Why thin people are thin

People always wonder how some people -- usually not themselves -- can be so thin. There are two basic reasons some people are naturally thin (Motto: "Don't hate me"). These reasons have nothing to do with discipline, good genes (though they certainly help), or the influence of Barbie dolls. The real reasons some of us are thin are
1. We are picky.
2. We cannot make decisions.

Reason #1 keeps us from eating fattening things we don't really like, such as rhubarb pie, or chocolate that has lots of other stuff in it, like coconut, cherries, nuts, spinach, gorgonzola, etc. So, for instance, we're dining at a friend's home, out comes the dessert, and it has things in it we cannot identify. Or it looks too healthy (No chocolate? No, thank you). And so we decline, running the risk of hurting the host's feelings, but reasoning that this would be more kind than to accept a piece and mutilate it in an effort to look as though we tried to eat some of it.

Reason #2 keeps us thin people from eating when there are too many choices. When faced with 365 flavors of ice cream, for instance, we would rather go without than have to narrow our choices down to one. There is, after all, always the risk that we will choose the wrong one. And this we cannot tolerate. Moreover, if our favorite, tried-and-tested flavor we always get when we go for ice cream is not available, our ability to choose a substitute shuts down. "Oh, that's okay," we say. "I wasn't really in the mood for ice cream anyway."

And so it looks to non-thin people as if thin people are exercising great control, and they admire this, when really we thin people are dying for some ice cream and wishing on our lucky ice cream flavor that we could make decisions as blithely as non-thin people. That we could fool ourselves into believing that all our future success does not depend on whether we choose the right ice cream. What if, we reason to ourselves, we were to pick black cherry, but we should have picked chocolate chip instead -- what would that do to our chances of getting into Yale? It's just too much risk for a thin person with even thinner decision-making skills to ponder.

I think it is no coincidence that thinness is disappearing from society at the same time we are teaching kids better decision-making skills. There has to be a connection.