Mastodawn

Why don't some people never gain any weight no matter how much they eat?

https://lemmy.world/post/26154267

Why don't some people never gain any weight no matter how much they eat? - Lemmy.World

My brother, 21 yo, is like this. He’s ~180 cm tall and has never weighted more than 61 kg (during the 2020 covid lockdown, he made a big deal out of this since it was the first time he passed the 60 kg mark; after the lockdown was over he immediately dropped back to his perpetual weight of ~55kg). I live with him so I know his eating habits: he eats all the time, whatever he wants, whenever, how much he wants and simply doesn’t put on any weight. Is very energetic, no sick look / demeanour. It’s just fascinating to me cause I’m not like that at all, I have to watch what / how much / when I eat.

onebonestone Feb 28, 2025

Genetics probably. Some people are suited for endurance sports, others gain muscle more easily. I recognize myself from the description. Very hard to gain muscle/weight and eating enough feels like a chore.

danekrae Feb 28, 2025

I was the same. Then I turned 30…

amino Feb 28, 2025

if you don’t starve yourself and eat whenever you’re hungry you actually gain less weight than being on a diet

Blue_Morpho Feb 28, 2025

That’s psychology, not physics. If you actually stick to a diet such that you are eating less than you burn, you will lose weight.

No one can break the laws of physics.

amino Feb 28, 2025

too bad human beings aren’t engines huh?

the fake claim that most people even need to lose weight actually derives from the eugenics movement. for more information I recommend the book Belly of the Beast by Da’Shaun L. Harrison.

if you’re burning more calories than you eat that’s called starving yourself and it leads to eating disorders and long-term organ damage. stop spreading harmful misinformation

…edu.au/…/its-time-to-bust-the-calories-in-calori…

It's time to bust the 'calories in, calories out' weight-loss myth

The University of Sydney

Deestan Feb 28, 2025

Reading past the headline, the article goes on to say that calorie in/out is correct but hard to calculate usefully and thus they recommend strategies that are easier to keep stable.

It’s pretty shitty to equate a first worlder feeling hungry for a bit to actual starvation. One is unpleasant. The other is serious.

amino Feb 28, 2025

reading past the mansplainer explaining the headline to me, what it actually says is that calorie counting can be more harmful than good (which is a very mild take and an under-estimation)

nieminen Feb 28, 2025

Read the article, 2/3 of it corroborate that it is a calorie in/out balance that determines weight, but is simply more complex than a simple formula. Which we all know. Fiber changes how many calories you actually consume. The type of calorie depends on how much you consume (whole foods vs processed, raw vs cooked) Processed sugars like candy is almost entirely taken in calorie wise, but something like an apple or carrot, have to be converted in the digestive system to be absorbed, thereby reducing the effective calorie input (takes energy to convert).

All that said, you do your best to track, (weigh your own food instead of guessing off the label), and keep your calorie intake below what you spend (again, this is generalized, and won’t be 100% accurate, but should get you close and then you adjust as needed). The problem most people face is they make sweeping changes, and quit their eating habits cold turkey. “I’m never eating candy or ice cream again” <- bad idea unless you’re allergic or something. Forbidding it will increase the craving for it, and then when you eventually succumb to the craving, you feel super guilty and basically give up.

I follow the “add good food” rather than the “reduce what I eat”. If you up your fiber and protein intake, it’s SUPER hard to overeat. Fiber and protein are super satiating, and it lasts a long time. Adding whole foods to what you already eat is a great way to reduce overall consumption.

Btw potatoes and beans are GOATed.

amino Feb 28, 2025

ah yes, promoting calorie counting and weighing food, the famously not disordered gymbro eating patterns. the article actually says that calorie counting can cause more harm than good

nieminen Feb 28, 2025

Lawl, I’m so not a gymbro.

I’m fat, and out of shape, but am slowly working my way to a happier healthier weight, using the principles listed above.

amino Feb 28, 2025

you’re what we call in the fat community one of the “good fats”. just know that what you’re promoting is pseudoscience and not conducive to “health” whatever that means

nieminen Feb 28, 2025

You’re what we call in the Internet community jackass and a troll.

Look up the definition of pseudoscience, I think you’ll find it fits your discussion points better than mine.

Anywho, troll’s always be trollin’ so I’ll leave off here because you won’t ever even consider you might be wrong. I’ve been on both sides of this argument, and the overwhelming consensus aligns with what I’ve been saying.

Blue_Morpho Feb 28, 2025

too bad human beings aren’t engines huh?

Humans are engines. Stop eating and you will lose weight. I didn’t make any claims about health. But you absolutely are and engine. The proof is that if you stop eating, you will die. Different fuels burn differently but you can’t defy the laws of physics.

Eugenics is the study of improving humans through breeding. You used the wrong word.

I’m not taking the word of one uneducated author over the overwhelming majority of trained doctors and scientists who all consider obesity to be a medical problem that needs to be treated.

amino Feb 28, 2025

what you’re doing here is mansplaining science by refusing to keep up to date on the recent research that’s only recently starting to make it acceptable in the scientific literature what’s been known all along by indigenous people and survivors of famine. that is that food scarcity doesn’t cause weight loss, it causes systemic retention of fat to survive life threatening scenarios.

in the epigenetics field as well it is well known that famine trauma propagates through generations, which is exemplified by Irish people tending towards larger sizes on average.

you’re also idolizing medics and the medical field by not acknowledging that they’re humans just like us and therefore not devoid of biases. the field is extremely white and man-centric, therefore refusing to accept any science that doesn’t benefit their class interests. eugenics is common practice in medicine nowadays, you can see it in the way fatness is criminalized and punished through violence by most doctors.

Blue_Morpho Feb 28, 2025

that is that food scarcity doesn’t cause weight loss

Bullshit.

Epigenetics isn’t eugenics. Like I said, you used the wrong word.

you’re also idolizing medics

I carefully used the phrase “overwhelming majority”. Science progresses through consensus. The data shows obesity kills.

amino Feb 28, 2025

and the consensus used to be that race science is a great idea. great job in rebranding that in fat phobia!

Blue_Morpho Feb 28, 2025

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. The data shows obesity kills.

Your claim that lack of food doesn’t cause weight loss is absolute bullshit of the flat earther variety.

kernelle Feb 28, 2025

Is very energetic

That’s the secret IMHO, being active is more than working out. Living an energetic lifestyle gives you a faster metabolism. Activate your core doing anything in your daily life will burn much more calories than slouching.

graycube Feb 28, 2025

These are the people who then say that if you gain weight it is because you are lazy or weak willed. Really it is 99% hormones and only 1% strength of character.

splendoruranium Feb 28, 2025

These are the people who then say that if you gain weight it is because you are lazy or weak willed.

Whether someone perceives it as hard to lose or not gain weight doesn’t really factor into it, does it? For adults the ultimate decision to eat more than one needs lies with exactly one person.

Really it is 99% hormones and only 1% strength of character.

I’m not sure I understand correctly, are you suggesting that obesity epidemics have some kind of shared underlying physiological reason?

amino Feb 28, 2025

there’s no obesity epidemic. it’s all eugenics to the core

splendoruranium Feb 28, 2025

there’s no obesity epidemic. it’s all eugenics to the core

I’m almost afraid to ask, but what do you mean by that?

amino Feb 28, 2025

that it’s an artificially engineered “crisis” by the medical industrial complex to justify modern day discrimination and refuse to provide healthcare to fat people, Black people, etc

podcast episode on this

The Obesity Epidemic

Maintenance Phase · Episode

Spotify

splendoruranium Feb 28, 2025

that it’s an artificially engineered “crisis” by the medical industrial complex to justify modern day discrimination and refuse to provide healthcare to fat people, Black people, etc
podcast episode on this

Thanks! I’m slightly confused by the sources linked in the podcast description though. While it’s pretty US-centric they universally seem to confirm that yes, obesity rates are rising and that yes, medical consensus is that obesity is a bad thing. Does the podcast then come to some kind of different conclusion?
I don’t have a hard time believing that American companies are profiteering off of sick people, but I feel like there might be some accidental shuffling of cause and effect here. You can fleece and discriminate against a fat person, but in order for that to happen you first need a fat person, don’t you?

NABDad Feb 28, 2025

Sometimes an actual medical condition makes the difference.

At a yearly physical, my doctor noted, “no one could gain that much weight that fast without something wrong”. That’s how I got tested for and diagnosed with a thyroid disorder. It’s also the explanation for why I could never lose weight. I thought the reason I could hardly move was because I was just getting older.

For years I had been unable to lose weight by dieting. After getting my thyroid levels corrected with medication, I became more active. I started casually intermittent fasting, and I lost 30 pounds.

There’s also been research that shows your gut bacteria has a lot to do with whether you gain weight or not.

uclahealth.org/…/gut-microbiome-makeup-can-determ…

Gut microbiome makeup can determine ability to lose weight

Naz Feb 28, 2025

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghrelin

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leptin

TLDR: The body has a setpoint for weight which is tuned to environmental conditions and will attempt to reach it by modulating hunger.

It takes 8-12 months for these hormones to reset, so any diet is ineffective unless permanently maintained.

High setpoint? Prepare to be ravenously hungry all the time if you eat below your hormonal baseline.

Ghrelin - Wikipedia

surewhynotlem Feb 28, 2025

You can also apparently wear weights to lose weight for this reason.

www.thelancet.com/journals/eclinm/…/fulltext?mc_c…

Acamon Feb 28, 2025

That finding is pretty mind blowing!

truthfultemporarily Feb 28, 2025

He eats less than he burns. Could be just high level of base activity - even just walking around a bunch makes a huge difference, much more than sports. Or could be very low appetite.

Diplomjodler Feb 28, 2025

Wait until he’s 30. I was pretty scrawny as a young lad. As soon as I turned thirty, I started putting on the pounds.

guy Feb 28, 2025

I wish 😭 have been able to eat whatever I want for all my life without gaining a pound. I've been told "Wait till you are above 30" so many times.
Over 30 now and I still can't get any fat to stay on my body. I just want to stop freezing all the time dammit

Diplomjodler Feb 28, 2025

I can give you a transplant.

Mothra Feb 28, 2025

To chime in with the others and answer: hormones, activity levels, calorie intake. Those three give you your results. Hormones in particular will vary greatly and are influenced by activity levels but also by mental stress (or lack of), age, sex, environment variables such as temperature, etc.

As to why you didn’t get that bingo card- nobody has an answer really.

Treczoks Feb 28, 2025

I know a guy who could eat butter raw without gaining a gram. Because his intestines simply don’t process any fats. He has problems dealing with proteins, too. So he has to eat smaller helpings all day long.

i_dont_want_to Feb 28, 2025

I knew a guy like this, even in his 40’s. He was active and he smoked a lot of tobacco. His mom is the same way, in her 80’s.

His brother, also in his 40’s, is overweight. Same habits that I have observed.

DragonsInARoom Feb 28, 2025

Some factors here: he’s tall and male so his energy need is greater compared to the latter. Here’s his TDEE (total daily energy expenditure) ( tdeecalculator.net/result.php?s=metric&g=male&age… ). Another factor if he’s over eating is that the fat he puts on won’t be visible fat but the fat that insulates the organs.

Calories Needed for a 21 year old, 60 kg Male

A 21 year old male who is 60kg needs an estimated 2,234 calories per day

amino Feb 28, 2025

it’s embarrassing that people still use eugenics calculators in scientific discussions

Bestaa Feb 28, 2025

The linked page uses the Mifflin-St Jeor Formula which appears to have been published in 1990. As someone acquainted with eugenics but not how BMR calculations play a role, could you share some I formation on how the two are related?

amino Feb 28, 2025

I think the initial assumption that a “healthy” universal weight even exists is rooted in eugenics. oh, and also the attempts by the medical industrial complex to standardize it and enforce it through violence against fat people

LesserAbe Feb 28, 2025

I’ve seen you say a few places in this thread that reducing caloric intake is related to eugenics. That’s a pretty strong claim to make without any evidence. Can you share any?

nakedunclothedhuman Feb 28, 2025

I think amino may be referring to the history of BMI, which is how most folks judge weight/mass, and has a long history of racist origins. There’s loads of research on it now and Aubrey Gordon’s book ”You Just Need to Lose Weight” and 19 Other Myths About Fat People summarizes some of the research very well. Here’s a recent ethics article that also sheds some light onto the subject:

journalofethics.ama-assn.org/article/…/2023-07

How the Use of BMI Fetishizes White Embodiment and Racializes Fat Phobia

Size-based health and beauty ideals emanated from eugenic pseudoscientific postulates, and BMI continues to advance white supremacist embodiment norms.

Journal of Ethics | American Medical Association

amino Feb 28, 2025

thanks for the recs, will check them out!

amino Feb 28, 2025

Belly of the Beast by Da’Shaun L. Harrison, Fearing the Black Body the Racial Origins of Fatphobia by Sabrina Strings.

a podcast on the intersection of fatphobia and eugenics I recommend is Maintenance Phase. on BMI, on the obesity “epidemic”

The Body Mass Index

Maintenance Phase · Episode

Spotify

FauxPseudo Feb 28, 2025

I was 61kg at 187cm from 15 to 30. I was eating 6000 calories a day to maintain that weight. Then I gained 22kg over the next three years and finally felt healthy for the first time. I had all the same health problems as anorexics while eating like an Olympic athlete.

It was just genetics. Multiple family members were like this but not as bad as I had it. Now I have a nephew who has it just as bad as I did. He just has to wait another decade or so to achieve normalcy.

neidu3 Feb 28, 2025

Similar metrics here. I finally managed to break 70Kg at 35.

Ziggurat Feb 28, 2025

As usual, weight is driven by Calorie in - Calorie out. If it's positive you gain weight, if it's negative you loose weigt.

Your brother is a tall, young male, all of that would point toward a relatively high calorie out also without knowing him in details it's hard to evaluate. There is always that person taking desert twice when out, but skipping lunch on regular day while doing a lot of sport.

amino Feb 28, 2025

this is actually misinformation that’s already been debunked. I recommend reading my other comment

HubertManne Feb 28, 2025

yeah. when my metabolism was like this I was not sedentary but was not into sport. mosquitoes loved me (and still do) and they detect carbon dioxide so my bet is just more resting calorie burning or just an inneficient digestive system and maybe both.

Melvin_Ferd Feb 28, 2025

Much more complicated than CICO. People burn calories at much different rates. Genetics, hormones, and medical conditions, NEAT all play big parts in this equation. Your answer does answer the question but doesn’t at the same time. It’s like answering “gas” when someone asks what makes a car go fast.

Acamon Feb 28, 2025

Calories in - calories out is true, but people often have the wrong idea about it. It’s very much not ‘what you eat’ - ‘exercise’. Like you say, being a tall young man probably indicates a decent base calorie expenditure.

Most people are aware that maintaining muscle mass spends more calories than maintaining fat stores (whose purpose is to provide calories during a famine!) but for many people the main uses of the calories they consume is to maintain body temperature. There’s indications that who are obese maintain a lower core temperatures during the day, which uses up less energy.

How many calories are spent on maintaining body temperature varies between individuals by up to 600kcal. So it possible that you and I eat the exact same diet, and you go for a two hour walk every evening while I scroll my phone on the couch, and I’ll lose weight and you’ll gain it.

And even in a sedentary lifestyle there’s a large variety of energy expenditure. Studies on esports are not conclusive yet, there’s some pretty dumb stuff sponsored by gaming companies that say shit like “one hour gaming = 1000 situps”. But more reputable studies suggest a more modest 50-100% increase in calorie expenditure compared to just sitting (so, the same as standing up or perhaps a gentle walk). And just fidgeting, changing posture and shifting in your seat can use up 350kcal

So it’s perfectly possible for OP’s brother to not do much obvious activity, and still use up the equivalent of a couple of big macs or 7 cans of cola, compared with a less fidgety friend with a more ‘efficient’ metabolism.

Evidence of a diurnal thermogenic handicap in obesity - PubMed

A thermogenic handicap has been proposed as potential contributor to weight gain in obese subjects but results from clinical studies are inconclusive. We tested whether diurnal and nocturnal body core temperature (BcT) measured for 20-h differed in nine obese subjects compared with 12 lean healthy c …

PubMed

Opinionhaver Feb 28, 2025

The people “not gaining weight no matter how much they eat” often aren’t eating as much as you think. I’ve heard people say this of me too but they just don’t realise how often I skip meals. I regularly eat just breakfast and nothing else the entire day. Yeah, you might see me destroying 700 grams of candy at one sitting but what you don’t know is that’s also the only thing I’ve eaten all day.

shalafi Feb 28, 2025

I was the guy people used to think about like OP’s brother. When you see me hog down, it’s because I haven’t put a single calorie in my mouth up until then.

HubertManne Feb 28, 2025

I was like this and was eating a shit ton so some people at some point in their lives have the super metabolism.

jagged_circle Feb 28, 2025

I think high metabolism is more frequent than the folks who skip meals. Lots of thin people eat more than fat people. But they also ride bicycles or do sports (burning lots of calories) and have high metabolism.

Zier Feb 28, 2025

Why?

Genetics

Movement

We lose weight by breathing. There are studies on this. If you are constantly moving you are breathing harder and expelling more CO2.
https://www.bbc.com/news/health-30494009
https://journals.physiology.org/doi/full/10.1152/advan.00006.2021
https://theconversation.com/when-we-lose-weight-where-does-it-go-91594

Fat 'breathed out' of body via lungs, say scientists

Fat can be breathed out as well as burned off as you lose weight, biochemists who have studied metabolism at a microscopic level say.

BBC News

hash Feb 28, 2025

Which makes even more sense when you ask “where does the fat go?”

Well where did that carbon you just exhaled come from?

brutallyhonestcritic Feb 28, 2025

Doh me negative detected.

Personally, I don’t never gain weight. I really should lose weight.

Melvin_Ferd Feb 28, 2025

People burn calories at much different rates. Genetics, hormones, and medical conditions, NEAT all play big parts in this equation.

pastel_de_airfryer Feb 28, 2025

I used to be like that when I was younger. Then I hit 27 and quickly gained 10kg which wouldn’t go away no matter what I did.

I was very active back then, went to the gym three times a week and didn’t drink or eat too much. I guess my metabolism slowed down.

HubertManne Feb 28, 2025

metabolism. I was like this in high school. it slowed down before 21 and continued to. This may happen to him but he is likely to keep a thin frame. If he does get fat it will likely be a pot belly.