naturally skinny !
Polaretapink
Posts: 25 Member
I know a couple of men and women who somehow manage to eat WHATEVER they want ( I am talking junk food and sweets EVERYDAY) and still manage to remain skinny without having to think about calories ! I am so jealous and curious to what their secret it ! what do you think ?
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You don't see what they eat and do 24/7. They're likely active people who actually don't eat that much through the day.
What you can do is try to be active constantly (cut back on TV/internet time) and control your calories. That's it. If you want to eat a large meal or calorie dense foods you eat a bit less at other meals.10 -
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I eat whatever I want, and I'm maintaining a healthy weight without thinking a lot about calories. It's easy because I'm not jealous, and I'm not jealous because I know how weight management works - you can eat anything you want, just don't eat too much (more calores than you burn) over time, and you don't gain weight. You haven't said anything about amounts, which is what matters for body weight, so I guess as much as they want is less than you want.20
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While I don't know how old the people you are referring to are, metabolism does slow down as part of the aging process. This is due to declining anabolic hormone levels and the fact that a lot of people are not as active as they get older. Meaning, if you took two people of the same height/weight, a 20 year old is likely going to be burning more calories than a 60 year old.
And as others have pointed out, regardless of age activity level plays a huge part in the amount of calories one can eat and remain skinny. I would consider myself naturally skinny, and I've had plenty of days this year in which I've eaten more junk food than I really should be eating. However, my weight remained steady as I was meeting the guidelines for being physically active.8 -
I know a couple of people where this is an actual issue. They have to eat MUCH more than they want to, or the average person needs, just to maintain a healthy weight. Two of them seemed to have legit medical issues, the other, well, she may have, but the crack probably helped some too.10
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Junk food and sweets have nothing to do with anything...the bottom line is they're taking in fewer calories than they expend. I eat around 3,000 calories to maintain, so I can fit a fare amount of food into that target including "junk" food...just ate half a pizza last night...I'm moderately active.7
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I have a medical issue that makes it difficult to absorb nutrients and maintain a healthy weight. Don't be jealous of me.14
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When I was younger I was "naturally skinny" and ate "a lot of junk food" but I was active and didn't actually eat a lot. People saw me eating something every so often and made assumptions that weren't true about the rest of my eating habits. These days, I'm not well and very sedentary so the same eating habits make it difficult to maintain a healthy weight. (I can still eat something sweet everyday and lose weight without any trouble and I'm on 1330 calories a day.)5
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My boyfriend is "naturally skinny". He seems to eat whatever he wants whenever he wants. 5 bowls of pasta at a sitting, 6 slices of pizza, a huge plate of french fries. But because I live with him and am around him 24/7 I also see him not eat much for days at a time. Most of the week I eat more than him and I'm on 1200 calories. He maintains his weight because of those huge calorie days and those low calorie days. Unless you're with someone 24/7 you have no idea how they actually eat.20
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More active, eat less than you think, eat less another day, trying to gain5
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Give them 5000 calories a day for 12 months then review.10
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Polaretapink wrote: »I know a couple of men and women who somehow manage to eat WHATEVER they want ( I am talking junk food and sweets EVERYDAY) and still manage to remain skinny without having to think about calories ! I am so jealous and curious to what their secret it ! what do you think ?
There's no secret...4 -
Polaretapink wrote: »I know a couple of men and women who somehow manage to eat WHATEVER they want ( I am talking junk food and sweets EVERYDAY) and still manage to remain skinny without having to think about calories ! I am so jealous and curious to what their secret it ! what do you think ?
The secret most often is that they simply don't want to overeat. Not thinking about calories does not necessarily mean eating too many calories. Some people just naturally stop eating before they overeat.
For a small percentage they may have gut problems that prevent them absorbing all the calories they eat. This is not something to envy. If you are not absorbing calories you likely are also not absorbing nutrients.3 -
C&Ping myself from another thread:I was this friend when I was in high school and into college, or at least that was what my friends would say. But they didn't see me 24/7 as mentioned above. Or they didn't understand calories. I would have a can of Coke and a Snickers for lunch several days a week, which to them would be seen as stuffing my face even though that's just around 400 calories total. Or they'd see me eat gigantic servings at Sunday brunch (my college had an awesome Sunday brunch included in the meal plan) and not factor in that most days of the week I ate much less at meals. Plus I had a job giving walking tours throughout the week. And I was a big fidgeter.
In other words, you don't know as much about their energy balance as you think you do.4 -
Polaretapink wrote: »I know a couple of men and women who somehow manage to eat WHATEVER they want ( I am talking junk food and sweets EVERYDAY) and still manage to remain skinny without having to think about calories ! I am so jealous and curious to what their secret it ! what do you think ?
Most likely 1. genetics, 2. activity and or a combination of both...
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I have a light frame / skeleton (which is a possibility but still only within certain limits) and used to think I was naturally skinny as I was never muscular in my youth, ie. before I started lifting weights. When I started paying attention to the facts of my metabolism and my nutrition I realized that a) I had been eating less than I realized b) my metabolism is only 'faster' than anyone else's by a small number within established norms for variation, on the order of 300 calories per day.0
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I agree with the above post and would like to help with some perspective.
I look at my slower metabolism as a bonus. If I was stranded in a survival situation, I would require let calories to maintain a healthy weight than my higher metabolic rate co-survivers4 -
This is my husband to all of his friends, I mean he can eat an entire pizza and then ice cream and drink all night. But he never eats breakfast, normally just has an apple for lunch and is pretty active and when hes not with friends he doesn't drink alot, and eats pretty much a vegetarian diet. People tell him hes naturally skinny all of the time but its simply not true, he doesn't have to focus on calories but hes eating at maintenance. For fun once I tracked his intake for a few days, Obviously not weighing and measuring but it came out to around 2500 calories, which is also his estimated TDEE according to online calculators.
He hasnt put on any excess weight in the past five years hes still in the same 5 lb range as when we met.2 -
laurenebargar wrote: »This is my husband to all of his friends, I mean he can eat an entire pizza and then ice cream and drink all night. But he never eats breakfast, normally just has an apple for lunch and is pretty active and when hes not with friends he doesn't drink alot, and eats pretty much a vegetarian diet. People tell him hes naturally skinny all of the time but its simply not true, he doesn't have to focus on calories but hes eating at maintenance. For fun once I tracked his intake for a few days, Obviously not weighing and measuring but it came out to around 2500 calories, which is also his estimated TDEE according to online calculators.
He hasnt put on any excess weight in the past five years hes still in the same 5 lb range as when we met.
My husband is like this too - if all you saw him eat was dinner you'd wonder why he didn't weigh a lot more. But he doesn't eat breakfast, rarely has more than peanut butter for lunch and then eats a huge dinner and dessert. I make his dinner pretty calorie dense since we are trying to keep weight on him.
He also drives me nuts because he can sit with a half gallon of ice cream, eat just a bit and put it away. If I tried that the whole thing would be gone before I knew it.
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My husband is "naturally skinny" and so is most of his family. And I'm with him a lot so I know how much he eats. I think the biggest thing is that he is tall and that he had a good metabolism in his 20s so he never gained in the first place. His whole family is the same way. They all start watching their food intake around their 40s to maintain their slim figures.
He spent his 20s weightlifting and trying to put on weight. Now that he is in his late 30s he still eats a fair amount (but less than his 20s) and he is at nice, slim, dad-bod weight.
His menu for today is thus:
Breakfast:Huge bowl of oatmeal (about 3 servings) with a quarter cup of walnuts, cup of chopped strawberries and heavy cream
Snack: half a bag of tortilla chips and half container of salsa (he usually goes through two of each a week)
Lunch: zoodles with pesto and chicken breast (I will make this for the both of us and he will eat 3/4 and I will have 1/4) - I will add about half cup of mozzarella cheese to his
Snack: a bag of gummy bears or a couple of cookies
Dinner: Large salad w/ caesar dressing, bowl of sweet potato soup, and a bbq sandwich and slaw.
I have just come to accept that I will always have to eat MUCH less than him. The overlap in our meals will occur at lunch and dinner and my lunch will not have cheese added. At dinner my salad will be lightly dressed with mostly vinegar, I'll eat a bowl of soup and have a tiny portion of breadless bbq.
We are both at healthy weights but need to maintain them VERY differently (also sorry this is long - but I felt like I had legit life experience to share here
) 3 -
laurenebargar wrote: »This is my husband to all of his friends, I mean he can eat an entire pizza and then ice cream and drink all night. But he never eats breakfast, normally just has an apple for lunch and is pretty active and when hes not with friends he doesn't drink alot, and eats pretty much a vegetarian diet. People tell him hes naturally skinny all of the time but its simply not true, he doesn't have to focus on calories but hes eating at maintenance. For fun once I tracked his intake for a few days, Obviously not weighing and measuring but it came out to around 2500 calories, which is also his estimated TDEE according to online calculators.
He hasnt put on any excess weight in the past five years hes still in the same 5 lb range as when we met.
My husband is like this too - if all you saw him eat was dinner you'd wonder why he didn't weigh a lot more. But he doesn't eat breakfast, rarely has more than peanut butter for lunch and then eats a huge dinner and dessert. I make his dinner pretty calorie dense since we are trying to keep weight on him.
He also drives me nuts because he can sit with a half gallon of ice cream, eat just a bit and put it away. If I tried that the whole thing would be gone before I knew it.
Yep. My husband usually just has coffee and maybe a small bowl of cereal from the time he wakes up until he has dinner. Then he'll have tacos, a burger, pizza, fried chicken . . . almost always in a very calorie-dense version. Anyone watching him might be confused if they're assuming this in addition to breakfast and lunch. But that's typically his only meal. He might snack on something like cashews and chocolate chips later in the evening, but he has very small portions because a small portion naturally satisfies him. In the 15+ years I've known him, his weight has stayed in a pretty narrow (healthy) range because he has naturally figured out a calorie-control method that is effortless for him.0 -
Question for the parents out there: do any of you have two children, who are naturally different weight categories from each other? Does the heavier child eat more or exercise less?
I was skinny as a child, but very active - when I stopped being active due to injury and illness I rapidly put on weight as an adult. My mom, on the other hand, was fat as a child and reports being miserable as a teen because she would eat salads while all her friends ate hamburgers and fries. The thing is, I know my mom is a huge liar about food now - she claims to eat about one quarter the amount she really eats - and I wonder if this was true when she was a child as well. But I also know her mom, my grandmother, was slim, and fed her reasonable portions of nutritious food, and my mom was physically active as a child, so I'm curious what first drove her becoming overweight.1 -
From the people I personally know who I thought were "naturally skinny" do things like eat one meal a day or are not stress eaters.
Some have a job where they are on their feet all day or might live in a busy city where they walk back and forth to their destinations.
They might be a fidgetter and can't sit down or stay still. Others may have a full plate of food, but actually pick at their meal and push it around and not eat all of it or just have a smaller portioned meal and nurse their food.
What I found interesting is to see those who were able to completely stop eating when they are getting close to becoming full and leave food on their plates. This was a skill that took me years to learn.3 -
rheddmobile wrote: »Question for the parents out there: do any of you have two children, who are naturally different weight categories from each other? Does the heavier child eat more or exercise less?
I was skinny as a child, but very active - when I stopped being active due to injury and illness I rapidly put on weight as an adult. My mom, on the other hand, was fat as a child and reports being miserable as a teen because she would eat salads while all her friends ate hamburgers and fries. The thing is, I know my mom is a huge liar about food now - she claims to eat about one quarter the amount she really eats - and I wonder if this was true when she was a child as well. But I also know her mom, my grandmother, was slim, and fed her reasonable portions of nutritious food, and my mom was physically active as a child, so I'm curious what first drove her becoming overweight.
Yes! My older child takes after my husband and my younger child takes after me. I cook the exact same main meals for both children and when they are home we do all the same activities together. Oldest child comes home from school and his after school snack is basically an entire meal (large protein, fruit or veg and two servings of carbs). He will then eat his entire dinner two hours later. Oldest child is underweight.
Younger child comes home from school and might have a clementine as a snack and eat about half their dinner. Younger child has always been on the line of healthy/overweight.
Both are active rambunctious children. Interestingly our children are built like us as well (older child is top percentile for height and gangly, younger child is "thicker" and short for their age). Older child is a bit more fidgety - but not enough to make up the difference in my opinion.
Pregnancies were also nearly identical (as far as weight gain, time in utero, etc). They even have almost the same face, but totally different bodies. It is sort of weird!2 -
laurenebargar wrote: »This is my husband to all of his friends, I mean he can eat an entire pizza and then ice cream and drink all night. But he never eats breakfast, normally just has an apple for lunch and is pretty active and when hes not with friends he doesn't drink alot, and eats pretty much a vegetarian diet. People tell him hes naturally skinny all of the time but its simply not true, he doesn't have to focus on calories but hes eating at maintenance. For fun once I tracked his intake for a few days, Obviously not weighing and measuring but it came out to around 2500 calories, which is also his estimated TDEE according to online calculators.
He hasnt put on any excess weight in the past five years hes still in the same 5 lb range as when we met.
My husband is like this too - if all you saw him eat was dinner you'd wonder why he didn't weigh a lot more. But he doesn't eat breakfast, rarely has more than peanut butter for lunch and then eats a huge dinner and dessert. I make his dinner pretty calorie dense since we are trying to keep weight on him.
He also drives me nuts because he can sit with a half gallon of ice cream, eat just a bit and put it away. If I tried that the whole thing would be gone before I knew it.
Yupp same here, haha I buy him flavors of ice cream that he likes but I dont, and he can make it last a week or two, if it was in a flavor I liked it would be gone in a matter of a night or two 0 -
janejellyroll wrote: »laurenebargar wrote: »This is my husband to all of his friends, I mean he can eat an entire pizza and then ice cream and drink all night. But he never eats breakfast, normally just has an apple for lunch and is pretty active and when hes not with friends he doesn't drink alot, and eats pretty much a vegetarian diet. People tell him hes naturally skinny all of the time but its simply not true, he doesn't have to focus on calories but hes eating at maintenance. For fun once I tracked his intake for a few days, Obviously not weighing and measuring but it came out to around 2500 calories, which is also his estimated TDEE according to online calculators.
He hasnt put on any excess weight in the past five years hes still in the same 5 lb range as when we met.
My husband is like this too - if all you saw him eat was dinner you'd wonder why he didn't weigh a lot more. But he doesn't eat breakfast, rarely has more than peanut butter for lunch and then eats a huge dinner and dessert. I make his dinner pretty calorie dense since we are trying to keep weight on him.
He also drives me nuts because he can sit with a half gallon of ice cream, eat just a bit and put it away. If I tried that the whole thing would be gone before I knew it.
Yep. My husband usually just has coffee and maybe a small bowl of cereal from the time he wakes up until he has dinner. Then he'll have tacos, a burger, pizza, fried chicken . . . almost always in a very calorie-dense version. Anyone watching him might be confused if they're assuming this in addition to breakfast and lunch. But that's typically his only meal. He might snack on something like cashews and chocolate chips later in the evening, but he has very small portions because a small portion naturally satisfies him. In the 15+ years I've known him, his weight has stayed in a pretty narrow (healthy) range because he has naturally figured out a calorie-control method that is effortless for him.
Thats exactly hoq much husband is too! He can portion control naturally and Im always like, how do you do that?! lol0 -
laurenebargar wrote: »janejellyroll wrote: »laurenebargar wrote: »This is my husband to all of his friends, I mean he can eat an entire pizza and then ice cream and drink all night. But he never eats breakfast, normally just has an apple for lunch and is pretty active and when hes not with friends he doesn't drink alot, and eats pretty much a vegetarian diet. People tell him hes naturally skinny all of the time but its simply not true, he doesn't have to focus on calories but hes eating at maintenance. For fun once I tracked his intake for a few days, Obviously not weighing and measuring but it came out to around 2500 calories, which is also his estimated TDEE according to online calculators.
He hasnt put on any excess weight in the past five years hes still in the same 5 lb range as when we met.
My husband is like this too - if all you saw him eat was dinner you'd wonder why he didn't weigh a lot more. But he doesn't eat breakfast, rarely has more than peanut butter for lunch and then eats a huge dinner and dessert. I make his dinner pretty calorie dense since we are trying to keep weight on him.
He also drives me nuts because he can sit with a half gallon of ice cream, eat just a bit and put it away. If I tried that the whole thing would be gone before I knew it.
Yep. My husband usually just has coffee and maybe a small bowl of cereal from the time he wakes up until he has dinner. Then he'll have tacos, a burger, pizza, fried chicken . . . almost always in a very calorie-dense version. Anyone watching him might be confused if they're assuming this in addition to breakfast and lunch. But that's typically his only meal. He might snack on something like cashews and chocolate chips later in the evening, but he has very small portions because a small portion naturally satisfies him. In the 15+ years I've known him, his weight has stayed in a pretty narrow (healthy) range because he has naturally figured out a calorie-control method that is effortless for him.
Thats exactly hoq much husband is too! He can portion control naturally and Im always like, how do you do that?! lol
Sometimes we'll be out and we'll see something delicious like ice cream or a pastry and he'll be like "I wish I could have some, but I'm not hungry." And I'm thinking: "You have to be hungry to eat ice cream?" because all my life, if something sounds tasty, I don't have to be hungry to eat it. Hence my presence on a calorie-counting website.
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janejellyroll wrote: »laurenebargar wrote: »janejellyroll wrote: »laurenebargar wrote: »This is my husband to all of his friends, I mean he can eat an entire pizza and then ice cream and drink all night. But he never eats breakfast, normally just has an apple for lunch and is pretty active and when hes not with friends he doesn't drink alot, and eats pretty much a vegetarian diet. People tell him hes naturally skinny all of the time but its simply not true, he doesn't have to focus on calories but hes eating at maintenance. For fun once I tracked his intake for a few days, Obviously not weighing and measuring but it came out to around 2500 calories, which is also his estimated TDEE according to online calculators.
He hasnt put on any excess weight in the past five years hes still in the same 5 lb range as when we met.
My husband is like this too - if all you saw him eat was dinner you'd wonder why he didn't weigh a lot more. But he doesn't eat breakfast, rarely has more than peanut butter for lunch and then eats a huge dinner and dessert. I make his dinner pretty calorie dense since we are trying to keep weight on him.
He also drives me nuts because he can sit with a half gallon of ice cream, eat just a bit and put it away. If I tried that the whole thing would be gone before I knew it.
Yep. My husband usually just has coffee and maybe a small bowl of cereal from the time he wakes up until he has dinner. Then he'll have tacos, a burger, pizza, fried chicken . . . almost always in a very calorie-dense version. Anyone watching him might be confused if they're assuming this in addition to breakfast and lunch. But that's typically his only meal. He might snack on something like cashews and chocolate chips later in the evening, but he has very small portions because a small portion naturally satisfies him. In the 15+ years I've known him, his weight has stayed in a pretty narrow (healthy) range because he has naturally figured out a calorie-control method that is effortless for him.
Thats exactly hoq much husband is too! He can portion control naturally and Im always like, how do you do that?! lol
Sometimes we'll be out and we'll see something delicious like ice cream or a pastry and he'll be like "I wish I could have some, but I'm not hungry." And I'm thinking: "You have to be hungry to eat ice cream?" because all my life, if something sounds tasty, I don't have to be hungry to eat it. Hence my presence on a calorie-counting website.
Bahahah thats me too!!1 -
One of my sisters is naturally skinny ( a little underweight). She has stomach issues and doesn't like the full feeling. She eats very little at a sitting ( like half a burger) and puts the food away pretty much immediately. She is also very active, so very skinny! I always was unsure how I'd ever lose weight eating like I do because I like the full feeling and hate being hungry ever since I was a child. I was also less active. I feel out of it and hungry when I don't eat. I am trying to get used to those things though. I guess she doesn't have that. My other sister works at it a little but is also pretty naturally thin. She prefers to eat healthy things, like an apple where I would like chocolate!0
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StarBrightStarBright wrote: »My husband is "naturally skinny" and so is most of his family. And I'm with him a lot so I know how much he eats. I think the biggest thing is that he is tall and that he had a good metabolism in his 20s so he never gained in the first place. His whole family is the same way. They all start watching their food intake around their 40s to maintain their slim figures.
He spent his 20s weightlifting and trying to put on weight. Now that he is in his late 30s he still eats a fair amount (but less than his 20s) and he is at nice, slim, dad-bod weight.
His menu for today is thus:
Breakfast:Huge bowl of oatmeal (about 3 servings) with a quarter cup of walnuts, cup of chopped strawberries and heavy cream
Snack: half a bag of tortilla chips and half container of salsa (he usually goes through two of each a week)
Lunch: zoodles with pesto and chicken breast (I will make this for the both of us and he will eat 3/4 and I will have 1/4) - I will add about half cup of mozzarella cheese to his
Snack: a bag of gummy bears or a couple of cookies
Dinner: Large salad w/ caesar dressing, bowl of sweet potato soup, and a bbq sandwich and slaw.
I have just come to accept that I will always have to eat MUCH less than him. The overlap in our meals will occur at lunch and dinner and my lunch will not have cheese added. At dinner my salad will be lightly dressed with mostly vinegar, I'll eat a bowl of soup and have a tiny portion of breadless bbq.
We are both at healthy weights but need to maintain them VERY differently (also sorry this is long - but I felt like I had legit life experience to share here )
Much of that is simply the difference between men and women, not necessarily being "naturally skinny". I can eat a whole lot more than my wife simply for the fact that I'm male and taller and heavier and have more muscle mass.4
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