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Lelouch: How is it you manage not to get fat, if all you ever eat is pizza? I never see you do anything more strenuous than walk across campus, and you only do that to annoy me between classes.
C.C.: Pizza is brain food. If you ate more pizza, you'd know that, as well as how I stay in shape.

When a character eats too much food, no matter how much or how unhealthy, but won't gain visible weight.

A common justification for this is that the characters are always active (like running every day, fighting bad guys that always cause trouble or carrying heavy objects everywhere they go), they use magic, they have a high level of metabolism, or the food they eat is healthy. This trope can be Zig Zagged; if they do gain weight, it will never be for more than only a few seconds of screen time as a gag or perhaps for a Very Special Episode.

Big Eaters often have this ability. Compare Hyperactive Metabolism, where a video game character regains HP/stamina through eating, usually with no weight-related consequences simply because the concept of weight itself was never programmed.


Examples:

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    Anime and Manga 
  • L from Death Note is infamous for the fact that he remains thin despite the fact that his diet consists almost entirely of sweets. When Misa denies a slice of cake because she doesn’t want to get fat, he reveals that he’s so smart that he can burn calories simply by using his brain.
  • Dragon Ball:
    • Goku and Vegeta are Big Eaters but they still keep their muscular physique every time they are on screen or page. This might apply to the entire Saiyan race.
    • Lord Beerus, the Destroyer Deity of Universe 7, eats just as much as Goku and Vegeta but still keeps his skinny figure every time he appears.
    • His brother Champa, however, is a subversion. He probably eats more than Beerus, but it's never shown.
  • Fairy Tail:
    • Zig-Zagged for Natsu, who is only seen getting a big belly in a short time after eating a lot with Happy. After that, he gets his muscles and abs back.
    • Minerva Orland is a very slender woman capable of besting her guildmates in eating contests — this includes dragonslayers, famed for near-bottomless appetites and magic revolving around eating. This Big Eater might be a Big Cheater though since she has spatial magic she is capable of employing as a pocket dimension.
    • Cana Alberona is this combined with The Alcoholic. She constantly drinks enormous amounts of alcohol, usually beer, far more than almost any other character (with the possible exception of the wizard Bacchus, whose power involves drinking), but never loses her hourglass physique despite the calorie intake.
  • K-On! has the Sweet Tooth vocalist Yui. When the rest of the band asks why she never gets fat with all of those sweets, she explains that she has a high metabolism.
  • Belkan style mages in Lyrical Nanoha burn calories quickly due to the physically intensive nature of their magic. Subaru from Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS in particular eats more than five full-grown men but maintains an athletic figure. This is an early hint that her body consumes a lot of energy, especially during physical exercise, because she is actually a cyborg and has to power all those electronic circuits with her metabolism.
  • Dragons in Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid can eat ridiculous amounts of food without putting on a single pound, though this likely ties into Shapeshifter Baggage given the sheer size of their true forms. Two of Elma's coworkers express jealousy over her ability to chow down at an all-you-can-eat buffet without gaining weight since both of them were on diets.
  • My Dress-Up Darling: Zigzagged with Marin Kitagawa. She clearly loves to eat, but somehow she manages to stay in good shape (a must for her part-time job as a model). However, when she starts eating Gojo's cooking, she loves it so much that she eats in a single day a ration that was supposed to last her a week. Eventually her eating habits catch up to her, which she realizes when the costumes Gojo made for her cosplays no longer fit her as before.
  • My Hero Academia:
    • Momo Yaoyorozu has the ability to make just about anything out of her body fat, so whatever weight she puts on through eating is quickly turned into various items she uses while being a superhero in training.
    • Rikido Sato A.K.A. "Sugar Man" is justified because of his quirk. Eating a lot of sugar just increases his strength and physique!
  • Subverted in Naruto with Anko Mitarashi. She enjoys sweets, particularly dango, and an omake page said that the number of calories she ate in a day would make anyone else fat. In the epilogue, which takes place around 15 years after the ending of the series, she's gotten plump from continuing to eat sweets without going on so many missions.
  • One Piece
    • Zig-zagged on account of Luffy's eating habits. Luffy eats so much food like there's no tomorrow pretty much all the time. He does get fat, but only for a short amount of time, always getting back to skinny in no time. Probably justified since he's a Rubber Man and his fighting style is stated to use lots of calories.
    • Zoro is seen drinking booze many times in the manga, anime, and the movies yet he never develops a beer gut. Every middle-aged drunkard would kill for a body like his! Though to be fair what time he doesn't spend sleeping he is usually training.
    • Franky drinking mostly cola is justified since his body is mostly robotic and the cola actually giving him more muscle!
    • Jewelry Bonney, one of members of the Worst Generation, eats so much that her Red Baron name is "The Glutton". Despite that, she still retains her figure no matter how much she eats.
  • In Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt, it is revealed that all the fat Stocking gets from her desserts and candy go straight to her breasts and nothing else. The one time it didn't was because of the influence of the Monster of the Week.
  • Sailor Moon: Despite eating a lot and being lazy in general, Usagi Tsukino still remains slim. Played with in a couple of episodes where it is implied that she has put on a couple of pounds (albeit not enough to classify her as overweight) as a result of her poor diet and exercise.
  • Justified in Toriko. Every important named character has Gourmet Cells implanted in them, which grant superhuman abilities at the cost of burning incredible amounts of calories and requiring delicious food to continue functioning. As a result, few Gourmet Cell users are fat and many are brawny due to the Gourmet Cells' reactions to food.
  • In Urusei Yatsura, both Sakura and Rei are absolutely gorgeous; Sakura is the school nurse at Tomobiki High and widely regarded as a ravishing beauty, whilst Rei is Lum's ex-fiance who makes women swoon without even trying despite being dumb as a stump. Both are also ravenous gluttons who will consume titanic repasts without qualm, and neither ever gains an inch. Though Rei's ushitora form has on rare occasions gotten a temporary Balloon Belly, Sakura never has, not even after devouring a Mega Meal Challenge that includes a whole salmon, a whole chicken, a whole pig, and a whole cow.

    Comic Books 
  • Jughead from the Archie Comics series is very lazy and eats staggering amounts of food, but is always portrayed as very thin. There was one story (in Jughead #200) where a witch explains that Jughead has an abnormally fast metabolism, and then buys it off him in exchange for a really good cheeseburger. Jughead continues his lifestyle and becomes grossly obese in short order. He gets his good metabolism back by the story's end, but in a final gag, realizes he'll still have to work off the existing weight.
  • Spoofed in an issue of Earth X, featuring a very fat and balding Wolverine who married Jean Grey (also immensely overweight). As the couple snark with each other Logan insists that his Healing Factor prevents him from getting fat (despite the ample evidence to the contrary).
  • Maggy from Monica's Gang is the poster child for this trope, as she eats large amounts of food at one time, yet is always drawn as very thin. This gets deconstructed in the teen spinoff manga, where she still loves to eat food, but is now extremely worried about her health.

    Fan Works 
  • Amazing Fantasy:
    • Subverted for Peter Parker. He used to be able to eat whatever he wanted and not get fat thanks to his spider-enhanced teenage metabolism. But he develops a gut after reaching his forties and consuming almost nothing but fast food due to a lack of funds.
    • Played straight with the Melissa Shields of Earth-2018.65, who happily indulges in donuts for breakfast, knowing that her active lifestyle as a Hero and her metabolism will more than make up for it.
  • In the DC Animated Universe/One Piece crossover, Justice:
    • Luffy and the Flash can eat high amounts of food and still remain as fit as always because of their insanely high metabolisms.
    • Nami fits in this trope quite well: in a Halloween party, she is gobbling quite a lot of food but she's confident that her exercise routine will keep her hourglass figure. Later, Volcana confirms it by proclaiming in frustration that she eats Sanji's food as much as the other ladies and yet she doesn't put on a single pound like the rest.
  • Per the page quote, a common element of Code Geass fics with C.C. She eats more or less constant pizza boxes but never gets fat. This is usually attributed to her immortality keeping her body in permanent stasis.
  • A Thing of Vikings: Gunnar is mentioned several times as being a Big Eater, but he never gains any weight, leading his friends to joke that he must have a hollow leg to store it all. Justified, since being a viking mercenary means he's active almost all the time.

    Literature 
  • Lampshaded in The Case Files of Jeweler Richard with Richard and his incessant love of sweets. He claims to stay in shape by boxing and that his blood sugar isn't a concern, but Seigi doesn't seem fully convinced, and Seigi wonders if half the people staring at them in restaurants aren't just distracted by his beauty, but wonder how he looks like that while eating like that.
  • In Chivalry of a Failed Knight, Stella complains that the food she eats goes straight to her chest.
  • Greg Heffley in Diary of a Wimpy Kid is well aware of how constantly skinny he is, no matter how much food he eats, which he notes in "The Meltdown".
  • In Labyrinths of Echo, Max often remarks how much some of his colleagues (most commonly, Juffin, Shurf, and Melamori) manage to eat while staying wafer-thin — in fact, this seems to be a common thing among combat-trained mages (like the aforementioned three). The only exception seems to be Sir Kofa Yokh, who is a combat mage on par with Juffin and eats as much as him, but has a rather corpulent stature — until it is revealed to be an illusion, maintained by a curse his father put upon him to make him more sociable.
  • Justified with Catarina in My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom!. She eats a lot of sweets, but she usually overeats due to her lack of self-control and makes herself sick. Also, her two main hobbies are rather physically demanding (farming and climbing trees), so any calories she does manage to digest get burned off pretty quickly.
  • In The Ship Who... Killed, Helva comments that she's never seen anyone enjoy food with the same gusto that Kira does, and yet she never seems to gain weight. Kira, a Stepford Smiler who generally either seems wildly happy or easily enraged to cover her depression, shows a bit of bitterness saying she can't, a reference to her infertility.
  • Justified in-universe in Slayers, where practically half the cast consists of Big Eaters, as spellcasting requires high caloric intake.

    Live-Action TV 
  • Fred in Angel has a huge appetite for junk food while always remaining a tiny skinny waif.
  • Joey on Friends, to the point the "Joey Special" (two large cheese pizzas) is named in his honor.
  • Gilmore Girls: Lorelai (in her early 30s) and her teenage daughter Rory are famous in their small Quirky Town Stars Hollow for eating large quantities of food, often rich food like fries, pizza, doughnuts, muffins, etc. and drinking absurd amounts of coffee. They never cook at home and have aversions to fruit and vegetables. They never exercise and hate doing sports (Rory is shown being thrown off balance when she has to choose a sport at her preppy high school; Lorelai says she wanted to join a gym after having a baby to get fit, but she never went there because she was not fit enough to show up there; and they spend one episode, partly set in the gym, drinking juice or lurking around). Yet they are both slim and they never put on weight.
  • Kamen Rider Wizard: Rinko wonders how Haruto can eat a whole bag of donuts in one sitting if given a chance. He, a bean sprout of a person who might actually weigh less than her despite his height, explains it's because his magic is Cast from Calories.
  • Supergirl (2015): Supergirl cannot get fat by overeating terrible foods due to her Kryptonian physiology. Exchange from "Fight or Flight":
    Kara: Hand me that last potsticker.
    Alex: No. That one is mine. You had four!
    Kara: If that potsticker is not in my mouth in two seconds I will melt your face.
    Alex: (Gives Kara the potsticker) I hope you get fat.
    Kara: Not on this planet.
  • Supernatural: Dean Winchester constantly gorges junk food and is always seen eating, and on top of that he likes to make fun of his brother's attempts at healthy eating. He never gains weight, possibly because hunting monsters burns lots of calories.

    Video Games 
  • Devil May Cry: Dante is mostly shown eating ice cream and pizza all the time, as well as drinking alcohol occasionally. Yet he still has a flat stomach with a six-pack. Justified as he is a half-demon and his line of work involves killing supernatural monsters, so he has a physically active lifestyle and needs a lot of calories to burn.
  • Fake Happy End: Aeri is a Big Eater who can consume several stacks of pancakes without getting fat. This upsets Mishika, who struggled in the past to lose weight.
  • In the first Heart Event between Elli and Jeff in Harvest Moon 64, Elli feels envious because Popuri can eat sweets without gaining weight. Jeff says that he prefers women with more meat on their bones, which makes Elli happier.
  • Subverted in Metal Slug 2 and onward: Eating enough dropped food items will make the player character(s) fat. This slows them down a bit but also strengthens their firepower.
  • Persona:
    • In a few of the games, there are challenges where you can eat a large meal in order to boost your stats (such as the Rainy Day Beef Bowl challenge in Persona 4 and the Big Bang Burger challenge in Persona 5). Odds are, you will have the protagonist do these challenges numerous times in order to boost your stats. In spite of the large amount of food to repeatedly consume, it will have no effect on your weight and appearance.
    • In Persona 5, Ann Takamaki has an enormous Sweet Tooth and gorges on high-end deserts after stealing Kamoshida's heart. Despite this, she never has any trouble maintaining her supermodel figure, making her the envy of her modeling rivals. This is partially justified by all of the exercise that comes with fighting Shadows and navigating Palaces and Mementos.
  • Lemres in Puyo Puyo. Considering the fact that he has a massive Sweet Tooth, it's honestly quite surprising that he hasn't gained any weight or come down with diabetes from all the candy that he eats.
  • Super Robot Wars Judgment: Festenia "Tenia" Muse is a notorious Big Eater. In the prelude to Mission 42, Kouji, Hyouma and Juzo want to ask her about this but aren't sure how to phrase it. Juzo just goes forward and asks "How is it you're not fat as a cow?" This naturally pisses Tenia off and after slapping him, she storms off in anger, while the other girls berate them for being so insensitive.
  • In Touhou Project, one of the powers granted by the Yin-Yang Orbs is the ability to eat sweets without getting fat. This is sometimes used to explain why Reimu Hakurei, the current wielder of the Yin-Yang Orbs, typically has the smallest hitbox in the games.
  • Queen Memory in Twinkle Star Sprites is a notorious Big Eater who never seems to gain a single pound no matter how much she eats. It's implied that all the fat goes to her breasts, which probably explains why they're huge in La Petite Princesse.

    Web Comics 
  • Molly and Golly, the fuzzy monsters in The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob!, are both established to have superhumanly fast metabolisms (they also have modest Super-Speed), so they can eat vast quantities of food and never gain an ounce.
  • Loserz: Ben, who's self-conscious about his scrawny frame, laments how he can't seem to gain any weight no matter how much crap he eats, which understandably infuriates the mildly overweight Eric.

    Web Videos 
  • RWBY:
    • RWBY: Nora eats copious amounts of food routinely, to the point other characters realize they need to get to a prepared meal quick if they want there to be any left. Despite this, Nora remains as slender as the other girls. This is parodied in the spin-off comedy series RWBY Chibi, where she's shown eating entire meals in one bite and getting fat immediately afterwards, usually only to return to her usual shape not long afterwards after letting out a burp. One short had Yang needing to work out to stay in shape, only for her to become angered when she sees Nora regain her usual shape so easily.

    Western Animation 
  • Beavis And Butthead: Zig-zagged with Beavis and Butt-Head themselves. They are somehow very slim in spite of their diet consisting of nothing but junk food such as nachos, cheeseburgers, and pizza. One possibility is that they burn most of the calories by walking around town a lot. The only times they become out-of-shape are in "Supersize Me" and as middle-aged men.
  • Duck Dodgers features probably the most gluttonous version of Daffy ever, who is constantly lazing about and eating junk food (some really weird). Despite this, he retains his thin build. "A Lame Duck Mind" reveals he stole a miracle diet pill created by I.Q. High and Manobrain, that allows one to stay thin no matter what they eat. The Cadet immediately lampshades this.
  • F is for Family: This used to apply for Bob Pogo, back during his younger days in the air force. A flashback showed him with Frank, who expressed amazement at how much Bob could eat without gaining weight, while he had to work like hell to keep his weight down. Bob claimed it was because of his high metabolism. In the series itself, which is set about 20 years later, it's clear that Bob never adjusted to his metabolism slowing down as he aged, as he's now a Fat Bastard Mean Boss who needs a scooter to get around. Part of his character development is him trying to eat healthier and slim back down again. Let's just say it's a work in progress.
  • In Family Guy, Chris inverts this trope when tries to lose weight in "He's Too Sexy For His Fat". Unfortunately, no matter how hard he tries, whether it's exercising or eating healthy, he gains weight. Poor kid can't catch a break due to Status Quo Is God.
  • Scooby-Doo has Shaggy and Scooby eat huge amounts of food in one sitting, but they remain pretty trim. Justified since they're always running away from danger and can reach speeds rivaling Olympian athletes. The original cartoon even noted Shaggy was in track and a gymnast. Little wonder he goes through so much food with Scooby if they're burning it through regular amounts of panic-induced exercise. Though several episodes and some of the movies show the two can gain a lot of weight from how much they consume, they also tend to burn it off almost immediately either because they metabolize everything fairly quickly or because they run like Hell after being scared. So it's more that they never stay fat.
  • The Simpsons: Ironically, this was true of Homer Simpson when he was a teenager. While he appears to have been the same Big Eater all his life, his youthful "metabomolism" protected him from the visible effects until he was in his 20s.
  • Subverted with Will, formerly Roy, Harper in Season 3 of Young Justice (2010). After mostly retiring from superheroics to focus on raising his daughter Lian, Will's managed to put on some weight. He at one point acknowledges he somehow gained a "dad bod", despite that he's a genetically modified clone.

    Real Life 
  • PEPCK-Cmus mice are mice with a genetic modification (that increases the amount of the enzyme PEPCK-C in their muscles, hence the name) that makes them hyperactive, eat twice as much as normal mice, and weigh less than normal mice.


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