There was this kid in a summer camp I used to go to, below-average size, 14/15 yo, who would eat about 2x the norm for a grown man. It was impressive in itself his stomach could hold it, but he stayed thin and bony.
This was a pretty strange kid overall, but what–in this narrow sense–was wrong with him?
At the time I was figuring he must have just shat all the food out. But now that I think about it, it doesn’t seem normal that his gut had such poor absorption. Either he shat the calories, or he burned them (I don’t think you can piss calories, can you?) but it didn’t seem like he had a horrible thyroid disease. Did he?
There are lots of things that could give him a ravenous appetite in the face of weight loss. Given he’s a weird kid, I would guess intestinal parasites or behavioral problems before thyroid disease or cancer.
Isn’t that relatively normal for teenage boys? My brother is tall, but he ate much more than you’d expect him to be able to at that age. So just hormones/growing could be the cause.
I’m sure a lot of other diseases/conditions could lead to it too. My sister (now 24) is arthritic, and that started when she was 12 or so. Since then she’s been able to consume ridiculous amounts of food (IMHO) and stay thin. She’s 5’6" or 7" and weighs about 112-115 lbs. Her doctors are not concerned (and they do blood tests every 6 months because of the meds she takes) and simply say that the extra energy she consumes basically gets burned away by the inflammation in her body. And no, eating less would not diminish the arthritic inflammation, she’s already asked
I was a skinny kid. In HS I was 5’11" & weighed about 115. I could & would eat more than any two kids, day in & day out. I also was much happier eating 4x / day, plus a mini-meal before bed.
I was then & am now perfectly healthy. My pet theory (WAG really): It takes a tremendous amount of calories to stay warm when you are all surface area & no meat. And it appears I’m just not real efficient at converting food into usable energy.
In my twenties this slowed down a bit. I was still eating double but my weight was drifting up towards nomal. By 35 I was at a typical weight for my height & my eating was down to about 1.5x normal.
Now in my late 40s I still eat a little hearty compared to the norm (nore like a typical 25 year old) and am slowly growing a paunch, a couple pounds per year.
Some folks get fat looking at a cake; I couldn’t gain weight eating a bakery-full of them. People vary.
I’m the same way. At 28 I stand 5’7, and weigh 153 lbs. I can eat 4000 calories a day without issue or gaining a pound. I’ve been tested and my thyroid and hormonal levels are all within normal range. I asked my doctor if I could have any underlying issues since I am actively trying to gain muscle mass, and he couldn’t really think of anything that might cause it. I have slowly gained about 50 lbs over the last 10 years or so, but that is pretty slow considering the diet, which I have never cut back on. I was always a small, skinny kid who grew slowly though, and continued to gain height until I was nearly 23. I also look young for my age physically. As I’m approaching the tail end of my twenties I’m beginning to appreciate that though as a lot of my peers are starting to look rough.
My son is very much the same way - he’s 6’ 4" and about 140, and although his pediatrician tested him for Marfan’s disease, he didn’t have it and is perfectly healthy. It’s just his metabolism.
My brother was the same way in his teens. The guy would come home from school and eat anything in the house that couldn’t run away fast enough. Yet he was always on the skinny side.
Thing is, he was also incredibly active. He worked out with weights and played soccer, but it was more than that. As a kid, he never sat still. He was always running around. Even when forced to sit, he was alway wiggling and twitching.
As an adult, he’s had to cut back on the eating. Part is undoubtedly metabolism slowing with age, but I think another part is that he just doesn’t run around as much as he did as a teenager.
This is a strange condition which often hits teens, particularly but not exclusively men, around this time. It is known as “Puberty” and also involves acne, height increases, and the growth of unexpected body hair.
I believe there was a study published a while back showing that thin people seemed to move around more than overweight people, and that this might explain some of the difference. I’m reasonably thin and fairly fidgety (okay, very fidgety) and I can eat twice what my wife does and lose weight. I think I burn more calories sitting in a chair than some people do jogging. Was the strangeness of this kid fidgeting? That can explain some of it. I also think our metabolisms are different, and that some of us absorb more food as it moves through than others, if you know what I mean and I think you do.
I was tall and skinny growing up. 6’4" and 125 in high school. I literally could sit down and eat the 8 piece KFC dinner and still be hungry a couple of hours later. It was wild and I wish I could eat like that now.
I’m still probably on the slightly slim side for my height and age. Over twenty years of marriage and Southern cooking, I’m now up to 188. Most of my 43 year old peers are jealous, but I’ve moderated my eating a lot over the years to adjust to my slowing metabolism.
There are only a very few conditions where someone can “eat like a horse” and stay thin. One has already been mentioned here - hyperthyroidism. Others are uncontrolled diabetes and any of a number of the so-called malabsorption syndromes, e.g. celiac disease, short gut syndrome, pancreatic insufficiency, . . .
As the name suggests, “malabsorption” means that although food is eaten, it’s poorly absorbed out of the intestines and into the body. People with this problem often have quite severe and unrelenting diarrhea. In fact, they will likely have what’s called steatorrhea - malabsorbtion of fat from the intestines and into the body. When present, steatorrhea is pretty well unmistakable - the poop REALLY stinks. It looks oily and tends to leave an oily film on the bowl making it necessary to flush more than once. (It probably floats but so does any stool containing air. Floating stools are a meaningless symptom.)
Pullet gives cancer as a cause for being able to eat like a horse yet stay thin. That is incorrect. I assume that he/she is thinking that people with cancer lose weight even though they eat well. And that’s the problem. People with cancer who are losing weight are NOT eating welll. It is NOT the case that the cancer cells are using up all the nutrition thereby preventing the rest of the body from getting hold of it and gaining weight. Phrased differently, if someone with cancer is losing weight, it’s because their appetite is down and they’re not eating much period.
I’m 6’4". Until I was in my late 20s I was as thin as a rake despite eating heavily and weighed 11 stone or so - I don’t recall the exact figures. At 28 or 29 something changed and my weight has gradually increased to 17 stone. I’d prefer to be about 15 stone.
Coincidentally, I did that for old time’s sake just last week. Felt Goood.
Stayed full for about 12 hours instead of the 3 it used to be.
I think I scared the counter folks at the KFC though; they’d never seen a guy with gray hair do that before; chicken, potatoes, gravy, veggies, biscuits, and all.
Through my teen years and early 20’s, I could eat anything I felt like without gaining weight. Candy, fast food, whatever. I had no tapeworms, no gland “problems”. I just had a metabolism that burned off the food/fat as fast as I could shovel it in. The only outward manifestation was a slightly elevated sweating/body odor issue, easilly handled with a daily bath or shower. (No skipping days for me. People would notice…)
Once I hit 30, I lost that wonderfull metabolism. At 30 I weighed 135. At 40, 160. Sigh.
