Skinny People Rarely Diet | Hacker News Reader

Skinny People Rarely Diet

theatlantic.com

12 pointsgoodJobWalrus10 comments

many of the registrants used “non-restrictive” strategies, like listening to hunger cues, cooking at home rather than eating out, and eating quality, non-processed foods

These strategies are only "non-restrictive" because of the attitude of the registrants. For someone who struggles with their eating habits, listening to hunger cues or eating quality foods will take discipline and restriction.

Kinda like saying 99% (or whatever) of all nondrug addicts do not indulge in drug use.

The report does give some interesting clarity as to how we can mimic skinny people, hoping for similar results. Frequent exercise, chicken and veggies meals, they eat breakfast more than the average population (96% in skinny, 90% in all pop) .

I'm struggling with weight and if I listened to hunger cues, I would weigh even more. I would be eating about twice more.

Do you differentiate between true, physical hunger and emotional hunger, habitual hunger, the need to chew something just because it feels like the "right" thing to do in a particular moment?

I'm still learning to discern between true, physical hunger in my body, and my brain's desire to eat.

Yes, when I'm not physically hungry, I try to not eat. I sometimes fail, but typically I allow myself only one snack a week. Also, I always eat very regularly, I can be really hungry even an hour before meal time, but I learned to just wait and ignore physical pain of being hungry (yep, it's painful for me to be hungry). I had some small success with exercise, but I didn't lose much weight, only gain some muscles.

If you exercise, you might gain weight if you're gaining muscle. But did you notice that maybe your clothes fit better even with the weight gain? What sort of sandwiches do you eat for breakfast and lunch?

But, are you more likely to answer you hunger cues by eating a salad or veggies, or eating crap? I bet it's the latter. If you can change this to genuinely prefer healthy food, even if you eat a lot of it, you shouldn't be fat. I am at healthy weight, but I can easily eat 2 pounds of veggies in one sitting (that's in addition to meat, and I am a woman). On the other hand, I can also eat 2000kcal of pizza in one sitting, and this is why I avoid eating pizza or cookies. I know in advance that if I start, I'm going to eat entirely too much. So I am what article declares as "consciousness of what I eat".

Depends, I eat pizza or other fastfoods once-twice a month. Typically it's sandwiches for breakfast and lunch and self-made home dinner. Yep, maybe I'm not eating as healthy as I should (only veggies and chicken), but just listening to hunger would cause me to eat even more.

The main point for me is that it is never: Oh she has such good metabolism and can eat whatever she wants. And this is what you hear from overweight people.

The truth is that healthy weight people were either brought up with the good eating habits, or they acquired them on their own (with the former being more likely IMO).

So the real question is: Can you acquire good eating habits (by this I mean genuine preference for healthy food) after a lifetime of eating crap or are these habits set in the early childhood and largely unchangeable?

I really truly prefer veggies to pizza, but my parents were feeding them to me since I was 6 months old. And from what I read so far, preferences for food are established early (even in fetus stage, fetuses learn to like what their pregnant mothers ate).

Can you acquire good eating habits (by this I mean genuine preference for healthy food) after a lifetime of eating crap

Yes. When I met my wife she was quite overweight, having been brought up by a mom who ate whenever she was depressed and taught her some really bad habits. At some point she decided that she was sick of the way she looked (I was perfectly fine with it). So she began to eat healthy foods, joined a gym, took up running, and lost a huge amount of weight and gained a healthier lifestyle.

I think the problem isn't that it can't be done; but it is a very difficult change that essentially requires rewiring yourself and constant vigilance to not fall back into old habits.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com