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?

I was always slim as a child and teenager and adult as I’ve always been very active and eg as a child I’d spend ages on my bike cycling the streets. We had snacks but. also fruit and veg a lot. One of my best friends, her mum worked at Tesco’s and they had beige food. Didn’t matter so much when they were young but when my friend got older and ill she piled on the weight and it took effort to get it off for her.

This is something that we've been talking about a lot in my family recently. We have two children, one is slim (like DH), one is rounder (like me).
They had very different body shapes as far back as age 2, you can just tell from the thickness of their thighs etc how they will look different as they get older.
The thinner one is very active in a completely natural way. They have 'ants in their pants' as I like to say, and they literally never sit still. If they're playing with toys on the floor, they're crouching, if they're moving down the corridor, they're running full speed, getting onto the sofa, they're jumping etc. There is no amount of dance classes or swimming lessons that could ever replicate this sort of constant calorie burn.
The thinner child also eats very differently. They rarely complain of being hungry, and when they eat meals, they eat varying amounts. Sometimes they will clear their plate, sometimes only eat a very small portion, even if it is a food that they enjoy. It feels like they are eating more naturally, it's so interesting to observe because I have never understood how other people don't want to eat everything they can get their hands on!
I've actually been using Mounjaro for a few months and it's prompted a lot of discussion with DH about how he feels about food compared to me. I thought about food constantly. I was always hungry, always thinking about what I was going to be able to eat next. I never skipped a meal, I thought that people that said that they 'forgot to eat lunch' were clearly lying. What if some people just have much higher levels of the hormones that weight loss injections artificially raise? For the first time in my life, I can eat like a thin person, but crucially, with the brain chemistry of a thin person too, because eating like a thin person (dieting) without that is torture.
My hope for the future is that the hormones in weight loss injections can be tested for in some way and treated as any other hormone deficiency where necessary.

I agree that, excluding specific medical conditions, it is fundamentally about what and how much you eat and what you burn off. I was thin for most of my life and it was because I didn't eat large portions and moved a lot. I hated feeling overfull, so never over ate. It wasn't rocket science.

Pregnancies and covid lockdowns meat things stretched and I got used to the full feeling. We moved a lot less over lockdowns and there was lots of extra stress, so I ate my feelings. I am now overweight as a result of those factors. Most people who are overweight are like that because they eat more than they need to and often the type of food they eat.

Where I do agree with the genetics front, is how driven people are to eat too much. I didn't have better willpower, I just didn't want to eat more. I walked a lot, and at a fairly fast pace, which becomes impossible with young children. Again, I just enjoy walking, it's not a chore.

I think there's a part of it that is genetic but that it is only part in the same way bone structure and height is.

I always wonder how much stress response dictates weight. If I am stressed I tend to eat less and lose weight. But others gain weight at these times.

I also think maintaining weight is easier. If you've never been overweight it is easier to stay this way and to make small adjustments rather than yo yo dieting which seems to cause weight gain long term.

I remember that opera singer! Was an amazing bit of TV…I remember thinking she must have some medical condition, but then they revealed each fruit bowl had enough for 8 people.

I always wonder how much stress response dictates weight. If I am stressed I tend to eat less and lose weight. But others gain weight at these times.

@Thepartnersdesk My friend of a similar height/ build (short and curvy) lost one stone during the first few months of the pandemic due to stress . I put on half a stone in the same period also due to stress.

She was struggling to eat as much 3 meals a day and was instead drinking lots of tea, whereas I was baking and ordering takeaways every other day and definitely not skipping any meals.

Yep. It all started with the now disproved "assumption" that all calories were equal. And calories are worked out by how much heat is produced when you burn them! So basically, absolutely nothing like how a body processes calories!

That's how we ended up with things that burn being bad for you, and things that don't burn being good for you. I.e. fatty stuff bad, fruit and veg good!

We've had successions of "fads", i.e. fat free diet, low carb diet, etc etc., but they tend to follow the same flawed logic based on burning stuff!

NHS "advice" is woeful. No wonder people don't know where to start.

I've been T2 diabetic for 25 years. I've seen NHS dieticians, I've seen diabetic nurses and a specialist diabetic trained GP, along with a succession of normal GPs and normal practice nurses. Even the specialists are woeful.

The sheer number of times I've been told to eat fewer mangos is ridiculous. I've never eaten mangos, but because it's on the NHS "crib sheet", they always parrot off the same things, which are broadly irrelevant to my eating habits and condition.

I've spent a lot of time and effort (and money) into working out exactly how to control my diabetes. I've trialled all kinds of things, such as taking drugs at different times of day, eating different things at different times of day, taking exercise at different times of day. That's along with lots of online research (not just simple factsheets from the NHS and diabetes organisations, but also published specialist papers).

Some of the "good" foods they recommend raise my blood sugars by more than the things they say you should avoid!

I'm pretty confident I know more about T2 Diabetes than most of the diabetic nurses and dieticians. I've got my diabetes under great control. The only thing I need the NHS for is things like blood tests, eye tests, etc.

Having "enjoyed" the best advice that the NHS can offer (dieticians etc), I'm not surprised in the least that we are having an obesity and diabetes crisis costing the country billions. The "advice" is usually very generic and usually arguably very wrong. They also advocate a "diet" which is pretty unrealistic. How many people really have the time to prepare meals from scratch?

They'd be far better accepting reality that most people don't have the time nor inclination to cook from basic ingredients and to start recommending the "best" (i.e. least harmful) of convenience foods like ready meals, tins and packets, rather than telling patients to avoid them completely and spend an hour instead to prepare some concoction made up of lentils and beans!

@Thepartnersdesk

I always wonder how much stress response dictates weight

My personal experience (and of family) is that stress causes all kinds of problems with the body.

My own blood sugar levels rise when stressed, regardless of what I eat or what exercise I do.

People close to me who've had stressful life episodes (divorce, close family death, child death, bankruptcy etc) have gone onto develop serious health conditions, particularly cancer, within a couple of years afterwards. It's happened too many times for me to accept it's a coincidence.

I believe that stress messes up your body's equilibrium and allows other health problems to develop, i.e. things that the body has managed to control itself, via antibodies, etc., suddenly go out of control.

My mum (died 13 years ago) was overweight as long as I can remember. When I look at her childhood pictures all her family were overweight. This would have been long before UPF foods.
In her wedding pictures and her early 20s she was maybe a size 12 (she was 5ft) .

I think she was naturally a larger build than either myself or my siblings are. My dad was never overweight but was also more active

I was diagnosed with a pituitary microadenoma in my late teens. I was a size 12/14 ( 1980s sizing). Once I had treatment the weight dropped off me but even at my lightest I was a size 12 because I have a large skeletal frame.
I have had meds on and off for the last 40yrs. I always knew when my hormone levels were too high because I would gain weight.
Now post menopause the tumour appears to have become inactive and my body shape is slowly changing.

Longterm research into the condition now explains all the struggles I’ve had with my weight. I’ve never been clinically obese but always overweight. I developed pregnancy induced hypertension that didn’t resolve after pregnancy. I have hyperinsulemia and other weird autoimmune conditions. And I was diagnosed with breast cancer, I have an increased risk due to the pituitary problem. All now known side effects of the condition.

I have lost weight in the past but taking Anastrazole has created intermittent side effects that make exercise difficult and I experienced exhaustion after radio which has taken a long time to recover from.

Food wise, I don’t overeat. Rarely eat more than two meals a day and don’t snack.
Nowadays easy weight loss is actually a major stress factor since it could indicate primary or secondary cancer. So apart from a gradual, very slow weight programme I’m just eating a non processed diet, don’t drink alcohol and dog walk.

I'm living with one rn. She's staying with us for a few months. The woman eats as much as my dh and I do combined. And constantly snacking too. Skinny

She is also the most sedentary person I know 😂

Sits in her room most of the day only broken up by walking downstairs to get more food.

Constantly ordering Deliveroo too

My cousin is stick thin, size 2, used to eat a domino's large pizza, wedges and a tub of Ben and jerrys 3-4 times a week. Never gained a pound!! Her insides must be ruined though

So given that MJ does not burn away fat, why dies it work fir people who have been fat all their lives?How does it suddenly give them the willpower to lose weight if it is not something they should have had but were lacking in the first place?

I think it just stops you thinking about food, so you have to remember to eat, and you want that thing to be healthy. So my friend says who is on it.

I think Mounjaro etc don't prove anything about calorie requirements, they show that some people are simply much more driven to overeat than others, for biochemical reasons - which we kind of knew anyway. I'm not thin because I'm more self-disciplined or better at denying myself than an overweight person. I'm probably averagely self-disciplined. I'm just not driven towards or gratified by overeating and never had a chance to develop a taste for UPF etc as a child. If an injection makes it easier for people who are driven to overeat to live a healthy life - great! If there's an easy way and a hard way to do something, why would one pick the hard way?

That said - I'm sure I'm not the only person who's had this thought, but it does make me wonder if we're about to embark on some sort of fucked-up biochemical arms race wherein Big Food seeks to create ever more addictive food-like substances whilst Big Pharma finds new drugs to counter their effects, which is a bit dystopian to think of.

I don’t know the science but think this is basically right. As I understand it, it’s the key difference from eg gastric band surgery, which limits the physical capacity but not the desire for food. Which is why some people who’ve had the surgery will literally resort to liquidising junk food.

I’d be assuming that wasn’t staying down

There's a fascinating explanation of this somewhere maybe the Why We Eat Too Much? It uses the south sea islands eg Fiji / Samoa and how their populations are naturally much larger.

Idea being that the original settlers had sailed long distances without much food so the ones that survived to populate the island were the ones who were genetically better at holding onto fat / slower burning energy etc

Here you go:

www.medscape.com/viewarticle/866987?form=fpf

All these theories are actually very interesting, and I genuinely mean that, so please no one take this comment as gunning for anyone! But when anyone goes into hospital, myself included, and can’t take in much food or has to stick to a low calorie and low fat diet for these reasons, we lose weight! Always. I believe it can be good for the elderly to have a bit more padding and fat reserves for this exact reason. Anyone starved or facing a calorie deficit in any circumstances all lose weight every time.

Of course certain illnesses, medications or even various emotional impacts that make us comfort eat all mean we can gain weight, but regardless of anything a calorie deficit does mean weight loss, everything else is surely excuses, back and forth, and I have been there, very overweight before I became ill, so I don’t come at it from complete ignorance.

Body shape has so much to do with things too. I am actually around the lower end of my BMI (I'm 5'6 and 9 stone), I run, I cycle, I have a physical job and now, post menopause, I watch what I eat like a hawk. I am actually quite slim, but I have short legs and big boobs and have got used to people seeing me wearing something close fitting and heels for the first time and saying 'God, you're really quite thin, aren't you?'
I look tubby. I have no tummy, a very defined waist and a decent bum (thanks running and cycling!) but I somehow 'look' chunky because clothes hang straight down from my boobs and stumpy little legs mean I seem to be closer to the ground.
Work uniform doesn't do any favours either... But when you slave and sweat and starve to have a decent shape but STILL look like a Weeble, it's enough to make you hate-eat an entire packet of chocolate digestives.

I’m always surprised at how little attention and recognition hormones receive in these discussions, particularly for women. I was always a thin child and teenager but hormones seem to have played a crucial role in different weight issues over my adult life. After giving birth to my second child, my weight plummeted out of control in the postpartum period, with no rhyme or reason. All the usual issues with thyroid were ruled out so I had no idea what caused it. If anything, I ate way more than at any other time during my adult life, simply because I could…. And other people became worried about me, so I had family members compulsively feeding me. It’s a pretty hormonally intense time, so I have no doubt that was a factor.

I had the exact opposite problem with my last child, and I packed on the weight at an alarming rate. It may well have been related to a stress response, as she was critically unwell for 2-3 weeks when she was one-month old and I barely ate or slept during her 2 weeks in the intensive care unit. I remember thinking ‘on the plus side, I will have lost the baby weight really quickly again’ only to be horrified that after 2.5 weeks of limited food, I had actually gained weight. Because I was so worried about my weight gain, I was heavily restricting and over-exercising, it wasn’t healthy at all.

I ended up being diagnosed with significant insulin resistance and was put on a high dose of Metformin. It was only after my husband came to the Dr with me and reinforced that I wasn’t actually lying about my intake and exercise, that I was finally taken seriously. I wasn’t badly overweight but I was really upset by it after being slim for my whole life. Metformin seemed to take about 3-months to start working properly and then I lost 2.5 stone without issue. Unlike how the injections seem to work to suppress appetite, I ate considerably more on the Metformin than before I was prescribed it.

I’d definitely encourage anyone struggling with weight related issues in the absence of poor eating habits to explore hormonal factors, including things like stress hormones.

But when you slave and sweat and starve to have a decent shape but STILL look like a Weeble, it's enough to make you hate-eat an entire packet of chocolate digestives.

It may be different for different people, but I really don't find 'how I look' to be very strong and lasting motivation. What works better for me is to think about how I'll feel after I've eaten anything, immediately and for the next day 24hrs later.

This got me in touch with how eating some foods make me feel lethargic and wanting to slump or even sleep after a meal while others leave me energised and ready to get up and at them.

Perhaps predictably, it was the foods which cause my blood sugar to rise quite quickly and release lots of insulin to clear that sugar out of my blood into fat, that make me feel lethargic after a meal.

This is actually hormone related cause of eating too much because the flood of insulin tends to stop blood sugar quite fast signally to the brain that I've got to eat so I do have an overwhelming desire to eat sugar which will raise by blood sugar again quickly. I think of this as the blood sugar rollercoaster.

It's a double whammy because while there is insulin circulating, it is impossible for the body to burn fat and have access to its stored energy.

It might be simplistic but it makes sense to me and helps me regulate my eating. So long as I avoid the things that drive my blood sugar up fast, I remain in my right mind around food and can moderate my appetite without too much effort. I like to think this is how 'normal' people feel around food.

For so many years I've been a prisoner of sugary and starchy snakes which cause havoc. Eating lots of veg, some good quality meat and not being afraid of fat has transformed my wellbeing and excess weigh has over a number of years melted off me.

I wish for anyone taking drugs that they would try this way. And, of course, that had found it a few years ago

I watched the first couple of those Channel 4 programmes about skinny people just now. They are very interesting because although those diets look terrible on paper in fact the slim people all seem to be eating pretty much exactly the calories they need to stay the same weight.

I've been quite thin all my life though I have never restricted my food intake or done significant amounts of exercise, though I'm fairly active in a normal walking around fidgety kind of way. Normal for me is a little bit underweight. During covid, I put about 5kg on just from not really moving around much and still eating the same sorts of things. This left me still in the healthy weight range but I felt terrible - lethargic, had rolls of fat around my middle that had never been there before and most interestingly I felt really disinclined to eat which has absolutely never happened to me before. I think my body was telling me to eat less. I didn't really listen to it, tbh, because I was so bored and food was a way of making my life less boring.

Since covid, I've gradually gone back to my normal weight. I feel so much better. But now I am underweight again and will have to go back to having pointless conversations with my doctor about it. So swings and roundabouts!

I'm going to watch the other episodes of the programme too. I think I might be a bit like the woman in the first episode whose body was just telling her to stop eating when she'd had enough calories, maybe crossed with the woman in the second episode who ate a really varied diet with a lot of veg. I'm quite an adventurous cook and there is very little I won't eat.

I was really surprised by the person upthread who said 'who has time to cook from scratch every day' because I've always cooked from scratch for practically all my meals since I was an adult so getting on for 40 years. Yes, I have the odd takeaway and I like eating out, but I don't like ready meals so it's cook or don't eat. And I like eating.