I was rail thin in my youth. I was 6’ 135 pounds till I was about 19.
I just never ate. I hear from people saying they can’t gain weight, but really they can, thin people always compensate for the extra they eat so they think they are eating but they just cut it out elsewhere.
I started lifting weights and working out and now I’m a thin guy with a bunch of muscle. (My weight ranges from 167 - 185 depending on what I want to look like).
Somehow, I just can’t reconcile your MeanOldLady persona with bike-riding without getting this.
I voted the first two options. It’s not that I’m naturally thin or that I watch/monitor what I eat, it’s that I naturally watch what I eat. If I have too many calories for the day, I feel sad and get down on myself unless it’s a holiday or something. If I know I’ll be drinking later, I cut back at lunch and skip breakfast to compensate for the calories. It’s not really something I track. It’s just habit/nature.
I went for both “natural” and “take care of myself”. Until about college, I could do whatever I wanted. As I got a little older, I adopted some bad habits, primarily, hanging out in bars with friends, which entailed eating a lot of bar food and drinking a lot of beer. Over the course of, say, 5 years, I went from around 135 to around 150. I didn’t like that, so I stopped drinking so much and starting eating better and working out a little, and I lost the weight again, over a couple of years. But I don’t do anything special to maintain it. I eat whenever I’m hungry, but I tend not to eat that much crap. I always take the stairs instead of the elevator, and go for a walk or a bike ride now and then, but I don’t really work out. I’m soft and flabby, but still thin, I’d say. Of course, that will all change now that I’m pregnant, but I don’t think that counts.
Funny! That’s almost exactly what I look like.
I’m just naturally thin. Quite thin, at 6’2" and 150 pounds. The body type runs in the family. My father and his brother and my brother are all taller than me, and all just as thin.
Until fairly recently, I never really took care of myself. I ate whatever I wanted, and a lot of it, and never gained weight. I changed my habits when I discovered that never gaining weight doesn’t mean one won’t get high cholesterol.
Nitpick: What you’re talking about sounds like pescetarianism.
I also had the worst, fattiest diet in the world for a long time, and I barely gained an ounce. Everyone always said that I don’t eat enough, but that’s not true; for a while I counted all my calories so I could be sure I was eating extra. I gained a little bit of weight, maybe 4-5 pounds, but it took so much effort to keep that weight on (spending more money, eating when I wasn’t hungry, all those damn egg whites) that I gave up. Now that I’m somewhat concerned about the thousands of Big Macs I stuffed into my aorta, I try to eat healthy at restaurants and strangely, people get almost upset with that.
You don’t get a lot of sympathy around here for wanting to gain weight, that’s for sure. I’m not abnormally skinny, but I think I could have played sports at a much higher level with an extra 30 pounds.
Same here. I just don’t eat a lot.
I’m usually ravenously hungry, and I don’t really exercise, but I didn’t gain weight until I went on anti-psychotic meds (and even after that, I’m still within the normal range). I do prefer fruits to candy, but I also eat too many processed foods because of my sensitivity to textures.
I think I do have something out of whack metabolically. I’m not just constantly hungry, I eat huge portions in a single sitting. At least, compared to other people. I remember being incredulous that my mother considered two soy burgers dinner- and she was nonplussed that I’d take at least six. Also, I’m pretty sure most people would feel full after a breakfast of two oatmeal packets and three-egg scrambled eggs. And then they wouldn’t feel starving an hour later.
I thought I was naturally slim until I hit my mid-20s. My natural inclination is towards sedentariness and greasy/starchy food and although my BMI never crept into the overweight territory, I was definitely heavier than I should have been - I felt sluggish, looked bloaty and had no muscle definition.
I’m slim now because I exercise 2x a day 5x a week (and often once a day on the remaining days), eat a healthy diet and monitor my calories.
I put ‘naturally thin,’ but I eat very well. This is partly conscious choices, but a lot of it is that I truly enjoy fruits and vegetables, and don’t eat if I’m not hungry. I’m pretty sedentary, but I live in Manhattan, so I do much more walking than the average American, which probably helps.
I had weight and foos issues in the past. I now walk outside at least an hour everyday. It makes all the difference.
Because I work really freaking hard, after having been ~20 pounds over my “good” weight and knowing how much it generally makes life suck (not as much energy, not as much self-confidence, makes my knees hurt when I play basketball at that weight, a ton of other stuff).
I go to the gym six days a week and I’m in a constant battle with my crazy food addicted brain to eat less food than it wants. I win more often than I lose, I stay in good shape; I have a bad couple of weeks, I get miserable fast. It’s good motivation.
I chose ‘take care of myself’. There were times similar to other posters where I was maybe +20 pounds over ideal weight due to drinking/lazy lifestyle in college. I run 30-50 miles a week now and semi-monitor my diet. I still like greasy foods, but if I have that I’ll balance it with lot’s of healthy foods to make up for it. I’m 6’6, 28, weigh 195 pounds.
I watch what I eat, sort of. I make an effort in eat a variety of foods and if I have a day of unhealthy eating I’ll try to balance it with a healthy meal later. But I don’t count calories or eat according to any kind of plan, and I’m not shy with the butter and cream if the recipe calls for it.
Also I am blessed with good genes. My mother is rail thin (she’s as thin as a person can be without looking unhealthy, if that makes sense) but she doesn’t particularly eat that much and is also a bit of a health nut. I eat a lot compared to her and am less health conscious, but I’m still on the smaller side of average. Thanks Mom.
I have a very small appetite generally and eating is not a priority for me. I usually have to watch to make sure I don’t lose too much weight, especially if I’m very busy or depressed.
I suppose I also have good genes - I take after my dad who’s naturally thin, despite having similarly bad eating habits (him: dessert with breakfast? sure!). Fortunately, unlike him, I have a body healthy view (he thinks he needs to lose weight. He’s in his 50s, rail thin with a itty bitty tummy. He has at times thought I needed to lose weight. I’m 5’5" and never been over 145 lbs. Ever.)
I’m stick figure skinny. I worry about the dog seeing me naked, because I so resemble the dried turkey treats she loves so much.
I’m skinny because I smoke. When I didn’t smoke, I weighed about 140 and wore size 11-12 pants. Now I might weigh 100 and a size 4 is about right. I weighed more before the gall bladder surgery, but I haven’t been able to put any of that weight back on. It’s usually mid-afternoon before I eat anything, and then it might be just a bowl of cereal. I’m just not hungry.
I’m currently 10-15 pounds overweight, but my BMI is right at the border of “normal” vs. “overweight”. I inherited my mom’s curvy frame with big hips and a round rear; my sister got our dad’s rail-thin frame. She can hide behind me even when I’m skinnier. And it’s not fat on the outside of these hips, poke maybe a half centimeter at most and you hit muscle over bone.
When I am normal-‘thin-ish’, it’s because I’m working hard at it. I’m making an effort to not eat junk, not eat out of boredom or emotional issues, watch to make sure I’m keeping portion sizes reasonable, don’t take in too many calories via beverages, and getting some extra exercise.
This is why I get super-annoyed when I’m doing well on weight, and people - sadly, mostly overweight female coworkers - say “You don’t need to watch your weight!” Yes, yes I do. Not watching my weight is what put these extra pounds on me. I even used to be a pants size larger because I let the weight “creep” progress. It was one day when I heard “you don’t need to watch your weight!” from someone heavier, who wasn’t watching hers, that I thought, “This is how it starts.” Give in a little more every day and the weight packs on over time. So I keep fighting, and some months are better than others and I feel great about my weight, versus putting on 10 pounds and feeling that the pants don’t quite fit so well any longer, and being annoyed at myself for slacking.
It’s also worth noting that I’m not letting my eating habits go completely to hell when I put on a little weight. It’s just small enough changes like an extra small snack a day or an additional beer now and then that a few extra calories are stored away each week, until, oops, what’s happened here? I eat a pretty healthy diet normally, and am a vegetarian, but it seems like many people don’t realize that yes, for many people who are slim, they need to keep eating healthy.
I am thin through a lot of hard work and determination.
I spent most of my life slightly overweight. Usually somewhere between 20-30 pounds overweight. Approximately four years ago I decided I was going to change my eating habits. I started learning a lot about what was in foods. I approximated how many calories my body needed each day etc. The more I learned the easier it was to lose the weight.
Today, I’ve kept the weight off through a combination of knowledge and structure. I require myself to know the nutritional content in every single thing that I eat. I also have a structure for what time I should eat a meal and what each meal should consist of. (how many calories I can intake for breakfast, lunch, a snack, etc.)
