Two thirds of adults in England are obese or overweight. It would make as much sense to ask what is different about the other one third.

[H0TK]

This was a comment I read elsewhere. I thought it was an interesting comment.

Rather than wondering what is wrong with overweight people and why they eat like they do. What is different about the people who are not overweight?

I’m in my 60’s and been slim all of my life and never been on a diet.
I think overweight people eat more, but only by a teeny tiny amount. So for example if you eat an extra 100 calories a day it’s not much but over a year you will gain about 10lb.
Carry on doing that for 10 years and you will be obese.

I do think hormones and genetics have a role to play. I've got 4 half sisters, the two on my Dad's side are naturally slim and have never been overweight. The two on my Mum's side were skinny as children and into early adulthood but did get obese as adults, mainly due to ill health. They've both been slim again at various times, but it's a struggle and they have to work at it.

Mum was thin all her life, though she bulaemic as a young adult (including just before being pregnant with me, I do wonder if this had some kind of genetic impact on me).

I was a chubby child, 13 stone at 16 and have battled with weight my whole life, I've been slim a few times but only with serious effort (keto or, currently, Mounjaro) and it's never stuck, my default is fat it seems. I do have an under active thyroid, but I don't think that's the whole problem as it's generally controlled by medication.

As a child I thought about food all the time and felt like I was always hungry. This never really went away.

I think we may see this change slightly.

Stereotypically, my generation was brought up to clear our plates, eat everything you were given, be grateful (someone somewhere is starving etc) and generally taught to eat far more than necessary. Holidays and birthdays required big special meals to cram in even more calories and so on.

Now, more people are raising their DC to recognise their own bodies cues, eat sensibly etc. Hopefully this will become the norm.

There’s increasing research to suggest it is genetics. Our ‘set’ weight varies between different people and one person could eat exactly the same as someone else and absorb more calories from it.

This is double offensive when you understand that obesity is much higher in holocaust survivors than in the average populations they returned to.

Perhaps you are saying the survivors somehow lack self discipline?

I think there is something in this. I used to live in affluent west London and everyone looked sleek and slim. I moved to the North and my job takes me into less affluent places- very overweight people who move slowly and use mobility aids relatively young. It wasn’t always like this-I grew up very poor in the 1970s and on,y one overweight kid in the class.
I’ve always been slim and never dieted. My kids are the same. I honestly think it’s down to portions and not much snacking. We always eat well yet my kids told me when they went to uni, their portions were half the size of other people’s. But we ate what we wanted-crisps and ice cream in moderation. Sweets at mealtimes. But the bulk of food is home cooked. I also don’t snack at work-there is an endless supply of cakes, biscuits and sweets so could easily be the size of a house if I wanted those things.

I'm sorry - it is an interesting question, but I'm not sure that this is the place for it to be asked. If the point of your post was "slim people tell us why, in your opinion, you are slim" then that's ridiculous. These people don't know why they are slim and others aren't; they know they are slim and they attribute it to certain characteristics. It may or may not be this.

If your point was, let's change the way we study human weight and the policies that we put in place for managing it on a population level, then I agree, let's study,.scientifically, large groups of slender people to see if there is a commonality to why they are the way they are. But the two are very different. One slender person, or even lots of slender people, telling you why they think they are thin is of no probative value whatever.

Perhaps the first thing to say is that, generally speaking, women put on weight a lot more easily than men. I'm one of those annoying slim people, the same waist size i was 50 years ago. And I put much of that down to good fortune. But I think there are a few other factors. First, I'm vegetarian, and as someone said to me a long time ago, "I've never met a (very) fat vegetarian". Next to no processed food. Absolutely no biscuits, cake, crisps, fuzzy drinks, all that junk the supermarkets are full of. Like that wise man said:

"Eat food; not too much, mostly plants"

I eat a fair amount of carbs (bread, pasta etc), though. I like beer too 😀, but like the bread, I make my own. I agree with the PP who spoke about big portions. And how big is a portion of chips these days, compared to my childhood? Over twice the size! When my DS visits, I feel like I'm feeding him all the bloody time!

I would question how this research is funded. If it was genetics then there would have always been 2/3s of obese people.

Unhealthy food is off the hook if we can blame it all on genetics.

I think takeaways and portion sizes are the biggest factors.

I live in quite a remote area. We didn't have access to these things for much longer and as a whole it was noticeable that the population was slimmer. But it is changing.

As a previous poster said, stress reaction is a factor. If I am stressed I eat less not more.

I have never dieted and I'm reasonably slim. I could be seen as eating what I like but I have also never eaten a whole packet of biscuits. I'm quite surprised at work when people discuss this kind of behaviour (when not dieting).

I'd say I eat a biscuit pretty much every day though so I am eating more than women on diets. I think the yo yo approach messes with your metabolism and I really hope weight loss injections will be successful in changing this.

It does seem an odd coincidence to me that a sudden change in people’s genetics giving them a propensity to put on weight also happened to coincide with the first point in human history where, in the developed world at least, physical labour stopped being the norm, and food became very cheap, freely available on literally every street corner, and massively calorie dense due to processing techniques and the affordability of sugar.

It’s genetics in the sense that we’re basically just chimps, genetically predisposed to overeating and laziness. They’re survival mechanisms. Like most mammals, we evolved in food scarcity, so we all have inbuilt systems for ensuring that we gorge when food is plentiful so that we can sustain ourselves on our fat reserves when it’s scarce. The problem most of us have is that food is always plentiful, and the scarce times to burn our fat reserves never come. It’s not genetics in the sense that a whole subset of people have entirely different metabolisms which mean they either get fat or don’t get fat.

I think we all know what people are doing right. Balanced diet, exercise, portion control.

I think possibly a more portent question is why people are doing what they're doing, if they are overweight. Mental health related and use fooe to feel better? No time to cook or exercise due to working hours? Can't afford fresh food? Don't know how to cook it?

I don’t think comments about concentration camps are appropriate to this thread.

I'm not curvy so not prone to massive weight gain but have had times in my life when I have been heavier (though not overweight).

So I personally think genetics play quite a big part. I will say that when I've been heavier it's often been when I've had a mood disorder (PND, depression/anxiety)

In terms of my day to day - I exercise 6 mornings a week (DH does the school run and I get up early) and I find that helps me manage my mood, suppresses my appetite and gives me an endorphin lift so I'm not looking to "treat myself" so much.

Breakfast is always a homemade smoothy with frozen fruit, overnight oats, oatmilk and honey. Lunch is often homemade veg soup and a piece of bread and butter (winter) or salad in the summer, sometimes a sandwich or something but i always make these at home, mostly because i dont like the unnecessary cost of buying lunches out. Eat what I want for dinner, sometimes homemade and healthy, sometimes frozen pizza! I snack on fruit and don't drink alcohol often.

Oh and I'm crap about drinking water but do find that when I drink more water I eat less... need to go and drink some water actually 😅

I have a few slim friends (most of them are overweight like me). I have observed that with the slim ones they are controlled most of the time. I don't think it's necessary easy for them or that they don't hear the same "food noise" as I do. I think they are just better at ignoring it because their image is more important to them than mine is to me. They also dress well and make the effort with styling hair, make up etc whereas I'm more lazy. Their strong desire to look good helps them to have that self control that I sometimes lack around food.

My most slim friend says she weights herself every day and has since being a teen, though got criticised by her parents for doing so. But if her weight goes up significantly over longer than about a week, she nips it in the bud straight away.

I imagine a good proportion of them find the normalisation of obesity abhorrent.

Yes I should have written partly due to. I found the book Why We Eat (Too Much) interesting.

Genetics aren't independent of environment though. A change in environment will affect people differently due to their genetics.

If it was genetics then there would have always been 2/3s of obese people.

This is an over simplification of genetics. Firstly, obese people tend to have more children than slim people. So if there is an genetic proponant you already have it increasing in populations through Darwin's evolution.

Secondly, genetics do not exist in isolation. For example, if you have genetics that respond strongly the UPF then you would have been fine in 1800 when there were none, but you are fucked now when they are everywhere.

This is yet another scientifically illiterate point. If you go back hundreds of years people in any given population were not uniformly "nourished". Some were fatter than others because broadly the same genetics were in play. It is probable that it is only when food became cheap that those genetics had the opportunity to cause greater variations and the expression of weight gain in more people.

I'm not saying it is genetics, by the way, just that your point doesn't tell us anything about whether or not it is.

I’ve always been very slim. I’m not as slim as I was but I expect I would still be very slim to most.

Part of it is absolutely genetic. I take after my dad’s side. His sisters and mum were all really slim. Even for people brought up in wartime.

I can never eat a lot in one go. I’ve almost never eaten a 3 course meal. Usually I can only manage one course even if I would like a desert.

I exercise a lot - through work, hobbies etc - just generally an active lifestyle. It’s still harder as I’ve got older. I’m bigger than I was.

It was never the done thing in my family to eat loads of shite. No take aways except fish and chips. Pretty simple - even boring - meals. so I very rarely have take out as an adult.

I prefer savoury to sweet so will happily turn down cake.

Now I’m older I have to make more effort and watch what I eat. I eat small portions. Usually chicken or fish. I also like being slim more than I want to eat.

I don’t know if I have less food noise than others - I don’t think so. I love food. I think about food a lot.

Sport and physical activity regularly and from a young age, home cooked meals, moderation and, undoubtedly, genetics.

I love good food and I love to eat. When I was growing up we had a very good diet at home, living in London we walked everywhere, and dad encouraged each of us to play a sport etc. Thankfully neither I nor my sisters ever had any hang ups about food or weight etc, and I think our environment had a lot to do with that. Genetics too of course. These are two things that people can’t really change (at least not easily).

On a really good day according to my Fitbit I walk about 8 miles or so but it can fluctuate. I walk about 2 miles to the office each day from the train station and the same again at the end of the day, plus I go for a run twice a week. I don’t go near a gym or any kind of work out, nor am I much interested in fast food or ultra processed foods. I’m 5’4” and weigh consistently just under 9 stone which is perfect for me.

Some were fatter than others in unequal societies because they had greater access to food. There’s absolutely no evidence if we look at e.g. the different tribes lesser contacted peoples around the world who by and large have the same access to the same diet that two thirds of them within the tribe will just be fat and a third of them will just be slim.