Obesity Catch-All

LarryC wrote:

I'll see if I can get this lecture. In actuality, if weight categories are defined by BMI and fitness together, then the best places to be were "Normal and up to Obese 1 but fit." Fitness appears to be a fantastic equalizer - you can be slightly obese and still be perfectly great as far as health risks are concerned so long as you can do an Ironman. In fact, you're apparently slightly better than Normal for some reason. I'll see if I can dig up the lecture.

I read that overweight people are better at recovering from a hospital stay than low normal weight ones. I think it had to do with low normal weight people were more sickly.

Yeah I am using BMI and it is not necessarily good for the individual and fitness is a great equalizer but it is a good place to start.

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/1...

Check out this article. Try to figure out your age fitness.

BMI only works up to a certain point, it's pretty useless. Just another example of focusing on the wrong thing, like calories.

I'd just like to note that you can't outrun calories - you'd lose a crapload more weight just by eating smaller portions of higher quality food for 8-12 months. Fitness is more for personal strength, better cardio, having more energy, etc. If you do both (eating better + physical activity) the benefits multiply and come faster.

It reads like Paleocon wants all the big guys here to suddenly jump out of the bed at 5:30 am and go do the Rocky scenes. That's kind of great for people who already want to be fit, once you go through the door, you need a LOT of motivation and discipline to get on the path. But if you've never done it in your life, you will find all sorts of reasons not to bother - "I'll look stupid working out, people will laugh, I don't care enough to do it, I'm fine, I tried it before and it didn't work, I just can't". For those big GWJers, it would be a huge victory to just go walking 30 minutes a day for a few weeks. But they have to want it.

I think clover's got it: Trying to forcibly fix people who aren't ready to work on themselves is a waste of time. People have to want it before they'll try it, and they're usually ignorant of the effort needed.

BTW if you've been fat 30 years, don't expect to lose it in one year. It'd take like 2-6 years of small gradual lifestyle changes (which you could've gotten since childhood if your parents had better information). Or 2 years of going hardcore, but most people aren't mentally strong enough for that.

Mex:

Actually for some people, "outrunning calories" is actually quite doable, but it has to be an activity that is relatively low-damaging and constant. Back when I cycled more intensively, I'd have to ramp up my eating for a century ride and I'd still lose weight if I did too many of them back to back.

No, it's not sustainable long-term, more complicated than that but that's basically the reason.

Mex wrote:

No, it's not sustainable long-term, more complicated than that but that's basically the reason.

In general, I would say yes. For specific cases, maybe not. I'm willing to bet that a moderately obese person can increase his or her daily caloric intake and still lose a lot of weight within 6 months if they changed jobs from a desk secretary to a busy pier stevedore. Hauling cargo daily is very energy-intensive work.

On a more personal note, I just finished my company offered fitness assessment.

My BMI is 28, putting me in the high overweight category (30+ is obese), but my body fat composition according to the pinch test is just under 20% putting me at the low end of average (18% is considered "Athletic").

My resting heart rate is 48bpm and the stress test (3 minutes on the treadmill and a one minute pulse test afterwards) gave me a clean bill of cardiovascular health. Blood pressure was 110/54.

There were strength and flexibility tests as well. I did pretty well on those too.

I manage to maintain this with about 1 hour of exercise per day which comes out to 7 hours/week (or about 1/5 the time the average Americans spends watching television).

I also do this while working close to 50 hours/week, sleeping 8 hours/night, cooking my own meals, studying for certifications, and playing an hour of video games a night (along with traveling to Baltimore every weekend to see my wife who lives 300 miles away).

I am certainly no shining example of a gym rat by any means, but my investment (7 hours/week) is pretty modest. And frankly, it isn't that hard.

Try piling on a second job, 3 kids, and no free gym. And let's put diabetes and chronic hypertension into the mix, why not?

LOL. There must be something wrong with that, goman. It's listing my fitness age as "younger than 20."

Paleocon wrote:

On a more personal note, I just finished my company offered fitness assessment.

My BMI is 28, putting me in the high overweight category (30+ is obese), but my body fat composition according to the pinch test is just under 20% putting me at the low end of average (18% is considered "Athletic").

My resting heart rate is 48bpm and the stress test (3 minutes on the treadmill and a one minute pulse test afterwards) gave me a clean bill of cardiovascular health. Blood pressure was 110/54.

There were strength and flexibility tests as well. I did pretty well on those too.

I manage to maintain this with about 1 hour of exercise per day which comes out to 7 hours/week (or about 1/5 the time the average Americans spends watching television).

I also do this while working close to 50 hours/week, sleeping 8 hours/night, cooking my own meals, studying for certifications, and playing an hour of video games a night (along with traveling to Baltimore every weekend to see my wife who lives 300 miles away).

I am certainly no shining example of a gym rat by any means, but my investment (7 hours/week) is pretty modest. And frankly, it isn't that hard.

Based on your previous description of how your workplace encourages healthy activities, and the fact that you've been living an active lifestyle for as long as I've been on GWJ, it's no surprise at all you don't find it that hard. You're maintaining the lifestyle you're used to, so of course it's easy. The part you're not getting is that changing to that active lifestyle when you're used to one that's not is the hardest part. Assuming that it'd be equally easy for everyone is where the judging comes in. That post isn't a whole lot better than "Have you tried not being fat?"

http://www.ntnu.edu/cerg/vo2max

Here is the calculator... try it out... It is based off 7 variables that the Norwegian researchers figured out the most important.

Sex, Age, whether you exercise, how long do you exercise, how hard do you exercise, resting pulse, and waist size.

goman wrote:

There are actually 4 places you can be.

1. Underweight - bulimics and anorexics are most likely this way. It is unhealthy and not desirable at all.
2. Normal weight - best to be here if you want to be healthy. Health Risks are lowest.
3. Overweight - not the best place to be but you are generally healthy here. More risks especially if you are not active in this range.
4. Obese - health risks skyrocket here. Heart disease, Diabetes, cancer risks are much higher here.

So if you are obese your risks are lowered if you go into the overweight range. That is a lot easier to do than trying to go from obese to normal. Shoot for the overweight range if you want to lower risks if you are obese.

People with bulimia are all over the BMI scale.

LarryC wrote:
Mex wrote:

No, it's not sustainable long-term, more complicated than that but that's basically the reason.

In general, I would say yes. For specific cases, maybe not. I'm willing to bet that a moderately obese person can increase his or her daily caloric intake and still lose a lot of weight within 6 months if they changed jobs from a desk secretary to a busy pier stevedore. Hauling cargo daily is very energy-intensive work.

You're just wrong here, you can't work out intensely enough to outwork the calories your body receives for long periods of time without serious health problems. You'll just screw your body or your mind. I'm talking about long term, healthy, sustainable weight management, not going to work at a pier to screw up your joints at 45. Just eat better, it's that easy (or hard, depending on how much you like food).

LarryC wrote:

LOL. There must be something wrong with that, goman. It's listing my fitness age as "younger than 20."

CM not inches..!!!! try again.

It is not really weight that matters but waist size.

sometimesdee wrote:
goman wrote:

There are actually 4 places you can be.

1. Underweight - bulimics and anorexics are most likely this way. It is unhealthy and not desirable at all.
2. Normal weight - best to be here if you want to be healthy. Health Risks are lowest.
3. Overweight - not the best place to be but you are generally healthy here. More risks especially if you are not active in this range.
4. Obese - health risks skyrocket here. Heart disease, Diabetes, cancer risks are much higher here.

So if you are obese your risks are lowered if you go into the overweight range. That is a lot easier to do than trying to go from obese to normal. Shoot for the overweight range if you want to lower risks if you are obese.

People with bulimia are all over the BMI scale.

True.. I should take that off. Anorexics on the other hand....

Switching gears, question time for all - Some people who are fat adults don't personally know how to lose weight. In practice yes, they can have the "theory", and the magazines, but they don't have any personal experience actually doing it. They didn't acquire these principles early in life, from their parents or relatives. They might have been thin early in life but that's due to metabolism and other factors (lack of children, etc). Do you think the people who have this knowledge have a moral responsibility to help those who don't, or am I going on the wrong path? How about teaching these principles to their children?

goman wrote:
LarryC wrote:

LOL. There must be something wrong with that, goman. It's listing my fitness age as "younger than 20."

CM not inches..!!!! try again.

It is not really weight that matters but waist size.

Awesome. 1 yr under my age.

goman wrote:
LarryC wrote:

LOL. There must be something wrong with that, goman. It's listing my fitness age as "younger than 20."

CM not inches..!!!! try again.

It is not really weight that matters but waist size.

Haha. Yeah, that's MUCH closer to how I feel.

I got it 8 years under my real age...

I am overweight like Paleocon.. but I have been running the past year and a half and got my resting pulse down to 52.

I also tested my VOmax a different way and they are different by 2.

goman wrote:

I got it 8 years under my real age...

I am overweight like Paleocon.. but I have been running the past year and a half and got my resting pulse down to 52.

I also tested my VOmax a different way and they are different by 2.

What is VOmax? That was under by 3 for me.

Mex wrote:

SwitcDo you think the people who have this knowledge have a moral responsibility to help those who don't, or am I going on the wrong path? How about teaching these principles to their children?

Not sure if we have the moral responsibility to help those who don't. As I've shown in the medical quackery thread, there are people out there who aren't open to ever being convinced of anything. If someone is open to the help then by all means, give it. There was a time when I was mountain biking and I was new to it, and struggling up a long ass hill. I was slowly making my way up the hill and a guy who looked like a pro-level mountain biker pulled along me and said, "come on let's do this!" and I can't tell you how much that helped. Just that little encouragement, a guy I didn't know who was rooting for me, was a huge help.

For kids I think we need to have a mandatory nutritional class in school, where we teach kids about carbs, proteins, calories, etc.

Mex wrote:

Switching gears, question time for all - Some people who are fat adults don't personally know how to lose weight. In practice yes, they can have the "theory", and the magazines, but they don't have any personal experience actually doing it. They didn't acquire these principles early in life, from their parents or relatives. They might have been thin early in life but that's due to metabolism and other factors (lack of children, etc). Do you think the people who have this knowledge have a moral responsibility to help those who don't, or am I going on the wrong path? How about teaching these principles to their children?

Your kids are your kids, you can try to instill whatever attitudes towards eating healthy and exercising that they'll let you.

As for giving that advice to other people: When asked? Sure. The thing that turns helpful advice into fat shaming is assuming the fat person wants or needs that advice and offering it unsolicited.

Yellek wrote:
goman wrote:

I got it 8 years under my real age...

I am overweight like Paleocon.. but I have been running the past year and a half and got my resting pulse down to 52.

I also tested my VOmax a different way and they are different by 2.

What is VOmax? That was under by 3 for me.

Woops it called VO2max..

V for volume
O2 for oxygen
max for maximum

It is a calculation of mL/(kg*min) to determine aerobic fitness ability. The higher the number the more aerobically fit you are. The more aerobically fit you are the lower your resting pulse rate. (Heart doesn't have to work as hard to pump as much blood around while at rest)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VO2_max
http://www.ntnu.edu/cerg/fitness-num...

I can't tell if my VO2 Max is good or bad from that site. It doesn't offer any basis for interpretation.

Anyway, my VO2Max is 55 and my fitness age is 22.

Paleocon wrote:

I can't tell if my VO2 Max is good or bad from that site. It doesn't offer any basis for interpretation.

Anyway, my VO2Max is 55 and my fitness age is 22.

Here is a chart.

http://www.topendsports.com/testing/...

Real VO2 Max testing requires one to go to a clinic and get hooked up to machines while running a treadmill or other such cardio machine (I've heard of elipticals as well as bikes used). They put a mask over your face to measure the volume of O2 going in and the air coming out, as well as your heart rate. I believe such tests typically cost around $200, though it's been a while since I've looked into it. Once you finish testing they give you some papers which show you your results. I believe they also tell you what is your best heart rate range for working out.

Interesting. So in spite of being near the line between overweight/obese, I am slightly under for my fitness age and in the good range for VO2Max. Mostly due to not carrying weight primarily around my waist. This seems to lean quite a bit towards genetic lottery territory.

cheeba wrote:

Real VO2 Max testing requires one to go to a clinic and get hooked up to machines while running a treadmill or other such cardio machine (I've heard of elipticals as well as bikes used). They put a mask over your face to measure the volume of O2 going in and the air coming out, as well as your heart rate. I believe such tests typically cost around $200, though it's been a while since I've looked into it. Once you finish testing they give you some papers which show you your results. I believe they also tell you what is your best heart rate range for working out.

Right -- that is the most accurate way... but this is another way according to the NY Times article is very close to your real number.

In order to figure out how to estimate VO2 max without a treadmill, the scientists combed through the results to determine which of the data points were most useful. You might expect that the most taxing physical tests would yield the most reliable results. Instead, the researchers found that putting just five measurements — waist circumference; resting heart rate; frequency and intensity of exercise; age; and sex — into an algorithm allowed them to predict a person’s VO2 max with noteworthy accuracy, according to their study, published in the journal Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise.

The researchers used the data set to tabulate the typical, desirable VO2 max for a healthy person at every age from 20 to 90, creating specific parameters for fitness age. The concept is simple enough, explains Ulrik Wisloff, the director of the K. G. Jebsen Center of Exercise in Medicine at the Norwegian University and the senior author of the study. “A 70-year-old man or woman who has the peak oxygen uptake of a 20-year-old has a fitness age of 20,” he says. He has seen just this combination during his research.

Yellek wrote:

Interesting. So in spite of being near the line between overweight/obese, I am slightly under for my fitness age and in the good range for VO2Max. Mostly due to not carrying weight primarily around my waist. This seems to lean quite a bit towards genetic lottery territory.

If you exercise that is probably the reason why also despite being "heavy."

goman wrote:
Yellek wrote:

Interesting. So in spite of being near the line between overweight/obese, I am slightly under for my fitness age and in the good range for VO2Max. Mostly due to not carrying weight primarily around my waist. This seems to lean quite a bit towards genetic lottery territory.

If you exercise that is probably the reason why also despite being "heavy."

Once a week for 30m or less. Hardly a fitness routine.

Yellek wrote:

Interesting. So in spite of being near the line between overweight/obese, I am slightly under for my fitness age and in the good range for VO2Max. Mostly due to not carrying weight primarily around my waist. This seems to lean quite a bit towards genetic lottery territory.

m
I know a few guys and girls who are clearly very gifted genetically, but they never cared about their body, it seems like such a waste for me.

So I guess only bother with fat people who ask for help, which was kind of my position to begin with. Unless someone disagrees with this? I was thinking of the whole "help people specially if they don't know they need it, etc. " thing. How about children of fat families? Is it rude to get into their eating habits?