Why are some people prone to being chubby?

[Scarlet2906]

I don't believe any person is naturally obese without consuming a massive amount of calories either through food, drink or both but I do believe that I am naturally prone to being mildly overweight. I am currently 2st overweight.

I have been thin in the past but only when I was barely eating anything all day. I have to go on a huge calorie deficit to lose even a small amount of weight.

I honestly don't eat any more than people that are an healthy weight and regularly go to bed hungry. I also have a job that must burn a lot of calories as I am on my feet all day and on top of that I walk a lot every week. I regularly walk 2 miles home from work.

Are you the same? Do you think that I might have a problem with my thyroid?

No. I think that just like some people are naturally stick thin while guzzling ice cream every day and eating fry ups, some people are naturally fat. We all have different hormones, different genes, different neurological pathways and different bodies. Our bodies will try and return to that set point. We can cajole them to being thin or fat but really unless it’s where they want to be it will always be tough. It’s just that society has decided that fat people should be punished for this fact and skinny people should be celebrated

I think eating very healthily and avoiding sugar and sweeteners is more important for long term health than being 2 stone overweight personally.

i found ultra processed food caused me to gain masses amount of weight

Yeah I think it's a big factor.

In most cases it's very likely to be the opposite. When all of what people eat is accurately observed over time, in just about all cases, slim people consume a lot fewer calories.

There was a Channel 4 programme some years ago that addressed this very issue and found that the slim people just didn't eat very much.

https://www.channel4.com/programmes/the-secret-lives-of-slim-people

And when they looked at the people who 'couldn't lose weight despite not eating very much' they all ate a lot more than they thought.

Two that I remember especially were a traffic warden who 'only ate salad and was on her feet all day' but wasn't accounting for the fact that she was in and out of Greggs during every shift on the high street and an opera singer who also said she was always on a diet but couldn't lose weight, but they then showed her preparing her breakfast fruit by piling punnets of the stuff into a bowl that you could have done the washing up in.

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=secret+eaters

I also think some of us are more insulin sensitive than others so have more carbs and sugar than we should.

because they are “prone” to enjoying a second or third packet of crisps or chocolate bar

Evidence is showing that gaining weight is not just more calories in than out. Far more complex and some are far more prone than others.
The NHS is miles behind in weight health.

I read something that explained why it was important to keep children’s diets healthy because the number of fat cells a person produces is decided in childhood (or something like that). An obese child will have produced more fat cells and therefore be more prone to being overweight all through adulthood.
Thats a very simplistic explanation but it made a huge amount of sense. They had done a study on it, I’ll see if I can find the link.

So if you were an overweight child, you are more likely to struggle with weight as an adult.

Whilst I know a lot of thin people who enjoy the occasional fry up or enormous ice cream I don't know a single one who consistently consumes more calories than they are burning off.

I do think body types vary and some are more likely to be overweight than others due to several factors, but generally people eat more calories than they realise in a lot of cases. If you aren't eating a good balance of protein, carbs & fats then it's perfectly possible to feel hungry even if you are over enough calories. Aside from metabolic conditions which are rare, reality is there aren't many slim people who eat an abundance of food and magically stay 'naturally' slim.

Definitely ultra processed food has a huge part in this. My DD has always been normal weight, she is fit as a fiddle, one year eating crap in uni has her 8kg up. It is all the rubbish she eats now. She never would have eaten those quantities of UPF before.

There was a crazily interesting documentary on Netflix a couple of months ago about gut health and gut bacteria.
One of the topics discussed in there is that people can eat an identical apple (for example) and take a different number of calories from it. Weight control is biologically harder for some people than others.

It’s about how fast your metabolism is and how many calories you need to sustain yourself. Muscles need more calories so people with higher muscle tissue ratio can eat more without putting weight on. This is one but not the only reason why men on average need more calories to sustain themselves than women.

Metabolism is genetically determined but can be boosted. It slows down with age. In my family, for example, there’s been a lot of obesity without overeating, so I suspect our metabolism is slow. I’ve managed not to put weight on but I’ve always had to watch what I eat (more so as I got older) and I exercise regularly. It’s always been very easy for me to pile on weight.

I have friends who never had to watch what they were eating and are unhappy now in their middle age due to putting weight on. This is likely due to the fact that their metabolism has slowed down but their eating habits might not be the healthiest. Exercise can help boost metabolism, especially regular cardio.

I also think nowadays we eat a lot more than the previous generations. There’s more snacking and more processed food which can mess up blood sugar levels and make one feel permanently hungry.

Genetics plays a huge part as well. My brother is like a bean pole and yet he guzzles coke , eats rubbish all the time and he can't put on an ounce. I know people then who are just prone to putting on weight and it's extremely hard for them to loose it.

I don't think I have ever seen a thin person eating a massive fry up since I was at university, and that would have been me - trained for hours a day doing sport and probably barely ate for the rest of the day.

Gut bacteria help determine how food is processed. One person will excrete calories that another person will absorb. So you could literally get fatter on the same diet as someone identical size and shape to you. Of course, diet and exercise play a big role!

Rate of weight gain as babies and toddlers is highly predictive of later size. Depressingly!

This is half a story.
I live with a slim husband and teen kids
I definitely eat less than every one of them. I do portions at meals and give them more. They also snack freely.

My daughter is the same height as me and weighs a little over half my weight.

I am not secretly snacking all day. I am averagely active (get about 7-8k steps on a typical day).
It's disingenuous to suggest that metabolism doesn't change over one's lifetime or that there is zero genetic input into weight distribution.

For example I have lipedema since puberty which is an inherited tendency to gain diet-resistant weight in the legs. Even at my very slimmest, I have heavy legs like tree trunks. This condition affects 10 percent of women almost all of whom don't know, and go through life thinking they are lazy and greedy for having fat legs. When it's hormonal and genetic. Why has no one heard of this condition? It's a feminist issue of course; almost exclusively affects women.

https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/lipoedema/

Well metabolisms do vary to some extent.

You might be eating more, or more calorie dense food, than you think though. Have you fully monitored it?

But overall I’d just focus on eating well and getting some exercise in.

Lipodema is really tough.

There should be more awareness PP.

Genes. You can see it even looking at a class in infant school, even if none are overweight yet it’s easy to see the different body types. It’s pretty well known that different countries tend to have different statures. I will never be 5ft9 and size 6 like my best friend. I’ll never be 5ft0 and size 4 like my other best friend. I’ll always be my stubby peasant build, storing energy for famine times 😄

(edit because all the emojis came up and I couldn’t get them away to finish typing!)

We largely have grown to accept (my sons in their 30s) to see portion distortion as ok, supersizing stuff, in the way it wasn’t before.
i’m 62, had a few food phases, never really over ate as a child, tho did have hot foreign holidays camping, different foods.
i read that are genetics go back to our grandparents , we also need to mindful as to why we over eat

But does he exceed calories? How active is he? One of my friends has a takeaway every single day and drinks sugary drinks, but although wildly unhealthy and not doing her any favours, she doesn't go over a reasonable amount of calories because she doesn't really eat a lot outside of these meals.

I tend to be a bit underweight and my best friend tends to be a bit overweight. Actually I'm probably too underweight right now as I've been stressed, but that's over now so I expect I will go back to my normal soon. Neither of us makes a conscious effort about this except when she is trying to diet, and on the face of it it would seem that I eat significantly more. We spend a lot of time together and have lived together, and over the years I've realised that it's a bunch of tiny things that all add up. Firstly, incidental movement. I'm naturally restless. I can't sit down for too long at once, and I do everything at a faster pace. Secondly, I don't eat things like takeaways or much UPF at all - partly for health but mostly because my parents come from cultures where these aren't really a thing, so I didn't grow up with them: I don't associate takeaways with a treat, more a waste of money tbh. I'll partake if other people are getting one, to be polite, but I've never been overly impressed by one. Relatedly, I eat more vegetables, simply because this is how I was brought up. Finally, I don't like to eat a heavy meal in the evening because it affects my digestion and sleep. I probably do eat more than most people at lunch and maybe breakfast too, but then I have something light later. I'm sure some people do have a faster metabolism than others, but I don't think it's as dramatic as some people pretend it is. I think if you take a snapshot of a thin person and an overweight person's habits, you might say the thin person just burns a lot more, but if you looked at it over weeks and months it would be different.

I don't think this is necessarily completely true. It's only recently, since the big time introduction of processed and convenience 'food' that people have got fatter.

Before the 80s fat people were not that common. In my primary school through the 80s there were maybe 2 fat kids during my whole time there. Reception to class 6. Even into secondary school there weren't many fat kids.

It was the norm to be a healthy weight because people ate real food. Now, we don't, so much.

If you primarily ate homemade whole foods, without sweeteners and additives, in normal portions, you would end up a healthy weight. Unless you had an actual medical issue, which a lot less people actually have than is portrayed.