Why Aren't Thin People Fat?

I know this is a digression from the main topic, but I was wondering if and how your parents influenced your relationship with food?

That...is a very long, very bitter answer.  My mom's family are all very sturdy people.  Most of them are overweight now, but back when they all worked on the farm they were just what I'd describe as being stocky.  My mom used to be the exception.  She was skinny until she had kids. 

Her self-loathing has been a huge influence on my relationship with food.  She recently took up smoking again, after giving it up for over a year.  The reason?  She wanted to lose weight.  She's obsessed with being thin, and places far more importance on being skinny than being healthy.  I started to get chubby around age 9, and from that point on Mom was constantly putting me on diets and telling me I'd be so pretty if I just lost weight.  Then she'd turn around and put a ton of butter in the vegetables she served for dinner and let me eat an entire bag of crisps.     When I got to be a teenager, I'd usually look at her new diet of the month and say "Mom, this doesn't sound very healthy."  Her response was always, "Well, neither is being overweight."  The last time I was home she brought up how skinny I was when I was in kindergarten.  That was over 20 years ago!  She drives me nuts sometimes.

I love my mom, really, but I do have to wonder if I would have had a less disordered relationship with food if I'd grown up in a different house. 

Hmmm, my mom pretty much encouraged healthy eating, but was never over-the-top about it.  My dad's been overweight all my life - ranging from mildly to a quite large belly.  However, we were only allowed a chocolate bar once a week, a Coke-drink once a week and encouraged to drink things like juice & Kool-aid and stuff in very limited quanities.  My mom was a SAHM and therefore made most meals rather than pre-packaged foods.  Granted, we never shied away from things like chicken fried steak or a good meatloaf, but overall I think she cooked relatively healthy and for a while made a huge effort to help my dad lose weight (and there made everything baked, not friend, low-fat, etc.).

As I got older, she would definitely make a big effort to curb my eating & help me (or tell me) to lose weight, but not in a derogatory way.  For instance, she'd always tell me not to eat huge bags potato chips or lumps of cheese & I'd get chastised for doing so.  I was generally overweight (but not TOO much - just slightly) as a pre-teen/teenager, but I guess other than encouraging me to get more exercise, there wasn't much she could do about it, I didn't really have any BAD habits - I just always had puppy fat!

Through a concerted effort of exercise and being really careful with what I ate, I finally got down to a great, normal weight in college.  I've never been skinny, and know I never will be - as even that last 5 lbs were impossible to shift with 4x-week workouts & close food-watching.  Over the past few years, that weight has steadily creeped back on, and then some, mostly through sheer laziness.

Sorry, I digress!  Anyway, I think parents MAY be a small factor for some, but obviously it's so many different things that it's impossible to pinpoint.

Edited to add: for what it's worth, my (older) sister has a pretty unhealthy relationship with food/diet.  She's ALWAYS on a diet and can get truly obsessive about it.  She's obsess about exercise, too.  Sure, she looks great, but I know that level of fixation cannot be good - and she's done this in the past, proving that it's not sustainable long-term (seems to be a stop-start, stop-start thing).

I probably come from the other end of the spectrum.  My mother was a maniac when it came to food.  Candy, ice cream, chips, etc were all banned from the house.  She wrote notes to school banning me from eating the birthday cupcakes, pizza, etc that kids sometimes brought.  So when I moved out for college, for the first 2 years I made up for missing out by gorging on it.  Candy bar after candy bar after bags and bags of potato chips….  I would get terribly sick so I would behave and eat “healthy food” till I got well and then went back to the junk food.  This vicious cycle repeated basically till I graduated.  Now I basically went back to the diet my mother has set.  I can’t say I follow it it’s because I find it healthy.  I think my body is so programmed into only accepting that kind of food that any other food makes me ill. 

These days my only problem is finding the time to eat.  Most of the time, I’m too busy running around to get things done so eating has a very low priority.  Finding 30 minutes or an hour to sit down and eat is absolutely impossible for me.  It has gotten slightly better since I got married because there is my husband to think about.  Before, I get home from work and I plop down on my bed and snooze away.  With my husband around, he will usually poke me awake and ask for dinner with his puppy eyes.  It forces me to at least get in a proper meal once a day.   

My mom & grandma were all about the 'have something to eat, it'll make you feel better' sort of mentality - I think they were both that way themselves.  And with all the sh*t that happened during my childhood, there was quite a lot to try & feel better about. 

If I were a parent and chose one thing to do different than my parents, this would be it. My mom and grandmother did this too (including the "kids starving in [pick a locale]") and looking back on it, I don't think this is the best way.

I'm glad my parents didn't force me to clean my plate.  They also allowed everyone (even small children) to serve our own portions of things.  They tried to encourage me to eat vegetables but without a huge amount of success.  I finally started eating them in college.  I think it can be very difficult to get children who don't have big appetites to try new foods.

My parents served us healthy meals, and had a lot of junky food around for snacks, but our family wasn't really preoccupied with food.  My children are much the same way, and friends are surprised when they don't beg for snacks or notice when I don't serve them dinner until really late (I know - bad mother  )

My inlaws are great cooks and healthy eaters, but they insist on serving everyone's plate.  They want children to clean their plates because "our children always ate whatever they were served".

It can be tricky to figure out the best way to get children to establish healthy diets, and I don't think there's a straightforward answer as to what's best.

I'm not big on blame, but I can definitely see a lot of my food issues came from my family. My dad had MASSIVE food issues. He was obsessed with it and ate constantly, ate secretly, ate nothing but junk, etc. I mean honestly he really did have big problems. My mom tried, she really did. But the FIRST thing she did when there was something going on (someone visiting, something to celebrate, etc) was plan what to eat. There was a very definite fixation on food in my family.... My brother is similarly obsessive as am I. 

A lot of what Mrs. Robinson wrote about the show just seems to make sense with my experiences.  I've gone through periods of my life when I ate really badly and didn't exercise at all.  I try to eat well now because of the health benefits and because I have hereditary cholesterol problems.  My weight has stayed in the same range whatever.

My son and daughter eat about the same amount and exercise about the same amount.  If anything my son eats more and eats a greater variety of foods.  Nonetheless he is always at the 25% for height and weight, and my daughter is at the 50% for height and weight.  They're both healthy happy children but people often compare them and comment on my son's size.  They ask me why I don't feed him better!   It's really not the funny joke they think it is.  One older woman memorably asked my son his age and said "Well, you're a midget!" then asked my daughter her age and said "And you're a giant!"  My son does not want to be small and skinny so he asks me how he can grow and how he can get muscles.  My daughter meanwhile has started asking me if she is "fat".

If this evidence will help people to accept the bodies they've got and try to keep them as well as they can, while refraining from judging other people by their body size, then I say YAY!  I'll be happy to see more of it.

My son and daughter eat about the same amount and exercise about the same amount.  If anything my son eats more and eats a greater variety of foods.  Nonetheless he is always at the 25% for height and weight, and my daughter is at the 50% for height and weight.  They're both healthy happy children but people often compare them and comment on my son's size.  They ask me why I don't feed him better!   It's really not the funny joke they think it is.  One older woman memorably asked my son his age and said "Well, you're a midget!" then asked my daughter her age and said "And you're a giant!"  My son does not want to be small and skinny so he asks me how he can grow and how he can get muscles.  My daughter meanwhile has started asking me if she is "fat".

If this evidence will help people to accept the bodies they've got and try to keep them as well as they can, while refraining from judging other people by their body size, then I say YAY!  I'll be happy to see more of it.

You should have punched her in the face! What justification does this lady have to think her judgment is better?! Who does she think she is?!! That makes me so upset! I'm going to give her the benefit of the doubt and think she wasn't trying to be mean, but it really wasn't any of her business, especially if they were healthy. ARRR! Again, this makes me so angry. If your kids are healthy then they are perfect just the way they are! Above size, health comes first!

If you can't already tell, I feel very passionately about things like this...

I think most people are 'addicted' to food

I both disagree with this and not sure why you put "addiction" in quotes. Food is unique in that we all need it to live, but the best way I could explain food addiction to others is that there are people who enjoy drinking and then there are alcoholics.

My doctor put me on an anti-depressant once and I hadn't initially that it was also used to control compulsive behaviour and treat addiction. One morning after about a week of taking it, I woke up, padded to the kitchen to grab food (as I do first thing when I get out of bed,) opened the fridge and stopped. I didn't want anything. I didn't want it because I wasn't hungry. That feeling really shocked me as it was entirely new!

And do it was, for the entire time I was on the meds: I still ate and enjoyed food. But I stopped when I was full and didn't really worry much about it when I wasn't hungry. The obsession with getting to that next morsel, that next snack, to that next meal was gone.

This "addiction" for some: it is very very real.

ETA: From reading, it seems like people just have very different relationship with food. For example, I'm like MeShell: food consumption is not related to feelings of hunger in any way.

Experiences of someone like Jewlz, who is constantly hungry, are foreign to me. If my eating was driven purely by that, I'd probably eat only two apples and an egg a day, or something. And those are just two permutations.

There are infinite number of reasons why people gain weight, stay overweight, can't lose weight. Isn't it ridiculous to think that there's only one way to address that?

I feel the spirit of my post seems to have been misinterpreted and taken out of context, based on judgements and assumptions, about a single sentence.

Indeed, I agree that food is unique in that we all need it to live and that is my point! Most of us desire to eat, as it is a biological necessity of life, and there is a spectrum of behaviour that can exemplify that (resulting from many factors, like social, biological, social, etc.), i.e. degrees of addiction, so hence the quotation marks.

I’m just not convinced, in my experience, that pathologising behaviours all of the time, which are sometimes perfectly reasonable responses, sometimes to often terrible things, is helpful. Addiction can be a perfectly reasonable response to unreal circumstances. Nowhere did I say that addiction isn’t real for some. It wasn’t my intent to say that.

I agree there are an infinite number of reasons why people gain weight, stay overweight, can't lose weight. Of course there are many ways to address this: in fact, I have highlighted that there are social, biological, class and gender issues to name a few things that are at play. 

Mapleleafgirl, I feel you were misunderstood too.  I agreed with several of the points you made in your original post, especially this.

I try to focus on my health and detach it from my weight, as weight is not the only indicator or necessarily an accurate indicator, of health. I try and ask myself if I am my friends / loved ones are happy and do they love themselves - this helps me to not focus on what is ultimately superficial. 

What is also problematic, IMO, is that women are often socialised to judge and value themselves and other women on the basis of looks. And tied into this is weight. I think what is worrying is some people's judgemental attitudes that being thin equals some kind of moral superiority, where those that are deemed fat are pathologised. This just highlights how individualistic many Western cultures seem to be, ignoring the interdependence and social nature of what it truly means to be human.   

You should have punched her in the face! What justification does this lady have to think her judgment is better?! Who does she think she is?!! That makes me so upset! I'm going to give her the benefit of the doubt and think she wasn't trying to be mean, but it really wasn't any of her business, especially if they were healthy. ARRR! Again, this makes me so angry. If your kids are healthy then they are perfect just the way they are! Above size, health comes first!

If you can't already tell, I feel very passionately about things like this...

Thanks, Rynn My kids weren't really that upset by it, and they laugh off this kind of thing for the most part.  It's just a shame that it's commented on so often.  The reason I brought it up is because my kids are people whose diets and exercise levels I can observe first hand and document well.  I think lots of people who've had more than one child could attest to having babies who drink different amounts of milk, grow differently, etc.  We accept that there are a variety of healthy sizes for babies, but at some point we seem to decide that everyone should be the same size.  It doesn't surprise me if scientists are discovering evidence that would show people do have innate differences which affect their weight.

I know that my body is meant to be a certain way, and nothing I do will change that. Nothing I have done has changed that. I sometimes wonder if I would have a different body type had I not had so many food issues starting at such an early age.
My mother's disordered eating influenced me growing up, seeing her fear of being fat my whole life-- even now, she barely eats, is a size 6/8, and complains of being fat! And while growing up, we didn't really eat healthy. My mom doesn't and can't cook so we had a lot of takeaway, processed, prepackaged, or just plain unhealthy and easy-to-prepare food. Our snacks were always junk too.
Moreso, though, food was my response to childhood trauma; I became a compulsive overeater to deal with the bad things happening. I have had disordered eating since I can remember (so, at least since I was 5 yrs old). I can remember getting up at night after I was meant to be asleep, just to sneak food.
Around age 13 my overeating slowly morphed into anorexia and bulimia, with stretches of time where I would still compulsively overeat. I went for years without ever feeling hungry simply because I never stopped eating, and then I went years feeling constantly hungry because I was starving myself. Through years of abusing my body, by not eating for days on end (I did "fasts" frequently and it wasn't uncommon for me to not eat for 5-10 days at a time), or for throwing up everything I did it, and over-exercising if I ate "too much" I messed up my metabolism. I've been in recovery for 2 years and I think my body is finally getting back to normal.

I've spent nearly two decades despising my body, loathing myself, and wishing to be thin. I've ranged in size from US 10 to 16, but my body naturally seems to like being at a size 12, around 170lbs. According to the charts I am 11lbs and 3 BMI points overweight, and I could lose that weight easily if I wanted to, but I'd never be able to maintain it. After years of struggling with eating disorders and hating myself over the number on the scale and the number on my clothes, I've come entirely too far to concern myself much with what scientists or society have to say about my body. I am finally at a point where I accept my body as much as any normal woman does, I think. Sure, I'd like thinner thighs, or I'd like to be a couple sizes smaller. But I eat healthy 80% of the time, I get a good amount of exercise, and I finally don't hate myself.

I agree with the person(s) who said they feel more comfortable in their own skin here in the UK than anywhere else. I've never felt so unconcerned about my body as I do here.

but my body naturally seems to like being at a size 12, around 170lbs.

I think a size 12 is perfectly healthy. And from what you've had to overcome, I think you should congratulate yourself for having such a good attitude toward weight! 

I've spent nearly two decades despising my body, loathing myself, and wishing to be thin. I've ranged in size from US 10 to 16, but my body naturally seems to like being at a size 12, around 170lbs. According to the charts I am 11lbs and 3 BMI points overweight, and I could lose that weight easily if I wanted to, but I'd never be able to maintain it. After years of struggling with eating disorders and hating myself over the number on the scale and the number on my clothes, I've come entirely too far to concern myself much with what scientists or society have to say about my body. I am finally at a point where I accept my body as much as any normal woman does, I think. Sure, I'd like thinner thighs, or I'd like to be a couple sizes smaller. But I eat healthy 80% of the time, I get a good amount of exercise, and I finally don't hate myself.

I agree with the person(s) who said they feel more comfortable in their own skin here in the UK than anywhere else. I've never felt so unconcerned about my body as I do here.

I think it's great that you feel more comfortable with yourself now! I think it's so important for maintaining mental health and general well-being.

I think a size 12 is perfectly healthy. And from what you've had to overcome, I think you should congratulate yourself for having such a good attitude toward weight! 

Agreed that a size 12 is totally healthy!

Thanks to you both!   And yes, there is nothing wrong with being a size 12. It was the average size in the US for a long time, if I remember correctly. I recently read that the average size in the US is now a 14/16.

This is a bit of a digression, but speaking of average sizes . . . I had a friend in grad school who was a size XS, and she never paid more than maybe $10-15 for any item of clothing.  She always had a huge selection of extra smalls to choose from on the 80% off sale rack, meanwhile the Ls and XLs were long gone.  Retailers seriously don't have a clue.  Why do they insist on carrying so many tiny sizes?