The world seems to be surrounded by skinny people who eat to their heart’s content and manage to remain slim whereas on the other hand you are struggling with weight loss and merely looking at a plate of food would add calories to your body (a little exaggeration here). Well, though this part is exaggerated, we do see a lot of healthy and slim people around who are not on crash diets and do not slog it out in the gym for hours altogether. However, most of them do have habits that they swear by and have made them these habits a part of their lifestyle. Weight loss is all about making lifestyle changes and these habits would help a great deal. Here are 30 Common Habits of Skinny People that Keeps them Healthy and Thin.
Why It’s Important to Lose Weight and Achieve a Healthy BMI?
Weight loss is not about achieving a certain body image and reaching size zero, it’s about insulating your body from metabolic and lifestyle disorders such as type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, stroke, and inflammation which is a root cause of many life-threatening diseases. Here are some reasons why should lose weight if your BMI (body mass index) us high:
1. To keep your body safe from type 2 diabetes, stroke, heart disease.
2. To gain more confidence.
3. To get more active.
4. To improve your mood.
30 Common Habits of Skinny People that Keeps them Healthy:
1. They don’t nom nom and gulp down their food: They in fact eat at leisure, chew their food slowly, enjoying each morsel. Researchers have often observed that skinny people chew slowly, even if it’s a delicious dessert, and by the third bite, they are often full and push the plate away. When you chew slowly, your body sends signal to your brain that you are full at the correct time. On the contrary, when you are eating food at a fast pace, the signal to the brain is made late and by that time, you would have eaten more than necessary, piling calories in the process.
2. They tend to sleep really well through the night: Fit people hardly have any sleepless night or have problem falling asleep. There can be many reasons for poor sleep like stress, ageing, hormonal changes, using too much phone at night, Netflix binge, etc. Skinny people follow a tight sleep schedule, avoid using phone late into the night, and eat their meal at least 2 hours before bedtime so that a full tummy doesn’t sleep their goodnight’s sleep.
3. They tend to finish dinner by 7 PM: It is often said that that later that you eat dinner, chances are more of your putting on unwanted weight. Skinny people often finish their dinner by 7 pm and it’s usually extremely light on their tummy, low in carbs, and high on nutrition.
4. They don’t deprive themselves of food: Instead they follow healthy diet: Crash diets are not sustainable but healthy eating habits can be made into lifestyle which are easily to follow. Diet programs on Rati Beauty stress on making lifestyle changes through healthy eating rather than putting you on fad diets which only work for short term otherwise.
5. They hate trans-fat: Transfat is artificially made from vegetable oils by a process called hydrogenation where hydrogen molecules are added to the oil. This is done to increase the shelf life of the oil, to solidy the oil, and make it more appetizing and suitable for frying. Also, transfat is an inexpensive way to add taste to the oil, but this process is extremely harmful to the human body due to the high proportion of LDL (bad cholesterol) which can wreak havoc in the body and puts one at the risk of developing morbid diseases like type 2 diabetes, stroke, and heart disease. That’s why skinny people hate anything that has transfat in it.
6. They portion control food: Most researchers have observed that skinny people tend to portion control their food and most often eat food from a bowl rather than a plate so as to control calories during all meals. When you use small plates or bowls, you tend to take smaller amount of food and that would prevent you from eating more than you need. There’s also an amazing scientific study that states that your brain gets tricked and feels satisfied when you eat from a bowl than from a plate. You would feel full when you eat from a small bowl with the same quantity of food that you eat from a larger plate. Also, the bowl’s weight in hand will give you the feeling that you are consuming more food. So, dump that plate and pick that bowl
7. They don’t binge eat: Most of us tend to binge eat, taking more slices of pizza, but skinny people do not know how to “binge eat.” They stop at one slice of pizza and one piece of cake, and say “no” when offered more.
8. They eat only when they are hungry: Yes, they eat only when they are hungry!
9. They have high NEAT levels: NEAT which means non-exercise activity thermogenesis is hte energy we use for everything we do in our day-to-day life except for when we are sleeping or exercising. Using the stairs instead of the lift, squatting on the floor to lift something up, walking while talking on the phone, every activity we do while being on our feet, comes under NEAT. All these activities help to burn some amount of calories and these bits of calories spent here and there, add up to a considerable amount when you are trying to lose weight. Skinny people tend to have high levels of NEAT because they like to move around and be on their feet through most part of their day.
10. They get their sweet tooth satisfied from fruits and natural sugars: Most of them having missing “sweet tooth” or even if they have, they indulge in healthy treats like fresh fruits, banana oats smoothie, dark chocolate, or peanut butter. Candies, sweets are not for them.
11. They do not have a negative body image: They do not find flaws in their body and are highly confident about their body image.
12. They read the ingredient list of every food package: In fact, we should all read ingredients list of packaged food to weed out transfat, added sugar and salt content. “Sugar-free and low-fat” items should also be put back on the shelves because they usually are loaded with transfat and artificial sweeteners to make up for the taste.
13. They eat one portion protein, one portion of veggies, and at least one fruit each day.
14. They most like snack on apples: Their favorite snack anytime during the day would be “apple,” and it’s not only because it can keep the doctor away – apple is rich in fiber, vitamins, and minerals. It can be called a whole food.
15. They treat food as a source of nourishment, not as an emotional anchor: This means they do not indulge in emotional eating – they indulge in different hobbies to vent out their emotions and stress. Fit people use food as a source of nourishment, not something to help them calm down.
16. They enjoy cooking homemade food, eat out less often: Through homemade food, they have a control of how much oil, salt they are adding.
17. They just have a cheat meal, not a cheat day: Yes, it’s only a “cheat meal” that you can have in a week, not a whole day of cheating and binging. A whole cheat day would “undo” your efforts through the week in eating clean.
18. They know that often when they feel hungry, it’s most likely that they are thirsty: Yes, it’s a fact that most of them times when you are feeling hungry, it’s most likely that you are just thirsty and need water. Get at least 10 glasses of water or more, particularly in summer.
19. They indulge in healthy fats: Almonds, ghee, butter, avocado – they like healthy fats and do not go “low fat”, fat-free because that’s a wrong way to lose weight.
20. They often cook in non-seed oils: Seed oils can increase inflammation in the body and prevent you from losing weight. Opt for non-seed oils such as coconut oil to stay healthy and lose weight.
21. They eat a large chunk of metabolism-boosting foods to burn more calories.
22. Most of them practice yoga: Yes, yoga is a great way to not only relax and calm down, it can help you lose weight and tone the body. Supermodels, actresses like Kareena Kapoor, Malaika Arora all swear by yoga.
23. They eat high-fiber food: Soluble fiber, combines with water to form a gel-like component that slows down the release of digested food into the gut. Soluble fiber also helps the friendly bacteria that exist in the intestines thrive well and these bacterial flora helps with better absorption of vitamins and nutrients into the bloodstream from the small intestine. This process is called fermentation which releases short chain fatty acids which can in turn reduce belly fat. Fiber also helps reduce appetite to a great extent by regulating the production of hunger hormone “ghrelin.” Fiber content also reduces one’s appetite by slowing the movement of food through the gut. Since fiber has low glycemic index, it also does not spike up insulin and thus reduces the chance of extra calories getting stored up as fat in the body.
24. They consume a good amount of probiotics through natural food: Skinny people love probiotics. Probiotics are good and friendly bacteria that reside in the small intestine and colon in the human body. These colonies of friendly bacteria extract nutrients from the digested food and release it into the blood when it reaches the intestine. When the good bacterial flora is disrupted with the invasion of bad bacteria, it creates an imbalance and nutrients and vitamins are not efficiently extracted from the food. This disruption in the digestive system is called as “dysbiosis,” which is an imbalance microbial ecosystem in the intestine. This dysbiosis is linked to weight gain and obesity. When friendly bacteria in the gut maintain the digestive system, weight loss. Here’s a list of probiotic-rich natural food.
25. They have whole grains, no “white” food in their pantry: Whole grains are rich in fiber which direclty helps to maintain a healthy weight. White flour, refined sugar are seldom found in skinny people’s kitchen or pantry.
26. They take the stairs: Yes, they don’t spend 10 minutes waiting for the elevator/lift, they would rather walk up the stairs without huffing and puffing.
27. They love coffee but don’t overdose on it: Caffeine can increase metabolic rate and help your body burn more calories. It also acts as an appetite suppressant but skinny people like black coffee and that too limit the intake to just two cups in a day, they don’t overdose on it.
28. They consume calcium-rich food through natural sources: People who are deficient in calcium find it extremely hard to lose weight. Here’s a list of calcium-rich food items that you can include in your diet.
29. They save leftovers for the next day: They don’t believe in finishing everything that they have cooked in a single meal. If there’s leftover, they would save it for the next day.
30. During workouts, they stress more on strength training, spend less time on treadmill: Rather than sweating away on the treadmill, skinny people lift weights or do functional training to burn off the calories.
Bonus Tip: They boil cumin and jeera in water and consume it on empty stomach every morning to boost weight loss.
Do you have any more pointers on how skinny and fit people tend to shake extra weight. Do let us know in the comments below.
