to think that the people who have a healthy relationship with food do so because they have a fast metabolism?

[Fuckedoffat48b]

I am half way through my first pregnancy and I have gained… 4lbs. I started the pregnancy at the top end of a healthy weight, have dropped a dress size (!), look and feel great, and have suddenly noticed I have absolutely no guilt whatsoever about what I am eating. I had to increase my caloric intake by about 200-300 calories a day from the very beginning, just to maintain my weight.

Nobody is more shocked than me about this, as this is the first time in my life since I was about 13 that I have honestly been able to eat until I am full, and not gain weight.

It has been an absolute revelation, and made me realise if this is just how all the smug skinnies lecturing about 'just eating until you feel full' feel all the time?! If that is honestly the case then no wonder they have a 'healthy relationship with food' imo.

If food didn't make me fat I would have a healthier relationship with it too. AIBU to think this healthy relationship with food could actually be more body type than mindset after all?

Eat less move more. The whole metabolism thing is a red herring.

If I were you I’d want to be tested for gestational diabetes. Struggling to maintain weight in pregnancy without any other obvious factors (severe sickness etc) would slightly worry me.

In answer to the actual question, I don’t think metabolisms make much difference, certainly not when you reach adulthood. Some people just have more self control than others.

No, I don't think it's necessarily the case. I was always very slim when younger (alas no longer) and it really used to irritate me when plumper friends who were endlessly on some diet they never actually stuck to, said, 'Oh, it's all right for you - you can eat whatever you like and not put weight on.'

Despite my telling them, they chose to ignore the fact that I had never been a big eater and wasn't mad keen on sweet things, whereas they were endlessly eating biscuits, cakes and puddings, etc. One such 'friend' spread a rumour that I was anorexic - because I declined biscuits with coffee at her house! (Very likely custard creams which I'd never want anyway.) But to her, anyone turning down biscuits had to have something seriously wrong with them. It was months before I found out what she'd been saying.

Having said that, I do know someone who had a very fast metabolism. He was extremely slim despite eating like a horse - among other things he would have 5 spoons of sugar in his tea or coffee. He said that when he was a child, his mother always had to leave a sandwich by his bed, since he would invariably wake up hungry in the night.
That sort of extreme must be unusual, though.

My relationship with food improved massively when I was pregnant and even more now that my child is a toddler. I’m a recovered anorexic but always used to worry a little bit about putting on weight, and when I got pregnant it was as if I’d been given permission to eat as much as I wanted, and I ate when I was hungry and treated myself occasionally and it was great. I did actually end up putting on quite a few pounds during pregnancy but it didn’t bother me at all. I lost the weight quite quickly after giving birth, and now that my toddler is mobile and running around I must be burning much more energy as I feel like I can eat anything and not put on weight. I do fluctuate a little bit but it doesn’t me bother at all and now I just see food as fuel so I can keep working/looking after my son/doing yoga and weights etc. It’s quite a nice place to be in.

Now, I know that I won’t always be this busy and I think I’ll keep an eye on what I eat and how much I exercise in the future, but that will be to keep fit and healthy, and not related to controlling my life by controlling my food intake.

One thing I have learnt from all those years of restricted eating, and it’s that if you’re dieting or taking it to the extreme, you become obsessed with food and end up with lots of cravings as your body is starving and just wants you to eat. I had the worst cravings when I was ill, but I’ve not had any for a few years now and it’s so liberating. I guess it’s to do with eating somewhat healthily so your brain functions normally too. That to me would indicate that hardcore dieting isn’t something we’re meant to be doing and that better results are achieved by maintaining a healthy lifestyle (I.e. decent diet and some exercise) even if it takes a bit longer to get to your goal.

Sorry for the novel, I don’t really know how it all works but this is what happened to me.

I don’t mean to burst your bubble OP but in both my pregnancy’s I started off at the lower end or middle of the BMI score. I didn’t gain any weight until well past 20 weeks, yet come 40 weeks I was the size of an elephant. I put on 3 stone by the end of my pregnancies.

I’m 14 weeks this time round and have no intention of eating whatever I like, I’m older this time I know it will be harder to lose the weight.

This is a really interesting thread. Someone (OP?) was asking for people who have lost weight and maintained to come forward?

I have been every BMI under the sun, from 15 (ED) to 25. I maintained a high-healthy BMI for a few years after recovering from the ED before deciding to do something about it - something I could maintain. I adopted Keto, now have a BMI of just under 20 (I don’t weigh myself often at all) and am a size 8 at 5’11. The sacrifice: I don’t eat carbs. Fruit is a very rare indulgence. I can’t remember what potatoes taste like! But, I don’t calorie count, weigh my food or really ‘need’ to weigh myself. I might step on the scales every few months for a quick check and it’s always as expected.

I’ve had to exercise a lot of willpower I suppose. For me it just got to a tipping point wherein being the weight I wanted to be, maintaining that, and being healthy were more important than my previous regime of carbs three times per day.

People often assume I am one of those ‘naturally skinny tall people’ - I am quite happy to correct them!

Comparing history - ie looking at population data over time - can be immensely valuable, from a health planners POV (I'm assuming here that you want the NHS doing things like this, so they can prepare for the likeliest medium-term challenges)

It would be a lot lot more useful to compare children in 2018. Obesity is not uniform across the country, some places have a much higher count. We aren't all larger, some people are. We can't go back to rationing and the joy of traffic less roads to walk everywhere but we can look at why some children are slim in the present and emulate that. I feel average in my office just about in the 'south' I went to a caravan park in the north east and felt like a freak for being so thin. My BMI is 23.....

Huh? How about - People who have a healthy relationship with food are generally a healthy weight.

Smug skinnies - jesus.

There was a programme not long ago where they looked at the diet of a woman who ate unhealthily but was slim. Eg. She likes pasties with salad cream on and would buy loads from McDonald's. They found that after stuffing herself, she'd then naturally not bother to eat for hours and hours without really thinking about it. So it regulated her weight that way

BeautifulWintersMorning
Is it wrong that I really want a pasty with salad cream now...?

Go on you know you want to!

UPDATE: I had a cheese & cucumber with salad cream sandwich instead. And by "a" sandwich I mean 2 sandwiches, obviously.

(I'm a size 10 if anyone is interested. Make of that what you will...)

How about - People who have a healthy relationship with food are generally a healthy weight.
This. It's not rocket science. Healthy relationship with food, not sedentary will probabpy lead to a reasonably healthy weight (which may be more/less depending on build).
Someone eating healthily and who has a healthy attitude to food and who moves around (not counting walking around school as a sign they are 'active') will probably not be overweight and almost certainly wouldn't get obese unless there were substantial medical issues.

there was a doctor on the radio the other day who actually said that the obesity thing is lots more scarmongering than anything as the so called statistics and rise are only part truths. because the increase is infact mainly down to obesitiy only just becoming a researched thing and it only just becoming a researched statistic.and only just become a nhs healthy catorgory.so its actually not as "big" as its said to be.

I'm skinny and have had colleagues remark on how I must have a fast metabolism because I'll eat a really big lunch at work, and then dive into the biscuit tin, and have a big chocolate muffin or something. I assumed I must have too - except when I had to put on weight to start IVF, and started tracking my food using MFP, I found that I was massively overestimating how much I was actually eating. I will almost never eat 3 meals a day because I'm not hungry - so my main meal at lunch means I'm not hungry in the evening and won't have a proper dinner. So my calorie intake was way lower than I thought - once I started making a very conscious effort to eat more, and tracked to make sure I was getting close to 2000 calories a day I DID start to put on weight. But I felt rubbish forcing down food all bloody day that I had no interest in eating.

When I'm stressed or sad then my appetite vanishes completely. So I lost the weight I'd worked so hard to put on, within about 2 weeks of my first miscarriage. I didn't really put it back on because I didn't MAKE myself eat whether I wanted to or not

It's not that I have a fast metabolism - if I ate 2000 cals a day consistently I would put on weight

But my appetite is naturally small. I have no interest in food. It's functional. Weekdays I will tend to get hungry around lunch and eat that as my main meal of the day. But weekends or when working from home I often forget to eat. So my 'eating whatever I want' is just that I don't actually want to eat that much - I don't consciously restrict. It's the opposite - I subconsciously eat less unless I make a very concerted effort to force myself to eat, regardless of whether or actually want to or not

Bananafish I completely understand. I’ve been through phases in my life where I’ve had those comments too and like you when I’m stressed I can’t eat. I’m not a comfort eater as the thought of eating when I’m upset makes me physically sick. At the moment I’m the heaviest I’ve ever been and wasn’t to lose weight so it can change. However the hot weather has put me off food and I’ve lost my appetite, I’ve had one small meal and some healthy veg fruit juice today. This isn’t a bad thing as the weight loss will do me good.

want to*

People don't have a completely even playing field so build, body shape, occupation, hormone balance, underlying health (including medication), gut health etc will all adjust the balance of what they need to maintain a healthy weight.

I'm fortunate that I don't have issues that contribute to weight gain. I grew up with a sensible lifestyle and tend to go for a 3 meals and one snack approach. I like a varied diet. I eat until comfortably full, and rarely until bloated. I naturally rein back after excess. Having a fairly small build means I notice weight gain easily, which means I'm accustomed to noticing the change and tweaking the balance back. I've never "been on a diet". Mindfully reducing sweet/ processed foods, checking portion size and making sure I have a decent range of food restores the balance and has kept me long term at a healthy weight, accompanied by regular exercise. If I don't basically manage my lifestyle to maintain my weight, I will fall into the classic trend of gaining a pound here and a pound there and after a few years wondering why I'm clearly overweight with a big weightloss to go.

Pregnancy was an exception to me. The "first trimester" nausea killed my appetite stone dead. Despite clearly gaining bump early on, I lost 3/4 stone. When my appetite did return halway through, it was accompanied by SPD. Being sedentary through complete exhaustion, followed by the pain of attempting to move significantly affected my maintainence level of calories. In 4 months I gained 50% of my bodyweight, over 4 stones. With hindsight, I craved sugars constantly for energy. By the end when I could barely use my legs, and my hands were pretty useless from carpal tunnel, eating was one of my few pleasures. 2 stones was baby, fluid, placenta, but by defaulting to fairly decent habits and rebuilding my fitness back from an absolute minimum, I did lose all the baby weight within a year. Second time was a similar story although avoided the initial loss as the nausea wasn't so bad or prolonged. Kept moving using crutches. Gained a mere 3 stones, again about 2 stones was of me. Lost it in a similar way and timescale.

Looking at my family, I'm an anomally for being slim at my age. Subtle gains normally creep in by this stage (35+)

Slim is not a guarentee of a heathy lifestyle, but I'd suggest that people with a sustainable, healthy lifestyle protect their metabolism better by not yo-yo dieting, have healthier gut bacteria and are less likely get trapped in a poor health/ weight gain cycle. No guarentees of course!
Positive habits are likely to be subconcious which is why it is presented as simple. Simple and easy are not the same thing.

I have two DSs - one is skinny and 'eats like a horse'. The other is a little chubby and thinks it's unfair his brother can 'eat like a horse'. In reality DS2 eats far more snacks and ssweet stuff, buys sweets with his pocket money, and spends his life curled up in a chair with his laptop and the cat. DS1 wolfs down food when he's starving, eats nothing when he's not, runs around all day long. I reckon if you did a simple CICO test on them both, it would be clear why one is skinny.

I have a friend with a slow metabolism. He's went to various doctors because of it etc...

He's always been pudgy (and at one point genuinely fat) and it really seems incredibly unfair to seem him struggle this much...

So, idk. I don't think you need a fast metabolism to have a healthy relationship with food.

But I do believe that people with a slow metabolism are unlikely to have a... Simple relationship with food. And that it takes much more effort to have a healthy one.

I wish I had a small appetite. I think if it had no consequences I could happily eat every couple of hours. And I find having a big meal in the evening (eg a takeaway) makes me extra hungry the next day. My body/brain just don't regulate my appetite like it seems they do for other people!

@VickieCherry I'm the same.

Doesn't help that I'm short so I really can only eat a tiny fraction of what I would like to. Eating according to my appetite caused me to put on 40 lbs that I'm now working hard to shift

I wish I had a tiny appetite or could "forget" to eat. That's so far from reality it isn't even funny! I could never forget to eat

Hasn't the idea of slow / fast metabolism been pretty much debunked, except in rare medical conditions

Bit

As far as I know?

Not really. People can have very different metabolic rates. Some of the contributing factors (weight, activity, muscle mass...) are things people can control. But there are also other factors.

I think an up to 10% lower (or higher) than average BMR is still possible. (Without having any kind of rare medical condition.)

An up to 20% possible difference between person A and B is quite big imo.

Well I have always had a very fast metabolism and a fairly small appetite, and I would not say I had a 'healthy relationship with food' at all. Quite the opposite - I could eat McDonalds or pizza everyday without changing size or shape at all, and sometimes I did - sometimes both! Suddenly I got to a certain age and my metabolism isn't quite as good, and my appetite not quite as small. I have to actually think about what I eat now and as a consequence I think I have a much healthier relationship with food. Now I would feel a bit guilty if I had a McDonalds for breakfast, pizza for lunch and burger and chips with a milkshake for dinner - and that's probably a good thing!