Do little bitty asian women have to watch what they eat or do they eat as they like?
from cheese_greater@lemmy.world to nostupidquestions@lemmy.ca on 09 Mar 09:14
https://lemmy.world/post/44027544

To be that tiny/lithe. Asian cuisine seems a lot naturally healthier and nutrient-dense but i wonder if they still have to practice a ° of restraint

#nostupidquestions

threaded - newest

Valmond@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 09 Mar 09:21 next collapse

Wow now that’s a question. I’m a bit curious but man…

cheese_greater@lemmy.world on 09 Mar 09:23 collapse

I Ask…So You Don’t Have To (Uncle Sam point)

Also upvote then lol, help a bortha out. I need to feel the love

Valmond@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 09 Mar 11:05 collapse

Here you go 👍🏻

Thavron@lemmy.ca on 09 Mar 09:25 next collapse

Not an expert, but small bodies require less fuel to function, so they would naturally need less food and as such would get hungry less quickly, I’d assume.

SaneMartigan@aussie.zone on 09 Mar 10:44 collapse

Adding to this, women generally need a bit less than men due to lower muscle mass on average.

InvisibleShoe@lemmy.world on 09 Mar 09:32 next collapse

Partner of a small asian woman. She eats small portions and generally has a very healthy diet. Gets full very quickly/easily.

cheese_greater@lemmy.world on 09 Mar 09:39 collapse

She never “pigs” out?

InvisibleShoe@lemmy.world on 09 Mar 10:17 collapse

She ate alot at a bbq recently but what she considers alot and I do are different things. I don’t think she could eat an entire pizza without being sick, where of I were to really pig out, I could manage 1 and a half to 2 pizzas.

Though I have seen some small Asian women online who are competitive eaters and they can inhale tons of food.

cheese_greater@lemmy.world on 09 Mar 10:22 collapse

Isnt it true that theres a hard limit to how much weight a person can gain in a single day/max amount of calories that can be integrated?

CompactFlax@discuss.tchncs.de on 09 Mar 11:41 collapse

No.

cheese_greater@lemmy.world on 09 Mar 11:57 collapse

Seriously, you can gain 10 lbs in a day?? 35,000 calories goes in and stays in?

3500 cals/lb

There must be a hard physical limit or Ld50 of calories

CompactFlax@discuss.tchncs.de on 09 Mar 12:14 collapse

Yes, most of a shock caloric increase leaves as poop and NEAT. There’s no hard limit because it varies widely between people. Biology is messy.

blarghly@lemmy.world on 09 Mar 09:49 next collapse

I mean, first of all, not all asian women eat asian food. See: all the asian women living not in asia, who are 2nd+ generation immigrants. They are just as likely to be trashing their bodies at McDs as anyone else.

In general, a smaller body requires fewer calories to sustain than a larger body. And the human body typically accounts for this via hunger signals. Smaller people tend to stop feeling hungry before larger people.

However, it is a fairly well understood phenomenon that, yes, for people who want to meet the sort of “lithe” female beauty standard, it is often more difficult to maintain for shorter people since any additional weight they gain will be less distributed across their bodies than the same weight on a larger body.

Also, as you (kinda?) pointed out before (in a very almost racist way) - diet plays a huge role here, as a traditional asian diet will impact the body in ways that cause it to signal less hunger and burn off excess calories, while a modern western diet will do the opposite. But this isn’t really a point for traditional asian diets, so much as it is a ding on modern diets. Basically any traditional diet that we can find around the world will help you maintain a thinner figure than a modern diet. There is no such thing as a traditional diet with twinkies and root beer.

And also, I lied before - asian women actually arent as likely to eat at McDs as anyone else. Due to historical and cultural factors, immigrants of asian descent in western nations are significantly more likely to inhabit higher socioeconomic classes than the average person in the same country. This status imparts on them cultural habits like not eating junk food (which is low class) and the economic ability to maintain these habits (eg, living near a Whole Foods and eating at a trendy restaurant, vs shopping at the gas station and grabbing some McDs). But probably more importantly, being in a higher socioeconomic class gives people a greater sense of security and general well-being, which reduces stress, which reduces hunger signaling and results in the body not feeling the need to store extra calories to protect against times of future hardship.

So the answer to your question is "well, it depends on the person, but broad trends indicate that asian women are not generally starving themselves to stay thin (any more than women of other races).

cheese_greater@lemmy.world on 09 Mar 09:51 next collapse

I’m not so much inplying the starving themself so much as is there a prescient level of restraint (could be cultural, could be genetic, or could be whatever) independant of their desire or physical need that has a larger degree of discretion over those more inherent drives or instincts

Its not racist to ask in good faith and air out these ideas to get to the truth, please. Its the opposite, I’m open to hearing completely different takes or reality checks here as long as people dont try to limit the discussion artificially by playing on race

blarghly@lemmy.world on 09 Mar 09:53 collapse

I feel like you are trying too say too much with too few words here. Please elaborate.

cheese_greater@lemmy.world on 09 Mar 10:27 collapse

Can they eat what they want (throwing discipline to the wind) and maintain their physical form?

I guess my thesis is that there are cultural and other factors besides hunger/satiety at play but I’m not married to this thesis, just my uninformed theory

nesc@lemmy.cafe on 09 Mar 10:01 next collapse

There is no “traditional asian diet”, like there is no traditional african, or traditional european diet. There are dozens of different nations and hundreds of different people.

blarghly@lemmy.world on 09 Mar 10:07 collapse

I mean… sure. Whatever. My point is that no one’s traditional diet contains twinkies.

nesc@lemmy.cafe on 09 Mar 10:12 collapse

True, *traditional* diets are all about maximum calories and maximum food preservation everywhere tbh.

blarghly@lemmy.world on 09 Mar 10:21 collapse

Sure… what’s your point? Because my point is that traditional diets don’t contain highly processed foods, which are the driver of overweight and obesity around the world.

Triumph@fedia.io on 09 Mar 10:59 collapse

There is no such thing as a traditional diet with twinkies and root beer.

Not with that attitude

nesc@lemmy.cafe on 09 Mar 09:56 next collapse

Of course you need to have a healhty diet to look good.

Tap for spoiler

Dunno which asian cuisine is healthier (and compared to what), most aren’t all that healthy. Also Asia is like 1/3 of entire world population and like half of them isn’t even ‘asian’ in looks.

cheese_greater@lemmy.world on 09 Mar 10:01 collapse

Right but in relation to the itty bitty asian woman physical form archetype

nesc@lemmy.cafe on 09 Mar 10:10 collapse

I get it, you are talking about chinese/japanese/korean people. They need to control their diet as much as any other people. It’s not particularly healthy, unless you are rich.

DearMoogle@piefed.social on 09 Mar 11:36 next collapse

Am petite Asian woman who is a healthy weight. I do see overweight Asian women (Asians in general) though. It’s becoming more common IMO as people’s diet’s are getting worse/more indulgent. More delicious options eating out, less home-cooking. But I was raised a certain way, with lots of home-cooking lol. -> Eat a balanced meal. My table spread must look balanced! So even if I order pork belly, I have to order a side of dark greens, or maybe a light veg soup. I also don’t eat too much rice. And my best compliment for dessert? “Ah! Not too sweet” 🤣 (this one’s funny, it’s kind of an older Asian insider running joke. I sound like my mom lmao)

ALSO! There’s something about eating “family style” (shared plates). You actually don’t eat as much bc you don’t want to take everything. It’s not like eating let’s say American style, where you get a huge plate in front of you. It pushes you to want to finish the plate. With family style, you naturally eat a bit slower, you only take what you can finish.

cheese_greater@lemmy.world on 09 Mar 11:51 collapse

I find plate/serving vessel size/depth is a huge little-discussed elephant in the room basically every time these kinds of discussions happen, I agree! Like in basically any discussion of metabolism or vanilla dietary practices or etc

Also, very refreshing to get an actual representative person chiming in non-judgmentally, theres already been whiffs of people claiming degrees of racism (playing race card to out it bluntly) when I’m clearly more interested in exploring a hypothesis and open to reasonable discussion and of course any contradictions they are aware of :)

I swear, disaffected folks are addicted to spinning up relevance for themself out of whole cloth at a systemic scale, its a real epi- and sys-stemic problem

CompactFlax@discuss.tchncs.de on 09 Mar 11:46 next collapse

To maintain a weight, humans need to eat according to their body mass and their activity level.

Ethnic Asians are no different.

cheese_greater@lemmy.world on 09 Mar 11:56 collapse

Right but do they or is it common for them to actually “indulge”

gramie@lemmy.ca on 09 Mar 12:51 collapse

I can’t speak about all Asians, but I know that in Japan anorexia is considered a virtue. There is a lot of social pressure not to get fat, especially for women. I think the pressure has decreased, but not disappeared.

And the Japanese government actually fines companies if two large a proportion of their workers is overweight, so I would imagine that being overweight makes it harder to get a job as well.