Why most Japanese girls slim????

I've been here in Japan for a year and half and I notice 95% of Japanese girls are slender and in good shape...  I wonder how they do it???  winter, summer or fall...they are all the same...  how could they keep it???...  i always gain weight on winter, no matter how I minimize my in take..it seems my weight keeps on gaining...is it because I don't sweat much?...  how come Japanese girls do?...  anybody knows???... I appreciate your thoughts!...She

I'd guess diet and philosophy - 

Fish, white meat, long grains, buckwheat, and eating based on perceived health benefit...

They live longer too.

Don't they eat snack between meals??..you know they've got a lot of kinds of sweets and high calorie snack here!...  i can't resist it sometimes!...how can they manage to avoid it?...  or is their favorite Public Bath counts?..  I used to try it twice a week for 3 months..  They've got all this hot pools (40 degrees or up)..sauna, steam bath and bubble jet jacuzzis all inside the bathroom...  You can enjoy it all as long as you want (open until 2am!)...but I'm only good for 2 hours and I'm deadly exhausted...  I've tried to weight myself before coming in and after I go out...  I could lost .5 lbs after that...  but after awhile, my weight backs to normal...  Does those hot baths counts?...  especially for me who doesn't really like vigorious exercise?...

i was just in japan for 3 weeks. the food is not any healthier. but i did a ton of walking there. you know how they use the train rather than cars and then walk? i think that helps. i also read an article that there is more pressure on asian girls to be thin from their families. like if you start gaining, your mother, friends, other family members, etc. tell you you look fat, rather than how its kind of taboo to say such a thing in america. the portions were smaller over there i thought too.

perhaps because they drink more tea compared to us?:)

seriously i also have no idea..

I've always heard portion control. We do know that in North America at least, portion sizes are WAY too large. So if the Japanese (or the French, I've heard too) eat smaller portions they can afford to snack between meals.

Typically Japanese foods are healthier, too.

Asian people are genetically predisposed to being skinny. That's it.

A better diet. Not perfect, but a lot better (Although it's getting worse). Staying slim when you are slim is pretty easy if you eat right. Getting slim after you are fat is difficult.

They are not without obesity in Japan though.

Japanese girls (or from any Asian country for that matter) have a lot of pressure to be thin. I have some friends from there and they all think they are fat even though they are really thin. Their culture puts a lot of emphasis in that. Plus I think that if everyone around you is thin, you have even more pressure to stay as thin as they are. About the way they do it, probably portion control. They look very skinny, but not athletic so I doubt they work out that much.

japanese people are naturally thin for the most part, its in their genes. most of them have very small frames to begin with and the culture doesnt eat much

Original Post by ve_blur:

Japanese girls (or from any Asian country for that matter) have a lot of pressure to be thin. I have some friends from there and they all think they are fat even though they are really thin. Their culture puts a lot of emphasis in that. Plus I think that if everyone around you is thin, you have even more pressure to stay as thin as they are. About the way they do it, probably portion control. They look very skinny, but not athletic so I doubt they work out that much.

 I agree..I had befriended Japanese girlfriends in college and they stated that lots of young people had eating disorders or took diet pills to remain thin because there is a lot of pressure in the culture....

Like Rikaj, I was only there for a few weeks, but I did a ton of walking.  We walked everywhere.  Just from that change alone, I dropped about 20 pounds in a month (no it didn't stay off when I came back to the states).

Their diet is slightly different, with more lean meats and much smaller portions at restaurants.  Not to say that they don't pig out on junk food too, but their staple foods tend to be healthier.

And then there is the genetics... (I'm ging to stop before jealousy rears it's ugly head)

I don't know whether there is any truth behind this theory, but I've heard somewhere that Asian bodies are predisposed to be on the smaller side as a result of the population density of many southeast Asian cities. The idea is that many of them are so crowded that people's bodies are inclined to be small so as to conserve space. 

Again, not sure how valid that is.  

I think historically they have been smaller because they have always had less food to eat, and don't eat as much. In recent years, as they have adopted a more western, higher calorie diet, the younger japanese are growing to much the same size as western people.

I do think the culture pressures the women to be smaller, so many of the ensuing eating disorders arise.

less dairy(i know opinions differ here)

small frames

portion control

much more fish than meat

cultural pressure

eat with chopsticks makes you eat less and slower..

they look slender and small but they are not so athletic.. fat component probably is even higher than a standard "western body".. even in very thin women you do not see hard muscles anywhere..

they say "A good girl MUST weight 100 pds" ..big crazy pressure ,ah?

they do not eat so much animal protein because is TOO EXPENSIVE for them... they eat a lot of shell- food so they eat slow and therefore less food..

body structure is different in them. they have BIG head, small shoulders, flat butt and front, which also make them to look smaller. have you noted asian women try to make look bigger their head with haircut?

there's a book called "Japanese women don't get fat or old"...it's a very similar style to French women don't get fat, written by a Japanese expat in the U.S..

it talks about Japanese diet and what keeps their women in shape and looking young...it will probably answer alot of your questions..althoughi do think genes play a big role

I somehow agree to you Ms Teyito...  I think Japanese eat lesser because the food is so expensive...  and i think for them, their priority is fashion rather than food...  They would buy a very very expensive brand name clothes and accessories but you can't ask them to eat often in a restaurant... They would rather bring their homemade lunch to office than eat outside or canteen...  That's how they save money (and calories???)

Actually, I hate to break it to you but alot of their 'sweets' are still considered healthy compared to things we eat here. Things like pocky are less then 200 calories a box, and something here, like a chocolate bar, is usually way more then 200 calories a bar. Even some of their candies are considered healthy compared to us. At least what my local Asian food market brings in is. I strictly buy my candy from there now because it's considered so healthy compared to what I can buy at the 'regular' store.

We also eat a lot of red meats, and they don't. Fish is great in keeping a slim figure and loosing weight, as it hardly has any fat in it, and red meat is loaded with it.  They also eat much smaller portions then we do, and they walk everywhere! They are always walking or biking, I think due to the fact that all the trains are usually packed. I mean the deep fryer fat that McDonalds uses here is strictly forbidden in Japan, they have to use something that has way less fat, and would actually make fries half healthy.

Genetics are also a big part of it. They are very pre-dispositioned to being thin.

Genetics have a lot to do with, they are born with small bone structure and also what they eat, they eat a lot of rice and fish, low GI and unprocessed foods.  The Japanese who move to Western countries and discover the delights of McD's can become obese the same as Westerners.

Original Post by sizz_leteen:

I don't know whether there is any truth behind this theory, but I've heard somewhere that Asian bodies are predisposed to be on the smaller side as a result of the population density of many southeast Asian cities. The idea is that many of them are so crowded that people's bodies are inclined to be small so as to conserve space. 

Again, not sure how valid that is.  

If human bodies could recognize and respond to urban population density (as removed from the concept of scarcity), everyone on CC would have moved to London or Manhattan or Hong Kong by now, and there would be no overweight people in those places.