How can some people eat so much junk and gain no weight?
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My boyfriend's entire immediate family are beanpoles. They eat whatever and whenever they want, as I've observed. They likely eat more than I observe since I'm not with them 24/7. Piles of food. Family dinners amaze me sometimes, they think its funny. Boyfriend detests exercise, and is not active unless you count mowing a teeny lawn once a week and taking out the garbage pails. Parents are elderly now and don't get around much, but never had middle-age spread. So, meh, I chalk it up to genetics, sunspots, or some other mysterious force of the universe that doesn't apply to me.2
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violajunerose wrote: »dave_in_ni wrote: »How exactly does this work? I have lost quite a lot of weight in this past 6 months, over 3 stone. But even when at my fattest I never ate as much as 1 little skinny guy I work with.
I am eating 1500 cals per day at the moment, this is one meal I count over 1000 cals roughly in 1 meal. For lunch he a burger and several bars of chocolate, chips/crips washed down with a bottle of coke, and this is every day. I'm sure the guy easily eats double what I do. French fries and burgers are a daily thing for him. Even at my fattest I never ate anywhere near that amount.
How exactly can he do this? He's not active at all, never does any exercise either.
You or I are not going to die if we skip a meal, or even two. I can go on any restrictive diet I want, and so far, I haven't lost an ounce on most of them. I experimented with not eating at all, and ate zero calories a day for two weeks. Nothing.
File this under "T" for "Things that totally happened I swear"15 -
My 78 year old mom always hovers around Underweight and even used a tub of weight gainer. When I eat with her, she eats large meals. However:
1. She is extremely active. This time of year she often puts in an 8 hour day in her garden, and also walks, and goes to the gym for strength training with a trainer. She was Client of the Month this month
2. She eats irregularly. She often has breakfast after noon.
3. Her large meals have a lot of high volume, low calorie foods.1 -
When I was in college - Almost 6' 1", 145 lbs., no exercise other than walking to class, ate like a horse, and could not put on a pound. I even bought a product called "Weight On." It didn't work.
When I hit my late 20's, I ate less, but started gaining weight.
There is only one answer - metabolism. With a super-fast metabolism, calories out seems to have no limit. At least that's how it worked for me.4 -
huntersmom2016 wrote: »Some people are just built that way. I have a nephew that tried so hard to get into the Marines but they kept rejecting him bc he didn't weigh enough. He would eat and eat to gain weight. Eventually he made the weight requirement... Barely
To add to my previous post... My nephew was born prematurely and very small. Probably affected him in some way that makes it hard to gain weight1 -
There are some people who can eat much more than others and NOT GET FAT, they exist and CICO isn't always the only answer for everyone.
WE are very alike but we are also different in terms of thyroid function, metabolism, physiology---this is a great thread. Thanks OP for eliciting this discussion.0 -
Question: Are there any statistics about the number of people with conditions that can effect the CO part of the equation, like thyroid conditions can?
Are there be more people with conditions that make it necessary to cut more calories to lose, or more that would need to eat more to gain?0 -
huntersmom2016 wrote: »huntersmom2016 wrote: »Some people are just built that way. I have a nephew that tried so hard to get into the Marines but they kept rejecting him bc he didn't weigh enough. He would eat and eat to gain weight. Eventually he made the weight requirement... Barely
To add to my previous post... My nephew was born prematurely and very small. Probably affected him in some way that makes it hard to gain weight
I wonder if this is a factor. I wasn't a preemie, but I was small, just over 5 pounds at birth, and so I've always been small.1 -
There are some people who can eat much more than others and NOT GET FAT, they exist and CICO isn't always the only answer for everyone.
WE are very alike but we are also different in terms of thyroid function, metabolism, physiology---this is a great thread. Thanks OP for eliciting this discussion.
1st bolded portion: What would be the process by which that happens?
2nd bolded portion: Wouldn't this just mean that some people's RMR is different than others'? It might be harder for some to determine their RMR but CICO would still apply. The food they eat doesn't just disappear. If they have a hard time gaining weight, it's because either CI<CO or because CI=CO.0 -
In my youth I ate copiously, was skinny and seemingly couldn't gain weight for trying. That changed around the age of 20 or so. Back then I also had an average body temp of 99.1 where today it is the standard 98.6. Half a degree F, over 170 pounds of body mass (what I weighed most of my senior year in high school), 24/7 is a lot of energy. So yes, fast metabolisms do exist.0
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Re fidgeting, I saw a UK documentary a few years ago about this exact topic - i.e. why skinny people could seemingly eat whatever they wanted, not exercise and stay lean. Turns out the people in question were jiggling their legs and feet pretty much 24/7 and it was burning everything off.0
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My bf eats gigantic portions for lunch at work, but after work he eats more like child portions. He just doesn't like to eat too much at one meal, except at work.0
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Don't forget, being skinny doesn't necessarily mean that he is healthy... he might also feel like crap all the time, but because this is how he eats all the time, it will feel normal to him0
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There is no way you could know what any other person really eats unless you were that person 24x7. Mainly It is a waste of precious time to look too much at what others are doing and worry too much about it. It does not change anything for you either way, whether what they do is truth or not.
There is most likely so many more important things to put your attention on if you want to be successful in life.0 -
RollTideTri wrote: »Yes all calories are burned by some kind of heat generation, but you don't believe people can burn variable amounts of calories given identical activity levels? People can't just have bodies that burn more calories than average? There are lots of processes that burn calories in the body that don't involve movement. Some people will burn more calories than you while sitting perfectly still or sleeping, some less.
Yes, that can happen, but only by generating excess heat. The energy must go somewhere. Movement and heat are the only net energy outputs the human body is capable of (and sound, but that's pretty negligible in our case compared to, say, a car) . All body processes which don't result in movement generate heat.
Obviously there is only so much hotter a body can run, unless you're talking about the human torch, so if the discrepancy is large, fidgeting and spontaneous activity probably account for most of it and extra heat only for a small proportion. But you can see the effect in the fact that a fair few "naturally skinny" people don't feel the cold and wear t-shirts in chilly weather.
I'm an engineer. This is very much my area of expertise. Energy in equals energy out in ANY system. It is not a matter of opinion, and in the human body there is limited variation in energy out unless there'sa big difference in activity level. Imo, those rare cases where someone genuinely eats hugely with little activity and fails to gain weight are more likely a digestive problem reducing the amount of energy going in.
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We can't look at what others do... that guy probably is extremely active, or eats alot at that one meal and then hardly anything the rest of the day...
People are overweight because they either eat too much/don't move enough.
You'll find that slim people are inclined to stop before they are full and are usually naturally active.0 -
CooCooPuff wrote: »Question: Are there any statistics about the number of people with conditions that can effect the CO part of the equation, like thyroid conditions can?
Are there be more people with conditions that make it necessary to cut more calories to lose, or more that would need to eat more to gain?
I can't even get numbers on how strongly thyroid conditions affect someone's metabolism. If it's still in the +-300 kcal for 96% of the population statistic it loses all credibility.1 -
ObsidianMist wrote: »huntersmom2016 wrote: »huntersmom2016 wrote: »Some people are just built that way. I have a nephew that tried so hard to get into the Marines but they kept rejecting him bc he didn't weigh enough. He would eat and eat to gain weight. Eventually he made the weight requirement... Barely
To add to my previous post... My nephew was born prematurely and very small. Probably affected him in some way that makes it hard to gain weight
I wonder if this is a factor. I wasn't a preemie, but I was small, just over 5 pounds at birth, and so I've always been small.
This is interesting! my sister was born premature and she is stick thin (she doesn't exercise at all and eats loads all the time - yeah totally annoying when I have to watch everything that goes in my mouth).... perhaps its just coincidence but for any science buffs out there it would be nice to hear your opinions.1 -
stevencloser wrote: »CooCooPuff wrote: »Question: Are there any statistics about the number of people with conditions that can effect the CO part of the equation, like thyroid conditions can?
Are there be more people with conditions that make it necessary to cut more calories to lose, or more that would need to eat more to gain?
I can't even get numbers on how strongly thyroid conditions affect someone's metabolism. If it's still in the +-300 kcal for 96% of the population statistic it loses all credibility.
But a condition isn't just about RER.
Consider PCOS - it apparently reduces the ability to burn fat, reduces cardiovascular response to exercise (beyond the weight factor) so that the amount of calories one can burn during effort are reduced. So while metabolism might be only slightly reduced - macro partitioning becomes more important AND the Calorie Out part of the equation is also affected because it just is that much harder to be active at the same level. And it takes a lot of effort to retain a healthy VO2max.
Food for thought.
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For those bringing up teenagers, I think teenagers and other children are a whole different ball game, growing uses energy.5
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