To ask you all a question about weight?

[Onceinabuemoon]

If you are slim and in good shape. What's your diet like? Do you eat a healthy diet, do you exercise regularly and so on? What I mean is do you work at keeping in shape, even if it's not difficult for you personally? Or are you slim but live on coffee and fags?!

If you are overweight or know you eat a bad diet and don't exercise, do you feel a bit rubbish? Or are you bigger but feel healthy and great?

The reason I'm asking is although I've never been overweight, I've always been bigger than I'd like upper end of a healthy weight. I eat what I want and don't really exercise and I don't really feel particularly healthy. Tired a lot, bad pms, feel unfit.

I can lose weight ok if I try and have often lost a stone but find it a real drag, hate limiting calories, hate cutting out food groups. Always put it back on. I figured I'm going to try a different way. Instead of disliking my body and trying to change it, I'm going to try and forget altogether but try eating better and exercising to feel healthier in the hope things will fall into place.

I'm just interested to hear how others manage their diet/weight really.

[Rainbunny]

I'm very slim on paper (BMI 19.5) but in RL I don't look skinny (32E breasts and I'm very short). I do exercise quite a bit but only in the last 12 years or so (I'm in my late thirties) mostly so I can be better at a sport I love competing in.

Having been a "non-exerciser" who became an "exerciser" I can say that exercise has had a minimal impact on my body size TBH. I look better because I have more defined arm and leg muscles etc... (although a decade of pilates ab type exercises have not produced a visible ab muscle on my belly ever!) What I'm saying is that in the end it's all about diet in terms of body size, exercise is not a magic bullet for weight loss.

I know there are slim people who eat their own body weight everyday but that's not me, I have a noticeable smaller appetite than other people but again I'm short. It's also worth remembering that our metabolisms really do start slowing in our thirties to forties and I have noticed that a few pounds are creeping up on me recently.

Gimmicks don't work for me nor diets where a food group is excluded, the one and only trick that has ever worked for me consistently is to remember to look at the palm of your hand - a serving size of protein for you should be about that size and no bigger. Next time you're at a dinner with family/friends, look around and you'll notice how many people are eating more than they need - not heaps more but subtly more, such as more protein than would fit in their palms. I think this is actually a root cause of widespread obesity these days, not people endlessly stuffing their faces with junk food but the fact that as a society we eat subtly bigger servings now.

[paxillin]

I find no snacking at all, only eating when really hungry and cycling/ using stairs keeps me slim. If I snack, stop cycling or take lifts and escalators I shoot up to upper end of healthy weight in weeks.

[ShotsFired]

@WomblingThree I read the Telegraph link you provided Boris. Dieting didn't make him fat. He lost weight on every diet. Stopping dieting and going back to stuffing his face as normal made him fat. Swapping food for vast quantities of alcohol made him fat. Eating less and moving more does not make you fat.

It feels like this is quite semantic - "diets" in the commercial sense don't tend to work or else we'd all be lithe little fillies and the owners of Slimming World would be even richer than they are. "Diets" in the sense of eating well and appropriately do.

e.g. Eating full fat yoghurt is arguably better than eating low fat diet yoghurt but which is filled with sugar. But the full fat stuff is also bad if you eat gallons of it at every meal.

[buggerthebotox]

I'm 57, about 10st I think. I eat anything I like-just small amounts of it.

I'm quite fit and work out 3 times a week as well as walking for an hour a day. In today's vanity sizing I'm usually a 10.

I aim for lb a week based on 1200 cals plus exercise. I think my tdee is 1300 on sedentary days; I never expend the "magic" 2000 cals, however. I usually come in just under, no matter how much exercise I've done.

Getting older is a pita! I've lost weight over the past year, but weight seems to settle on my norks and upper belly now. It used to be belly, thighs and arms.

This is it now, in terms of lifestyle.

[toffeeboffin]

TheSeaTheSkyTheSeaTheSkyyyyyy

LOVE your username
🐷

[toffeeboffin]

I totally agree with the age vs weight loss thing too.

I'm 35 and it's taken six months of hard work to lose 20lbs. 1400 per say, oodles of veg, lentils and chickpeas and the like. I know it's still good but in my twenties I'd have lost that in six weeks. Same diet, same exercise etc.

It's brutal.

[toffeeboffin]

Per day, not say

[NewspaperTaxis]

This thread would be neater if only the slim ones replied, as requested by OP!

Anyway, I'm not slim, but was for a while. My tip is: those who are slim because they are slim. Their fat cells are efficient, so they don't need to eat much. If you are fat, you are not fat because you are eating loads. You are eating loads because you are fat - those inefficient fat cells just aren't getting the message that you're full.

It takes six months to a year of healthy eating - NOT diet - to turn those inefficient fat cells around. Don't go hungry, it's not about that. Eat to capacity. Just eat tasty, healthy stuff. Even then, you'll be thinking, what's the secret? I'm not losing much weight. Then, after a while, it comes off, the 'new' fat cells get the message and you can go all day on not much.

Sugar and such snacks bugger up your thermostat and it takes a while to get back to where you should be. Sneaky fat cells lie in wait for you to go back to where you were, they kind of hibernate. You have to freeze them out longterm.

[NameChanger22]

I was a size 6 to 8 for 15 years. To stay that size I had to skip a lot of meals, I hardly ever age dinner. I also exercised like a lunatic. I also smoked to curb my appetite. It was a miserable existence.

Now I'm a size 12. I still exercise at least an hour a day. I mostly eat what I want, with plenty of treats, but also lots of vegetables. I prefer being fatter, I'm happier now.

[flatbreads]

Ok I am very slim, 5 ft 4 " and weigh just under 8 stones at 51 years old. Size 6.

I graze constantly and struggle to eat big meals, I never eat beyond feeling full, stop immediately and don't care if it means not clearing my plate.

I run 4 or 5 times a week and walk a fair bit too. Have been this size and weight all my life with barely any fluctuations whatsoever. I do think I am a bit abnormal though, most of my friends are overweight. I have utmost sympathy as must be so hard to lose weight. I eat fairly healthily I would say.

Not sure if that is helpful or just annoying!

[rightsofwomen]

I have not found any correlation between age and weight.
I am the same weight I have been all my adult life. I am nearly 47 and perimenopausal.

[WhatToDoAboutThis2017]

I'm naturally slim. I eat a lot of chocolate and crisps and fast food and never exercise.

Only time I get put on weight was due to a medication, and as soon as I was off it I lost it all.

I'm aware it's a very enviable position to be in.

[bruffin]

I'm 35 and it's taken six months of hard work to lose 20lbs
Last year at 53 i easily lost nearly 2 stone low calorie and swimming up to 4 hours a week.
Since then i have not lost weight, nor have i gained weight but i am not dieting.
Our local leisure centre has recently installed and egym and a bodytrax machine. Turns out even though i still weigh obese, i have a very high muscle score and do not score red for anything other than my actual weight. My visceral fat score is 10 and the bodytrax does not show excess fat round my stomach. It says I am a solid build bordering on standard muscular.

[stevie69]

I'm slim with fairly nice (well I think so) muscle definition.

I eat healthily —proteins, complex carbs, fruit, vegetables, very little sugar, no alcohol—just about ALL the time.

I go to the gym and lift heavy weights four times a week.

Stray too far from the above and I will head straight back to being a size 20. Nothing wrong with that per se but it doesn't make me happy.

I work SO hard EVERY single day. Is it worth it? You bet

S xx

[OCSockOrphanage]

I'm over 60 and a size 10/12 (bosoms!) I have never been overweight, but I have always been careful and quality-conscious about food.

So I eat fruit, home-made granola (no sugar, lots of nuts and seeds) with two dessertspoons of full fat Greek yoghurt for breakfast, home made soup and bread in winter and goats cheese on a cracker at lunch in summer, and probably more fruit or a couple of tomatoes. Then dinner with family, generally fish/meat/pulses and veg/salad but not many carbs. No puddings or cake, but a mini Magnum after Sunday lunch most weeks! Chocolate is two or three squares of dark chocolate every few days, and wine most evenings.

I have a large young dog, so walk every day for an hour maybe more, plus I do Pilates (with weights) once, sometimes twice a week, plus housework and gardening. I find that I am flabbier than I used to be, but I suppose that's to be expected and I am resigned to the inevitability of age and wrinkles!

[Stillwishihadabs]

I am 41BMI 21-22. During the week I have only coffee and fruit for breakfast, salad or soup at lunch and a normal (but not huge) evening meal no calorie containing drinks (black coffee, herbal tea, water). At the weekend I am more relaxed but only have pudding once a week. A run twice a week and always take the stairs as well as 3 minute ab workout every morning. It's worth it to me to stay in my size 8 and 10s.

[WhereDoAllTheWildThingsGo]

Seems as though staying thin for some was a totally miserable existence!

[Ollivander84]

Overweight, but I'm fit/strong and built like a powerlifter. 5ft 10 and broad shoulders etc (size 14/16 at 15.8 stone)
I exercise regularly, spin class, weights, horse riding
It's complicated by me being always tired as I take 4 x Zyrtec a day and I'm immunosuppressed. My calories worked out to lose weight doesn't fit with what actually works
Always hungry but today's food was
B - protein shake, tea
L - chicken breast in a tortilla with salad
T - a fish cake and steamed veg

[peachgreen]

@NewspaperTaxis Reread the OP. It also asked for opinions for overweight people.

[revolution909]

@WhereDoAllTheWildThingsGo not really, it's hard, and yes sometimes I'd love to have the whole pastry... But I don't know losing weight has given me the confidence I never had. Exercise makes me feel empowered!

[Groupie123]

I've always been overweight/obese and tbh you would never think it to look at me. I'm tall and toned (ie muscular). The biggest I have ever been is a size 18 (with a 30 inch waist). I'm now a 12, have a 25 inch waist, 40 inch hips, but am still in the overweight range for my height. Some of us have more muscle in proportion to fat or find it easy to gain it and so are heavier.

[Stillwishihadabs]

Not really I like being slim, I can run faster, clothes look better, I have more energy. None of this makes me miserable, but not being able to run quickly or wear nice things definitely would.

[Groupie123]

My diet has always been clean (I cook from scratch, count calories etc).

[AlmostAJillSandwich]

I flit between about 16 stone 9 and 17 stone 3 lately.
Always been big, was a chubby toddler, was briefly "skinny" aged 6 as i went through a really fussy eating stage but then again been overweight since 7. Been brought up on portions too big in size my whole life so a normal portion isn't enough to fill me to the point of being satisfied and i will quickly feel hungry again after.
Add in PCOS, OCD which has restricted me to the point of being housebound, Depression and the only thing in my life i get any enjoyment out of, is eating food that i enjoy. Unfortunately the foods i enjoy, aren't healthy, and due to my disability i am not really able to cook, and convenience foods are full of fat and sugar. This has lead to being formally diagnosed with compulsive over eating disorder, with episodes of bulimia in a desperate attempt to maintain weight, never mind lose it. Also due to my OCD which is about using toilets, i can't drink very much as using the toilet causes significant distress, and takes over an hour for a wee, so having a glass of water when i'm hungry, isn't an option.
I have an oversensitive bladder nerve that gets triggered when i'm standing up or in a sitting position, making me feel desperate for a wee, even if my bladder is virtually empty, and if i don't lie down i would have an accident, so exercising is really not something i can do, or else i'd be running for a wee every half hour and it would take me an hour each time to go.
Currently waiting on blood test results, a test 3 months ago showed underactive thyroid, if the repeat shows the same, i will be put on thyroxine, which should help me lose weight, but im insulin resistant due to PCOS, so already gain weight pretty much by looking at bad food and its virtually impossible for me to lose.
I do occasionally manage to stick to an altered diet, but i don't like the taste of most salad vegetables, and i have to avoid fruit because of the sugar content, even natural sugars make me gain weight very easily and the sweetness makes me crave more sugary foods so it's for the best to avoid them. I'm also not a big meat eater, don't eat fish, so i struggle to get the necessary protein as i've yet to find a meat substitute i actually like.
Plus i'm broke trying to survive on £700 a month, crap food is cheaper. I don't feel healthy at all, i worry about my heart, my arteries, my organs, but with so many complex issues building in to me being this weight, feels impossible to do anything.
And i look awful, i carry my weight badly, i'm short, and my BMI is roughly 40.

[frieda909]

Instead of disliking my body and trying to change it, I'm going to try and forget altogether but try eating better and exercising to feel healthier in the hope things will fall into place.

That's what's been working for me lately.

In January I was 13.5 stone and determined to be 11 stone by this summer. I started working out like crazy and eating more healthily and lost a stone pretty quickly. But I soon found that the fitter and healthier I felt, the less I cared about the numbers on the scales.

I've kept that stone off comfortably but I'm no longer bothered about whether I get to 11 or not. Instead I just want to feel fit and happy. I've focused on making sure I go to the gym at least 3 times a week, and signed up for a half marathon this autumn which I've just started training for. It's a difficult adjustment as I'm so used to yo yo dieting, but I think I'll be so much happier in the long run!