... To surmise that 'naturally skinny' goes hand in with either eating or digestive disorders

[5ChildrenAndIt]

The last counter-example in my circle of friends has just been diagnosed as Coeliac.

I now know no one who is vogue-slim without either food trauma in their past or under medical treatment for digestion or immune disorders.

I'm a bit unsettled by it tbh! Do skinny, healthy and happy people even exist?

'...dramatic outrage burns calories though, squoosh.'

Consider me outraged in that case!

I have just turned 40, I have had 3 children and I am 5ft 4in and a size 6.

I have always been like this.

I usually eat 3 healthy meals a day, but as wish said sometimes I eat less and I am guided by appetite.

Again as wish said, I agree if I fancy some chocolate or cake etc I will eat some. In fact we have plenty of chocolate etc in the cupboard, which the family eats when they feel like it, but doesn't eat just because it is there. This seems to surprise many people who say that they cannot keep such foods in the house as they will just eat it all.

On the subject of eating disorders, I do wish that they weren't associated with being skinny. Of course not everyone who is skinny has an eating disorder but the opposite is also true and not everyone with an eating disorder is skinny.

My sister has been nice and slim throughout most of her life. The only time she wasn't slim and was in fact quite a bit overweight was when she was suffering from bulimia.

Don't agree OP. I know several women age 40-50 who are the same weight as they were in their 20s (size 6-8 and naturally very slim) who eat what they want, don't have eating disorders, and don't have digestive problems. My sister is one of them.

I used to be able to eat what I wanted but after the age of 40 that changed for me - have to really watch it now. It didn't change for her. Bar the things pregnancy does to your boobs, she is the same shape now she was age 18.

Mind you, I think if I lived 30 years ago, I would still be very slim without thinking about it. My parents never ate except at mealtimes and probably never ate in the street in their lives. Whereas I live surrounded by processed high-sugar foods and in a society where eating between meals and eating in public is the norm. So if I don't have the willpower, I get fat.

?People vary in their propensity to gain weight in response to overfeeding, overfeeding is harder to avoid when highly palatable calorie dense food is ubiquitous.
When people become very overweight the mechanisms which regulate food intake are often damaged making it harder to be slim ?

YABU to claim that everyone who is naturally slim has an eating or digestive disorder because some families are naturally slimmer because of genetics. Having said that, just because they are slim doesn't mean they are healthy. They could have high cholesterol which can lead to heart disease or stroke or other health problems.

A lot of the men I know that were naturally skinny often had a rude awakening when they hit their mid thirties. Beer starts to take up permanent residence on their belly.

All the posters saying you know people who are slim and with no EDs, with all due respect, how do you know that for sure?

My bmi is the low end of normal, all the people who know me would probably say I'm just lucky and eat normally, no ed etc. they're wrong I struggled with an ed for most of my adult life and even now can't shift the disordered thinking and that is why I'm so thin. No one would know unless I told them.

I'm in my mid 40s. I've noticed that my appetite has decreased a bit from what it used to be a few years ago. I'm assuming that's natural. I've been the same size 6-8 all my adult life. I eat what I want but I fully realise that what I want seems to be less than what other people might want.

All the posters saying you know people who are slim and with no EDs, with all due respect, how do you know that for sure?

A lot of posters have referred to themselves and I think they know themselves quite well. I am reasonably slim (currently just under 9 stone) but prior to having children I would probably have been what the OP describes as skinny. I was 7 and a half stone and I used to eat a decent amount and a wide variety of foods. I never dieted or even thought about the number of calories I was consuming but I did walk a lot as I didn't drive. I never used to gain any weight regardless of how much I ate even at Xmas when I was eating loads of chocolate and drinking too much booze.

My mum was technically underweight all the time we were young and I have never known her to have an eating disorder apart from indecent enthusiasm for national trust cream teas

Her metabolism just works that way, with reasonable levels of diet and exercise. My three brothers inherited it. Guess which of us inherited from my dad who is an amazing human being and a former rugby prop forward?

That said I think we have a very screwed up relationship with food and body image in both directions, with loads of people eating too much and not recognising morbid obesity, and another section being driven by crazy media images of super skinny.

Healthy diet, healthy exercise and bodies will find their own level. Let's celebrate healthy variety!

I was naturally skinny
now i accept that actually i never sat down, rarely ate three times a day and made mostly healthy choices
i am still thin but the choices are more obvious to me now and i sit a lot more!

Up to the age of late 20's I was naturally skinny. good genes. you sound jealous OP.

You are completely wrong. This is the sort of nasty comment peddled by fat people. I'm not slim now but until my 30s my weight hovered at around 7 stone. I ate a lot and healthily and have no disorders or allergies. Husband is the same and at 60 still has a 32/34waist. Son at 24 is exactly the same and can fit into waist 26 jeans. He is 6 ft and model slim with no effort.

No I don't think you are correct.

I had a friend who was and still is very slim with a lovely figure. I lived with her for a while so I know that she ate properly and there were no signs she had an eating disorder.

In fact come to think of it I lived with a few girls in my first year of Uni who were skinny but ate normally. There was one who definitely had an eating disorder however.

I was a natural size 8 until the menopause,when my waist went up to a 10.

I was happy and skinny until I had my second child. Never dieted, watched my weight or worried about seconds. Ate healthily and walked around 10 miles a day, to and from work with a backpack was 7 miles in itself with a big hill.
I had my second, then I was less skinny but still with a healthy BMI and lifestyle in my mid 30s.
Then life got too full to plan in regular exercise, so I got fatter.
Now I'm in my mid 50s and about a stone and a half overweight.
Yes a lot of people are naturally skinny and healthy, and a lt of overweight people don't exercise enough. Gets harder as you get older I think.

I can't believe some people think you can't be naturally skinny..why on earth not?? I'm size 8, 8ish stone, eat 3 square meals a day + copious amounts of cake. I don't exercise, I'm definitely not a nervous jitterer. My mum, maternal grandmother and great grandmother are all slim..
I went to school with plenty of people with a similar shape who are still the same shape. A couple of them exercise, the rest of us don't.

Why on earth would naturally skinny be such a mystery? Look at Japan ffs, has the whole country got an eating disorder?

It's actually really bloody insulting that you'd look at my body and judge me as anorexic/bulimic/ill or obssessive in some way.

YABVVVVVVU.

'It's actually really bloody insulting that you'd look at my body and judge me as anorexic/bulimic/ill or obssessive in some way.'

But consider who is judging you, and why.
Then dismiss it.
The OP has a circle of friends with medical conditions and disorders and food traumas. That's not the norm for most of my friends. Is it for yours?

I think that there are lots of people, both very slim/skinny and overweight, who have disordered relationships with food, or who use food to deal with emotions, or to exercise personal control when in situations that they feel are not within their control. That can apply to under and over eating.

Food is used to control us as children, from things like feeding routines, particular foods deemed 'treats', being made to 'clear your plate', sadly for some food being withdrawn as a punishment, offering a biscuit to sooth a child with a grazed knee, all these things set patterns that can and do carry over into adult life.

The above, along with societal issues about how 'we' [particularly women] are meant to look, It is no wonder so many people have unhealthy attitudes about eating.

There are so many emotional issues, tied up with eating and body image. I have known of girls/women, who have over eaten in a subconcious attempt to 'hide' or make themselves invisible, or unattractive, in those cases it was related to sexual abuse/assault, nothing to do with being lazy, but self preservation/protection.

Understanding rather than scorn is needed IMO.

We should all be kinder to each other.

'We should all be kinder to each other.'

I think if we were, there'd be a lot less fretting about our outward appearances. From weight to ageing to 'being stylish' or not. Thus far fewer general traumas and fears.

I'm tall, naturally slim (was a size 8 till I had babies, still a size 10) and have no eating issues. Eat what I want when I want. I'm sure it will change at some point as I get older.

So YABU.

YABU. I'm 'naturally skinny'. I'm now in my 40s, weighing pretty much the same as I did in my 20s (size 8). All my life people have made assumptions about me having anorexia, when in fact I eat healthily and would actually love to put on weight.

YABU and rude!

I'm 37, 5'1, a size 6, and weigh about 6.5-7 stone (don't have scales so I rarely weigh myself). I do not have an eating disorder, and I think it's really rude of you to assume this. I have been the same weight (and height, obviously) since my late teens.

I eat three meals a day plus snacks, and don't do any exercise like going to the gym, but I have a fairly active lifestyle in that I walk everywhere (probably at least 30 minutes a day, sometimes twice that).

My weight is probably due to both genetics (my mum and sisters are about the same height and weight, and my dad also had a slim build), and the fact I have a naturally small appetite compared to most people. I would never eat a full packet of biscuits at once, and find most restaurant meals to be too much for me eg: I'd have a main and dessert, but not a starter as well.

I am slim (what might be called a boyish figure - no hips and small breasts), and get called skinny a lot and told I need to eat more, which is really annoying as I eat plenty! I know I am lucky to never have to worry about my weight - if I want a biscuit or a slice of cake, I eat it. But I rarely go back for seconds.

As a PP has said, I think this shows how used society is to people being overweight that a slim build is regarded as 'skinny'.

Who's to say whether someone really does have a high metabolism or rather has some sort of intestinal disorder?

Most people say the former, but that's probably just because it's a more comforting idea.

I suspect it is overwhelmingly the case that people with 'high metabolisms' aren't actually either 1) in constant motion, or 2) generating huge amount of heat, or in any other way actually burning up vast sums of energy.
I suspect most of it is just being shat out unutilised.