20 Habits skinny people live by

Thank you for posting these simple tips! It's great to get reminders about potential positive choices!

When I eat boring foods thats when I throw out my food plan and binge.. It may be great for people with self control.. but not an idea that works for me

I'm fairly skinny and I don't do half the things on this list.

A lot of it is bull****. Especially the first one.

Thank for sharing but take everything you read with a grain of salt.

Do you honestly think every person of your size does has exactly the same lifestyle habits as you? The post was siting study results. Just because you don't fit the mold doesn't make the results BS.

Great info .Thanks

This probably came from Cosmo or Glamour. Unfounded 'tips' we don't need and don't have any real substance to them.

great post

I know I'm late to the thread, but just wanted to throw out a response to the many people saying that there's no reason to refute this list (and others like it), that the list is merely helpful and criticizing or questioning it is unnecessary and mean-spirited.

The problem with lists like these is twofold. First, they border on flat-out inaccuracy by conflating correlation and causation. Second, the repetition of such ideas ad nauseam takes them from being "tips" to being "rules."

As to the correlation/causation issue, lists like these give an air of authority by citing multiple studies. While looking to science for these answers is clearly important, blatantly misusing studies to say something they do not actually say is more harmful than helpful. Take the ever-popular "eat breakfast" advice as an example. The studies cited in the list show only that normal-weight individuals tend to eat breakfast at a higher rate than overweight individuals. Lists and tips like these take a leap forward from that and claim that eating breakfast is what causes the difference between those groups. Those are very different ideas. The habit of eating breakfast could just as likely be a result of something else.

That leads to problem two, that such a tip becomes a rule. "Eat breakfast," it says, "you want to be skinny like those people, don't you?" In this view, eating breakfast is not simply helpful for some, it's a requirement for anyone to have successful weight loss. When you throw the appearance of scientific support behind it, it becomes even stronger. It becomes a directive rather than a suggestion; eating breakfast becomes good and necessary while skipping it becomes bad and unhealthy. This is problematic because it is far from a hard rule and is not going to be helpful for everyone (or even most people).

It would take willful blindness to deny that this is the origin of a lot of conventional weight loss and diet wisdom. Take a quick look around the forums and see how many people take these same ideas not as mere suggestions but as hard-line musts. I admit I've fallen for it in the past, in former weight loss attempts which failed miserably. I know I'm not alone in that experience. A list giving exact opposite advice of this one would probably work for a lot of people, but you won't find it. Something simple like skipping breakfast or eating large meals infrequently rather than snacking is key for many people (myself included) but is seen as radical or crazy or faddish or stupid or unhealthy precisely because the sort of advice in this list is so ubiquitous.

So when someone points out inaccuracies with a list like this, it is not being mean or priggish. It's simply giving an often-silenced counterpoint, and one which is valid and should not be ignored.