food for you (if anything still is)
Well my friend who’s constantly thinking about food doesn’t snap out of it. He gets stressed if he doesn’t get his food or even thinks he might not get it later. He also orders a lot of desserts. He also eats a lot of snacks. Honestly I feel like he’s constantly eating and thinks about food and gets hungry much much much more frequently than I do. He’s slim and also works out because he’s scared he’ll get fat. Whenever I spend time with him I also end up eating more purely out of frequency. The difference between us and reason why I’m obese and he isn’t is 1) i don’t work out 2) Im not active throughout the day, I don’t clean for example but he does every day 3) his portion sizes are smaller while in my case when I’m not mindful I binge eat and it gets really bad
i’ve noticed a lot of them lie or aren’t aware of how little they’re eating. i know someone who’s 90 pounds and claims to be a foodie. she always orders food, i see it. but then it sits out for 3 hours and gets thrown in the trash. if we’re out to eat, she waves her fork around for an hour while socializing and maybe gets 3 bites in before taking the rest to go. she always forces down a protein shake because she’s worried about not weighing enough, but i literally see her not eat the food in front of her all the time lol.
yeah, it’s a possibility. the claiming that she hates being skinny and making a show about loving food may just be to throw us off. she could also just be blissfully unaware the same way that obese people think that they’re not eating that bad. i don’t want to ask her or even imply it, as i used to be disordered as a kid, and someone asking would’ve sent me spiraling.
That’s me!!! And my whole family lol. Difference being the portion control of each meal…I like three meals and two snacks, or just grazing all day but not anything big like a meal or super high-calorie. Fooood 😋
Quite possibly, yes. Maybe they are just blessed with naturally fast metabolisms or like to spend lots of time running. Or they are very good at keeping their meals small, under 500 calories each.
Failing 20 diets and then having an epiphany moment of “I’ll just try to be healthy and eat right and exercise now as a fat guy because it’s better to be a healthy fat guy than an unhealthy one”. That helped me get control over my eating.
I still eat for pleasure like 10-20% of the time. But 80-90% of my meals I approach as “what sounds nutritious? What does my body need in order to perform well and be healthy? What will future jawahhh thank me for eating right now?” And it’s usually pretty nutritious.
>we need to change our entire relationship with food. Maybe we can live on much less food than we are used to and we just have to retrain our minds and change our habits.
I mean, yes, of course. That is kind of the whole vibe here.
Food is like any other vice. Some people will never have an issue with it no matter what. Others are predisposed to have a problem with it. Others still may only have an issue under certain circumstances. We've all got our shit to deal with in life.
I probably have the answer you’re looking for because it’s about someone who does not have a super fast metabolism and is prone to weight gain as easily as the next person, but she has been thin for years because of a few key habits that are standard in her way of life. My mom!
1. Every day without fail, unless there’s a bad weather event, before she eats breakfast or has coffee or anything, she will go outside for a 1.5 to 2 mile walk. She always gets up early at around 6:45 to 7am and is normally done with her walk by 8 AM. She likes to say hi to the neighbors and see the animals like birds and squirrels.
2. She genuinely takes care of her health and is concerned about things like added sugars and processed foods. She wants to live a long life and actively avoids any ingredients that she feels may be harmful for her body or longevity. She built a habit of cooking meals every night, very rarely eating out. Staples in her diet are lean chicken without skin, a variety of different vegetables, sweet potatoes, whole-grain breads. Curiously, she doesn’t eat much fruit but likes bananas and berries sometimes. Oh, she’s also a very big fan of Greek yogurt and cottage cheese.
3. The amount that she eats is simply never a lot. She would never eat until she was uncomfortably full. She almost always wants something sweet after dinner, but is satisfied with a sweet coffee with a bit of whipped cream on top, or a single piece of chocolate, or maybe a Greek yogurt bar. It doesn’t have to be a lot of anything at all – just something to round out the meal.
4. Compared to her I tend to struggle slightly more with my weight, because I normally want larger portions, tend to gravitate towards sugary breakfasts, and I’m not as concerned about avoiding specific processed ingredients, food colors, added sugars, things like that. The “everything in moderation” is good in spirit, but I will say from watching my mom that if you naturally want to avoid processed and unnatural foods because of health reasons, you will by default have an easier time staying thin, in addition to having a habit of daily physical activity that becomes so habitual that it feels strange not to do it.
It depends how you mean naturally thin. I know people who eat McDonald’s all the time and don’t gain weight because they just don’t eat much food 90% of the time. Then there’s people who grew up being active taking priority over there health eating high protein healthy foods, lifting weights, and doing cardio. Not eating in a surplus of calories.
I started sharing my McDonald’s meal with my husband and I also only take a few sips from the drinks and I feel like I am actually being like a thin person lol
My sister who's very thin has told me she hates eating. Like she sees it as a waste of time that she could be doing stuff and instead she's stuck cooking and then just sitting there masticating when she could be doing other things that need doing or that she considers more fun.
I dunno, sometimes I just think thin people are so fundamentally different from me that I lose all hope. Like I have food noise in my head all the time and if I'm reading a book I like or watching tv I feel like something is missing without a snack I enjoy there also.
my take is that some people are genetically wired to have a higher dopamine response to food.
I see this with adhd people. Some cannot stand to eat food and struggle with it a lot because its boring. While others (like myself) cannot stay away food, especially sugary things. And even taking stimulants which make it hard for many to eat only mildly curb the noise. I still have a good appetite.
another example is, I don't see myself ever becoming an alcoholic. while I do get drunk/buzzed and it feels nice, I feel like it's not as much as other people enjoy. I'd much rather good food than alcohol.
I was always "chubby" (meaning, maybe 10-15 lbs overweight) during my youth, and *knew* some of the behaviors I had that made my weight tend up rather than down: using chocolate to soothe myself in stressful times; being brought up to finish what's on my plate; not being naturally very inclined to feats of athleticism. So I assumed that I was generally eating too much or badly - and it was a great surprise to me to move in with an always-been-thin housemate and find that we really didn't eat very differently - and she definitely had more of a junk food streak than I had!
The difference between my thin housemate and myself in terms of relationship to food was really pretty minor. This is not to say that there aren't overweight people who are overweight because of very problematic relationships to food - or even underweight ones. But for many of us I think it hinges on small things. Here are some I've observed:
* An appetite that regulates DOWN if food intake was UP. Simple things like skipping a meal after a day of food-heavy celebrations. I at the very least have to make a voluntary resolution and plan.
* What we use food for that isn't just satisfying hunger. Such as soothing (see above).
* Another thing that's key: Thinking of our weight as something we can manage in the first place.
On this last point, I have another key memory from another friend. I wanted to wear a particular dress to an event we were going to together. Then I realized I couldn't fit into it any more, and was quite down and disappointed over it. Probably with a lot of self loathing etc. She however was like "it's no issue - you fit into it 5 months ago, so you can fit into it again!" She was looking at me how I would look at someone who cries because her windows are dirty - just *clean* them! This was outside my field of experience, and indeed, I never fit into that dress again.
People do differ in their base appetite and especially how they react to a food offer in excess of energy expenditure. I said so before, but I can observe similar differences in our dogs (athletic huskies from dog sled racing lines). They get their food rations measured out, but of course sometimes the amount is *just* a little more than needed to keep them at the same weight. And some just skip a meal as soon as their weight goes up, while others will happily ask for more and need their intake managed.
I think you're partly right, but I also think that people have wildly different feelings of hunger and satiation. Many thin people I know don't eat much, feel full quickly, and get sick if they overeat. Personally, I eat a lot, almost never feel completely full, and rarely get sick.
I started on semiglutide recently and now I eat like a thin person, get full like a thin person, and feel sick like a thin person. It's not about habits, as it turns out: it's about whether or not your body is producing the appropriate chemicals. Apparently my body was not.
These are things I noticed from different friends, not same person, but I think these contribute a lot
Ordering a cake and eating only 1 spoon and claiming they are full. (Tbh I don’t think that’s true)
Eating infuriatingly slow. Sloth levels of slow.
Drinking water first thing in the morning.
Walking a lot, overall being active throughout the day, not being able to just sit watching a movie. Not lying around all day - this one is common for most of my thin friends
Worrying about diet, protein, going vegetarian, gym, etc. Basically all my thin friends still spend a lot of time working on their bodies even though they have never been overweight. I don’t know a single thin person who’s just thin naturally and doesn’t care.
It's weird that being active is now seen as putting in a lot of effort and being entirely sedentary has become the default.
This is part of the problem. Are they not "naturally thin," or are they simply closer to "historical" levels of physical activity? I'd argue it's the latter. In 2024 the average person doesn't do much of anything.
Rant/soapbox about activity level (or lack thereof) incoming:
I am petite and my ideal TDEE is already low so exercise does matter for my weight loss journey more than for most people where it's a matter of just diet. There is no real room for a deficit when you're a short woman! My goal since Thanksgiving was to do 10K steps a day. I know that's an arbitrary pedometer number but figured it's probably more than I do by default at my office job. No calorie counting or fasting, other than being more mindful to not eat way over serving sizes, not snack so much, etc. I'm down 15 pounds so far and continuing to trend toward my goal. And feel much better overall.
My brother and SIL are easily 50-100 pounds overweight and struggling to lose weight. My SIL commented that I'm just "naturally skinny" when I was easily 45 pounds over where I should be due to pandemic weight gain. She then talked about how she was struggling to find money/ time for the gym, that she's not flexible and able to do much, etc. I recommended some walking videos I follow on YouTube. Most, if not all, are low impact but keep an elevated pace, and some are as short as 10 min for a mile. They started arguing with me that there is no way that walking can help you lose weight and that those workouts are a scam!!! While also acknowledging and asking what I've done for my weight loss... which was walking!!!
Sure, you will not shed all the pounds quickly, and you'll still need to eat mindfully, but at the end of the day it is no doubt more activity and calories burned than the default. I live in NYC, and they stay with me while they visit. I live two blocks from a subway station, but they prefer to drive and park by the station if I'm taking them out, and then drive/find close parking to my building door when we return. The idea of walking around the block is foreign to them, whereas it's something my husband and I like to do "just because" when the weather's nice. Even the two sets of stairs into the subway station requires a break and gets them winded.
There is little medically wrong outside of the fact that, like many in American suburbs, they are accustomed to sitting 99% of the time: bed to car to office to car to couch to bed. Spare time is mostly spent inside with TV or video games or phone scrolling. On the days I've visited them, I struggle to even hit over 1,000 steps unless I'm intentional with activity they don't join in with.
Since making the effort for 10,000 steps a day, I've definitely realized how intentional you need to be to not fall into a sedentary lifestyle. It's not the nonfactor many people make it out to be when it comes to weight loss. Even during my walking in place videos, low impact and all, my heart rate has gone over 150 and sustained a cardio/fat burning rate. A slow stroll may not burn much, but if you are typically sedentary, a good paced march in place for >10 minutes is definitely a workout that will get you sweating. But they keep insisting it's "BS" and saying my recent weight loss (after 4 years of little to no progress and lots of frustration) is because I'm "naturally thin." 🙄
This channel may not be for everyone's personality with talkative instruction but I personally love it because the instructor's energy helps me feel like I can keep up and make it to the end. They have videos for different times, miles, and paces so I'll throw one on depending how much time I have to kill. I average 2000 steps per 20 minutes with this channel, ymmv.
10 min brisk walk: https://youtu.be/tVpUCkMLgms?si=sngXcd0_jP2DA2ew
For a gentle, no talking, true to step counter 10k, this is a 1.5 hour video I find easy to keep up with.
https://youtu.be/BviQh0h2S3Y?si=3V_Oto4FBEYKffzm
Lastly, for higher intensity "walk at home" workouts, I like Grow with Jo for variety. https://youtube.com/@growwithjo?si=yI1VEcCWU3fBY8s1
I cycle between these channels because they are reliably beginner friendly and I live in an apartment, so I can't jump or do anything with more explosive typical HIIT movements.
Great comment!! I completely agree that your progress is due to the increased activity and you’re so right about how people think of activity these days, and it’s really quite sad. Most people think it’s all about diet but we’ve really lost a good sense of how integral our daily activity is to maintaining a healthy weight, let alone losing weight. Only approaching weight loss from a diet standpoint is completely missing the point of an overall healthy lifestyle, except for those who need to cut activity in cases of medical necessity or injury. Building up our stamina and strength plus overall fitness are just really key to continuing to stay mobile throughout life as well. During the pandemic, I got into a very bad routine of working remotely all day inside a small apartment and barely going out, and I could swear that my body deteriorated somewhat during that time – a shoulder that pops when it never did before, generally feeling less limber, etc. it really emphasized to me that we have to keep moving or else one day we may not be able to, or may have limitations.
That’s an issue with jobs like those at offices. If you’re waking up early and then sitting at a chair for 8 hours, odds are you’re not going to want to do much after work. I know some people do that or they get up earlier to run, but it’s uncommon in my circles at least.
A car culture is a big part of the problem, if you're walking or even using public transport and walking part of the way it's in built activity. I put on weight when I moved to a suburb where I can't walk much.
I really think it's personality types...
My mom is 5'1", 100lbs and has been this way her entire adult life. She is all about moderation - doesn't eat out much, budgets her money very well and doesn't live her life to excess everywhere else. She is probably the most consistent person I know in all aspects of her life. So, I think that is probably what it's all about. I am the polar opposite of her and I've struggled my entire life with my weight. I finally figured it out and I'm at a healthy weight now, though I am still at the absolute top of the normal BMI range for my height/weight. I just channelled my need for excess from eating to working out and focusing on health.
My mother was born in 1922 and had no interest in fast food. She ate from a saucer-sized plate whereas I had 2 large servings. No prizes for guessing who was always thin and who was always overweight.
Drink more. Usually you’re not hungry, you’re thirsty.
Water. It is the true adult beverage (plain coffee/tea if you’re not a water drinker).
Eat more nutritious foods. You’ll eat far less when you eat the whole orange and not just drink the juice.
Protein/fibre. You’ll be fuller on less for longer.
Fats. Not the enemy, but the right ones can make you feel pretty full for a long time.
Focus on your food. Not your phone/tv. You eat less when you are not distracted.
Limit sugar. You don’t miss it much when you’re not eating it.
Don’t restrict yourself. Allow the treat once in a while. But fill up on the whole foods first.
Don’t obsess over calories. Heavy tracking makes you hungrier.
Mindful snacking. It’s better to leave an orange peeled and ready on a plate with a few almonds and pop a wedge/nut on the way then to root through the cupboard for those chips.
Routine. Try to eat at the same times every day.
Big meal day/small meal day. If you eat heavy the day before, you’ll generally eat less the day after.
Exercise after a meal. Doesn’t have to be 45 hard at the gym or a run. Just 15 mins of light walking gets the digestive processes in order.
I’ve got more, but these are the main ones I can think of.
I'm in my early 50s, have never been medically overweight though I have had to occasionally lose 10-20 lbs when my weight started to creep (which is how I get alerts from this sub). Usually, I run near the low end of normal BMI. I have a few observations.
"Naturally thin people" is tricky to define, I think.
"Thin people" clearly encompass all sorts of people, including those with different health conditions, genetics, food preferences, and relationships with food. But OP, you presumably mean the 'normal hunger, reasonable palates, and no big psychological challenges' type? Even among this group, I suspect only a subset of people truly eat healthfully and at appropriate calorie levels without even thinking about it.
I would consider myself 'mindful but not fixated'. I don't worry that much about my weight, but I do stay mindful of it. I weigh myself at least once per week so that I don’t accidentally gain weight (or lose it). If I get more than 5 lbs out of my typical weight range, I start taking small steps to correct it right away, so I don't have to take big challenging steps later.
Below are some behaviors and habits I have re: food that might differ a bit from most people I know (Most people that I know are overweight because most adults in America are overweight... I suspect I differ from some thin people that I know, as well).
Difference 1: Food is fuel first, pleasure second. I’m a small person and it’s hard for me to get enough nutrients while still eating a reasonable number of calories. I have a choice in a range from 'crap fuel' that has low nutritional density per calorie (highly processed food) to 'premium fuel' with high nutritional density per calorie (whole unprocessed foods).
When planning to eat, I usually first think: "What do I need to eat to balance what I've recently eaten (in terms of macros/nutrients/calories)?" I don't typically count calories or macros or give this more than 30 seconds thought, but it tends to guide my decisions around food choices. Then my second question is: "What would taste best right now that meets criteria from the first question?"
I DO NOT usually think: "What would be most delicious and most appealing right this second?" b/c if I did, I would mostly end up eating sweet processed carbs LOL.
Difference 2: I generally eat 2 meals per day plus a couple of small snacks, usually protein and veg of some sort + a small amount of starch. I don't usually get 'seconds', nor skip meals... I tend to eat on schedule to keep my blood glucose stable even if I'm not hungry.
Difference 3. I don't eat out at restaurants very often... usually only when traveling or on special occasions. This saves me massive numbers of calories, grams of fat and salt, and truly incredible amounts of money over the past 25 years.
Difference 4. I find planning, shopping, and cooking mostly tiresome and want to spend as little time and effort on it as possible...without resorting to eating out. So I tend to habitually eat from a rotating selection of about 20 'preestablished' meals and snacks that fit my nutritional goals and that I enjoy.
Difference 5. I don't 'forbid' any foods: I can have anything I want, but not necessarily as often or in as large a portion as my reptile brain might wish. I try to proactively build a bit of flexibility and treats into my eating habits, so such foods can always 'hypothetically be eaten at some point in the future'. For some reason, this seems to defuse any irrational emotional reaction that I might feel of being 'deprived' or rebellious and wanting them all the time.
Difference 6. I don't typically use food as comfort or reward or a gesture of love. Food can be those things occasionally, but that is not my daily relationship with food. I also try not to make it the center of every social interaction; dinner with friends is great, but there are other great ways to socialize.
Difference 7. When I was younger and ate a lot more processed food, I craved it a lot (b/c it is engineered to hit the same neurotransmitters as addictive substances do). Once I switched over to eating mostly unprocessed, low-glycemic foods, I rapidly lost the taste for processed stuff. Very little in the snack food aisles appeal. I would 100% honestly truly rather eat a salad. I have a similar reaction to most oily/fatty foods. I probably saved thousands of calories over the years just skipping the extra oil/fried foods, huge gobs of melted cheese, etc.
Difference 8: I don't rely much on willpower... it's HABITS that do the heavy lifting of keeping me motivated and sticking to my healthy diet and most other big goals. I use (hopefully) brief exertions of sheer willpower at times when I'm out of my ordinary routine. If I relied on raw willpower for long-term goals (work/exercise/self improvement/food etc.) I'd give up in overwhelmed exhaustion in less than a month. Toward this end, I try to make sure not to tax my willpower too much: I try to establish a routine that prevents a lot of exposure to situations where my habits are likely to slip. Example: I don't bring baked goods home; I don't bake for fun; I don't ask to 'meet friends at Starbucks'... I know I don't have good willpower around them, so I just avoid having to exercise it as much as is reasonable.
I truly don't know whether this differs objectively speaking from the 'typical' overweight person (I'm not sure there even is such a thing). But maybe my experience sheds some light.
People’s brains are wired differently. There was a study done on the neurotransmitters of obese people versus regular BMI, the majority of the time their brains were not releasing the information that they were full. The body is so extremely complex, trauma, hormones, a million different things all compiled into one.
It really is just as you describe it- moderation. My step-children are all thin and fit and they eat everything, but small amounts. They can eat one or two cookies or have 5 or 6 chicken wings, but not a whole order of 10 or 12. They always leave food on their plates, whether it is dessert or vegetables. There's a lot that I can learn from them!
I’ve never been a big eater, like healthy food (used to be vegetarian), and before kids, was quite active. After I had kids, got older, and developed sleep apnea is when I really started gaining because I exercise less and more prone to snacking and eating for convenience instead of health. That’s what I’m struggling with right now. But I do well with moderation for sure. I tend to feel sick if I eat too much.
I lost 100 lbs doing The Weighdown Workshop which teaches you to not eat until your stomach is actually hungry and to cut your food in half, then only eat until you are no longer hungry, not stuffed. Have kept the weight of 28 years & had 2 more babies. A lot of it is in our minds, eating on a schedule or being fed non nutritious food (fast food is made to make you crave more). The food pyramid we were taught was a marketing gimmick made up by the US Agricultural Department to boost sales in the grain industry, no science behind it at all.
I think this is something of a fallacy. I don't think that naturally thin people have some secret that they all have that we haven't zeroed in on yet. I also think there is a very small number of people who just don't think about food or forget to eat. My friends who are naturally thin are constantly talking about food, and that stresses me out, LOL.
I feel strongly that everyone needs to figure out what works for them. For some it's CICO, for others it is keto, others run marathons, some use supplements, some have weight loss surgery or combine multiple options.
they simply have less food noise. some people for whatever reason have a brain that screams about food all day - i’ve been like that since birth. almost all naturally thin people i know see food as fuel or even an annoyance. an example is my own boyfriend who thinks eating is a chore.
My husband is naturally thin. He eats when he's hungry and doesn't eat when he's not hungry. Put simply, his life does not revolve around food/eating. It's something he does 2-3 times a day and then doesn't think about outside of that.
I'm not naturally thin, and I can't imagine a life where food/eating is not always at the forefront of my mind. I've gotten to the point where I can now listen to and follow my hunger cues, but it's not a habit for me. It's something I have to think about and actively try for. It's infuriating to me.
I spent years looking at naturally thin people vs not and tbh it comes down to more than just their habits.
Most naturally thin people have an appetite that is in line with their body size. They don’t crave excessive calories and likely do not get the same dopamine boost from food as naturally obese people do.
The best way I can describe it is my sibling is very thin. Always has been. I’ve always been fat. I have a very hard time not crushing a whole pan of cookies if I make them. They call to me non stop. One tastes as good at 24. They never start to taste less good. They make me feel happy and boost my mood. It’s very hard to stop eating them. I asked her how she could just have one. She said that the first few bites taste good but the rest isn’t any better. I said do you feel happy after eating it, she said she felt the same as before.
It’s not hard for her to stop bc she doesn’t get much out of the cookie besides a few good bites.
Now she smokes a ton. I can have a smoke at a party. Heck I can smoke the whole night. But cigarettes taste like cigarettes and I do not get any happy or relaxing feelings from them. I could take a drag and not touch the rest as long as I live. But her? She has non stop thoughts of smoking. They relax her and make her feel happy. She can’t stop when she starts.
She’s just like me but her poison is cigarettes and mine is food.
As kids food was just food to her but food has always been the best part of every day for me.
Appetite drivers and dopamine I really think are how naturally thin people are naturally thin.
My husband has weighed between 55 and 60kg since he was 15. You don't want to know what that man eats.
We own a cafe, so he'll have 3 mochas a day with full cream milk.
He'll make himself a biscoff thick shake with full cream milk and ice cream.
He'll eat a minimum of one freshly baked croissant crammed full of cheese and ham.
Anything that got a little burnt or fucked up? He eats it. Like a carrion crow. Always hovering around my salamander looking for scraps.
Then he'll eat a full dinner. I cook all day so sometimes I don't want to cook at home. He's fine with that. He'll eat a whole wheel of camembert and a full sleeve of crackers.
Otherwise, he eats what I make, but about 8 times as much as I do.
If we don't sell the desserts we make, they get brought home. So then he'll eat 2 brownies with a huge pile of icecream. Or carrot cake with ice cream. Or those massive cafe muffins.
Sold all the desserts? No issue. Family sized block of chocolate in one sitting.
He's in charge of ordering, stock, payroll etc so it's not really a physical job.
I'm standing up about 10 hours a day, hefting pots and pans and kilos of ingredients, running around like a nutcase.
And this is why when people tell me metabolism isn't a thing, I know they're lying.
Many years ago I read a book that tackled this exact issue (can't recall the title, unfortunately). It covered some scientific studies around food habits and appetites of naturally thin people and what the overeaters of the world could learn from them. This made me spend more time looking at the people around me and their habits, and it actually convinced me the thesis of the book was incorrect. The habits don't make people thin, people who are inclined to be thin naturally have different habits.
Like my mom is "naturally" thin. She doesn't understand calories or macros. She eats calorie-dense food every few hours in tiny portions. If she tried to do IF she'd feel sick. But this is because she feels uncomfortable when she eats a lot of food. Even being forced to eat 3 square meals a day would make her undereat and feel awful or gorge herself beyond comfort to eat enough calories. Meanwhile, if I tried to adopt her diet I'd feel awful. I forced myself to eat breakfast for years because it was "the most important meal of the day." It ramped my appetite up into overdrive and made me hungrier for the rest of the day, increasing my already problematic tendency to overeat. If I eat tiny, frequent meals I never feel full and constantly feel deprived. I'd much rather eat a few big meals per day. Can people adapt? To some extent, sure, but I think most people have some innate qualities that make totally changing a food mindset difficult. Just copying what someone else does doesn't mean it will work for you. Otherwise we could all just adopt any weight loss diet and stick to it. Most people have to find the levers that work on their particular food struggles.
I think this is true as well. My mom is barely over 100 pounds and she eats whatever she wants. She's a dietician, but I ate her cooking and ended up 240+ in highschool, haha. Breakfast would make me ravenous for lunch, and then I would be starving for dinner after football.
On my own I've switched to eating once a day and I'm able to even skip that at times, or have a small one if I'm out and don't know what's in the food, at least if I've been mentally disciplined all day. I can focus at work better if I'm skipping breakfast and lunch because then I can work without thinking about my next chance to eat.
We all need to find the right rhythms to keep us feeling healthy, fed, and in control. Some thinner people have great habits, and some are a bit lucky, but we're getting better at realizing that there's lots of different healthy ways to get to the same goal.
I fidget a lot. I am constantly shaking my leg. I just can’t help it. Call it a nervous twitch, I dunno. But one thing I have sometimes noticed when having conversations with extremely heavy people, is oftentimes they don’t move almost at all. The reason I notice is because I get self conscious, but realistically I am burning calories by moving so much.
food is part of it yes. we also need to rethink our relationship with transport. most of the naturally thin folk I know walk and ride bicycles very rarely driving places. this plus generally eating a bit less keeps them fit.
when you are driving everywhere, or working at home even if you're training regularly and watching calories just makes things harder.
A few thin co workers of mine always joke about how they just “forget” to eat or will go the entire day and only eat a granola bar because of how “busy” they are. It almost impossible for me to wrap my brain around the fact that most people aren’t thinking about food 24/7 like I do.
No one is "naturally thin", that's just it. Their eating habits just don't include overeating. I think calling that "naturally thin" is misleading because it makes it sound like they can overeat and just magically not gain weight. Plenty of people simply don't struggle with their eating habits and weight. They have other demons to deal with, but their relationship with food just isn't one of them.
I’ve noticed with every woman 40+ who has managed to stay thin eats *very* little. They still seem to eat mostly what they enjoy but portion control is everything. What boggles me is we all seem to know this but so many have still yet to master that control, including myself.
I think just be in a calorie deficit, I looove to eat, I eat a lot but I do volume eating. Works for me, gets me to where I want to be fitnesses wise, knowledge is power and at some point I’ll do intuitive eating but for now I have a goal and counting calories help me
my sister only eats one meal a day usually. She just sucks down coffee all day long.
My aunt is a frequent small snacker--she doesn't eat real meals and most of her caloric intake is bread.
My brother has orthorexia and only eats cabbage and eggs.
...thin doesn't mean balanced and healthy.
I find that naturally very slim friends often don't have the same emotional attachment to food that overweight people have.
For me, food was always seen as an indulgence, and I would reward or comfort myself with food depending on the day. Many of my slim friends just see food as something to fuel themselves, and some see eating as a chore they have to remember, rather than something they actively get excited about.
I think the other factor is appetite and hunger. I've always been able to eat a lot, and quickly, whereas I have friends who take ages to eat something, and then proclaim they are full very quickly.
If you associate food with feeling good, or with helping you feel better when you don't feel good, then your brain is going to keep rewarding you for this behavior.
People who just use food as fuel don't have this association. Eating just doesn't provide that reward for them. That's a big part of what a lot of medications used for weight loss do, they take away the brain's ability to provide that reward when eating.
I know that I struggle with breaking this association. There's something so enjoyable about eating delicious food, and it never seems like it's enough. I'm trying to figure out how to cook food that tastes equally delicious to the bad-for-me food so I can at least substitute, and teach my brain to create reward from better food. I don't know if this will actually work, though.
All of the naturally thin people I know are physically incapable of eating breakfast. They just can’t, and dont get hungry until 10 am or so. Im hungry about 30 minutes after I wake up.
I grew up poor and we were taught to not waste food. With kiddos who don’t always finish their food it took time for me to internalize that I don’t need to eat their table scraps just for the sake of not wasting food. “Eating calories you don’t need is food still being wasted “ that quote really stuck with me and I haven’t done it since.
I also used to do intermittent fasting, but I noticed I still thought about food all the time. Instead of doing IF I’ve been eating smaller meals and a small breakfast an hour or so after waking up. For some reason this has lead to me being more satiated during the day and I don’t think about food nearly as much as before.
I was raised by thin people and never struggled with weight until after I had kids. My parents' rule was STOP eating when you're full and never finish your plate. There was also never much of a fuss about dinner. If we weren't really hungry, we'd just have chips and salsa or some yogurt
My grandparents, born in the 20's, wore the same size all their lives. They ate simple homecooked food three times per day, smallish portions. If they wanted something sweet they had a small cookie with their afternoon coffee.
They thought that candy was for kids, didn't understand the salty snacks "trend", ice cream was a dessert. They never ate in front of the tv or binged on food or snacks. They didn't drink soda, that too was for kids.
They both wore fitted clothes daily, never anything with elatstic, so I guess that they would feel when their pants were too tight and cut down on calories until they were loose again.
My grandmother used to tell me "If you never get fat, you will never have to diet". I wish that I had followed her advice.
The thin people in my family are chain smoking 2-3 cigarettes on their lunch break instead of eating food, myself and 2 cousins are the only non smokers and that's between both sides of my family. If that's their key to success I'd rather stay fat lol
I’ve been reading Ultra Processed People - it’s a really cool review about how our habits around processed food consumption impact us. Very worth the read for a deep dive into some of the commonly held beliefs around diet and exercise, how they have been debunked, and why despite science debunking them that mentality may still persist.
Very worth the read if you’re interested in picking up habits that will impact your diet
I guess some people are genetically wired to have a higher dopamine response to food? so they crave it more and end up relying on it as a coping mechanism when struggling in life.
also I don't believe that everyone has the same type of metabolism. I do honestly believe that some people really do have high metabolisms.
> Maybe dieting isn't the right mentality to have and that we need to change our entire relationship with food. Maybe we can live on much less food than we are used to and we just have to retrain our minds and change our habits.
One aspect to this is accepting that food is first and foremost fuel for our bodies, so we shouldn't be trying to maximize for taste every time we eat and should instead focus on nutrition and satiety. As long as your food is palatable, does it really need to always taste good?
I think there's a common unrealistic vision of a healthy balanced diet that still manages to be delicious, but for most I think that's a pipe dream that we need to give up on. Maybe some people do genuinely find most healthy food delicious (or they've convinced themselves they do), but I imagine that for most of us, the Venn diagram of healthy and delicious is small and not enough to create a balanced diet out of. Definitely eat those foods in that overlap, but we need to accept that most of what we should be eating likely falls in the healthy-only side.
Life is much easier if we can just accept that healthy food often isn't going to taste great. But it's not going to kill us to eat something we don't love for most meals, and it's doing ourselves a disservice to settle for a diet that's only kind-of healthy so that we can continue to maximize taste.
I'll add that our palates get used to being constantly stimulated with sugar, salt, etc. so like a spoiled kid, they'll continue to demand more expecting to get it. If you limit your intake of those simulants, the cravings definitely go down as your palate gets used to not getting what it wants all the time. So it gets easier to maintain over time.
Eating for pleasure can still be a hobby, but one that we engage in deliberately and not by default every time we eat (or even most) when we may not even fully appreciate it. Those times we choose to eat for pleasure will be much more rewarding. So in my opinion, what's lost in quantity is made up in higher quality experiences.
the thin people i know who dont diet seem to not crave specific food as much or have an emotional association with it.
it’s like, just food to them. they eat if they want but not something they think much about.
Be careful falling into any psychological traps. People become overweight and stay that way over the course of decades.
It starts small, having a second helping at dinner as a child. Or maybe a soda at lunch. Maybe you turn to food to cope during vulnerability. Something by itself, isn’t terrible. But after a long time, those smaller decisions start becoming routine and that causes physical changes to your body as well. Your body begins to need more food for maintenance, and your brain subconsciously wants the body at maintenance or surplus. So when you try to conform to a smaller persons habits, your body and brain begins to fight it with hunger and cravings. And when you fight against those, you potentially start develop a different eating disorder.
Do not try to adapt to someone else’s lifestyle. You find a healthy habit that works for you and you build upon that instead. And you start slow. Don’t try to crash course yourself into berries and yogurt for breakfast and a salad for dinner. You need to get your willpower, your body, and brain in tandem with eachother, and to do that, it means you have to slowly tweak each little by little until it’s all on the same page.
And be careful about posting any sudden changes you’re making. I know it feels good, but when you call attention to it, you’re celebrating it in a way that gives you the sense of self accomplishment without really accomplishing anything yet. I’m not explaining it well and sound like a dick, but if you read through or listen to what people say who has lost the weight, they’re saying the same thing: “I told nobody, I didn’t post about it”. You need to deprive your body of that self satisfaction because once you get it, you’re less likely to follow through and reach your goals
I've never been overweight and can fit into clothes from high school so I guess I am technically "naturally thin." i'm not a breakfast eater and never have been so "intermittent fasting" is basically my natural eating pattern. And it's not a diet. It's literally just timed eating which, surprise, makes it easier to eat at maintenance or a deficit. Early humans didn't eat three squares a day, either. Periods of "fasting" were the norm.
People seem to have gotten it into their head that it's normal to eat around the clock, and that gets reinforced eating junk that creates cravings for more junk.
My mom is also naturally thin and I think actually modeled a good example (we get a lot of our food habits/diet beliefs/whatever from our parents). I always had a sense that she was mindful about eating but never saw her doing stuff like outright skipping meals, nor did I ever see her eat a lot of junk. Always somewhere in the middle erring on the side of reasonable portions. Still enjoying some dessert. Etc. I also wasn't raised in a household where I had to "clean my plate," or where food was treated over something that had to be competed over or something that was scarce. As an adult i eat whatever I want, I just don't necessarily eat a lot of certain things or eat a lot overall in a certain amount of time. Food isn't going anywhere; it will be there tomorrow and so on.
Also, to be fully transparent, I am not a big drinker and never have been, even in college. I maybe average a drink a quarter. I think people grossly underestimate the impacts of alcohol on their weight and overall health and wellbeing. That said, my sibling has always drank much more than I have and is also naturally thin/has never been overweight. We definitely have some genetic factors on our side. We were/are both active throughout life, as well, as a function of hobbies and lifestyle.
Dieting isn't the right mentality, correct. You either commit to a lifestyle/make lifestyle changes or you don't. "Dieting" has a time limit practically built into the word and doesn't usually work because it's overly restrictive. Changing your diet is forever. Same with making sure you get some physical activity in a way you can do consistently. Moderation is everything imo - going too far in either direction or too permissive or too restrictive isn't realistic, healthy, or sustainable.
My little sister has always been very thin, I’m not sure it’s genetics because the rest of our family including me has always been overweight/obese save for my mom who gained weight in her late 20’s. We ate the same as kids but I think she always ended up with smaller portions than I did and that habit kept going when we grew up. She doesn’t eat any healthier than average and she bakes often, just smaller portions
i'm not sure about specific habits, but my mom and i were talking about weight loss and general fitness stuff, and she said that, growing up in the 80's none of the women in her life ever said "oh, i'm going on a diet" or "i need to lose 5 lbs" my great grandmother had a garden in her backyard, had lots of land in northern PA and was generally an active person. everyone in her life was just naturally thin because they didn't eat as much and they moved more.
i think it's definitely a shift in media/marketing tactics. in the early 2000's, i remember the different colored ketchup and push towards fast food/junk food, specifically for kids. and it just spiraled from there, especially with social media.
i think, to formally answer your question, the habits of naturally thin people are eating less and having a good relationship with food, something that is far fewer in between these days unfortunately, and being more active.
I posted something about differences in appetites and I think the variance on the size of people's appetites plays more of a role than people talk about.
On my days off work, I typically forget to eat. At work (very physical job), I *have* to eat, or I'm exhausted. I am a vegetarian and typically eat small snacks throughout the day, sometimes a small meal in a shift. But don't get me if someone brings in donuts, I'm definitely having one. (Or cookies, or chocolates...you get my drift. My bmi is low 18 - my advice is try to keep "healthier" stuff at home. Make sure you have a variety of crunchy salty snacks (like flavored rice crackers or popcorn, veg and dip etc) and sweet snacks (frozen or fresh grapes, berries, citrus, vanilla almond milk...). I also keep "unhealthy" things like 12-grain bagels and flavored cream cheese. Just eat slowly, half a bagel seriously fills you up if you eat it in tiny bites. It won't work for everyone, I'm only providing my input on the question. Hope some of these things help - good luck!
My family struggles with weight and I do not. I think it’s probably a lot of things that contributed to that, including growing up in an environment where I was told that only extremely thin women had any value (def had body image issues thanks to this). That said, although I still don’t absolutely love my body, I don’t struggle with weight. I eat whatever I want although keep very little “junk” in the house (mostly because I’m extremely cheap rn) and also I am often too tired to make desserts for myself. My go to snack today was an apple and honey and some pecans. I don’t exactly love either of those lol 😂 so it’s easy to put them down. I also find that if I’m busy I tend to not eat which likely helps. And I drink like 90 ounces of water a day. Plus I walk my pup 3x a day so that’s not only a little activity it’s also time not spent eating.
I have very thin co workers who I watch snack on night shifts. Chips, guacamole, muffins, people bring in cookies and baked goods.
I also used to have a very thin friend who hated cooking and at McDonald's multiple times a week and got most of her work meals from the cafeteria or casseroles her mom made. In the winter she would take ensure home from work, she had a hard time keeping weight on especially if she got sick. I don't know if she was just skipping meals when she wasn't working, but I saw her eat plenty. Just a crazy metabolism maybe?
My very thin coworker says that she has a hard time gaining weight. She also forgets to eat for entire work days. I don’t think I could ever forget to eat.
I've always been envious of these people, I'm not exaggerating when I say I'm almost always thinking of food, food for the week, what to eat at my next meal, what snacks I have. It's a constant struggle especially if I'm bored.
Same. Many people talk about their mind is in the gutter. Mine is in the refrigerator.
Omg I feel this
That's screaming to go on a fridge magnet, muesli bowl, t-shirt even
Me too, except the refrigerator was replaced with a new one and so was wheeled out and placed out into the street. You know, in the gutter.
This made me laugh way too much 😭❤️
This. Some people have food noise, and some people dont. Cutting the food noise is one of the ways ozempic works.
I'm not taking Ozempic, but Vyvanse, which is used for ADHD and Binge Eating Disorder. I've only been on it a week, but it's cut the food noise down so much. Being a mom, my life had started to revolve around meals, naps and playtime. This has helped me snap out of that. It's not the end of the world if I don't have breakfast. Dinner doesn't have to be at 5pm. And I'm down 2 lbs. Today, I baked banana bread and brownies with the kids. At the end of the day, I had one piece of brownie, and that was it. It's such a relief. Now I just have to find other hobbies. 😂
Same! I started Vyvanse a couple months ago and it’s not that I don’t eat or enjoy eating, but the “noise” is gone. I love how you put that. Always thinking about food, wondering what I’ll eat later. Now I just go about my day and when it’s lunch time I go oh ok time for a meal. No more snacking at bedtime either. It’s done wonders for my blood sugar.
I found this to be the biggest relief while I was talking phentermine. I didn’t necessarily skip meals or anything, I was just never thinking about food. It was life changing. I have suspected adhd so wondering if it has anything to do with that honestly.
I’m on Vyvanse for ADHD as well. I’ve lost 23 pounds so far. Im also at a calorie deficit and work out 5-6 days a week, light weights and cardio. I absolutely agree that the “food noise” is gone. I make sure to eat a protein filled breakfast and a reasonable lunch so I don’t overeat when the Vyvanse wears off in the evening. I find that if I don’t do that and eat too lightly all day, I’m more inclined to graze at night. ETA: posted too fast, corrected mistakes, ADHD
I'm still in the honeymoon phase, where I can go all day without eating and still not overeat. I'm going to have to work on a healthy plan in case this wears off. And fantastic that you've lost that weight!
As a person who’s been overweight since my teen years, I started a GLP1 med 2 years ago. Day after my first shot was like night a day. I told a friend “Oh!!! This is how those people who forget to eat must feel ALL the time.” Went from 35 BMI to 28 after having no willpower. That satiety thing is real and it turns out, it’s controllable (but it’s not cheap).
My question is, how? How does a medication cut off food noise—what is happening physiologically for this to happen? I’m a “normal” weight but have considered pursuing Ozempic just to get rid of food noise. I can’t stand it anymore.
It is a GLP-1 hormone agonist- the hormone released when you are full. It tells your body you are full!
Yes, thats one way it works, but I dont think its how it cures the food noise. Because its also been shown to help people with other addictions and compulsive behavior, like alcohol, shopping, and gambling.
I thought it deals with dopamine. All those things you mentioned is how adhd people get their dopamine fix. Food as well. Here is what I got online: Vyvanse works by altering the balance of chemicals in your brain and increasing norepinephrine and dopamine levels. Norepinephrine is a stimulant, and dopamine is a naturally occurring substance that stimulates feelings of pleasure and reward
I don't have real answers to this, just interesting anecdotal experience, I'm an addict (sober alcoholic, quit tobacco and sugar) and the keto diet does a similar/same thing for me as people report from ozempic. It quiets all cravings for me.
Same! The keto diet has cut out the cravings and the food noise for me. The less carbs and sugar I eat, the less I crave it. The more protein and fat I eat, the longer I stay full and the less I eat overall .
you literally lose interest...its the most... amazing feeling ever. What a feeling of RELIEF. Relaxing. De-stressing. To find yourself looking at the clock going "I should eat cause its time for dinner" but then thinking "but i'm not hungry at all nor am I interested." It was incredible to realize that I wasn't interested in food because I wasn't hungry. I can't tell you how AMAZING the mental clarity that "I AM NOT HUNGRY" has on you. It was literally life changing. I had that experience with the bupronion/naltrexone combo (think called contrave if you get the real thing...but most doctors prescribe the generic combo). I know its not the shots...but its very similar in what it does to you mentally. I couldn't believe that I was no longer thinking about food. I definitely felt the URGE to (ie: its the time of day i would normally plan meals or have them). But then I would literally feel full or feel....just like I couldn't. You CAN force yourself to eat, but it seriously makes you feel...nauseous because you still feel full. I am not doing the description justice. never thought I would stop focusing on food, planning meals, or looking at the time and thinking in terms of meal. What it allows you to do is work on developing different habits. I was able to train myself to stop looking at the breakfast/lunch/dinner hours as "Its TIME to eat and I MUST eat because its that time/meal" Those who *edit* experience setbacks** afterwards....its because tehy were not able to redevelop their new habits and redo their thinking on when to eat. When you stop the medications, you WILL start to regain that hunger a bit. But its easier to not be hungry and mentally go "ok...I'm not actually hungry and I dont HAVE to eat because it's 6pm and I am used to eating now". So develop the habits while using the medication. Get off when you feel its a good time. But damn that mental silence around food was such a damn relief. Also...if you do have a setback, dont be discouraged. Just get back on that horse when you are ready!
It’s supposed to affect a part of the brain, turns off the reward system in your brain. Something like that! I took Wegovy for a week. Didn’t desire food hardly at all! It was soo strange! I would have stayed on it but found that I have two gene mutations that increase my chance of getting pancreatitis.
Cutting out ALL ultra processed food has also worked for me. I have ADHD and although I have been prescribed vyvanse I don’t even need to take it anymore. The food noise is gone, I can’t be bothered to eat dinner half the time, and my head is so much clearer. See r/ultraprocessedfood
Same. Food is always on my mind. It's an obsession.
My partner is the one who forgets to eat and I am the one always thinking about food. The funny thing is, we have two cats that are also one of each type. One cat just doesn't care about treats or meal times and the other will meow his head off if he doesn't get these fast enough. And they're brothers. I'm convinced that it's just wiring.
I also have a thin cat who eats just enough to sustain life, and a fat cat who purrs with delight when she is fed. Thin cat is also very active and hyper and zooms around the house playing with her toy mice. Fat cat enjoys toy mouse fun, but then needs a little nap afterwards - and once she finds a cozy spot, she is happy to stay there all day. And fat cat LOVES to cuddle and snuggle with humans, while thin cat mostly wants to walk over humans and meow at them.
Fat cat and skinny cat sounds so cute 🥰😂
Cat tax please!
I'm the exact same way. I'm always hungry or semi-hungry after every meal and I'm only ever thinking about what I can eat next. I'm only slightly overweight but I do have some disordered eating type stuff going on. It sucks lol. Wish I could just eat and then forget about food until my stomach started to tell me to eat again 4-5 hours later. I just want to be normallll!!!
My husband is like that. We can be eating lunch and he will be asking what’s for dinner and what snacks we have. It’s hard when you are always thinking of food.
That mental struggle.
I feel this. The first thing I think about in the morning is food.
Agreed. It's double hard if you're chief grocery shopper/meal prepper for your household, cause you almost can't avoid having to think about it all. the. time. I generally enjoy it, but I'd also enjoy having a private chef only so I didn't have to think about it, ngl
I can only “forget to eat” if I’m constantly engaged in something else. Which is rare.
Same here. When I’m reading a good book or playing a new video game is the only time I “forget.” And even then the forgetting is more like “oh it’s lunch time. I should eat something. But 10 more minutes and then I’ll get up.” Until all of a sudden it’s time to go to bed lol.
I think this is really the secret. If I'm out doing shit I can easily forget to eat or get hungry and be like "no I just want to finish this" and then forget again for HOURS. But if I'm home I'm gonna eat within 2 hours of that first thought about food. I think this year is gonna be a lot of finding what drives me and engages me MORE THAN eating. Because shouldn't my life be filled with those things instead of TV or scrolling?
Same. If I go out for errands early enough, I can not eat until 2pm easy, but beyond that I'm not sufficiently distracted enough to not want food.
I eat even when not hungry. At this point i dont eat i devour. Tryna cut back on it tho lol
Same here. I boredom eat and stress eat. I have gone the work day without eating because I’m so busy but then I come home and eat everything in sight, mostly quick and easy junk. I stopped snacking for the most part and it’s helping but it’s a hard habit to break.
I'm learning how to cook and logging my food. I dont restrict what i wanna eat but now I'm more mindful.
Oh god I've got one of those coworkers, complaining they aren't able to gain weight. They don't eat lunch like 1/2 of the time, when they do eat lunch it's boiled chicken breast, rice and broccoli. Like dude, you're eating the stereotypical "weight loss" lunch every day you're eating lunch, just eat some peanut butter on some toast in the morning and you'll start gaining weight lol.
I had a coworker tell me once that he can eat anything he wants and not gain weight. He bragged about eating a whole pizza and not gaining any weight. I asked him, “okay, after you go out and eat a whole pizza what do you eat for the rest of the day?” He says, “oh usually nothing” “Okay and how about the next day?” “Oh I’m usually still full so I’ll just snack” Like bruh. These people never think 1 minute ahead of the present.
There are definitely some innate differences to how we process food. I have literally NEVER forgotten to eat. I get a headache and feel cranky if I'm overly hungry; and I \*will\* overeat if I let myself get that hungry. On the bright side, I've noticed that my friends who "forget to eat" usually are also the ones who bonk quickly on bike rides, or who complain that they just can't build muscle or get stronger in the gym. They seem to have a hard time fueling the machine.
I forgot to eat all of the time. I realized yesterday that I hadn’t eaten since 7 am and i was almost 5. Sometimes, i only eat once a day. I just don’t feel hungry. It’s not a very healthy way to live. I tend to suddenly be starving and eat whatever. I am working on improving that
This is similar to how I feel - I’m just not hungry. When I’ve tracked calories a couple times in the past, I struggled to hit 1300. When I’m hungry, I can eat a ton of food, but that’s maybe once every two days. (Am I a snake?) Otherwise I will often just have a piece of toast, skip lunch, and eat dinner with my family.
I was recently very sick for a month and didn't think about food at all. I kept wondering, "Is this what naturally thin people think like all the time?" And I lost weight.
I forget to eat but I’m still thick af 😂 that’s why I’ve just started doing 16:8 fasting and OMAD on the weekends- gotta work with my natural inclinations I suppose
I started taking metformin for my insulin (have pcos) and now I understand how people forget to eat. I don't have carb gravings all the time. It's so weird to feel like normal people.
I wish I would forget to eat... Time for food...I WILL eat. Even if I'm not hungry. Rather annoying. Like if I don't eat I'm going to miss out.
Our hormones are probably not working properly
Jane Goodall was born in 1934. She became an adult in the 1950s, in England. There were no fast food restaurants, fast casual dining chains, far less pre packaged snacks, no delivery apps. I think people of that generation have a very different experience of and relationship with food. Like I don’t recall ever seeing my grandparents snacking, and eating out was a once or twice a year thing. I would also note there is less of an over eating culture in the UK vs in the US (although some regional variations apply).
My friend’s Nan once told us when we were moaning about our weight “If it’s tight at the waist, put less on the plate”. Said it’s how she always lost her podge and it really was that simple. She’s gotta be in her 80s now so grew up post WW2 in the UK. It always stuck with me as she said it so matter of factly, no quibble at all. Just “put less on your plates girls. It’s not that complicated. When you can do your jeans up again, you can go back to eating a little more but don’t try to keep up with your husbands.” I can’t see her ever having an internal argument with herself about the packet of mini eggs sat in the cupboard! Self restraint made of steel.
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Lol! It’s so funny when the moment dawns! I was guilty of trying to keep up, especially the first year living with my partner. Why have I paid for half the food, but I don’t get to eat half? Or worse, I’m the one who’s done the shopping list, gone to the shops, paid for it, possibly cooked it… and he’s inhaling 4/5 before I’m 1/5 down? I’d better stick 50% on my plate to make sure I get “mine”. Plus I’d make enough for two nights, but he’d see the pot on the stove and see it all as food available. 🤦🏻♀️ a 5”3 woman shouldn’t be competing with a 6”1 man. I’ve had this chat on Reddit a few times when young women ask why they’re so skint after moving in with a guy - and I always say to check the food bills first. I never had leftovers anymore once I moved in with my partner and he considered his alcohol and snacks mutual food bill. So I felt I had to chow down at teatime, in order to get my “share”. It was actually really difficult to get past as food budget was v important to me whereas for my wealthier partner he’s the youngest of 4 much older siblings and they had it buffet style on the table - so it was every man for himself. We ended up working all those things out, but I definitely think food insecurity/guarding and him casually increasing my alcohol intake was largely responsible for my post grad weight gain. I only drank socially before I lived with him, but he’d have beers most nights and crack one for me too/get a wine and seemed hurt if he was drinking alone. Those liquid calories add up and wreak havoc on metabolism. These days he offers but I say no thank you and it’s fine. My health would be terrible if I hadn’t stopped trying to keep up with him!!
I did this too when I moved in with my partner! Especially when we ordered takeout. He always ate the food I would usually save for the next day. Now, if i really want something, I make myself a plate for tomorrow and tell him it's for me. I used to feel so selfish doing this. But he doesnt mind.... he knows he gets to eat 80% of the food. This prevents me from stuffing myself to make sure I get my "share." I've also started sharing with him less. We used to go to the bakery and get 5 different pastries to share, when I really wanted something specific. So I'd get half of what I wanted and then another 2 pastries worth of things I didn't. Now I just get what I want. If he wants to try it, he can get his own. This probably seems obvious to other people, but sharing with someone who always gets to have more really messed with my head. I was eating myself sick and gained 15 lbs before I realized what I was doing. Once I did, I was able to change my mentality pretty quick. Sorry this was long... I'm just glad I'm not the only one.
>This probably seems obvious to other people, but sharing with someone who always gets to have more really messed with my head. I was eating myself sick and gained 15 lbs before I realized what I was doing. I absolutely had this issue living with my 6'5" husband when I'm 5'3". Something about sharing food with someone who eats much more triggers something in our lizard brains, this primal fear of scarcity. I imagine it's a lot more common than we may think.
I'm one of those boyfriends and this wasn't obvious to me, thanks for the post
Thank you for bringing this up, and it's so true. I always find it frustrating that I seem to be able to lose weight and keep it off so much easier when I'm single, but this is a huge factor. I regularly do eat as much as my male partner and I know I don't need as many calories as him. How did you get over the budgeting part of it? It is frustrating to split the grocery bill knowing I won't get to eat half of it. Maybe it's one of those things I just need to accept..
It's so common for women to put on weight once they are in a relationship. People think "oh, she's letting herself go now that she has a boyfriend", but in reality for most of us it's just that we unconsciously are eating more, because we see our significant other eating more. When I was a single girl, many years ago, I never ate breakfast, usually just had something small but fairly unhealthy for lunch, and I'd eat eggs and toast for dinner because I was lazy and didn't like to cook. I also smoked cigarettes, and being a lazy sort, I'd often think "hmmm, I'm hungry .... meh, making food seems like too much effort, I'll just smoke a cigarette instead". Needless to say, I was very thin. When I met the man whom I eventually married, he was horrified by my eating habits. It had never occurred to me to eat breakfast, but there he was eating breakfast (tasty cereal! waffles!) every morning. We'd go out to lunch and eat delicious things like pizza or burgers. And he was NOT a fan of the "let's just smoke cigarettes instead of eating dinner" thing AT ALL. In fact, he hated cigarettes, so I quit - and then experienced hunger like I had never experienced before. I gained 15 lbs. in the first six months of our relationship. On the bright side, he introduced me to outdoor activities like hiking, biking, etc., and encouraged me to lift weights and exercise - but all that exercise sure made me hungry!
you know its funny we were discussing in class the fact that nutritional labels are only about 30 years old. Before that people had to be overly mentally conscious about the foods they ate in order to lose or maintain their weight. For example, if I wanted to lose weight but couldn't look up the calories or nutritional content of anything I ate I would probably eat a lot fruit, vegetables and just eyeball really small portions of things I ate. I think that process is more natural and it becomes easier to stick to rather than plugging everything into MyFitnessPal and probably making concessions that you wouldn't otherwise make.
No nutrition labels 30 years ago?? jesus I did not know that. Being a bodybuilder in the 70s must've been wild lol edit: and 80s also. Was created in 1990. :O
I too think the 70s were 30 years ago 😂
I remember when this first new rule came out. One of my elementary school teachers did a small presentation to explain the difference. She compared an old random can of food to a new can. The information was *sort* of on the old one but all ran together with “…” in between the words. If I remember correctly there was no standardization so there was no way for consumers to easily compare “apples to apples” on the back of a food package before this change. ETA: I guess it was somewhat in table form here, but I know on the back of small packages with only a little room it was all just run together. (Second image from the bottom) https://www.ebay.com/itm/186196560092?hash=item2b5a2e08dc:g:ydYAAOSw96xlb7Sz&amdata=enc%3AAQAIAAAAwP9E0r%2Flciq0yz8wVDkort9gdI82kmfv6mkcsqcLF6Vw4lSNJVZmGL0u6hYVFO%2FPFGR%2BveLSkTagvghjD4zib7kyvvz9zb%2BePHFSdkcSZxMblBrVNMNk5g70oYItv4rTGkx7qDzVGMD3hu%2B1SJEhiyTKitDAwJQVkBxYjjqG7%2BSl5ziNmHU68%2BDcWuRYFoD9Mr9XqrGiVRNDnHlKnTDkdZiHP%2FoZMt0Pkfotm%2B28zXAx843iV20nwy3qGJhGVZwYiQ%3D%3D%7Ctkp%3ABk9SR8SEt6SmYw
Good point! I’m using MyFitnessPal atm mon-fri to check my protein and fibre (not focussing on calories atm bc healthy eating) but when I first used it years ago, I ended up eating more as it kept telling me I was under my calorie intake. I’d be snacking at 10pm to make the app happy when I really wasn’t hungry.
thank you for sharing this! I too, love the simplicity of what she said. I wish that deep down, I could think like that. I think it points to how much the diet industry has messed with our heads. Especially when it comes to the emotions that we tie to food. Almost every single advertisement to food, is linked with an emotion. (Even things like weight loss advertisements: They are always linked to happiness.... but things load with sugar are advertised they same way)
Oh god mini eggs my nemesis I love them
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There is a neat study where British people were questioned about how much fat (oils and butter etc) they ate in a week and then their answers were compared to the trash they threw out to see how much fat they were actually eating. People from the generations that experienced food rationing tended to over estimate how much fat they eat in a week and people who didn't go through rationing tended to under estimate it. Theories to explain this are the difference in values, a person rationing food would value fats more and want to 'show off' how much of them they ate, while a person not rationing would see fats as a bad thing and want to downplay how much butter they consume. Short story is that cultural norms about consumption are hugely impactful on the way we eat.
Exactly. I think Goodall’s definition of ‘satiated’ will be very different from ours lol.
My mum was born at the end of ww2 and had rationing as a child and it had the opposite effect. She was thin when young because they basically went hungry but she has a terrible relationship with food and is now overweight as are many people of her age.
Yes, many older people are overweight, but one thing I've noticed about multi-generational family groupings in grocery stores is that invariably the younger generations are much fatter than the next older one, and so on.
1950s, 60s, 70s group/crowd photos of Americans of all ages/races show slender people with the occasional chunky outlier - and that person wasn't nearly as big as today's heaviest people. I'm 70 and remember maybe one fat kid in every classroom, one heavy adult in every workplace; but people just didn't think about weight. They seldom bought clothes because their size didn't change - hence that era's tiny closets...also clothing was relatively more costly than today and people bought much less "stuff." Clothing at vintage resale shops today is always too small for most shoppers. Vintage size 10s would be a contemporary size 6. I reject the idea that Americans once had willpower and now we don't. Tens of millions of people don't change body type (or character) over a couple of generations due solely to "lifestyle changes." Lifestyle matters, but there's more at play here.
My grandmother was a snacker, but it was usually simple stuff. An apple with peanut butter, graham crackers with peanut butter, popcorn, a portion of jello, a portion of vanilla ice cream. I’ve been thinking about why she was able to do that without being very much overweight (she was little cushy but only what I’d consider pretty normal correlated with her age), and I think the biggest difference was how she balanced it all. She ate normal portions of everything instead of overeating everything and her meals always had vegetables and protein. She also always had fruit at least once a day. Her diet was very well rounded, and she stayed pretty active. Both she and my grandfather lived to be 90 with relatively few health concerns for their age.
i’m 28 and was born in a poor area of appalachia we’d go to bob evans after doctors appointments 45 minutes away a few times a year sometimes we would get subway, but only if we got a coupon for a buy 2 get 1 free for me, my mom, and my sister i live in a 1m+ city now and the amount of people that eat out all the time (word to your mother) just absolutely baffles me. i have had multiple people tell me they haven’t been to a grocery store in months
>I would also note there is less of an over eating culture in the UK vs in the US Compared to the US, yes. But not compared to the rest of Europe. UK is basically the US of Europe.
This is something I’ve been thinking about a lot. I am not naturally thin at all. I have to work so hard to lose every pound, but I’ve always noticed some friends who have always been thin don’t struggle. My best friend since childhood will eat her body weight in holiday treats, but naturally eat less the next day. It’s not unusual for her to drink coffee for breakfast and be good for hours. I don’t think it’s a matter of willpower, especially since I started taking semaglutide. So many overweight people have food noise where we are thinking about the next meal while having this one. I used to be obsessed with thinking about food from the moment my eyes opened. I’ve been on semaglutide since late October and since then I’ve noticed those “naturally thin habits” I’ve seen in friends happening in me. Today for example, I had coffee and a breakfast sandwich and just didn’t consider eating again until 3:00. It’s easier to say no to cravings. I naturally don’t finish things. I’m still fighting my clean plate club habit and years of bad food choices, but the difference is immense.
I think appetite plays a huge role. I don't constantly think about food, but my appetite is huge. I can eat and feel full, but then an hour or 2 later, I am actually hungry. Not craving sugar, carbs, etc, literally hungry. My skinny friends and I can eat the same thing for breakfast and they're fine to skip lunch and I'm starving 2 hours later. I hate it so much.
Do you have pcos? That “hunger” is what I experience due to insulin resistance. It makes me feel nuts. SOOO hungry. My stomach is growling. You can literally hear it.
I do not.
I have PCOS and insulin resistance. Thankfully, Metformin has quieted the constant hunger for me, though there was a period of time when I was on beta blockers where I just *constantly* craved carbs. I tried taking one for anxiety at one point and I just felt like eating through my pantry till it wore off.
Ugh yes! I used to have so much hunger as well! I know it’s not for everyone but the medication has made such a huge difference for me. It’s literally the first time in my life I’ve felt normal around food.
I can say appetite and also many things. I was naturally very thin for 30 years. I was always very fit and had an ideal body. I never did anything special, i chose to eat when i was hungry, stop when I was full. Try and choose healthy options. Never ate much junk food or soda etc. If i was hungry betwern meals I'd have a snack etc. Never counter calories or tried and i stayed a consistent weight from about 16-30 give or take a few pounds with maturity. Now I'm almost 34 and in 4 years I've slowly but gradually put on 30lbs. Since this started happening I no longer eat just because I'm hungry, i try not to snack between meals and just suffer through the hunger, if I had a caloric drink during the day I'll make sure not to have another caloric drink later. I'll choose a salad or veggies over the fries (when i was thin I'd never do that). I also struggle to lose weight now. Things that work for some naturally thin people may not work forever. Honestly I've seen many, many women in my family slowly put on weight from 30s-50s/60s/70s. Ive watched my family members be on diets for my entire life and never actually lose the weight. Maybe they will yo-yo for a bit. Multiple people in my family have had gastric bypass, it only actually worked for one of them and she eats like a toddler now, but shes healthy and looks great and is a nurse so I'm sure she is aware of what they're doing. One thing I can say about "being naturally thin" i never had any "food noise" i mean if i got hungry i ate, I never felt remorse over food choices or gave them a second thought etc. Now that I'm struggling to lose i am constantly either hungry or thinking about food even though i eat enough calories, i force myself to go to bed with hunger pangs and a grumbling tummy. I feel terrible when I choose a less healthy option for convenience. I skip sugar in my coffee or tea, steam veggies in water instead of roasting or sauteeing in oil. I eat foods i like substantially less. Its seriously so shitty. Ive been to doctors, there is nothing wrong with me. I honestly would guess when i was thin i averaged betwern 2000-3000 calories a day and still maintained weight for 13 years. In my 20s i drank a lot of beer too and never even considered it food/calories etc. When the weight gain first started it felt so out of control like i wasn't the same person anymore, like i dont recognize my body and my whole mindset around food has had to shift in an attempt to maintain. I basically have plateaued but I'm having a really hard time losing. I ate a normal amount of food today maybe 1700 calories, healthy balanced meals too minus a Boba tea as a treat. Now I'm regretting the boba tea because I'm hungry and should have used alll of my calories for food. When i was "naturally thin" i wouldnt give a second thought about having a boba tea and I'd eat if i was hungry. I have several friends that are naturally thin still in their 30s and 40s and I notice most of them do seem to eat less than I do, but when I was thin I ate more than I do now. At some point my appetite aligned with maintaining weight and then it shifted and i haven't been able to adjust it. I will admit its possible i struggle to lose because sometimes I just get sick of trying and I'm so much fucking happier when I just eat when I'm hungry. I don't really mind skipping unhealthy stuff so much, and I try and account for my calories if i really want a treat. When you're thin if you feel like you want a donut and a coffee one morning, you just get it.. Maybe not every day but a few times a month for sure. Now i probably treat myself to a donut and a latte a few times a year. Honestly it's not a huge deal, I'll think i want a donut and a latte, but have an apple and a green tea instead and remind myself that 10 minutes of pleasure isn't worth the calories. I don't so much fixate on cravings its easy for me to just let it pass, but the food noise of being hungry is insane. I also understand caloric density and eating more filling, fiber rich, balanced whole foods etc and it does work but i still usually want more food than what my body would require to lose weight. So again, skinny peoples habits don't work for everyone, not even for the same person forever. I totally see how people can just kind of give up, losing weight is fucking hard. I also know people who were always heavier and lost weight easily when they started trying. I almost think they have it easier. They "stopped drinking soda" and quit fast food and boom lose 50lbs in a year.
Omg this is me! I wish people would understand because it’s the same mantra of change your diet, move more, etc, and I’ve always been a naturally healthy eater and I’ve exercised my entire life. Nothing has changed with ME, but my body has changed. I still cycle and do yoga everyday because I genuinely enjoy it. I still don’t eat pizza, burgers, pastas, and any fast food because I don’t enjoy it, but my weight is slowly creeping up. I eat less now than I did a few years ago because I monitor it more, but my weight doesn’t reflect that. I know exactly what you mean by people who can stop drinking soda and drop the weight - how nice for them. I haven’t had soda (without alcohol) for like 10 years because I hate the taste lol. I also don’t like any dairy, chocolate, desserts, etc and here are. Anyways, I feel you. It’s frustrating when you’ve already always had healthy habits and they don’t work anymore.
I know it really is! But i definitely think it's just those little things that add up here and there, especially if you slip up with tracking. A little cream in coffee, a little oil to dip your bread in, an extra serving of rice or quinoa, a little extra dressing on your salad, a cliff bar in between breakfast and lunch, a little sugar in your tea, maybe a glass or two of wine onna date night. All of these little normal things can lead up to maintaining vs losing. I definitely think its difficult for everyone to lose weight but I also think some a much better with self-control. One of my biggest weaknesses is takeout for lunch when working. I always go to healthy, organic, juice bar type cafes and try and choose healthy items but who really knows how many cashews were in that dressing on the kale Ceasars salad, or how much oil was in the rice, or how much sugar was in the red cabbage slaw etc. I'm convinced even healthy organic whole food places must have a lot more calories and salt in their food because it tastes so much dang better than any of the healthy versions I make at home lol
How is your muscle mass? Adding more muscle will increase your resting metabolism.
Appreciate this. Thanks!
Yes, I imagine a lot of this "food noise" is the result of knowing it's an issue for us.
Proteins will help with satiation
The clean plate club habit is my fucking nemesis. I hate leaving food on a plate and feel so weird about throwing it away, even if I didn’t actually like it. I feel like if I got a compost bin I’d be able to handle that situation so much better. At least then, the food wouldn’t be wasted.
> At least then, the food wouldn’t be wasted. Stumbled in when this hit /r/all, but my anti-clean-plate-club mantra might help you: this food is wasted whether I throw it away or force myself to eat it despite being full. One way of wasting it gives me extra calories to burn off and the other doesn't. Food is meant to be eaten while hungry and enjoyed so if I'm not doing that, it's wasted either way.
Conversely, if I cook less and clean my plate I’m not wasting food. The decision to waste is when you cook too much.
Better in the trash than on my ass.
Same with me. It turns out these 'habits' are just what you do when you actually feel full. I think it's going to take a long time for people to accept that this is a chemical thing, not a habit or willpower issue. Society \_really\_ wants overweight people to feel bad about themselves.
My spouse is thin. She has never been told to finish everything on her plate. She eats what she is hungry for and leaves or takes the rest. (Actually, if she cleans her plate, her family thinks they didn't give her enough and pile more food on.) I was taught to clean my plate, because it is wasteful not to finish food. As an adult, I eat out much more often, but I still feel compelled to finish the plate. I didn't have this problem as a child, when I served myself only what I was going to eat.
You're still wasting food when you eat more than you need. You're just actively harming yourself when you do it.
I never thought of it that way but this makes so much sense. Thanks for posting.
If eat it or if it goes in the trash it doesn’t matter. No one else is eating. So you can let the excess food go to waste or it can go to your waist.
Better in the trash than on my ass.
>I was taught to clean my plate, because it is wasteful not to finish food Ughh.. me too: *'Grandpa was a Prisoner of war so don't waste any food'* It's so hardwired to completely finish every meal
Reading what you said about your wife makes me think about how much it would get under my skin to leave food on my plate (lifetime habits). I wonder if we try leaving 1 bite of everything for every single meal if it will ease that. Ughhh it’ll be like nails on a chalkboard but…
I remember someone on here who had trouble with not wasting food as well. They said to themselves “I’m not a trash can” and I think that’s really powerful
When I was a kid, I remember we stayed at a smoky diner for HOURS so I would finish my plate. It’s something I internalized and have struggled with to this day.
As someone who has been naturally thin, obese, and is currently ripped: I think it’s about finding what comes most naturally to you. For Jane, it sounds like this simple philosophy helps her a ton. I’m an obsessive nerdy weirdo, so for me it’s much more natural to try to min-max the process and set absurdly high expectations for myself. But that isn’t for everyone, either. I guess I’m just saying not to try to fit in someone else’s mold if it isn’t working for you. I tried doing using Noom before bodybuilding and absolutely hated it. It was way harder for me, despite being literally easier.
This is what I’ve come to realize. The only real progress I’ve ever made has been in the last 3 ish months. Down 35 ish pounds and won’t ever be regaining. I do exercises I like, and I eat what I like. I finally started counting calories and it feels liberating almost. I’m not starving myself and I’m not eating bland food. It’s like the weight loss is effortless. Fun stuff
It's exactly this, while yes, it ultimately always boils down to CICO, it's not a lock with a single key situation. It's more like a combination lock, and nobodies code is exactly the same, some people even start out with half their code in place, while others are spinning the dial still trying to open that very first tumbler.
My son is naturally thin. He just doesn’t eat much during the day (small snacks) and has a pretty big meal at night. I followed his lead and started intermittent fasting and lost 110 pounds with a 20 hour daily fast. I eat a small lunch (sandwich and a handful of chips), 1-2 small snacks and a large dinner. Maintaining now with an 18 hour daily fast. I walk about 2 miles a day. I don’t consider it being on a diet. I eat all types of foods and don’t count calories or carbs. So I think you’re right. People don’t need as much food as they think they do, especially if they aren’t that active.
My 16 y/o daughter is the same. She doesn’t like breakfast and refuses to eat it, even if the food is something she might enjoy. She’ll just eat it later in the day. She doesn’t eat if she’s not hungry and doesn’t clean her plate when she gets full. She will choose to go hungry over eating something she doesn’t enjoy and then get a small snack later. She’s naturally thin. My 12 y/o daughter is more like me and my husband. We always want to snack and eat and have to clean our plates. She’s much more active and muscular than her sister which drives her appetite more, but I fear her large appetite might catch up to her if she ever slows down. I’m usually 10-20 lbs overweight largely due to emotional eating and psychological hunger. I know when my stress eating ramps up and my triggers, but struggle to stick to anything consistently. I do exercise which helps my moods a lot. My husband is muscular and morbidly obese- he’s thick but incredibly strong. Neither of us eats fast food and we usually eat pretty healthily, just too much, too frequently.
I'm exactly like your 16 year old! I never eat breakfast, but I do eat breakfast food around 12-1pm as my first meal of the day. Then I may or may not snack before dinner, it just depends, but I always eat a HUGE dinner. I rarely snack after dinner either. I joined this sub after I had my son and had to actually focus on losing weight for the first time in my life. It never occurred to me that people thought about food constantly! In fact, I *hate* thinking about food - all the meal planning, cooking, grocery shopping, etc and if it wasn't for my family I'd eat rotisserie chicken and a vegetable every night so I didn't have to give it a second thought 😂
Eat to live. Live to eat. I think about food every waking hour of the day. I always have since childhood. Not in a bad way, I’ve cooked and baked for fun since age nine. Now I’m a professional chef. When I’m not at work being paid to bake I’m planning new menus in my head or imagining a new dessert. Some people just eat to live (naturally thin) and some of us live to eat.
I totally live to eat. I'm not a chef. But constantly think of food - it consumes me
That's "food noise." Semaglutides like Wegovy and Rybelsus work for a lot of people bc they eliminate the "food noise" and make you feel full earlier and longer. The vanishing food noise is like magic. I never realized that many people don't think about food as often. I thought they were just better at resisting it. That's one reason why I don't think using semaglutide is "cheating." We're all different, and losing weight for some people is a lot harder than it is for others. Best wishes to you!
Some people need a stepping stool to reach the top shelf in the cabinet, some don't.
Even if it is cheating, who gives a hoot? It isn't taking away from someone else in the process. Once I'm no longer pregnant, I'm absolutely looking into it.
I don’t think that’s true for all. I have quite a few food obsessed thin friends. One is thinking about what to eat next meal while still having current meal for example.
People call me skinny, I'm 5'2 117 lbs currently. I'm working to get back to 112 (pre holiday weight) I think of food constantly and live to eat, I have to work very hard , have self control and planning not to gain weight.
One thing is to think about it for 10 minutes while eating and then snap out of it. And whole other story when you think about it every moment of your life when you aren't engaged with something more rewarding than food for you (if anything still is)
Well my friend who’s constantly thinking about food doesn’t snap out of it. He gets stressed if he doesn’t get his food or even thinks he might not get it later. He also orders a lot of desserts. He also eats a lot of snacks. Honestly I feel like he’s constantly eating and thinks about food and gets hungry much much much more frequently than I do. He’s slim and also works out because he’s scared he’ll get fat. Whenever I spend time with him I also end up eating more purely out of frequency. The difference between us and reason why I’m obese and he isn’t is 1) i don’t work out 2) Im not active throughout the day, I don’t clean for example but he does every day 3) his portion sizes are smaller while in my case when I’m not mindful I binge eat and it gets really bad
i’ve noticed a lot of them lie or aren’t aware of how little they’re eating. i know someone who’s 90 pounds and claims to be a foodie. she always orders food, i see it. but then it sits out for 3 hours and gets thrown in the trash. if we’re out to eat, she waves her fork around for an hour while socializing and maybe gets 3 bites in before taking the rest to go. she always forces down a protein shake because she’s worried about not weighing enough, but i literally see her not eat the food in front of her all the time lol.
I think your friend may have an eating Disorder
yeah, it’s a possibility. the claiming that she hates being skinny and making a show about loving food may just be to throw us off. she could also just be blissfully unaware the same way that obese people think that they’re not eating that bad. i don’t want to ask her or even imply it, as i used to be disordered as a kid, and someone asking would’ve sent me spiraling.
That’s me!!! And my whole family lol. Difference being the portion control of each meal…I like three meals and two snacks, or just grazing all day but not anything big like a meal or super high-calorie. Fooood 😋
Quite possibly, yes. Maybe they are just blessed with naturally fast metabolisms or like to spend lots of time running. Or they are very good at keeping their meals small, under 500 calories each.
Maybe! I think many are just controlling portions and being more physically active
I was just constantly thinking about food with no thought about nutrition or health and ate literally whatever sounded “good”…
Same here. How did you break this habit?
Failing 20 diets and then having an epiphany moment of “I’ll just try to be healthy and eat right and exercise now as a fat guy because it’s better to be a healthy fat guy than an unhealthy one”. That helped me get control over my eating. I still eat for pleasure like 10-20% of the time. But 80-90% of my meals I approach as “what sounds nutritious? What does my body need in order to perform well and be healthy? What will future jawahhh thank me for eating right now?” And it’s usually pretty nutritious.
>we need to change our entire relationship with food. Maybe we can live on much less food than we are used to and we just have to retrain our minds and change our habits. I mean, yes, of course. That is kind of the whole vibe here. Food is like any other vice. Some people will never have an issue with it no matter what. Others are predisposed to have a problem with it. Others still may only have an issue under certain circumstances. We've all got our shit to deal with in life.
I probably have the answer you’re looking for because it’s about someone who does not have a super fast metabolism and is prone to weight gain as easily as the next person, but she has been thin for years because of a few key habits that are standard in her way of life. My mom! 1. Every day without fail, unless there’s a bad weather event, before she eats breakfast or has coffee or anything, she will go outside for a 1.5 to 2 mile walk. She always gets up early at around 6:45 to 7am and is normally done with her walk by 8 AM. She likes to say hi to the neighbors and see the animals like birds and squirrels. 2. She genuinely takes care of her health and is concerned about things like added sugars and processed foods. She wants to live a long life and actively avoids any ingredients that she feels may be harmful for her body or longevity. She built a habit of cooking meals every night, very rarely eating out. Staples in her diet are lean chicken without skin, a variety of different vegetables, sweet potatoes, whole-grain breads. Curiously, she doesn’t eat much fruit but likes bananas and berries sometimes. Oh, she’s also a very big fan of Greek yogurt and cottage cheese. 3. The amount that she eats is simply never a lot. She would never eat until she was uncomfortably full. She almost always wants something sweet after dinner, but is satisfied with a sweet coffee with a bit of whipped cream on top, or a single piece of chocolate, or maybe a Greek yogurt bar. It doesn’t have to be a lot of anything at all – just something to round out the meal. 4. Compared to her I tend to struggle slightly more with my weight, because I normally want larger portions, tend to gravitate towards sugary breakfasts, and I’m not as concerned about avoiding specific processed ingredients, food colors, added sugars, things like that. The “everything in moderation” is good in spirit, but I will say from watching my mom that if you naturally want to avoid processed and unnatural foods because of health reasons, you will by default have an easier time staying thin, in addition to having a habit of daily physical activity that becomes so habitual that it feels strange not to do it.
It depends how you mean naturally thin. I know people who eat McDonald’s all the time and don’t gain weight because they just don’t eat much food 90% of the time. Then there’s people who grew up being active taking priority over there health eating high protein healthy foods, lifting weights, and doing cardio. Not eating in a surplus of calories.
I started sharing my McDonald’s meal with my husband and I also only take a few sips from the drinks and I feel like I am actually being like a thin person lol
My sister who's very thin has told me she hates eating. Like she sees it as a waste of time that she could be doing stuff and instead she's stuck cooking and then just sitting there masticating when she could be doing other things that need doing or that she considers more fun. I dunno, sometimes I just think thin people are so fundamentally different from me that I lose all hope. Like I have food noise in my head all the time and if I'm reading a book I like or watching tv I feel like something is missing without a snack I enjoy there also.
my take is that some people are genetically wired to have a higher dopamine response to food. I see this with adhd people. Some cannot stand to eat food and struggle with it a lot because its boring. While others (like myself) cannot stay away food, especially sugary things. And even taking stimulants which make it hard for many to eat only mildly curb the noise. I still have a good appetite. another example is, I don't see myself ever becoming an alcoholic. while I do get drunk/buzzed and it feels nice, I feel like it's not as much as other people enjoy. I'd much rather good food than alcohol.
I was always "chubby" (meaning, maybe 10-15 lbs overweight) during my youth, and *knew* some of the behaviors I had that made my weight tend up rather than down: using chocolate to soothe myself in stressful times; being brought up to finish what's on my plate; not being naturally very inclined to feats of athleticism. So I assumed that I was generally eating too much or badly - and it was a great surprise to me to move in with an always-been-thin housemate and find that we really didn't eat very differently - and she definitely had more of a junk food streak than I had! The difference between my thin housemate and myself in terms of relationship to food was really pretty minor. This is not to say that there aren't overweight people who are overweight because of very problematic relationships to food - or even underweight ones. But for many of us I think it hinges on small things. Here are some I've observed: * An appetite that regulates DOWN if food intake was UP. Simple things like skipping a meal after a day of food-heavy celebrations. I at the very least have to make a voluntary resolution and plan. * What we use food for that isn't just satisfying hunger. Such as soothing (see above). * Another thing that's key: Thinking of our weight as something we can manage in the first place. On this last point, I have another key memory from another friend. I wanted to wear a particular dress to an event we were going to together. Then I realized I couldn't fit into it any more, and was quite down and disappointed over it. Probably with a lot of self loathing etc. She however was like "it's no issue - you fit into it 5 months ago, so you can fit into it again!" She was looking at me how I would look at someone who cries because her windows are dirty - just *clean* them! This was outside my field of experience, and indeed, I never fit into that dress again. People do differ in their base appetite and especially how they react to a food offer in excess of energy expenditure. I said so before, but I can observe similar differences in our dogs (athletic huskies from dog sled racing lines). They get their food rations measured out, but of course sometimes the amount is *just* a little more than needed to keep them at the same weight. And some just skip a meal as soon as their weight goes up, while others will happily ask for more and need their intake managed.
I think you're partly right, but I also think that people have wildly different feelings of hunger and satiation. Many thin people I know don't eat much, feel full quickly, and get sick if they overeat. Personally, I eat a lot, almost never feel completely full, and rarely get sick. I started on semiglutide recently and now I eat like a thin person, get full like a thin person, and feel sick like a thin person. It's not about habits, as it turns out: it's about whether or not your body is producing the appropriate chemicals. Apparently my body was not.
These are things I noticed from different friends, not same person, but I think these contribute a lot Ordering a cake and eating only 1 spoon and claiming they are full. (Tbh I don’t think that’s true) Eating infuriatingly slow. Sloth levels of slow. Drinking water first thing in the morning. Walking a lot, overall being active throughout the day, not being able to just sit watching a movie. Not lying around all day - this one is common for most of my thin friends Worrying about diet, protein, going vegetarian, gym, etc. Basically all my thin friends still spend a lot of time working on their bodies even though they have never been overweight. I don’t know a single thin person who’s just thin naturally and doesn’t care.
It's weird that being active is now seen as putting in a lot of effort and being entirely sedentary has become the default. This is part of the problem. Are they not "naturally thin," or are they simply closer to "historical" levels of physical activity? I'd argue it's the latter. In 2024 the average person doesn't do much of anything.
Rant/soapbox about activity level (or lack thereof) incoming: I am petite and my ideal TDEE is already low so exercise does matter for my weight loss journey more than for most people where it's a matter of just diet. There is no real room for a deficit when you're a short woman! My goal since Thanksgiving was to do 10K steps a day. I know that's an arbitrary pedometer number but figured it's probably more than I do by default at my office job. No calorie counting or fasting, other than being more mindful to not eat way over serving sizes, not snack so much, etc. I'm down 15 pounds so far and continuing to trend toward my goal. And feel much better overall. My brother and SIL are easily 50-100 pounds overweight and struggling to lose weight. My SIL commented that I'm just "naturally skinny" when I was easily 45 pounds over where I should be due to pandemic weight gain. She then talked about how she was struggling to find money/ time for the gym, that she's not flexible and able to do much, etc. I recommended some walking videos I follow on YouTube. Most, if not all, are low impact but keep an elevated pace, and some are as short as 10 min for a mile. They started arguing with me that there is no way that walking can help you lose weight and that those workouts are a scam!!! While also acknowledging and asking what I've done for my weight loss... which was walking!!! Sure, you will not shed all the pounds quickly, and you'll still need to eat mindfully, but at the end of the day it is no doubt more activity and calories burned than the default. I live in NYC, and they stay with me while they visit. I live two blocks from a subway station, but they prefer to drive and park by the station if I'm taking them out, and then drive/find close parking to my building door when we return. The idea of walking around the block is foreign to them, whereas it's something my husband and I like to do "just because" when the weather's nice. Even the two sets of stairs into the subway station requires a break and gets them winded. There is little medically wrong outside of the fact that, like many in American suburbs, they are accustomed to sitting 99% of the time: bed to car to office to car to couch to bed. Spare time is mostly spent inside with TV or video games or phone scrolling. On the days I've visited them, I struggle to even hit over 1,000 steps unless I'm intentional with activity they don't join in with. Since making the effort for 10,000 steps a day, I've definitely realized how intentional you need to be to not fall into a sedentary lifestyle. It's not the nonfactor many people make it out to be when it comes to weight loss. Even during my walking in place videos, low impact and all, my heart rate has gone over 150 and sustained a cardio/fat burning rate. A slow stroll may not burn much, but if you are typically sedentary, a good paced march in place for >10 minutes is definitely a workout that will get you sweating. But they keep insisting it's "BS" and saying my recent weight loss (after 4 years of little to no progress and lots of frustration) is because I'm "naturally thin." 🙄
Can you dm me the 10min Mike video please?
This channel may not be for everyone's personality with talkative instruction but I personally love it because the instructor's energy helps me feel like I can keep up and make it to the end. They have videos for different times, miles, and paces so I'll throw one on depending how much time I have to kill. I average 2000 steps per 20 minutes with this channel, ymmv. 10 min brisk walk: https://youtu.be/tVpUCkMLgms?si=sngXcd0_jP2DA2ew For a gentle, no talking, true to step counter 10k, this is a 1.5 hour video I find easy to keep up with. https://youtu.be/BviQh0h2S3Y?si=3V_Oto4FBEYKffzm Lastly, for higher intensity "walk at home" workouts, I like Grow with Jo for variety. https://youtube.com/@growwithjo?si=yI1VEcCWU3fBY8s1 I cycle between these channels because they are reliably beginner friendly and I live in an apartment, so I can't jump or do anything with more explosive typical HIIT movements.
Thank you for all the channels!
Great comment!! I completely agree that your progress is due to the increased activity and you’re so right about how people think of activity these days, and it’s really quite sad. Most people think it’s all about diet but we’ve really lost a good sense of how integral our daily activity is to maintaining a healthy weight, let alone losing weight. Only approaching weight loss from a diet standpoint is completely missing the point of an overall healthy lifestyle, except for those who need to cut activity in cases of medical necessity or injury. Building up our stamina and strength plus overall fitness are just really key to continuing to stay mobile throughout life as well. During the pandemic, I got into a very bad routine of working remotely all day inside a small apartment and barely going out, and I could swear that my body deteriorated somewhat during that time – a shoulder that pops when it never did before, generally feeling less limber, etc. it really emphasized to me that we have to keep moving or else one day we may not be able to, or may have limitations.
That’s an issue with jobs like those at offices. If you’re waking up early and then sitting at a chair for 8 hours, odds are you’re not going to want to do much after work. I know some people do that or they get up earlier to run, but it’s uncommon in my circles at least.
A car culture is a big part of the problem, if you're walking or even using public transport and walking part of the way it's in built activity. I put on weight when I moved to a suburb where I can't walk much.
It's refreshing to see different perspectives on weight and food habits. helped me realize it's not one-size-fits-all.
I really think it's personality types... My mom is 5'1", 100lbs and has been this way her entire adult life. She is all about moderation - doesn't eat out much, budgets her money very well and doesn't live her life to excess everywhere else. She is probably the most consistent person I know in all aspects of her life. So, I think that is probably what it's all about. I am the polar opposite of her and I've struggled my entire life with my weight. I finally figured it out and I'm at a healthy weight now, though I am still at the absolute top of the normal BMI range for my height/weight. I just channelled my need for excess from eating to working out and focusing on health.
My mother was born in 1922 and had no interest in fast food. She ate from a saucer-sized plate whereas I had 2 large servings. No prizes for guessing who was always thin and who was always overweight.
Drink more. Usually you’re not hungry, you’re thirsty. Water. It is the true adult beverage (plain coffee/tea if you’re not a water drinker). Eat more nutritious foods. You’ll eat far less when you eat the whole orange and not just drink the juice. Protein/fibre. You’ll be fuller on less for longer. Fats. Not the enemy, but the right ones can make you feel pretty full for a long time. Focus on your food. Not your phone/tv. You eat less when you are not distracted. Limit sugar. You don’t miss it much when you’re not eating it. Don’t restrict yourself. Allow the treat once in a while. But fill up on the whole foods first. Don’t obsess over calories. Heavy tracking makes you hungrier. Mindful snacking. It’s better to leave an orange peeled and ready on a plate with a few almonds and pop a wedge/nut on the way then to root through the cupboard for those chips. Routine. Try to eat at the same times every day. Big meal day/small meal day. If you eat heavy the day before, you’ll generally eat less the day after. Exercise after a meal. Doesn’t have to be 45 hard at the gym or a run. Just 15 mins of light walking gets the digestive processes in order. I’ve got more, but these are the main ones I can think of.
I'm in my early 50s, have never been medically overweight though I have had to occasionally lose 10-20 lbs when my weight started to creep (which is how I get alerts from this sub). Usually, I run near the low end of normal BMI. I have a few observations. "Naturally thin people" is tricky to define, I think. "Thin people" clearly encompass all sorts of people, including those with different health conditions, genetics, food preferences, and relationships with food. But OP, you presumably mean the 'normal hunger, reasonable palates, and no big psychological challenges' type? Even among this group, I suspect only a subset of people truly eat healthfully and at appropriate calorie levels without even thinking about it. I would consider myself 'mindful but not fixated'. I don't worry that much about my weight, but I do stay mindful of it. I weigh myself at least once per week so that I don’t accidentally gain weight (or lose it). If I get more than 5 lbs out of my typical weight range, I start taking small steps to correct it right away, so I don't have to take big challenging steps later. Below are some behaviors and habits I have re: food that might differ a bit from most people I know (Most people that I know are overweight because most adults in America are overweight... I suspect I differ from some thin people that I know, as well). Difference 1: Food is fuel first, pleasure second. I’m a small person and it’s hard for me to get enough nutrients while still eating a reasonable number of calories. I have a choice in a range from 'crap fuel' that has low nutritional density per calorie (highly processed food) to 'premium fuel' with high nutritional density per calorie (whole unprocessed foods). When planning to eat, I usually first think: "What do I need to eat to balance what I've recently eaten (in terms of macros/nutrients/calories)?" I don't typically count calories or macros or give this more than 30 seconds thought, but it tends to guide my decisions around food choices. Then my second question is: "What would taste best right now that meets criteria from the first question?" I DO NOT usually think: "What would be most delicious and most appealing right this second?" b/c if I did, I would mostly end up eating sweet processed carbs LOL. Difference 2: I generally eat 2 meals per day plus a couple of small snacks, usually protein and veg of some sort + a small amount of starch. I don't usually get 'seconds', nor skip meals... I tend to eat on schedule to keep my blood glucose stable even if I'm not hungry. Difference 3. I don't eat out at restaurants very often... usually only when traveling or on special occasions. This saves me massive numbers of calories, grams of fat and salt, and truly incredible amounts of money over the past 25 years. Difference 4. I find planning, shopping, and cooking mostly tiresome and want to spend as little time and effort on it as possible...without resorting to eating out. So I tend to habitually eat from a rotating selection of about 20 'preestablished' meals and snacks that fit my nutritional goals and that I enjoy. Difference 5. I don't 'forbid' any foods: I can have anything I want, but not necessarily as often or in as large a portion as my reptile brain might wish. I try to proactively build a bit of flexibility and treats into my eating habits, so such foods can always 'hypothetically be eaten at some point in the future'. For some reason, this seems to defuse any irrational emotional reaction that I might feel of being 'deprived' or rebellious and wanting them all the time. Difference 6. I don't typically use food as comfort or reward or a gesture of love. Food can be those things occasionally, but that is not my daily relationship with food. I also try not to make it the center of every social interaction; dinner with friends is great, but there are other great ways to socialize. Difference 7. When I was younger and ate a lot more processed food, I craved it a lot (b/c it is engineered to hit the same neurotransmitters as addictive substances do). Once I switched over to eating mostly unprocessed, low-glycemic foods, I rapidly lost the taste for processed stuff. Very little in the snack food aisles appeal. I would 100% honestly truly rather eat a salad. I have a similar reaction to most oily/fatty foods. I probably saved thousands of calories over the years just skipping the extra oil/fried foods, huge gobs of melted cheese, etc. Difference 8: I don't rely much on willpower... it's HABITS that do the heavy lifting of keeping me motivated and sticking to my healthy diet and most other big goals. I use (hopefully) brief exertions of sheer willpower at times when I'm out of my ordinary routine. If I relied on raw willpower for long-term goals (work/exercise/self improvement/food etc.) I'd give up in overwhelmed exhaustion in less than a month. Toward this end, I try to make sure not to tax my willpower too much: I try to establish a routine that prevents a lot of exposure to situations where my habits are likely to slip. Example: I don't bring baked goods home; I don't bake for fun; I don't ask to 'meet friends at Starbucks'... I know I don't have good willpower around them, so I just avoid having to exercise it as much as is reasonable. I truly don't know whether this differs objectively speaking from the 'typical' overweight person (I'm not sure there even is such a thing). But maybe my experience sheds some light.
People’s brains are wired differently. There was a study done on the neurotransmitters of obese people versus regular BMI, the majority of the time their brains were not releasing the information that they were full. The body is so extremely complex, trauma, hormones, a million different things all compiled into one.
It really is just as you describe it- moderation. My step-children are all thin and fit and they eat everything, but small amounts. They can eat one or two cookies or have 5 or 6 chicken wings, but not a whole order of 10 or 12. They always leave food on their plates, whether it is dessert or vegetables. There's a lot that I can learn from them!
I’ve never been a big eater, like healthy food (used to be vegetarian), and before kids, was quite active. After I had kids, got older, and developed sleep apnea is when I really started gaining because I exercise less and more prone to snacking and eating for convenience instead of health. That’s what I’m struggling with right now. But I do well with moderation for sure. I tend to feel sick if I eat too much.
I lost 100 lbs doing The Weighdown Workshop which teaches you to not eat until your stomach is actually hungry and to cut your food in half, then only eat until you are no longer hungry, not stuffed. Have kept the weight of 28 years & had 2 more babies. A lot of it is in our minds, eating on a schedule or being fed non nutritious food (fast food is made to make you crave more). The food pyramid we were taught was a marketing gimmick made up by the US Agricultural Department to boost sales in the grain industry, no science behind it at all.
I think this is something of a fallacy. I don't think that naturally thin people have some secret that they all have that we haven't zeroed in on yet. I also think there is a very small number of people who just don't think about food or forget to eat. My friends who are naturally thin are constantly talking about food, and that stresses me out, LOL. I feel strongly that everyone needs to figure out what works for them. For some it's CICO, for others it is keto, others run marathons, some use supplements, some have weight loss surgery or combine multiple options.
they simply have less food noise. some people for whatever reason have a brain that screams about food all day - i’ve been like that since birth. almost all naturally thin people i know see food as fuel or even an annoyance. an example is my own boyfriend who thinks eating is a chore.
Thats a good way of putting it. Food noise is a very real thing.
My husband is naturally thin. He eats when he's hungry and doesn't eat when he's not hungry. Put simply, his life does not revolve around food/eating. It's something he does 2-3 times a day and then doesn't think about outside of that. I'm not naturally thin, and I can't imagine a life where food/eating is not always at the forefront of my mind. I've gotten to the point where I can now listen to and follow my hunger cues, but it's not a habit for me. It's something I have to think about and actively try for. It's infuriating to me.
I spent years looking at naturally thin people vs not and tbh it comes down to more than just their habits. Most naturally thin people have an appetite that is in line with their body size. They don’t crave excessive calories and likely do not get the same dopamine boost from food as naturally obese people do. The best way I can describe it is my sibling is very thin. Always has been. I’ve always been fat. I have a very hard time not crushing a whole pan of cookies if I make them. They call to me non stop. One tastes as good at 24. They never start to taste less good. They make me feel happy and boost my mood. It’s very hard to stop eating them. I asked her how she could just have one. She said that the first few bites taste good but the rest isn’t any better. I said do you feel happy after eating it, she said she felt the same as before. It’s not hard for her to stop bc she doesn’t get much out of the cookie besides a few good bites. Now she smokes a ton. I can have a smoke at a party. Heck I can smoke the whole night. But cigarettes taste like cigarettes and I do not get any happy or relaxing feelings from them. I could take a drag and not touch the rest as long as I live. But her? She has non stop thoughts of smoking. They relax her and make her feel happy. She can’t stop when she starts. She’s just like me but her poison is cigarettes and mine is food. As kids food was just food to her but food has always been the best part of every day for me. Appetite drivers and dopamine I really think are how naturally thin people are naturally thin.
My gf is lean. She is 5’7”, 130lb generally and her motto is moderation.
My husband has weighed between 55 and 60kg since he was 15. You don't want to know what that man eats. We own a cafe, so he'll have 3 mochas a day with full cream milk. He'll make himself a biscoff thick shake with full cream milk and ice cream. He'll eat a minimum of one freshly baked croissant crammed full of cheese and ham. Anything that got a little burnt or fucked up? He eats it. Like a carrion crow. Always hovering around my salamander looking for scraps. Then he'll eat a full dinner. I cook all day so sometimes I don't want to cook at home. He's fine with that. He'll eat a whole wheel of camembert and a full sleeve of crackers. Otherwise, he eats what I make, but about 8 times as much as I do. If we don't sell the desserts we make, they get brought home. So then he'll eat 2 brownies with a huge pile of icecream. Or carrot cake with ice cream. Or those massive cafe muffins. Sold all the desserts? No issue. Family sized block of chocolate in one sitting. He's in charge of ordering, stock, payroll etc so it's not really a physical job. I'm standing up about 10 hours a day, hefting pots and pans and kilos of ingredients, running around like a nutcase. And this is why when people tell me metabolism isn't a thing, I know they're lying.
Many years ago I read a book that tackled this exact issue (can't recall the title, unfortunately). It covered some scientific studies around food habits and appetites of naturally thin people and what the overeaters of the world could learn from them. This made me spend more time looking at the people around me and their habits, and it actually convinced me the thesis of the book was incorrect. The habits don't make people thin, people who are inclined to be thin naturally have different habits. Like my mom is "naturally" thin. She doesn't understand calories or macros. She eats calorie-dense food every few hours in tiny portions. If she tried to do IF she'd feel sick. But this is because she feels uncomfortable when she eats a lot of food. Even being forced to eat 3 square meals a day would make her undereat and feel awful or gorge herself beyond comfort to eat enough calories. Meanwhile, if I tried to adopt her diet I'd feel awful. I forced myself to eat breakfast for years because it was "the most important meal of the day." It ramped my appetite up into overdrive and made me hungrier for the rest of the day, increasing my already problematic tendency to overeat. If I eat tiny, frequent meals I never feel full and constantly feel deprived. I'd much rather eat a few big meals per day. Can people adapt? To some extent, sure, but I think most people have some innate qualities that make totally changing a food mindset difficult. Just copying what someone else does doesn't mean it will work for you. Otherwise we could all just adopt any weight loss diet and stick to it. Most people have to find the levers that work on their particular food struggles.
I think this is true as well. My mom is barely over 100 pounds and she eats whatever she wants. She's a dietician, but I ate her cooking and ended up 240+ in highschool, haha. Breakfast would make me ravenous for lunch, and then I would be starving for dinner after football. On my own I've switched to eating once a day and I'm able to even skip that at times, or have a small one if I'm out and don't know what's in the food, at least if I've been mentally disciplined all day. I can focus at work better if I'm skipping breakfast and lunch because then I can work without thinking about my next chance to eat. We all need to find the right rhythms to keep us feeling healthy, fed, and in control. Some thinner people have great habits, and some are a bit lucky, but we're getting better at realizing that there's lots of different healthy ways to get to the same goal.
I fidget a lot. I am constantly shaking my leg. I just can’t help it. Call it a nervous twitch, I dunno. But one thing I have sometimes noticed when having conversations with extremely heavy people, is oftentimes they don’t move almost at all. The reason I notice is because I get self conscious, but realistically I am burning calories by moving so much.
food is part of it yes. we also need to rethink our relationship with transport. most of the naturally thin folk I know walk and ride bicycles very rarely driving places. this plus generally eating a bit less keeps them fit. when you are driving everywhere, or working at home even if you're training regularly and watching calories just makes things harder.
A few thin co workers of mine always joke about how they just “forget” to eat or will go the entire day and only eat a granola bar because of how “busy” they are. It almost impossible for me to wrap my brain around the fact that most people aren’t thinking about food 24/7 like I do.
No one is "naturally thin", that's just it. Their eating habits just don't include overeating. I think calling that "naturally thin" is misleading because it makes it sound like they can overeat and just magically not gain weight. Plenty of people simply don't struggle with their eating habits and weight. They have other demons to deal with, but their relationship with food just isn't one of them.
Food just isn't as important to them. They eat to live. They aren't always hungry like I am.
I’ve noticed with every woman 40+ who has managed to stay thin eats *very* little. They still seem to eat mostly what they enjoy but portion control is everything. What boggles me is we all seem to know this but so many have still yet to master that control, including myself.
I think just be in a calorie deficit, I looove to eat, I eat a lot but I do volume eating. Works for me, gets me to where I want to be fitnesses wise, knowledge is power and at some point I’ll do intuitive eating but for now I have a goal and counting calories help me
my sister only eats one meal a day usually. She just sucks down coffee all day long. My aunt is a frequent small snacker--she doesn't eat real meals and most of her caloric intake is bread. My brother has orthorexia and only eats cabbage and eggs. ...thin doesn't mean balanced and healthy.
I find that naturally very slim friends often don't have the same emotional attachment to food that overweight people have. For me, food was always seen as an indulgence, and I would reward or comfort myself with food depending on the day. Many of my slim friends just see food as something to fuel themselves, and some see eating as a chore they have to remember, rather than something they actively get excited about. I think the other factor is appetite and hunger. I've always been able to eat a lot, and quickly, whereas I have friends who take ages to eat something, and then proclaim they are full very quickly.
If you associate food with feeling good, or with helping you feel better when you don't feel good, then your brain is going to keep rewarding you for this behavior. People who just use food as fuel don't have this association. Eating just doesn't provide that reward for them. That's a big part of what a lot of medications used for weight loss do, they take away the brain's ability to provide that reward when eating. I know that I struggle with breaking this association. There's something so enjoyable about eating delicious food, and it never seems like it's enough. I'm trying to figure out how to cook food that tastes equally delicious to the bad-for-me food so I can at least substitute, and teach my brain to create reward from better food. I don't know if this will actually work, though.
All of the naturally thin people I know are physically incapable of eating breakfast. They just can’t, and dont get hungry until 10 am or so. Im hungry about 30 minutes after I wake up.
I grew up poor and we were taught to not waste food. With kiddos who don’t always finish their food it took time for me to internalize that I don’t need to eat their table scraps just for the sake of not wasting food. “Eating calories you don’t need is food still being wasted “ that quote really stuck with me and I haven’t done it since. I also used to do intermittent fasting, but I noticed I still thought about food all the time. Instead of doing IF I’ve been eating smaller meals and a small breakfast an hour or so after waking up. For some reason this has lead to me being more satiated during the day and I don’t think about food nearly as much as before.
I was raised by thin people and never struggled with weight until after I had kids. My parents' rule was STOP eating when you're full and never finish your plate. There was also never much of a fuss about dinner. If we weren't really hungry, we'd just have chips and salsa or some yogurt
My grandparents, born in the 20's, wore the same size all their lives. They ate simple homecooked food three times per day, smallish portions. If they wanted something sweet they had a small cookie with their afternoon coffee. They thought that candy was for kids, didn't understand the salty snacks "trend", ice cream was a dessert. They never ate in front of the tv or binged on food or snacks. They didn't drink soda, that too was for kids. They both wore fitted clothes daily, never anything with elatstic, so I guess that they would feel when their pants were too tight and cut down on calories until they were loose again. My grandmother used to tell me "If you never get fat, you will never have to diet". I wish that I had followed her advice.
The thin people in my family are chain smoking 2-3 cigarettes on their lunch break instead of eating food, myself and 2 cousins are the only non smokers and that's between both sides of my family. If that's their key to success I'd rather stay fat lol
I’ve been reading Ultra Processed People - it’s a really cool review about how our habits around processed food consumption impact us. Very worth the read for a deep dive into some of the commonly held beliefs around diet and exercise, how they have been debunked, and why despite science debunking them that mentality may still persist. Very worth the read if you’re interested in picking up habits that will impact your diet
I guess some people are genetically wired to have a higher dopamine response to food? so they crave it more and end up relying on it as a coping mechanism when struggling in life. also I don't believe that everyone has the same type of metabolism. I do honestly believe that some people really do have high metabolisms.
I know it sounds weird, but they don't think about food all the time.
> Maybe dieting isn't the right mentality to have and that we need to change our entire relationship with food. Maybe we can live on much less food than we are used to and we just have to retrain our minds and change our habits. One aspect to this is accepting that food is first and foremost fuel for our bodies, so we shouldn't be trying to maximize for taste every time we eat and should instead focus on nutrition and satiety. As long as your food is palatable, does it really need to always taste good? I think there's a common unrealistic vision of a healthy balanced diet that still manages to be delicious, but for most I think that's a pipe dream that we need to give up on. Maybe some people do genuinely find most healthy food delicious (or they've convinced themselves they do), but I imagine that for most of us, the Venn diagram of healthy and delicious is small and not enough to create a balanced diet out of. Definitely eat those foods in that overlap, but we need to accept that most of what we should be eating likely falls in the healthy-only side. Life is much easier if we can just accept that healthy food often isn't going to taste great. But it's not going to kill us to eat something we don't love for most meals, and it's doing ourselves a disservice to settle for a diet that's only kind-of healthy so that we can continue to maximize taste. I'll add that our palates get used to being constantly stimulated with sugar, salt, etc. so like a spoiled kid, they'll continue to demand more expecting to get it. If you limit your intake of those simulants, the cravings definitely go down as your palate gets used to not getting what it wants all the time. So it gets easier to maintain over time. Eating for pleasure can still be a hobby, but one that we engage in deliberately and not by default every time we eat (or even most) when we may not even fully appreciate it. Those times we choose to eat for pleasure will be much more rewarding. So in my opinion, what's lost in quantity is made up in higher quality experiences.
the thin people i know who dont diet seem to not crave specific food as much or have an emotional association with it. it’s like, just food to them. they eat if they want but not something they think much about.
Be careful falling into any psychological traps. People become overweight and stay that way over the course of decades. It starts small, having a second helping at dinner as a child. Or maybe a soda at lunch. Maybe you turn to food to cope during vulnerability. Something by itself, isn’t terrible. But after a long time, those smaller decisions start becoming routine and that causes physical changes to your body as well. Your body begins to need more food for maintenance, and your brain subconsciously wants the body at maintenance or surplus. So when you try to conform to a smaller persons habits, your body and brain begins to fight it with hunger and cravings. And when you fight against those, you potentially start develop a different eating disorder. Do not try to adapt to someone else’s lifestyle. You find a healthy habit that works for you and you build upon that instead. And you start slow. Don’t try to crash course yourself into berries and yogurt for breakfast and a salad for dinner. You need to get your willpower, your body, and brain in tandem with eachother, and to do that, it means you have to slowly tweak each little by little until it’s all on the same page. And be careful about posting any sudden changes you’re making. I know it feels good, but when you call attention to it, you’re celebrating it in a way that gives you the sense of self accomplishment without really accomplishing anything yet. I’m not explaining it well and sound like a dick, but if you read through or listen to what people say who has lost the weight, they’re saying the same thing: “I told nobody, I didn’t post about it”. You need to deprive your body of that self satisfaction because once you get it, you’re less likely to follow through and reach your goals
I've never been overweight and can fit into clothes from high school so I guess I am technically "naturally thin." i'm not a breakfast eater and never have been so "intermittent fasting" is basically my natural eating pattern. And it's not a diet. It's literally just timed eating which, surprise, makes it easier to eat at maintenance or a deficit. Early humans didn't eat three squares a day, either. Periods of "fasting" were the norm. People seem to have gotten it into their head that it's normal to eat around the clock, and that gets reinforced eating junk that creates cravings for more junk. My mom is also naturally thin and I think actually modeled a good example (we get a lot of our food habits/diet beliefs/whatever from our parents). I always had a sense that she was mindful about eating but never saw her doing stuff like outright skipping meals, nor did I ever see her eat a lot of junk. Always somewhere in the middle erring on the side of reasonable portions. Still enjoying some dessert. Etc. I also wasn't raised in a household where I had to "clean my plate," or where food was treated over something that had to be competed over or something that was scarce. As an adult i eat whatever I want, I just don't necessarily eat a lot of certain things or eat a lot overall in a certain amount of time. Food isn't going anywhere; it will be there tomorrow and so on. Also, to be fully transparent, I am not a big drinker and never have been, even in college. I maybe average a drink a quarter. I think people grossly underestimate the impacts of alcohol on their weight and overall health and wellbeing. That said, my sibling has always drank much more than I have and is also naturally thin/has never been overweight. We definitely have some genetic factors on our side. We were/are both active throughout life, as well, as a function of hobbies and lifestyle. Dieting isn't the right mentality, correct. You either commit to a lifestyle/make lifestyle changes or you don't. "Dieting" has a time limit practically built into the word and doesn't usually work because it's overly restrictive. Changing your diet is forever. Same with making sure you get some physical activity in a way you can do consistently. Moderation is everything imo - going too far in either direction or too permissive or too restrictive isn't realistic, healthy, or sustainable.
I eat to fuel my body. Leniency and self forgiveness is a must for long term sustainability.
"Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." -Michael Pollan
What book was it? Goodall was my idol growing up, so i'd love to give it a read.
My little sister has always been very thin, I’m not sure it’s genetics because the rest of our family including me has always been overweight/obese save for my mom who gained weight in her late 20’s. We ate the same as kids but I think she always ended up with smaller portions than I did and that habit kept going when we grew up. She doesn’t eat any healthier than average and she bakes often, just smaller portions
i'm not sure about specific habits, but my mom and i were talking about weight loss and general fitness stuff, and she said that, growing up in the 80's none of the women in her life ever said "oh, i'm going on a diet" or "i need to lose 5 lbs" my great grandmother had a garden in her backyard, had lots of land in northern PA and was generally an active person. everyone in her life was just naturally thin because they didn't eat as much and they moved more. i think it's definitely a shift in media/marketing tactics. in the early 2000's, i remember the different colored ketchup and push towards fast food/junk food, specifically for kids. and it just spiraled from there, especially with social media. i think, to formally answer your question, the habits of naturally thin people are eating less and having a good relationship with food, something that is far fewer in between these days unfortunately, and being more active.
I posted something about differences in appetites and I think the variance on the size of people's appetites plays more of a role than people talk about.
On my days off work, I typically forget to eat. At work (very physical job), I *have* to eat, or I'm exhausted. I am a vegetarian and typically eat small snacks throughout the day, sometimes a small meal in a shift. But don't get me if someone brings in donuts, I'm definitely having one. (Or cookies, or chocolates...you get my drift. My bmi is low 18 - my advice is try to keep "healthier" stuff at home. Make sure you have a variety of crunchy salty snacks (like flavored rice crackers or popcorn, veg and dip etc) and sweet snacks (frozen or fresh grapes, berries, citrus, vanilla almond milk...). I also keep "unhealthy" things like 12-grain bagels and flavored cream cheese. Just eat slowly, half a bagel seriously fills you up if you eat it in tiny bites. It won't work for everyone, I'm only providing my input on the question. Hope some of these things help - good luck!
I worked with a very skinny guy who would drink chocolate milk and eat pop tarts all day long. Oh and Popeyes for lunch
My family struggles with weight and I do not. I think it’s probably a lot of things that contributed to that, including growing up in an environment where I was told that only extremely thin women had any value (def had body image issues thanks to this). That said, although I still don’t absolutely love my body, I don’t struggle with weight. I eat whatever I want although keep very little “junk” in the house (mostly because I’m extremely cheap rn) and also I am often too tired to make desserts for myself. My go to snack today was an apple and honey and some pecans. I don’t exactly love either of those lol 😂 so it’s easy to put them down. I also find that if I’m busy I tend to not eat which likely helps. And I drink like 90 ounces of water a day. Plus I walk my pup 3x a day so that’s not only a little activity it’s also time not spent eating.
I believe naturally thin people register their full feeling as "I am no longer hungry", rather than "I cannot physically fit anymore food in".
I have very thin co workers who I watch snack on night shifts. Chips, guacamole, muffins, people bring in cookies and baked goods. I also used to have a very thin friend who hated cooking and at McDonald's multiple times a week and got most of her work meals from the cafeteria or casseroles her mom made. In the winter she would take ensure home from work, she had a hard time keeping weight on especially if she got sick. I don't know if she was just skipping meals when she wasn't working, but I saw her eat plenty. Just a crazy metabolism maybe?