How normal, thin people eat.

Lots of good points. But I've been overweight my whole life. I don't have the hunger cues most people do. I only feel full if I eat waaay too much, so calorie counting is the only way I can know when to stop.

I see it as a life-long illness. If someone has diabetes, they have to take their medication every day to manage it. Well, I'm prone to obesity so I''ve accepted that for the rest of my life, I'm calorie counting.

guess i'll never be "thin", then. 1.5 slices of pizza is not/ should not be considered a meal.

This.

Before you were watching your intake did you feel like you were eating a ton? Did other people comment that they couldnt believe that you could stay skinny with the way you ate?

Actually, yeah people did say that. The thing is it was mainly other skinny people, they'd also comment that I was a fast eater.

But I never really thought I ate a ton, I'd eat 1 or 2 meals a day(3 if I was particularly active) but I'd eat moderate/big meals if I was to eat. I was always more concerned with the quality of the food I was/am eating honestly, too few vegetables, too much fast food.

Always curious about how a thin person thinks when it comes to food. Define what would be a moderate/big meal today. I'll give you my definition of a large spaghetti meal at olive garden restaraunt l as an example. I no longer eat like this, but this was very typical for me 3 cups pasta, 3 cups of sauce, grated parmesan cheese, 5 medium egg size meatballs, two large salad servings, 4 breadsticks, alfredo dipping sauce, fried appetizer lasagna rolls, dessert, 4 refills on a berry drink. Would your meals be comprable to this? Sorry for all the questions but I have theories about why people are fat vs skinny.

I think you've made some good, valid, observations. Naturally thin people have learned (or never lost in the first place) the ability to eat instinctively and eat when they're hungry, stop eating when they're full, and just enjoy food for its own sake without attaching any morals to it ("good" food, "bad" food, etc) and so don't suffer from guilt, don't use food to soothe emotions etc....

this can be relearned though, I've been successfully maintaining my weight without tracking my food intake for a while now. I track my intake if I'm cutting or bulking, because if I don't track, I eat at around TDEE (I must be, if my weight is stable) and it takes effort to eat either less or more than TDEE. I don't attach moral values to food, although I do focus on nourishing my body well, i.e. eating good quality healthy foods for the most part, but I don't deny myself anything. If it's not that nutritious or not that healthy I'll just eat it in smaller quantities and less often. I don't have forbidden foods or forbidden food groups.

I think the best way to relearn this, is to track your nutrition, either for fat loss or maintenance, and after a while you just instinctively know how much food you need to feel satisfied but not over-full, and that there will always be more food later, or the next morning. So if while tracking food, I'd eaten my calories for the day, I'd think about what I'd have for breakfast the next day.

One of my biggest NSVs was one time I went into the corner shop, and they had mars ice cream bars, and I fancied one, but without even making an effort thought to myself "not today, I can have one any other day" - I realised I'd spent most of my life in a mindset of "must eat this forbidden food now, I'll never get another chance", due to being conditioned previously into thinking that those foods are rare treats that only come around once in a while. They're not. They always have them in the corner shop, I can buy one any time I like. So I don't *have to* eat one now. And it's the same with leftover food in restaurants. If the restaurant food comes in huge portions, I'll eat about half and take the rest of it home. While I'm doing that, I'm thinking how nice it'll be to eat the same food for lunch the next day, and how I'm getting 2 meals for the price of one. In the past I would have been thinking about how I'm "not allowed to" eat the rest of the food now, which would have made me want to eat all of it. How you think about food, and the availability of food, changes how you behave around food. I suppose it's a survival instinct... if you think you're not going to have a chance to eat a particularly desired food again for a long time (or not be allowed to), you'll want to eat all of what you have right now.