[handrous]

Can confirm, regularly ate 4,000-5,000 calories/day from ages ~13-22. Did some weight lifting for part of that time, a little bike riding, but wasn't a serious athlete, certainly. Was slim, at my slimmest drew comments sometimes because my face was so gaunt people thought I might be sick.

... Then all changed very abruptly (there was little transition, on the order of weeks). Basically had to get used to being hungry most of the time, to keep from shooting toward obese territory. Sucks. I mean, the stuff I was eating as a teenager was going to kill me early in life anyway so it's good I don't do that anymore (so much pizza, snack food, fried food, and soda) but I'm not sure I appreciated, at the time, how special it was to be able to down a large pizza, a couple orders of fries, a couple liters of soda, a bag of chips [edit: and not a single-serve bag...], a snickers, plus a pile of toast or eggo waffles, day after day after day, and still look quite good at the swimming pool.

[nsxwolf]

Some people's bodies at various times in their lives seem to either refuse to incorporate consumed calories or waste them by some mechanism that isn't well understood. Everyone has known someone who is slim and eats a lot and isn't especially active.

But we apparently pretend this isn't true because it's unscientific, 3500 calories in a pound, and all that.

[handrous]

Yeah, I was consuming so much and was only moderately active, that I can't believe it was all going to growth. Much of that time I wasn't even getting taller, or gaining weight, just maintaining. All I can figure is my body was throwing away a lot of it, one way or another. Maybe I had very hungry gut bacteria, which I killed by accident, somehow. I dunno.