Initially I took them at face value because I had no reason to believe they were not telling the truth. But since then, I have known many people who say they eat little but in fact eat a lot. They just believe they don’t eat much because they have got so used to eating the way they do, it doesn’t even occur to them that the amount they eat is not normal.
Example 1. My sister-in-law is obese. She tells everyone that she barely eats. I believed her because whenever we went out for meals together she really didn’t eat very much. So I thought her metabolism was “broken” or she had a thyroid condition. I even told her to go and get her thyroid checked. The test showed that her thyroid was fine. The mystery of her being obese while barely eating continued until I went on holiday with her for a prolonged period. We stayed in the same holiday cottage and were together 24/7. It was then that I finally realised why she was obese. She ate non stop from the time she got up in the morning to going to bed at night. She never ate a full meal. During meal times she’d eat half of what others ate. But she just grazed all day long. If you eat non stop over a period of 15 hours, although at any given point in time it looks like you aren’t eating very much, added up over 15 hours you are consuming a huge quantity of food.
Example 2. My parents-in-law are obese (not related to the sister-in-law in example 1). They eat three square meals a day where each meal is a substantial size (and full of fat and carbs). If you eat three big meals a day you are eating more than the average slim person. They also drink a lot of alcohol. I eat one meal a day. So when we have a meal together, just in that one sitting I might eat the same as, or even a bit more than they do because I eat my entire day’s calories in that one meal. But they always say to me how unfair it is that I eat more than them but I am thin and they are fat. They blame their obesity on their metabolism and anything other than their eating habits. In their view they don’t eat much and I eat an obscene amount of food. I have pointed out to them time and time again that I eat one meal a day and they eat three, but it just doesn’t sink in. They can only see that in the one meal we are having together I eat more than them (I don’t even - if you include the calories in the extra alcohol they drink, they probably consume more calories than I do even in the one meal in question). We’ve even gone on holiday together several times, staying under one roof, but they still can’t get their heads around the fact that I eat two fewer meals than they do.
So what I think is: many obese people have some kind of weird blinkers on that makes them selectively see only what others eat but not what they themselves eat. There have actually been studies which show that when people are asked to track their calories, they underestimate by a huge amount (they consume 50% more calories than they actually record, according to one such study). In my experience obese or overweight people definitely underestimate how much they eat.
Now, this isn’t to say that there aren’t people who really are obese/overweight without eating much. There are medical conditions that cause this such as hypothyroidism as I mentioned above. I am aware also that certain medications can cause weight gain, but it seems to me that this is usually because such medications increase appetite and many people eat more without even realising they are doing so because the effect happens subconsciously. So in the end, even though it’s not really their “fault”, they are still gaining weight because they are eating more than before (albeit unconsciously).
So to summarise, I think the majority of people who think they are fat while not eating much actually eat a fair bit, they just don’t realise it. A minority are correct in that they are overweight/obese for reasons other than eating too much.
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