Illustration by Curtis Parker
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Eat More, Stay Thin
By Brian Good, May & June 2006
10 fat-fighting tricks of the naturally lean
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You see them. Your rail-thin coworker who seems to live on pizza and never exercises. The skinny sibling whose best friends are Ben & Jerry. The svelte buddy who never met a second helping he didn't like. We hate these people.
Why is staying thin so easy for them and so tough for us? The ego-sparing reply is that they simply have great genes and a faster metabolism than we do, which at least shifts a little of the blame to our parents. But, sadly, this is often not the case.
Differences in genetics and metabolism are not conclusive factors in making someone overweight, says Jose Ordovas, Ph.D., professor in the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University in Boston. "Obesity is only 50 percent genetics. The other 50 percent is just personal habits." When you look closely, it turns out that lifelong-lean people just have better control over what they put in their mouths. You may see them gorge on French fries during lunch—but you'd see different behavior if you observed them the other 23 hours of the day.
Ironically, many slim people can thank their parents for their thinness—but not because of superior DNA. "Most lean people learned the habits that keep their weight under control in childhood," says Ordovas. What that means is that the rest of us can adopt these slenderizing habits, too. Here's what that trim person isn't telling you.
1. Never say diet The weight you lose during a two-week crash diet rarely stays off for long; you've probably experienced that. As soon as you stop restricting what you eat, the pounds come right back—and they generally bring friends. Why? Dieters unintentionally train their bodies to store more body fat at a faster rate. "Under normal conditions, humans absorb only about 80 to 90 percent of the nutrients from the food they eat," says A. Roberto Frisancho, Ph.D., of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. The rest—calories and all—passes through. But when the body is deprived of nourishment, he says, it becomes a superefficient machine, absorbing a much higher percentage of nutrients from food. So when a dieting person begins eating normally again, the body continues absorbing food at the higher rate—and stores more of it as fat.
While lifelong-lean people never diet, many do evolve their eating habits throughout their lives to maintain their weight, sometimes unconsciously. "Rather than dieting, the best thing is to make gradual, permanent changes to the way you eat—changes you can live with for years, not days," says Elizabeth Ward, M.S., R.D., a Reading, Massachusetts-based nutritionist and author of The Pocket Idiot's Guide to the New Food Pyramids (Alpha, 2006). "If you're going to change the way you eat for just a few weeks and then go back to your old ways, you might as well not even bother making the change," she says. You'll likely end up only fatter in the coming months, with an even slower metabolism because of the lean tissue you've lost. This dangerous cycle makes it more difficult to lose weight, and may even lead to obesity.
2. Beware of "low fat" Thin people often drink regular cola and eat full-fat muffins, while we opt for the tasteless or cardboardlike zero- or reduced-calorie alternatives. But foods that are sweet but have few calories can throw off the body's natural ability to judge how many calories you're actually consuming. In a study at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana, groups of rats were each given either a drink sweetened naturally or one sweetened artificially. After ten days on this feeding pattern, the rats were allowed to eat some chocolate and then as much regular food as they wanted. The rats who drank the artificially sweetened drinks ate significantly more than those who drank the sugar water.
The study suggests that sweet, low-calorie foods prevent the body from keeping track of how many calories it's actually consumed, says study author Terry Davidson, Ph.D. Because diet foods can have a supersweet taste but few calories, your body gets fooled into thinking that foods sweetened with real sugar also have no calories, leading people to overeat, says Davidson.
3. Steer clear of white bread When Tufts University researchers studied 459 middle-age men and women living in Baltimore, they found something surprising: white bread had a mysteriously strong connection with obesity. "When you look at the amount of white bread, alcohol, sweets, meat, and potatoes in people's diets, it wasn't the junk food or steak that did it but the white bread," says study author Katherine Tucker, Ph.D., a professor of nutritional epidemiology. "The people who eat it most often are also the most overweight."
Why? Good question. Even the experts aren't entirely sure. "The calories from refined grains, like white bread or white rice, just seem to settle at the waistline more than calories from other foods," says Tucker.
The key here may be fiber, which is filling and doesn't cause weight gain. Breads made with white flour have almost none. A better option is whole-grain bread with at least two grams of fiber per slice. Read the label, and make sure whole grain is listed as the first or second ingredient (don't just grab a brown bread; some contain molasses to add coloring).
4. Trust your brain, not your stomach Many of us are quick to say we're "starving" if we feel a mild hunger pang, but lifelong-lean people are less prone to such exaggeration. "Most lean men and women don't mind feeling hungry," says Megan McCrory, Ph.D., a professor in the School of Nutrition and Exercise Science at Bastyr University in Kenmore, Washington. "Too many people think you have to eat immediately when you feel hunger, yet that's not the case at all," she says. Why? Heavier folks often think they're hungry when they're really just craving a food. Though fleeting cravings triggered by a variety of stimuli (such as a fast-food commercial or the smell of a barbecue) are easy to interpret as hunger pangs, they're actually just a temporary lust. Unless you're a diabetic or have other blood sugar problems, you can ignore these cravings or quash them by distracting yourself with some task. Take a short walk, phone a friend, or read a book. Many times you'll find that what you really wanted was something to do, not something to eat.
5. Weigh in every day When your weight is an issue, nothing's more depressing than a daily reminder of exactly what you're clocking in at. That's why so many of us were delighted to ditch our scales during the 1980s and '90s, when diet experts said tracking your weight on a daily basis wasn't important. That was a big mistake—one that folks who have joined the lifetime-lean club a little later in life have learned to correct.
"If there's one thing that comes up over and over with the thousands and thousands of patients enrolled in the National Weight Control Registry, it's that weighing yourself each and every day on a scale has helped people lose weight and keep it off," says Rena Wing, Ph.D., founder of the registry, which tracks more than 5,000 men and women who have lost an average of 66 pounds or more and kept at least 30 pounds off for six years. (To enroll in the study, call 800-606-6927.) "You don't need to obsess over ounces every day, but keep track of the range—within two or three pounds—of what you weigh," she says. "That way there are no surprises. You can catch small changes as they occur and take corrective measures immediately, before your weight spirals out of control." This advantage is important for staying lean, because it's much easier to lose two pounds than it is to lose 20.
6. Learn what four ounces looks like "Most people who have been lean their whole lives have a much better understanding of proper portion size than do people who are overweight," says Deborah Riebe, Ph.D., a professor in the department of kinesiology at the University of Rhode Island in Kingston. "If they go out to eat, they'll ask for a doggy bag right away or just leave food on their plate rather than cleaning it up."
This trait is demonstrated early in life. A study in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that lean teens, after eating fast food, automatically compensated for the extra calories by eating less than usual the rest of the day, so their daily caloric intake remained consistent even with a junk food binge. Their overweight peers, though, wolfed down the fast food and ate just as much food at subsequent meals as they usually consumed—taking in hundreds of additional calories.
An easy way to eat smaller portions? Use salad—or even dessert—plates instead of dinner plates. Often our conception of "enough" comes from comparing a food's volume with its container. Also, eat with companions so you're more likely to talk while eating; yammering slows down consumption, and anything that slows you down is a boon. You've probably heard that it takes 20 minutes for your stomach to signal to your brain that you're full. But most of us already eat too much before our brains realize we have even picked up the fork. "It can take 12 minutes or longer for the signal that you've started eating to make its way to your brain," says Mark S. Gold, M.D., chief of the McKnight Brain Institute at the University of Florida in Gainesville. That old "chew ten times before swallowing" trick? It works.
7. Punch your snooze button Sleep prevents you from trudging through life like a mindless drone, but did you know a good night's sleep is also key for maintaining the proper weight? "There's a very significant relationship between sleep and obesity," says James Maas, Ph.D., professor at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, and author of Power Sleep (Collins, 1999).
Researchers at the University of Chicago restricted a group of healthy men and women to four hours of sleep a night. After six days the subjects' metabolisms and hormone levels were so out of whack that their bodies had a hard time processing glucose in the blood—a problem common in overweight diabetics. In a follow-up study, the researchers examined "normal" sleepers as well as a second group of people who slept fewer than six hours a night. The sleep-deprived group needed to produce 30 percent more insulin, on average, to process their food—a trait that predisposes people to weight gain and increases the risk of obesity over time.
"Study after study has shown that sleep deprivation can disrupt your metabolism, wreaking havoc on the body's ability to maintain a healthy weight," says Maas. Why? Fat cells produce a hormone called leptin, which helps the body keep track of how much potential energy (i.e., fat) it has stored. Leptin production peaks when you're asleep, and that spike can be interrupted if you deprive yourself of Z's. This leaves your body with an unreliable measurement of how much energy it has in reserve and ultimately causes it to end up storing calories rather than burning them.
Another drawback from not sleeping enough? "It's easy to confuse feelings of fatigue with feelings of hunger, so you end up eating when you're really just tired," says Maas. His advice: "Try going to bed at least one hour earlier than normal for a couple of weeks, and see what effect that has on your weight." If possible, shoot for the ideal of eight hours a night. Depending on your body, you may ultimately need even more.
8. Dive into doughnuts Here's a shocker: a group of researchers in the United Kingdom told 12 of 25 women to limit their sweets intake and then packed all of them into a room filled with goodies. Guess which group ate more? That's right, the "dieting" women were caught sneaking more food. Blame the allure of the forbidden. After all, if Adam and Eve couldn't resist, how can you? For most overweight people such a decadent rebellion isn't pure joy. It spurs feelings of self-loathing. The whole time they're eating a "bad" food, even if it's deserved and infrequent, a gnawing voice scolds them, saying, "You shouldn't be eating this. You have no self-control." As a result, they scarf down the food quickly; instead of enjoying the snack and feeling satisfied, they feel guilty and depressed—which, for many people, leads to raiding the potato chip drawer again.
Most lean people, however, don't entertain guilty feelings when they indulge in the infrequent binge. They emphasize the positive: rather than sneak these foods into their lives, most celebrate the occasional double-fudge-brownie sundae with glee.
"Lean people usually don't feel guilty when they're eating a food they enjoy," says Belisa Vranich, Ph.D., a clinical psychologist and health and fitness expert in New York City. "Instead, they make a lot of fanfare out of eating rich foods, getting maximum enjoyment from them."
9. Twiddle your thumbs It's a misconception that lean folk spend five hours a day on the treadmill (though most do make an attempt to regularly exercise). However, says kinesiology professor Riebe, "lean people are more likely to participate in fitness for fitness' sake." This doesn't have to mean thousands of leg presses or ab crunches. Most lean folks find ways to sneak physical activity into their daily lives, whether consciously (taking the stairs instead of the elevator) or unconsciously (pacing while talking on the phone).
To test the power of the fidget, researchers at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, fed 16 volunteers an extra 1,000 calories a day for eight weeks. The difference between volunteers' gaining two pounds or 16 pounds over the course of the study? It came down to the amount of time they spent engaged in small-scale movement, says study author Michael Jensen, M.D. It wasn't hours in the gym that helped the lean people stay that way, but tiny activities of daily life—standing up, stretching, even maintaining good posture.
10. Say "not now" instead of "no" Trying to eliminate favorite foods from your diet can bring disastrous results. "You often end up eating all kinds of other foods in their place and still never feel satisfied," says Vranich. "You're usually much better off just eating a small amount of what you really want."
The secret is planning. Use your favorite meal as a reward for a week of significant accomplishments: you grabbed your running shoes every evening when you really wanted to grab the remote control, or you grilled the chicken you normally would have fried. Now you get the bowl of Rocky Road as a treat. While dietitians have long advised that people struggling with weight should not use food as a reward, many are now relaxing this mandate. Tying decadent foods to occasional rewards can be a practical way to limit (and not eliminate) them, and to maintain control by preplanning when and how much you'll eat.
Even if you're not the self-rewarding type, try giving yourself a heart's-desire meal once a week. For six days you eat normally and sensibly. Then, at dinner of day seven, you're free to eat General Tso's chicken and bratwurst with mashed potatoes on the side—if those are the foods you crave.
"It's okay for people to blow one meal a week without feeling guilty," says Elizabeth Ward, the Reading nutritionist. "If you follow a healthy diet 95 percent of the time, you can relax and enjoy yourself the other 5 percent."
If starting on your path to Leanville seems daunting, take heart in this: "Statistically, almost everyone has a tendency to become overweight," says Ward. "Everybody has to learn the good habits needed to keep weight under control." That means lean people had to learn them, too. They got a head start, but you can catch up.
Brian Good is the deputy editor at Men's Fitness and has won the National Magazine Award for service journalism.
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