Bob Foster really hated food (explanation below)

Sebastian Fundora and Panama Al Brown are/were lucky to be alive, then. They must have consumed food only once a week to be that tall and thin.

 

He was a full time athlete and he might’ve just been a reasonable eater… BF maybe? didn’t want to be a pig to make up for all his activity and so it went up and down - they tried to build him up with pizza and pop, it didn’t work but I think that had to do more with a guy who likely wasn’t a glutton being put in a position to eat too much and just giving it up.
Things weren’t as exact in those times, calorie counting wasn’t so understood it was the 70s eat more to get bigger but how much? Eat less to shrink but how much? These days you can calculate either to be so comfortable you won’t notice any discomfort IMO.

 

Some people can eat and not gain weight.

 

They likely ate “enough” but were taxed so much from training the scale still descended.

 

I'm the same height as Bob Foster and, at age 60, my walking around weight is the same as it was in my early 20s, roughly 178. I eat as much as I want of whatever I want and my weight stays the same.
Just because you are tall doesn't mean that you can carry more weight. At one point in my late 20s, after I quit sparring regularly, I bulked up to right around 200 pounds, maybe 205, and I felt like a hog.

 

Bob liked to drink. After his brief challenge of Frazier, the two of them went out to a bar and got plastered. (Of course Joe sang his way extremely well through an excellent Light Beer from Miller commercial. Whatever was going on with the Ali-Frazier rivalry, it was Joe who always enjoyed the commercial endorsements.)

During IBHOF weekends, you could always find BF at the bar, although everybody actually joked about Norton always being drunk as a skunk.

 

They can't. They just underestimate how much they eat. There's not a human on this planet who can't get fat.

 

Got you beat Grey 5ft7-8 and got to a whale 217lbs or more… You might not believe it but I could still do press ups on one arm and hand stands but rolling my ankle made me fear for the permanence of said ankles functionality. I was built like Buster Mathis.

 

That’s it. Quick metabolisms.

We’ve all known that guy - the thin man who just says thin no matter what he eat’s - mo fos they are! Lol.

Also, nit picky but Bob was probably 6’3 1/2” - if not a touch taller - crazy height for his natural build and weight.

 

Some people are extremely sedentary - eating but not burning.

At the other end of the spectrum, there are those who literally can’t keep still, not even to sit down - they’re burning all the time.

Open question, do you think the concept of a quick metabolism is a myth - given the hidden variables of actual food intake and offset exercise?

I mean, you don’t know the true stats on people unless you actually observe them 24/7.

People who overeat are more likely and naturally going to understate how much they consume.

Some people also ensure that they consume the bulk of their food in solitude/privacy - so on superficial exposure to such people it might seem like they’re not big eaters.

 

Holyfield's solution for Foster's weight problem- steroids

 

Well, BF was certainly aware of the effects steroids had on his final opponent. Incredibly, he knocked out Bob Hazelton in ten before getting stopped by Mustafa Wassaja in five. Then, in BF's career finale, the fatally jacked up Hazelton retired him via second round TKO. (Wassaja would get his comeuppance when multiple left hooks from Michael Spinks turned him into a bobblehead doll.)

You can see why Hazleton took up steroids upon viewing his first round knockout loss to an up and coming Foreman. Hazleton looks like a toothpick in that one. In 1969, at 6'5.5" for Foreman, he weighed 194 pounds. By 1986, he had ballooned up to 312. Surely, BF was asked whether or not he would've considered steroid use for Frazier and Ali after what happened to him with Hazelton, but there's no such record of him answering such an inquiry.

I admire Michael Spinks for cleanly building himself up from 170 to 212. But whether during his career or into retirement, his body remained basically the same, without his head ballooning like Holyfield's or that of the notorious Barry Bonds (who was very skinny when playing for the Pirates).