[WillowTheWhisp]

Originally Posted by slinky

Yes well as a Naturally SLIM person let me tell you, yes putting on weight can be a issue too. Losing weight is actually easier than putting it on when you want to. Proven fact.

Losing weight may seem to be simple to someone who doesn't have the problem but if it really was that simple we wouldn't have a diet 'industry'. It is also a 'proven fact' that the majority of fat people who lose weight end up gaining more and being fatter than ever. It may seem illogical to a slim person. People who don't have a weight problem think 'eat less = lose weight = stay slim'. It would be great if that was true.

Unfortunately the human body is a bit more complex than that or I'd be 'stick thin' by now and probably loving people calling me that! The problem is that it has taken me about 16 years to realise that eating less, and then eating less than that, was actually having the opposite effect. When you (I, or any fat person) starve yourself (myself/themselves) the body goes into 'seige mode' and behaves as if food is in short supply. This isn't anything any of us can control. Unfortunately then what happens is that whatever we eat, however little, is then immediately stored as fat rather than supplying energy, so the fat person ends up fatter and more lethargic - you know - the classic image of the big fat lazy lump.

I have only recently begun to understand this properly and to try to learn when my body is telling me to eat - not when my body is telling me to stop. For far too long I have trained myself to IGNORE my body telling me to eat because I was determined not to eat. It's been incredibly difficult to recognise what feeling hungry feels like because I have purposely trained myself not to respond to that for years. And yes, fat people do feel hungry if they allow themselves to admit it. Being a huge mountain of lard doesn't mean we don't also need nutrition. It's hard enough as a fat person to understand this so I do appreciate that slim people find it difficult to accept.

The 'stick thin' people Rindy was referring to are not naturally slim people nor are they people who are considered underweight by those stupid charts and would dearly like to gain a few pounds. They are the naturally slim people who have then starved themselves into an unnaturally thin figure in a bid to reach some ludicrous ideal goal which the fashion industry has portrayed as the norm and which for many people is unattainable without making themselves seriously ill.

It's about time that people accepted that we come in different sizes and that there is a whole range of 'normals' without presenting ideals which many people would find it impossible to acheive.

I would dearly love to have your naturally slim figure. I would not like to be impossibly thin and have to be unhealthy in order to remain so.

I hope you can understand what I'm saying and how I'm trying to make the distinction between a whole range of natural and normal whether large or small and the unnatural and abnormal which is false and dangerous.

I cannot imagine that you as a naturally slim person (or anyone else with a similar figure) would ever want to be as huge as I am but I sure would love to be your size as I'm sure many other people with my problem would too.