The first two options, plus:
I’m not an exercise freak, but I do like to move about a lot.
I don’t eat a lot, and what I do is reasonably varied and healthful. I almost never snack.
I rarely watch TV. I just don’t have much use for programs and characters that I know nothing about, and am not interested in learning.
I’m a “naturally” thin man since puberty, which would be since the middle of the '80s. Since then I’ve lived different kinds of lifes, so to speak: I’ve been dead poor for some years, I’ve been working out daily some years, “building muscels”, I’ve been well off eating and drinking whatever I want for some years, and so on. But my weight never changes more than a few kilos–or a couple of kilos–up or down. I’m below avarage, “thin”; that’s all there’s is to it. Some quys gain weight just watching a soda pop, others won’t gain any drinking litres of it daily. Most are probably somewhere in between, of course.
TL;DR version: I used to think I could eat whatever I wanted, because I ate whatever I wanted my entire life, and never got fat. What I wanted, it turned out, wasn’t very much. For the brief time I started eating very much, I gained weight. When I realized I was gaining weight, I knocked it off, lost the weight, and have held steady ever since.
Now here’s the Mol likes to ramble version: I want to place one in the “I thought I could do whatever I wanted, and then realized, Oh shit! No I can’t” column.
I was a skinny kid (as in bony, not just average/not fat like I am now), then puberty trotted along and I got a bit more fleshy, though still thin. I stayed the around the same weight from 13-18. Enter college, and found the freshman 15 (turned out to be freshman 20, you filthy liars!) to be very real. Still, when you’re talking about a 5’8" 130 lbs girl, 20 more doesn’t exactly push you over into lardo land. It’s still within the healthy BMI (Yes, yes, which I know is a sham) range. I asked myself why I was gaining weight, and then I realized being on a dorm meal plan changed my eating habits quite a bit. As opposed to eating when I was hungry, I was eating when the dining hall was open. Also, I was eating larger meals at each sitting. Why? When I was at home, I didn’t eat that much per meal, and the only meal that was even kind of sizable was dinner, so I really couldn’t tell you why my meal portions were increasing, but they were. The weight gain left me a little perplexed, as I’d previously felt like I was immune to gaining. “Hey, I eat Carl’s Jr and don’t get fat, therefore I can never gain weight!” Nonsense. Sure, I ate bad food before, but I didn’t eat a lot, so I remained thin, even if I may have been unhealthy.
So anyway, that is where my weight remained, happily, until I got married. Cue guy who LIKES cooking, and makes food that is so not good for you in anyway, but is oh-so-goddamn delicious. Now I’m eating a lot of food, bad food, all the time, coupled with a completely sedentary lifestyle. So here I am thinking, “What the hell? How am I getting fat? I don’t get fat!” Then another part of me thinking, “Hey, shit-for-brains, apparently you do.” So the first part of me responded “Oh yeah. I’ll eat less and ride my bike more.” Weight gain disappears, huzzah, back to playing weight.
Sure, my best guess is it was easier for me, a person used to being a healthy weight, to shed lbs than it is/was for others who have spent many years being overweight. I guess the point of this long, asinine as hell post is even “naturally thin” people can become a bit chubby if they don’t watch it. Duh?
So! I used to think I could do what I want and remain thin, and I can, as long as “what I want” entails not eating a lot and moving some. It just so happened that “what I want” was that for a long time. When it stopped being that, I gained weight. When it resumed, I lost it.
Fin.
I used to be naturally thin and scrawny. But something changed a few years ago, and now my bad eating habits have caught up with me. I’m not fat, but I do have a layer of pudge forming that I hope won’t get too much worse.
I decided not to fill in the survey because my current self is not really thin, but not really not-thin.
Used to be the first reason (naturally thin).
Then some time 'bout my late thirties I started to gain weight. I’m tall so it was spread out and not noticeable, but I still managed to reach 235.
These days I’m at a slim 210 and I still eat a terrible diet. I run 25 miles a week to hold back the tide by brute force.
I bet if I stopped running I’d be up to 250 in a few months.
I put down other. I used to be naturally thin. Then the slowing metabolism thing caught up to me. Now I have to pay pretty close attention to diet and exercise.
Cuz I’m awesome.
(Actually, I used to be very thin, until I hit 30. Now I’m slightly overweight… But I’m keeping an eye on it)
I’m 5’6" and my weight is usually somewhere between 120-140. I’ve got big hips, so I hold the weight well- I look skinny even at the upper end of my range, but I can tell when I’ve put on weight.
Although I feel like I tend towards being fairly slim (skinny mom, fat dad, I’m curvy but slender) honestly I think lifestyle is a bigger part of it.
I don’t usually go through any special effort to exercise, but my lifestyle is naturally relatively active. I’ve never owned a car, so I’ve always ended up walking quite a bit. I’m a teacher, so I’m standing up or walking around while I’m working. I take every opportunity to dance that I can find. It’s nothing special, but spending all day climbing stairs, walking miles, dancing in front of the bathroom mirror and pacing the classroom add up. I’ve noticed that when I do work a sedentary job, I’ll go to the upper end of my range. Right now, I’d say I’m on my feet at least six hours a day and probably climb 15 flights of stairs a day.
I don’t actively diet (though I do have a hard time eating when depressed) but I do pay attention to what I eat, and control myself if I get out of line. For example, if I’m eating something really bad for me, I’ll eat half of it. I have no problem going to McDonald’s and eating half of a double cheese burger. I usually eat a token breakfast, a small but balanced lunch, and a big yummy dinner. I adore food and am quite a foodie, but I go for quality, not quantity. I especially keep a look out for mindless starches- it’s easy here in China just to pass up the rice and focus on meat and veggies.
I don’t keep a lot of snack food around (it helps that I don’t like sweets) and I just try to avoid bad habits. For example, if I snack while on the computer, I guarantee that next time I’m on the computer, I’m going to have an overwhelming compulsion to eat snack food. So I don’t do it- I snack in the dining room at the table.
Its pescetarian.
I got raised by a frugal women who believed in portion control (or maybe my mother was just frugal). Between meal snacking was frowned on - except over holidays. More than three SMALL homemade cookies (with oatmeal in to stretch them) was gluttony. You had a scoop of ice cream as a bedtime treat. A pound of hamburger had to feed four of us when my dad traveled (a lot), there weren’t half pound burgers in our house.
I didn’t get the “freshman 15” because I was on the look out for it. And because I went to college at large schools where there was a LOT of walking. I didn’t learn how I was raised until I was almost 30, when my income started to get to the point where I could eat out with restaurant portions more often. That’s when my freshman fifteen came.
Middle age has made me need to watch it and exercise. But I still seldom snack, think more than three small cookies is gluttony and can make a pound of hamburger feed four.
My parents were slim, and most of my relatives are slim, so “nature” is part of it.
The other part is severe depression/anxiety. That’ll kill your appetite. I’m a middle aged male, have no belly and not much muscle, either. If I take my shirt off, you can see each one of my ribs, quite clearly. I’m not quite emaciated, but I’m well into alarmingly thin territory. I have been a little more solid than I am now, but not that much
I do try to eat well, which is made far more difficult by the fact that I’m very poor. I don’t take any meds because they really don’t do much for me - meds seem to work a lot better on the moderate/situational side of Depressive illnesses than the severe/chronic cases like me.
I find the constant almost universal desire of everyone else to lose weight quite irritating, and the assumption that being skinny is “lucky” extremely annoying. Because - and I don’t care how fat you are - you do not want to be as thin as me, and you would not like to go through what I do. And nobody finds “skinny” an attractive attribute in a middle-aged male.
I was always naturally thin (Friends describe me as “tiny.”) until I hit about 30 or so when my metabolism slooooowed waaaay dowwwwwn.
Now, I keep an eye on refined sugars, carbs, and fatty fried foods, to make sure I don’t overindulge. And I work my butt off, quite literally.
At 5’ 2" my weight had ballooned at one point to nearly 150 about 5 years ago. I’m back to about 120 now, which is just about exactly right for my frame. My doctor is tickled. I just have to work at keeping it that way, which I never had to do when I was younger.
P.S. I despise nothing more than when someone who is overweight calls me a skinny bitch just because they are jealous that they are not a skinny bitch. Just because my weight is healthy and proportional to my height, that doesn’t mean I deserve your verbal abuse. And I’d never call you a fat bitch because I think that would be supremely uncool.
I’m 5’2" as well; 105 in High School, 100 when I got married (TOO THIN!) and have been as much as 127 (too heavy for my frame.) I’m around 113 now and would like to be a few less. IT IS HARD. I agree! I cannot stand comments about my weight. Must be nice…Uh, not really! It’s freaking hard and gets harder every year!
I chose both “monitor” and “not thin” because while I’m not thin, I’m no longer fat, either, and I made the change by monitoring food intake (mostly quantity, some quality) and exercise and weight. I’ve never been thin: Now (near age 40) I weigh roughly what I did at 17.
I’ve got a hyperthyroid disorder. I don’t attribute all of my weight and shape to that, however, because I’ve always been fairly active: swimming, dance classes, yoga, martial arts, building houses, organic gardening, working with kids, etc. One of my favorite activities is taking long walks; I get stir-crazy if I don’t go on at least one long walk a week. A walk of 2-3 miles doesn’t daunt me. I once kept track, and figured out that I can go about 5 miles before I get tired, and if I pushed myself I could probably go a couple more miles beyond that before I couldn’t go any further.
I also stop eating when I’m hungry. I snack during the day, but I have small meals, and when I’m full, I’m full. I’m not compelled to stuff myself just because the food’s on my plate. Often, when I eat at someone’s house or I go out to dinner, people will say, “Oh, you didn’t like your dinner?” It’s not a matter of me not liking it. Once I reach capacity, that’s it, I push the plate away. It’s rare that I can finish an entire plate’s worth at a restaurant. There’s a small handful of foods that I will eat until I get sick on it (fried okra is one).
5’8, 120 lbs, btw.
Yeah, I know enough about nutrition to get a salad (without the fatty fixings) instead of a burger and fries. The temptation lasts for only a few minutes at most, and I do not suffer from hunger afterwards. The willpower involved is no greater than the willpower involved to get out of bed and shower. Is that “hard work to stay thin”? Whatever.
The megaobese specials on TCC changed my thinking on obesity completely. It does not take me willpower to not to down a 5 pound Costco bag of Snickers any more it takes willpower to not to eat a bar of soap – I have completely zero desire to do that kind of overeating – but clearly for these megaobese, it is a daily struggle that occupies every corner of their mind.
Wow! Are you my long lost identical twin or something? I’m a dedicated carnivore, I seem to be completely immune to fat, grease, starch, anything. Pasta and pizza fear me. I can wolf down staggering amounts when I choose to. I’ve caught people staring at me, when I go to “all you can eat” places. And yet, I’m thin.
Based on the poll it looks like an awful lot of thin people are thin with no effort, which is what I was guessing was the case. Not a majority, but a lot of us are just like this, and are big eaters to boot.
Still, more thin people feel that they put effort into maintaining their weight. I imagine this happens to even the most skinny and ravenous people as they age. I’m looking forward to creeping pounds…
Well your definition of “naturally thin” included not eating a lot and moderate activity.
There ought to be an age component to this poll. Metabolism changes significantly after 30ish.