To think I shouldn't be THIS heavy??

[Lotsofsausage]

So to start, I know I am no supermodel. Fairly tall at 5'8, size 14, smaller waist, medium bust. Fairly curvy arse/ thighs but toned. I am fit and strong and exercise 4-5x per week, including strength training.

Now I know measurements and photos are a better gauge than the scales, and muscle is meant to weigh more than fat (but I thought that was bullshit).....I am 14.5 stone! I have a friend with the same body measurements as me and same height and she is TWO STONE lighter.
Can some people just be 'heavy'???

MummaDeeze, have you tried fasting?

I just don't believe a slice of organic wholemeal bread triggers anything. Other than the nom reflex.

You start believing pretty quick when it happens to you.

Oh, I used to binge and purge as a young dancer. That's because as a teenager I didn't understand what calories were and I didn't know any better. To counterbalance Chinese grandmothers and brutally honest brothers cutting us down to size, let's add 'dance school logic'... which is right up there with fat logic and bro logic in terms of dangerous stupidity.

Binges are rooted in the mind. No, a piece of bread can't magically make you binge- unless you sincerely believe it can, then hell yes it can.

Btw I doubt any one who has never had food issues would find themselves on this thread. Well, some- e.g. my nutritionist friend got into the field after her cousin succumbed to anorexia nervosa- but most people who get het up about this topic have been through the wringer and come to their own conclusions the hard way, I suspect.

Ok. A slice of homemade wholemeal toast and peanut butter makes me feel full until 1, when I eat lunch. I think it has about 250 calories. It's a perfectly fine breakfast, and I find it less boak making than endless eggs or fasting.

I have low blood pressure and no diabetes.

Btw I doubt any one who has never had food issues would find themselves on this thread

I have no food issues. But I admit I eat toast and pasta which I immediately attracts criticism. Think about it.

Well, you are very fortunate. I'm also able to eat ok now.

I love peanut butter. After my run, nothing beats peanut butter on a banana with a boiled egg. However, a jar of peanut butter can contain 3500-5000(!) calories. If someone is bingeing, that could be two or more days of calories in one fell swoop. So it might not make sense for everyone to keep that kind of stuff in their house.

Ok. A slice of homemade wholemeal toast and peanut butter makes me feel full until 1, when I eat lunch. I think it has about 250 calories. It's a perfectly fine breakfast, and I find it less boak making than endless eggs or fasting.

Fazackerley, I don’t doubt the above is true. You evidently have decent insulin sensitivity. When I used to have ‘healthier’ wholemeal toast for breakfast, to start with I found it impossible to have one, it would be several. When I managed to walk away from my meal, I’ll be ok for 1.5-2h, after which point I would experience a slump in energy, tiredness, then hunger will start. Now, what can I eat? I would go hunting for food and sometime eat the equivalent of a full meal mid-morning. Such a waste of time and energy.

If I have a three-egg omelette, I am properly full until 2-3pm. Don’t even think of food in between.

This is how my body works. I wish I could have anything, but I can’t.

I have no food issues. But I admit I eat toast and pasta which I immediately attracts criticism. Think about it.

I haven’t criticised you, Fazackerley. You don’t suffer any ill effects from eating while bread or pasta, good for you. You are the lucky one. Enjoy them!

Does peanut butter contain sugar? Sorry it’s not something I typically eat. I remember it tasting sweet.

It is does, there is your answer. Nuts on their own, you can only have so much. I mean two handfuls if really trying.

Not the peanut butter I eat. Some does.

I don't binge.

I eat brown toast and peanut butter.

Fgs that is normal.

Listen to yourselves.

Haha Rivers, I wasn’t in the slightest surprised you used to be a dancer. You have a dancer’s body, graceful and slender. I always wanted to dance, but I’ll be like a bull in a china shop. Not the mention the propensity to put on weight will automatically disqualify me from any professional dancing career.

My daughter does dancing now, she luckily inherited my tall and lanky DH’s genes, so weight is not an issue for her. She does like her sugar buns and bread lol
I am pleased for her that she is not going to have to fight her weight all her life like me or my Mum.

Fazackerley you ARE normal and that’s how you are supposed to be, unless you have insulin resistance. You don’t, so it’s alien to you. It is a reality for me.

This thread has been quite an eyeopener for me and I'm still non-the-wiser.

I'm 5'5 and weight 49kg - at least that's what I weighed a few months ago when was weighed at the GP for nothing related.

I'm continuously told by people I'm too thin, yet I've never had an 'issue' with food and I eat far more than Paradise does - I'd be ravenous on what you've said your diet is.

A typical day for me would be:

Breakfast - slice of wholegrain toast with scrambled egg

lunch - soup or sandwich (admittedly sometimes neither if busy at work)

Dinner - Jacket with beans and cheese, stirfry with chicken and blackbean sauce, homemade quiche with salad.

On a weekend I will have fish and chips from the chip shop (yes a small portion as frankly the normal is obscene and the chips could feed four!) and on a Sunday I have a carvery as there's a fab one just up the road.

I take no exercise as my job is sedentary.

Reading this thread I should be triple my weight at least?

waffle having a sedentary job does not exclude you from exercise - you do it outside of work.

I am similar in build, have a sedentary job and run, cycle and swim.

Not going to say what I eat.

waffle having a sedentary job does not exclude you from exercise - you do it outside of work.

Well quite - I'm not actually so stupid that I think my sedentary job means I can't to exercise.

The point I was making is that I'm classed as underweight, yet eat lots, albeit don't do any exercise.

It's no mystery. It's all science. You eat at a level that maintains you at 49kg which for your height is roughly 1400cal a day (don't know your age or other factors which might influence this).

tdeecalculator.net/result.php?s=metric&g=female&age=35&kg=49&cm=161&act=1.2&f=2

Oh, and you are not underweight according to BMI but at the low end of the healthy range with 18.9, unless I made a mistake converting your height to metric.

But Paradise eats far less than me (and I'd be ravenous) yet claims she's trained herself to eat whatever she wants - and I'll say absolute rubbish and she has an eating disorder - it is NOT natural to starve yourself which is what she is doing - yes her stomach has shrunk - yes she's cut out sugar re: diabetes but the reason she has lost weight is because she eats so little - Paradise - your diet is not the norm and shame on you peddling it - there are many posters with eating disorders who will listen to the rubbish you're peddling - your diet is NOT normal.

My diet is nothing extraordinary. Indeed, I eat more than Dr Fung’s obese patients do on their non-fast ordinary days. And more still than Dr Mosley recommends for people with high blood sugar. It has to be a particular type of food to regulate insulin though.

There is zero starving going on. I cannot tolerate hunger, as in not at all. Yet this type of food satiates me. I have explained the longer periods between meals, good for insulin levels to go down.

If you are the thin ‘ectomorph’ type, please ignore the advice I share, as it doesn’t apply to you. The thread is about naturally heavy people, not people who are extremely light and trim. I imagine they try to eat more to put on weight, but as the calorie theory works so well, they stay at their light self despite the cake they are putting away.

All I did was move away from refined carbs, gradually. I didn’t train myself to starve. My food intake reduced naturally over time as I started to feel less and less hungry. I still have to be careful as to the type of food I eat.

If I start eating dessert and white bread like ‘normal people’, my appetite will return to ludicrous levels pretty quickly. Same as sluggishness, mental fog and rolls of fat on my back. Why do I want to do that?

If uncontrollable weight gain has never been a problem for you, I can’t see how any of my experiences can possibly apply.

Please disregard me in the same way as I do posters who tell me they eat a whole pizza for a meal and stay size 8. Not for me.

I do get what @ParadiseInDisguise is saying

I can't have pringles/cake/bread in the house because bread almost triggers me. I can eat 6 pieces of toast and still be hungry. Yet if I go low carb which I probably should again I stop craving, my eating is more rational and I don't get hungry. The more protein and fat I eat, the more satiated (is that the word?!) I am, and the less I want to eat or snack. Doing properly low carb I had to force myself to eat as I wasn't hungry

I do know my blood sugar drops low very quickly. For example I had porridge at 6.30am one day, then 2 Jaffa cakes about 9am. At 9.45am I was on a break at work and fainted, they gave me a mars bar and glucose gel and still couldn't get my sugars up (I was the same as a kid)

My eating is often irrational and disordered and I need to look to going back towards low carb as for ME it's much better

I think if you've never had a weight issue, or had to ban a food from the house then it's trickier to get it

You'd best add me to the nonsense peddling pile with Paradise then, because low carb is the only thing that has come close to helping me control my cravings, binging, starvation, blood sugar and weight. I'm NOT starving - been there, done that. If i feel tempted to starve myself (and i still do occasionally) i go eat something high fat/protein.

The satiety comes mainly from the protein, yes. It is the higher levels of protein keeping you full that let many people succeed on low-carb approaches.

I wouldn't eat stuff like crisps because there's zero nutritional benefit and it's empty calories, not because of the carbs/salt/sugar/whatever per se, but the end result is the same as if I cut it out for anti-carb reasons.

(Potatoes in their natural form, cooked simply, are wonderful and nutritious, though. The best carbs in my opinion. But I do have a lot of Irish blood. )

Fat satiates too, Rivers. It's not just the protein. You'd struggle to do a low carb AND low fat diet, I think.

I think Paradise got her knickers in a twist over some of her comments earlier up the thread 😁 but I'm totally with her on the high fat / high protein / minimal carbs thing. It's the best approach for me too, and one that I'll be getting back to once I'm not pregnant and dealing with bl**dy hormones and everything else 😑

Fazackerley is indeed lucky enough to be 'normal' with her wholemeal toast and peanut butter. It's just a shame she can't understand that for some people, a slice of toast - even if it IS brown and organic - is to a carb-addict like a shot of whisky is to an alcoholic. You don't get people saying to alcoholics, "well I can drink one glass of wine and stop, why can't you??" (at least I hope they wouldn't be so ruddy insensitive).

Jason Vale's book 'The Diet Trap' is interesting, and explains how refined sugar, wheat, etc., are in essence just as addictive to alcohol if you're that way inclined.
I couldn't care less for alcohol, and hardly drink the stuff at all - it does not trigger anything addictive in my brain. But if I keep anything bread-related in the house, it won't last a day. I could eat 6 slices of "healthy, wholegrain, low-GI, whatever" bread for breakfast, and I'd still come prowling back within an hour or so to finish the loaf. That's not just because I 'think' myself into bingeing, that's because I'm addicted to the stuff.