Are you naturally skinny ? or do you have to work at it ?

If you don’t eat much and exercise lots…..

I was pretty skinny up until my 30s and that was without doing vast amounts of exercise, eating whatever I fancied and doing a lot more booze. Since then I’ve had to be a bit more careful and active just to maintain this current level of portliness.

I really have to work at it.

Mainly as I am a glutton. I won’t just have one biscuit…oh no. I’ll have the packet.

Currently 1/2>1 stone above fighting weight due to shit diet and injury forced exercise sabbatical.

Work seems to enforce it by sending me to places where the food likes to make me shit my self thin or food so bad i dont even eat it – 1 month on mars bars and lion bars. Mmmmmmm

I’m lucky I guess. I’m slim, eat a lot of food but never put on weight.

I’m pretty active but to be honest I still think I out eat my activity levels.

I have to really work at it. 5’10, 10st 7lbs.

It annoys me slightly when people assume I’m “naturally skinny”. It’s amazing how watching what you eat and drink, and 10 hours of exercise a week makes you naturally skinny. It’s a bit like how eating cake and chocolate and never doing any more exercise than waddling to the sweet shop gives people a “slow metabolism”.

^^^^, exactly this.

I can’t believe how much some people eat, and then moan about their weight.

I do 7 hours on the bike a week but I am still 2 stone overweight. My fault though as I eat too much. I can lose weight quite easily if I watch what I eat.

Most of what beej said.

I don’t think a lot of people really understand how sedentary they are. People often comment on the amount of food I eat (and it’s quite a lot) and what they assume my weight is (they underestimate this without fail), but running 15hrs a week with cycling on top. Y’know food is quite useful.

Quality, portion size, 50/25/25, energy expenditure. Rocket science it aint

I eat a lot. Struggle to put weight on. I may get a belly over Christmas if I drink and eat a lot and don’t touch the bike

naturally overweight, if you count having a compulsion to finish everything on my plate no matter how inappropriate the portion size, natural.

i have to work really hard to maintain a healthy weight and constantly yo-yo between good for my height and up to 3-4stone too heavy for my height. its not my exercise levels that are the issue, its will power with food.

entirely my fault.

I didn’t really answer the question FFS

Yes, I have to work at it. Intentionally managing my weight so I have more fat over winter. Hypothermia is a risk and fat is jolly good at fending it off.

@Phil

I wouldn’t beat yourself up too much. Your just doing what nature has programmed you to do.

I found it really helpful to read up on why we eat the way we do, even though it’s pretty obvious. Reading up on it enabled me somehow to ‘work with it’ rather than fight against it.

When it’s you vs your instincts, I’d bet on instincts

Naturally skinny – eat reasonably well, love a good cake. 6ft, 12st

I’d say I’m naturally skinny tbh. But then again I can get away with loads of food, as I ride about 15 hours a week.

On this subject, Matt Fitzgeralds book Racing Weight is worth a read

Some great posts already !

I guess if we are on here, we actually think about this stuff !

I am lucky (?) my body will respond to exercise and I enjoy doing it, however to counteract this I am also a natural glutton so any periods of injury etc lead to weight increases….Been injured and have had a lot of etc, this year.

I can understand people who work hard at maintaining a healthy weight being annoyed that it is assumed they are just naturally skinny.

The skinniest people I know however do no/very little exercise. They just don’t eat much, because they are just not into eating ?

I’m 6ft and about 12 stone and I STRUGGLE to keep my weight UP. If I stop trying I lose weight. I need to eat stupid amounts and am constantly grazing all evening before and after dinner. It is genuinely annoying. I’d naturally fall to about 10.5 stone if I ate normally. My job is physical and my passion is physical so those combine I guess, but when I lose weight I get achey and too exhausted to work properly.

i just eat, whatever whenever i feel like it, 6ft 11 1/2st.

heaviest i have ever been is just under 12st.

I guess the 150ish miles a week on the bike an aversion to phones at work etc helps?

I’ve always been skinny – I suppose reasonable levels of activity and not overeating helped with that – but I was never especially fit either. Now I’m getting a lot more exercise than ever before, I’m also about a stone heavier.

Been VERY lucky and always had a slim muscular build (even when I dont do anything) which really pisses people off hehe

I have the odd problem that if I do too much exercise, I get skinny. So I’m forced to eat loads to keep the weight on.

(when I say skinny, I mean lose a kg or so)

I’ve always been lucky enough to be skinny but able to eat what I want. Probably being active all the time helps but I never used to pay attention to eating healthily or in moderation. I have started eating with more of an eye on health but it’s not because of weight.
Being ill and effectively immobile for 7 weeks this year seems to have combined with hitting 35 to give me a bit of a belly which seems to be hard to shift now. I’m not too worried though; we’re talking up from 12.5stone to 13ish and rather than being a 32″ waist I hover in that awkward area where 32″ is too tight but 34″ needs a belt. (6’2″ tall)

I’m about 18 stone but I’d say I was naturally skinny. I work quite hard at keep this waistline. In other words I’d be skinny as hell if I wasn’t a fat greedy bassa! Take away the chocolate and fuzzy juice and I’d be skinny no bother.

I fricken love fuzzy juice!

I’m 5ft 10in tall & 140lbs. occasionally I eat like a pig, but most of the time I look after myself & eat sensibly as I like how strong I feel on the bike.
I also like how a light bike feels, so there doesnt make much sence spending lots on lightweight bike swag, if i was carrying a few pounds myself.

5.10″ here and 10.5 stone so skinny as a whippet and could do with putting some on really.

I eat loads but my weight just never seems to increase- similarly, I used to drink loads and never did any exercise whatsoever until my late 20’s but then got into mtb and running and was quite worried that I would lose weight and this would be unhealthy for me- but after going from totally sedentary to running half marathons and mtbing every weekend, I didn’t lose weight either.

Used to hate it, but don’t mind so much now and realise I may be lucky in some ways. Though of course you can still be skinny and unhealthy as f**ck, depending on your lifestyle.

5’10, 40yrs, 70kg (11 stone) is the heaviest I’ve been. Naturally skinny (as is brother and father so some genetics involved surely)- at the age of 20 I was ~10 stone, started weight training to complement my riding and put nearly a stone on in a month, and basically stayed at that weight +/-1Kg for 20 years.

Not sure how much real science is behind this theory, but anecdotally it seems to hold.

http://www.muscleandstrength.com/articles/body-types-ectomorph-mesomorph-endomorph.html

I seem to hover around 84kg no matter what (5’11”).

I find it almost impossible to lose weight by eating less AND doing exercise. Either is fine on its own though.

I find it almost impossible to lose weight by eating less AND doing exercise

Is that because exercise develops muscle which is denser than the fat you lose?

naturally skinny. If I wanted to be fat it’d take a lot of uncomfortable eating.

6′ 0.5″, 12.5 stone (always between 11-13)

25min cycle commute 10 times a week and 0-5 hours exercise as well (average prob 1 hour). I drink a bit too much and eat some junk on top of an otherwise healthy diet. 44 years old.

To me that means I don’t work at being skinny.

There is a free app called myfitnesspal that is pretty good as a motivator.

I slipped back into snacking between meals and visiting bakeries etc which is always tempting when you travel about for work. However when you tally up what you’ve eaten and you can see the Big Mac you had for lunch is the reason you ate 700 calories more than the day before you quickly get back on track.

Its also good to see what to avoid, sometimes you feel you’ve been pretty good and you find you’ve gone over by 500 calories, and other times you’ve slobbed out in front of the TV surrounded by popcorn, beer mixed nuts and chocolate but your lunch was healthier than you realised and you are under target 🙂

It allows you to set a target weight and after each day it will tell you how much you would weigh if you ate that way everyday.

You can enter most food by scanning the barcode.

uncomfortable eating.

That should be my nickname.

I’m another lucky one.
Lucky that I wasn’t brought up to be a lazy fat cake eating bullshitter.
When are people going to take responsibility for themselves and realise that we’re all on the same boat, it’s just listing a little as the gut lords shovelling more crisps through their disgusting greasy lipped mouths are all congregating at the port bow, probably drawn there by visions of cheese boards.

Always been naturally thin. My natural weight is just over 12 stone. I have to try to put weight on. Even when I was eating absolute shite I didn’t put on a pound.

At the moment I am 13 stone at 6’3. I have to eat about 3-3.5k calories to stay at this weight.

It’s amazing how watching what you eat and drink, and 10 hours of exercise a week makes you naturally skinny

Nope, not at all.

It works for some, not for others. It’s all very different.

If I said ‘anyone can gain loads of muscle, all they have to do is lift a few weights, job done’ would you agree with that? Cos it’s just as false.

You can usually put on MORE muscle that way, same as fat people can LOSE weight by exercising and not stuffing their faces.

But not everyone can realistically become properly skinny, just as not everyone can become a muscle bound hulk or grow a full beard. It’s a physical characteristic we just don’t all share. There are many many people on here who report the same as Horatio Hufnagel above – don’t dismiss us all as idiots in denial about how much we eat!

I can lose weight by doing lots of exercise and eating well, but I never get properly skinny.

Naturally skinny – eat reasonably well, love a good cake. 6ft, 12st

I wouldn’t call that skinny 😀 You have one and a half stone on me and I’m half inch taller. I eat a fair bit but just seem to vary my belt notch by 1 hole depending on how much cycling I do.
Thing is when I was at school the majority of people were built like me but 30 years has seen people’s sizes increase a lot, there was only one fat kid in my year but now it’s something like 30% are overweight.

Another 6ft 12st skinny.
I don’t have to work at it, I just eat what I need.

I wouldn’t call that skinny You have one and a half stone on me and I’m half inch taller. I eat a fair bit but just seem to vary my belt notch by 1 hole depending on how much cycling I do.
Thing is when I was at school the majority of people were built like me but 30 years has seen people’s sizes increase a lot, there was only one fat kid in my year but now it’s something like 30% are overweight.

I think the reality is that Normal is now fat, alot of this genes argument is just crap, i would suggest environment is a bigger issue than genetics. People have access to far more food than ever before and what is deemed a normal portion is far more than it was 40-50 years ago. Most people are far more sedentary than ever before in reality people should be eating less, eating smaller portions but people don’t. Net effect people are getting bigger, and what is perceived to be normal is also getting bigger.

6ft and 11st 5. Which feels about right( im slim/leanbut feels good on the bike) I am very good with eating and rarely over eat these days. I did once get quite chubby when my wife was away for 6 weeks. No exercise eating crap, she wouldn’t sleep with me when she got back! Said I felt like a curvy woman!!!
Bread/biscuits/cheese/meat/booze are not on my eating radar which helps.