How do people stay thin?

[Gamblerjoe]

AVOID WHEAT. wheat's being healthy is a big misconception.
avoid high fructose corn syrup, hydrogenated oils, sugar, dairy, white rice, cream... (a lot of things white)

embrace... oats, brown rice, millet, egg, kale, omega 3, potato, avocado, sprouted grain bread (look them up), etc.


edit: also... don't be afraid of butter. use it all you want. just avoid that "I can't believe its not butter!" crap. and speaking of butter, avoid margarine as well.

^^^ That and the fact that they probably skip some meals, as long as you get enough vitamins and minerals then you actually don't need the calories that three meals a day provide.

Yeah. I cut out soda and processed carbs and the weight melted right off. You'd be surprised OP.

Your friends who can eat what they want are lucky. I'm like you as well. I have to work out 5 times a week for 2 hours and even then I'm still 20 pounds heavier than where I want to be (I'm at the high spectrum of a healthy weight for my height and age so I'd rather be in the low spectrum if I can help it)

Don't try to go for unrealistic goals though. I remember even as a kid I had thighs that touched. I was a STICK, but my thighs never had space between. So I don't expect to ever be one of those thinspo girls 5 inches of nothing between their thighs because I was never like that even when I was a kid and had a faster metabolism and ran around a lot more.

Just keep exercising and try to do short bouts of cardio. No tread mill shit unless it's for just 5 minutes straight (running, not walking) and then go back to weights. Then after a while, do another short but hard burst of cardio.

Also, whatever you do, don't avoid things like fat, carbs, butter, etc. If you make a baked potato, feel free to stick some butter on that *****. Our bodies need those fats and oils and depriving them of it will not help you lose weight in a healthy manner.

What you WANT to avoid is processed and fast food. I recommend picking up a cook book or even learning to make some fast simple meals on the stove. I am addicted to my rice cooker (Rice in 30 minutes and I add whatever flavorings and veggies I want to that) for meals and rice is really damn cheap in bulk...also pretty much keeps for a long ass time (pasta as well)

Anyway, that's my recommendation. Hope it helped!

This is all incorrect. Dont listen to a word of it. Everyone who said "metabolism" wasn't paying attention to the question.

Personally I switched to smaller (and healthier food) portions and a little bit of exercise. Little yoga and freeweight stuff and Ive dropped from 250lbs to almost 200lbs. Wasnt fast but I feel better about myself and life now. Oh, and water! sweet delicious water, cut out all soft drinks!

^^^ That and the fact that they probably skip some meals, as long as you get enough vitamins and minerals then you actually don't need the calories that three meals a day provide.

I hear that skipping meals can cause your body to store more fat, so that it can survive another long period without food.

if you eat several small healthy meals by day your metabolism will quicken, that'll help =)

This is all correct.

The short answer is diet, exercise and DISCIPLINE. It takes self determination to improve your health.

To elaborate: You must eat roughly 2000 calories per day (give or take depending on your genetics.) Eating less will not make you lose weight, not unless you are literally starving yourself, which would be stupid and extremely unhealthy. Instead of eating 3 meals per day, eat 6 small meals per day that add up to 2000 calories. Its hard at first, but eventually you'll find that you cant even eat large meals anymore. Your diet needs to be balanced. Make sure you are getting sufficient carbohydrates, protein, lipids, and water. All of these things are necessary to survive, but they must be consumed in proper proportion. Cutting any of them out will cause your body to react negatively. Everything you have heard about cutting out carbs and all that nonsense is just crap people make up to sell books. Getting in shape is not easy, but if someone says that they have a method that IS easy, people will listen to them. They are full of shit though. Also, make sure you take a quality multivitamin. Even if you are eating vegetables and such, a good multivitamin will provide you with specific amino acids that will aid with your recovery and endurance.

As far as exercise goes, you dont have to kill yourself. I do personally, but thats my personal decision. I train in Mixed Martial Arts, so its kind of necessary. Jogging is enough for some people, but if you want to look better in addition to improving your health, you need to do specific exercises. Pick a program and stick to it. Buy a workout DVD you see on an infomercial if you want. They all work.

Sleep is also important. Get 8 hours of sleep every night. Two 4 hour stretches is also fine, even if they're broken up. Getting more than 8 hours is bad, but getting less than 8 is significantly worse. There are certain processes that your body can only perform properly while you sleep.

Last but not least is supplements. I take Mass XXX and creatine. I use a lot less of both than the label (and GNC employees) say to take. I DON'T recommend taking nitric oxide enhancers. I make small shakes and use them as meal substitutes, particularly the meals that immediately follow my workouts. Here is how I take creatine: First off DON'T LOAD!!! This is very bad. It stifles your body's natural production of creatine. This process produces several extremely important byproducts you need. Some of them are only produced in this way. What I do is take half doses for one week. Then I take full doses for 2 weeks. Then I take half doses for another week. Then I take a month off. Repeat.

 

[UrieHusky]

I eat the worst food for your weight, keylime pies, pizza, burgers, chips etc, I don't exercise and I still weigh 68-70 kgs (idk what that is in pounds if you care enough google is your friend) so, my guess it's a person by person basis, metabolism is what it comes down to really, I'm sure if you exercise heaps and eat right your weight will go down, it just takes determination I guess.

Sorry my advice is pretty bad since like I said I haven't experience what you're talking about but yeah.

 

[Hosker]

Only eat when you're hungry. Eating when you're not hungry is when you gain most of the weight.

 

[Vrach]

I've wanted to lose weight for a while now, and I have tried nearly everything (except diet pills and starving, I have my standards). The weird thing is that quite a few people I know tend to stay thin despite regularly eating burger king and such. I know some of them do work out, but some (like my girlfriend) somehow can stay thin without working out and despite apparently eating a lot (hell, I'm in much worse shape than my girlfriend, yet I have an easier time walking, thank you Mini-Boot Camp). I gotta ask, when it comes to those people, what's their secret?

Metabolism.

That said, if you wanna lose weight, you'll need to go on a diet. For a guy, eating between 1200 and 1600 kcal a day will get you losing weight, though no one's saying it's gonna be quick, you can easily go a month or so without seeing any effect (which doesn't mean it's not working).

Working out helps too. I don't really mean "get your ass to a gym and go weight lifting", just do something. A 30-45 minute walk each day is what I considered a minimum when I was on a diet. When I had a chance, I went for 2 hours of biking, right now, I do about an hour of swimming a day. You can also do some exercises at home like push ups, sit ups and such, though those will work more towards muscles and less towards weight loss (though considering you're likely into weight loss for looks, it'll be just as important).

1200-1600 a day is more of a starvation diet, especially if he's a reasonably tall guy who is already overweight. The whole 2000 calorie diet thing is based on heavily outdated science. The modern method involves an individualized formula which determines how many calories you need in a day to maintain your current weight. The general recommendation for weight loss is to take that number, and subtract 500 to get a healthy number of calories for weight loss. Healthy weight loss is on the order of 1 pound a week. Cutting out 500 calories per day gets almost exactly this speed of weight loss. For example, in my case (male, 21 years old, 200 pounds, 5'10", light activity level), it works out to 2,830 calories a day just to maintain my weight. To safely lose weight, I should be getting 2,330 calories a day, on average. If I were only getting 1200-1600 a day, I would effectively be starving to death.

Edit: By the way, that's 200 pounds, down from 220 a few months ago, although up from 180 two years ago. Dining halls (and all you can eat buffets in general) are bad, mkay?

Fair enough, didn't mean to misinform, it's merely what I used when I went on a diet and I didn't feel I was starving myself, just cutting down the intake to a minimum (sandwich breakfast, decent size cooked meal for lunch and cereal for dinner, eating fruit if I felt hungry in between).

Either way, the calories intake needs to be reduced if you wanna lose weight. Working out helps, but as your own link shows, not as much as reducing food intake does.

 

[Fieldy409_v1legacy]

Im dieting right now actually. managed to lose 30 kgs between two diets this year. the second one im still going on. I find the best thing is to work on the psychological aspect of it more than picking the right diet. Gotta keep yourself busy to keep your mind off how hungry you are, a lot of overtime at work helped and playing good videogames just to take my mind off the hunger works.

 

[llubtoille]

I've always been thin (trim?)
But I feel the best way to maintain it, is by making myself feel revolted at the thought of fast food - excessive grease, fat etc
That or chewing gum when you're bored.

Otherwise I eat the most blandest things, no joy is being had in eating here
morning - porridge or all-bran
day - 3 buns with some kind of shaved meat or chicken, a nut bar, a biscuit, 3 coffees and an apple.
night - fish or mince, veges, in some strange layout, several cups of tea.

my exercise is just about nil at the moment, tho I'll probably start jogging every other night eventually.

I think the thinnest I've ever been, was back at a college hostel, the food was shit so I practically lived on toast for breakfast, chewing gum during the day, and rice at night ><

 

[orangeban]

I've never really had an issue with weight, despite the fact I eat pretty normally. And when I say normally I mean red meat pretty much every day, packet of crisps a day. I'd blame metabolisms but some people here are saying they don't matter so I've no real idea whats going on.

On the plus side, I look muscly purely because I'm so thin there is nothing to cover up what little muscle I have.

 

[similar.squirrel]

Eat better, move more. It's not rocket science.

It also helps if your metabolism goes up to 11, like my entire family.

 

[Henkie36]

Only eating fat food in the weekends, is mine. I don't eat potato chips all week long, although it may be that I cycle more then the average man. But hell, I was also thin when I didn't do that.

 

[Continuity]

I've wanted to lose weight for a while now, and I have tried nearly everything (except diet pills and starving, I have my standards). The weird thing is that quite a few people I know tend to stay thin despite regularly eating burger king and such. I know some of them do work out, but some (like my girlfriend) somehow can stay thin without working out and despite apparently eating a lot (hell, I'm in much worse shape than my girlfriend, yet I have an easier time walking, thank you Mini-Boot Camp). I gotta ask, when it comes to those people, what's their secret?

My secret? mystery digestive disorder. I'm loosing weight even though i'm trying to put weight on. Seriously, I would be very happy to put a stone on right now.

Just be happy your digestion works, and maybe eat a few less mars bars.

 

[Fieldy409_v1legacy]

Im dieting right now actually. managed to lose 30 kgs between two diets this year. the second one im still going on. I find the best thing is to work on the psychological aspect of it more than picking the right diet. Gotta keep yourself busy to keep your mind off how hungry you are, a lot of overtime at work helped and playing good videogames just to take my mind off the hunger works.

Except you'll inevitably regain that weight, and more, after you stop. No matter how you occypy yourself, your body is still going into famine mode, and other side effects also kick in.

It's been said never change something about your diet that you don't plan to keep up for your entire life. Losing that much weight so quickly is even bad for your health.

30 kgs over this year isnt that fast man. And i fully understand i need to change, Ive just got to stop thinking of food as something to chew on when im bored, and do something else instead.

 

[Rayansaki]

I was overweight and got thin and stayed thin by just adjusting some of the stuff I ate. First off I cut my portions by 50%, I still ate everything, meat, chips, fried stuff, but only half of what I used to. And I changed from drinking Coke at every meal to drinking Coke Zero at every meal.
Oh and don't buy snacks. If you don't have snacks you won't eat between meals. Keep only breakfast food and full meals, don't buy cookies, chips, cakes, icecream, toast bread etc. If you have them at home its hard not to snack every now and them.

Nowadays I abuse every now and then, and do go to fast food places, but in my regular meals I mostly kept my 50% portions and no calories in drinks as the base to keep my weight stable.

 

[Soxafloppin]

An active life style, I had the build of a little girl for most of my childhood, so i Found it easy to bulk up when I started lifting weights at 16.

 

[Vivi22]

Cut all the carbs from your diet immediately and see how that impacts your weight. Some people are simply prone to pack on the pounds and are even more prone to do so when eating a lot of carbs. Sugar is by far the worst, since it keeps you hungry and encourages the body to store fat.

Yes, it means you have to get your calories from somewhere else, and that somewhere else is fat and protein. But really, if you can just do one thing and cut out the -sugars-, you'll be doing yourself a world of good right there.

Being fat for many people has very little to do with exercise. It's largely how and what they eat. Exercise has its own rewards, of course, but we're improperly conditioned to think that the one true path to not being fat is being excessively active. It simply isn't.

See: Gary Taubes, 'Why We Get Fat' and Google 'Dr. Lustig' for his discussion on sugar.

Thank you. Honestly, I have a hard time even reading through this thread because of the sheer number of people saying it's all about metabolism, or other such nonsense such as this:

everything to do with MATH!

calories in - calories used = net loss/gain

The End.

and this:

As long as your using more energy and calories every day than you take in as food, you'll lose weight, that's really it.

No, that's not really it, and the problem comes down to one of people not understanding the mechanisms by which the body stores fat. I recommended the movie Fathead earlier because it's a quick and entertaining introduction to the science behind fat storage and weight loss, but thank you mattaui for also recommending some good reading.

Here's the thing folks, controlling fat storage is a matter of controlling blood sugar. When we eat foods that increase our blood glucose levels our body has three choices: 1) burn the glucose as fuel
2) store it as fat, or
3) die

That's about it. The trouble is that we don't burn glucose very quickly or efficiently. So if the amount in our blood gets excessively high, our body releases insulin into the blood stream, triggering the body to store that extra glucose as fat so that number 3 doesn't happen. The trouble is that some people's bodies are really efficient at releasing the energy from those fat cells to fuel the body while others aren't. Those people are your friends who can eat as much of whatever they feel like with little consequence on their waistline.

Now for most people who's fat cells aren't that efficient who want to lose weight, simply avoiding the foods which cause your blood sugar levels to sky rocket is enough to get them most, if not all, of the way to their weight loss goals. So what should you avoid? The short list is:
1) foods high in sugar (candy, soda pop, etc. If you read a label and there's more than a few grams of sugar in it it should never pass your lips except on cheat day)
2) starchy vegetables (most people can't eat potatoes and lose weight effectively. Not eating potato chips should go without saying)
3) wheat and grains (any breads, pastas, oatmeal, etc. They will actually spike your blood sugar to levels comparable to or even worse than what you would see after drinking a can of Pepsi).

Cut out those things from your diet and focus on a diet higher in protein sources, as well as fat from things like nuts and seeds, or cocunut, olive and other similar oils (avoid corn or other vegetable oils like the plague though), supplemented with some vegetables and the odd bit of fruit here and there and you will lose weight. If you don't cut these foods, but simply reduce the number of calories you take in, you might lose some weight by virtue of eating less of the bad stuff, but eventually you will crack from the hunger pangs that follow your blood sugar repeatedly crashing. And as for creating a caloric deficit by exercising more, sorry, but you can't out train a shitty diet. Get the types of foods you're eating in order though and not only will you feel full longer, but everything else will naturally fall into place for the majority of people.

 

[Spoon E11]

IDK. I eat fatty foods do 0 exercise and still only weigh 9 stone (130 lbs)

BTW 5"11 18 year old male

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

I've wanted to lose weight for a while now, and I have tried nearly everything (except diet pills and starving, I have my standards). The weird thing is that quite a few people I know tend to stay thin despite regularly eating burger king and such. I know some of them do work out, but some (like my girlfriend) somehow can stay thin without working out and despite apparently eating a lot (hell, I'm in much worse shape than my girlfriend, yet I have an easier time walking, thank you Mini-Boot Camp). I gotta ask, when it comes to those people, what's their secret?

My secret? mystery digestive disorder. I'm loosing weight even though i'm trying to put weight on. Seriously, I would be very happy to put a stone on right now.

Just be happy your digestion works, and maybe eat a few less mars bars.

If you're honestly trying to gain weight and you're actively getting thinner, you might want to see a doctor. I mean, if I saw one of my cats exhibiting symptoms like that, I would seriously start wondering if they had worms. I don't mean to compare you to a cat, but humans can get the same sort of parasites, and even if it's not parasites, there's probably some sort of explanation -- some of which can be quite serious.

 

[oppp7]

Edit: Apparently wrong. Try bloodletting. A pint a day keeps the fatty away.

For example, to maintain my low weight I swore off snacks (except muffins, potato chips, and funnel cakes), sodas except the once a year one (or gingerale, which has no limits), everything with chocolate in it, all meat except poultry, all seafood except tuna and the rare salmon, and most added spice. Enjoy your hell.

Note that weight gain wasn't the only reason for me to swear off most of those things.

 

[Felgy76]

There's two basic steps to weight loss.
1. Eat less.
2. Move more.

A 'fast metabolism' is not the magic secret, it just determines how quickly your body can convert fat into energy or excess energy into fat. People that gain weight really easily have fast metabolisms, they just aren't active enough to burn of the amount of food they eat.

 

[AMMO Kid]

I have sex with my dog.

But in all seriousness, I drink a lot of Dr. Pepper, and apparently that speeds up my metabolism or something.

 

[Epic Fail 1977]

I'm 34. I never work out. My diet consists almost entirely of carbs, sugar, and fat. Full fat everything with extra cholesterol, thank you very much. I eat what I want, when I want.

I'm 6'0" tall, and I weigh less than 140lbs. Always have.

If I'm not walking proof of a fast metabolism then I don't know what is.

Eat 4000 kcal a day, then get back to us in a month. You eat like shit, but no-where near what a morbidly obese person eats.

And how do you think an obese person gets obese in the first place?