My brother, 21 yo, is like this. He’s ~180 cm tall and has never weighted more than 61 kg (during the 2020 covid lockdown, he made a big deal out of this since it was the first time he passed the 60 kg mark; after the lockdown was over he immediately dropped back to his perpetual weight of ~55kg). I live with him so I know his eating habits: he eats all the time, whatever he wants, whenever, how much he wants and simply doesn’t put on any weight. Is very energetic, no sick look / demeanour. It’s just fascinating to me cause I’m not like that at all, I have to watch what / how much / when I eat.
Wait until he’s 30. I was pretty scrawny as a young lad. As soon as I turned thirty, I started putting on the pounds.
I wish 😭 have been able to eat whatever I want for all my life without gaining a pound. I’ve been told “Wait till you are above 30” so many times. Over 30 now and I still can’t get any fat to stay on my body. I just want to stop freezing all the time dammit
if you don’t starve yourself and eat whenever you’re hungry you actually gain less weight than being on a diet
That’s psychology, not physics. If you actually stick to a diet such that you are eating less than you burn, you will lose weight.
No one can break the laws of physics.
too bad human beings aren’t engines huh?
the fake claim that most people even need to lose weight actually derives from the eugenics movement. for more information I recommend the book Belly of the Beast by Da’Shaun L. Harrison.
if you’re burning more calories than you eat that’s called starving yourself and it leads to eating disorders and long-term organ damage. stop spreading harmful misinformation
Reading past the headline, the article goes on to say that calorie in/out is correct but hard to calculate usefully and thus they recommend strategies that are easier to keep stable.
It’s pretty shitty to equate a first worlder feeling hungry for a bit to actual starvation. One is unpleasant. The other is serious.
reading past the mansplainer explaining the headline to me, what it actually says is that calorie counting can be more harmful than good (which is a very mild take and an under-estimation)
too bad human beings aren’t engines huh?
Humans are engines. Stop eating and you will lose weight. I didn’t make any claims about health. But you absolutely are an engine. The proof is that if you stop eating, you will die. Different fuels burn differently but you can’t defy the laws of physics.
Eugenics is the study of improving humans through breeding. You used the wrong word.
I’m not taking the word of one uneducated author over the overwhelming majority of trained doctors and scientists who all consider obesity to be a medical problem that needs to be treated.
what you’re doing here is mansplaining science by refusing to keep up to date on the recent research that’s only recently starting to make it acceptable in the scientific literature what’s been known all along by indigenous people and survivors of famine. that is that food scarcity doesn’t cause weight loss, it causes systemic retention of fat to survive life threatening scenarios.
in the epigenetics field as well it is well known that famine trauma propagates through generations, which is exemplified by Irish people tending towards larger sizes on average.
you’re also idolizing medics and the medical field by not acknowledging that they’re humans just like us and therefore not devoid of biases. the field is extremely white and man-centric, therefore refusing to accept any science that doesn’t benefit their class interests. eugenics is common practice in medicine nowadays, you can see it in the way fatness is criminalized and punished through violence by most doctors.
that is that food scarcity doesn’t cause weight loss
Bullshit.
Epigenetics isn’t eugenics. Like I said, you used the wrong word.
you’re also idolizing medics
I carefully used the phrase “overwhelming majority”. Science progresses through consensus. The data shows obesity kills.
and the consensus used to be that race science is a great idea. great job in rebranding that in fat phobia!
Read the article, 2/3 of it corroborate that it is a calorie in/out balance that determines weight, but is simply more complex than a simple formula. Which we all know. Fiber changes how many calories you actually consume. The type of calorie depends on how much you consume (whole foods vs processed, raw vs cooked) Processed sugars like candy is almost entirely taken in calorie wise, but something like an apple or carrot, have to be converted in the digestive system to be absorbed, thereby reducing the effective calorie input (takes energy to convert).
All that said, you do your best to track, (weigh your own food instead of guessing off the label), and keep your calorie intake below what you spend (again, this is generalized, and won’t be 100% accurate, but should get you close and then you adjust as needed). The problem most people face is they make sweeping changes, and quit their eating habits cold turkey. “I’m never eating candy or ice cream again” <- bad idea unless you’re allergic or something. Forbidding it will increase the craving for it, and then when you eventually succumb to the craving, you feel super guilty and basically give up.
I follow the “add good food” rather than the “reduce what I eat”. If you up your fiber and protein intake, it’s SUPER hard to overeat. Fiber and protein are super satiating, and it lasts a long time. Adding whole foods to what you already eat is a great way to reduce overall consumption.
Btw potatoes and beans are GOATed.
ah yes, promoting calorie counting and weighing food, the famously not disordered gymbro eating patterns. the article actually says that calorie counting can cause more harm than good
Lawl, I’m so not a gymbro.
I’m fat, and out of shape, but am slowly working my way to a happier healthier weight, using the principles listed above.
you’re what we call in the fat community one of the “good fats”. just know that what you’re promoting is pseudoscience and not conducive to “health” whatever that means
He eats less than he burns. Could be just high level of base activity - even just walking around a bunch makes a huge difference, much more than sports. Or could be very low appetite.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghrelin
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leptin
TLDR: The body has a setpoint for weight which is tuned to environmental conditions and will attempt to reach it by modulating hunger.
It takes 8-12 months for these hormones to reset, so any diet is ineffective unless permanently maintained.
High setpoint? Prepare to be ravenously hungry all the time if you eat below your hormonal baseline.
You can also apparently wear weights to lose weight for this reason.
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/eclinm/article/PIIS2589-5370(20)30082-1/fulltext
That finding is pretty mind blowing!
These are the people who then say that if you gain weight it is because you are lazy or weak willed. Really it is 99% hormones and only 1% strength of character.
These are the people who then say that if you gain weight it is because you are lazy or weak willed.
Whether someone perceives it as hard to lose or not gain weight doesn’t really factor into it, does it? For adults the ultimate decision to eat more than one needs lies with exactly one person.
Really it is 99% hormones and only 1% strength of character.
I’m not sure I understand correctly, are you suggesting that obesity epidemics have some kind of shared underlying physiological reason?
there’s no obesity epidemic. it’s all eugenics to the core
there’s no obesity epidemic. it’s all eugenics to the core
I’m almost afraid to ask, but what do you mean by that?
that it’s an artificially engineered “crisis” by the medical industrial complex to justify modern day discrimination and refuse to provide healthcare to fat people, Black people, etc
podcast episode on this
Sometimes an actual medical condition makes the difference.
At a yearly physical, my doctor noted, “no one could gain that much weight that fast without something wrong”. That’s how I got tested for and diagnosed with a thyroid disorder. It’s also the explanation for why I could never lose weight. I thought the reason I could hardly move was because I was just getting older.
For years I had been unable to lose weight by dieting. After getting my thyroid levels corrected with medication, I became more active. I started casually intermittent fasting, and I lost 30 pounds.
There’s also been research that shows your gut bacteria has a lot to do with whether you gain weight or not.
https://www.uclahealth.org/news/article/gut-microbiome-makeup-can-determine-ability-to-lose-weight
Is very energetic
That’s the secret IMHO, being active is more than working out. Living an energetic lifestyle gives you a faster metabolism. Activate your core doing anything in your daily life will burn much more calories than slouching.
Genetics probably. Some people are suited for endurance sports, others gain muscle more easily. I recognize myself from the description. Very hard to gain muscle/weight and eating enough feels like a chore.
I was the same. Then I turned 30…
Metabolism, muscle mass, resting energy expenditure, exercise
The type of food eaten is important too. Different foods change the bodies insulin levels.
T1Ds don’t gain weight unless they take their insulin, as an example of hormonal impact.
To chime in with the others and answer: hormones, activity levels, calorie intake. Those three give you your results. Hormones in particular will vary greatly and are influenced by activity levels but also by mental stress (or lack of), age, sex, environment variables such as temperature, etc.
As to why you didn’t get that bingo card- nobody has an answer really.
I was 61kg at 187cm from 15 to 30. I was eating 6000 calories a day to maintain that weight. Then I gained 22kg over the next three years and finally felt healthy for the first time. I had all the same health problems as anorexics while eating like an Olympic athlete.
It was just genetics. Multiple family members were like this but not as bad as I had it. Now I have a nephew who has it just as bad as I did. He just has to wait another decade or so to achieve normalcy.
Similar metrics here. I finally managed to break 70Kg at 35.
Some factors here: he’s tall and male so his energy need is greater compared to the latter. Here’s his TDEE (total daily energy expenditure) ( https://tdeecalculator.net/result.php?s=metric&g=male&age=21&kg=60&cm=180&act=1.375&f=2 ). Another factor: if he’s over eating the fat he puts on won’t be visible fat but the fat that insulates the organs.
it’s embarrassing that people still use eugenics calculators in scientific discussions
The linked page uses the Mifflin-St Jeor Formula which appears to have been published in 1990. As someone acquainted with eugenics but not how BMR calculations play a role, could you share some I formation on how the two are related?
I think the initial assumption that a “healthy” universal weight even exists is rooted in eugenics. oh, and also the attempts by the medical industrial complex to standardize it and enforce it through violence against fat people
I’ve seen you say a few places in this thread that reducing caloric intake is related to eugenics. That’s a pretty strong claim to make without any evidence. Can you share any?
I think amino may be referring to the history of BMI, which is how most folks judge weight/mass, and has a long history of racist origins. There’s loads of research on it now and Aubrey Gordon’s book ”You Just Need to Lose Weight” and 19 Other Myths About Fat People summarizes some of the research very well. Here’s a recent ethics article that also sheds some light onto the subject:
thanks for the recs, will check them out!
The people “not gaining weight no matter how much they eat” often aren’t eating as much as you think. I’ve heard people say this of me too but they just don’t realise how often I skip meals. I regularly eat just breakfast and nothing else the entire day. Yeah, you might see me destroying 700 grams of candy at one sitting but what you don’t know is that’s also the only thing I’ve eaten all day.
I think high metabolism is more frequent than the folks who skip meals. Lots of thin people eat more than fat people. But they also ride bicycles or do sports (burning lots of calories) and have high metabolism.
I was the guy people used to think about like OP’s brother. When you see me hog down, it’s because I haven’t put a single calorie in my mouth up until then.
I was like this and was eating a shit ton so some people at some point in their lives have the super metabolism.
As usual, weight is driven by Calorie in - Calorie out. If it’s positive you gain weight, if it’s negative you loose weigt.
Your brother is a tall, young male, all of that would point toward a relatively high calorie out also without knowing him in details it’s hard to evaluate. There is always that person taking desert twice when out, but skipping lunch on regular day while doing a lot of sport.
Calories in - calories out is true, but people often have the wrong idea about it. It’s very much not ‘what you eat’ - ‘exercise’. Like you say, being a tall young man probably indicates a decent base calorie expenditure.
Most people are aware that maintaining muscle mass spends more calories than maintaining fat stores (whose purpose is to provide calories during a famine!) but for many people the main uses of the calories they consume is to maintain body temperature. There’s indications that who are obese maintain a lower core temperatures during the day, which uses up less energy.
How many calories are spent on maintaining body temperature varies between individuals by up to 600kcal. So it possible that you and I eat the exact same diet, and you go for a two hour walk every evening while I scroll my phone on the couch, and I’ll lose weight and you’ll gain it.
And even in a sedentary lifestyle there’s a large variety of energy expenditure. Studies on esports are not conclusive yet, there’s some pretty dumb stuff sponsored by gaming companies that say shit like “one hour gaming = 1000 situps”. But more reputable studies suggest a more modest 50-100% increase in calorie expenditure compared to just sitting (so, the same as standing up or perhaps a gentle walk). And just fidgeting, changing posture and shifting in your seat can use up 350kcal
So it’s perfectly possible for OP’s brother to not do much obvious activity, and still use up the equivalent of a couple of big macs or 7 cans of cola, compared with a less fidgety friend with a more ‘efficient’ metabolism.
this is actually misinformation that’s already been debunked. I recommend reading my other comment thread
yeah. when my metabolism was like this I was not sedentary but was not into sport. mosquitoes loved me (and still do) and they detect carbon dioxide so my bet is just more resting calorie burning or just an inneficient digestive system and maybe both.
I know a guy who could eat butter raw without gaining a gram. Because his intestines simply don’t process any fats. He has problems dealing with proteins, too. So he has to eat smaller helpings all day long.
