The big fat con story

On Wed, 12 May 2004 03:51:36 GMT, Brunswick_kate
wrote:

I agree Mike, I found the article very interesting indeed. After years
of struggling with my weight, I've finally tossed out the scales. My
goal is to improve my fitness; if the wieght comes off or the dress size
goes down, that's nice but I'd rather be strong than slim and maybe I'm
one of those people who has to make a choice.

After 40+ years, I've finally accepted that I'm not going to be tall and
leggy. I'm short with a "mature" build. Now the goal is to make that
short mature build into a mean keen hill climbing machine....and God,
I'm having a blast doing it.

That's great. I'd set the limits (for me) at:
o No obvious sub-cutaneous fat bulging off of me
o Having a shape (waistline)
o Not carrying excess (fat) weight that it slows me down on the bike.

The goal would be:
o Being able to see my abs
o Getting back into the clothes I wore in college
o Working out enough that I'm in a slight caloric deficit.

I did this goal in 2001, but due to some setbacks, regained some weight.
I'm now hopefull with the extra mileage I'm putting in the recomposition
will be permanent. The last time I did it was pure diet (LC), and I did no
exercising at all.

-B

The overall thrust of this story, that being fat is perhaps medically OK, is
grossly wrong. But there is one point at the end that merits comment for
cyclists in particular:

Other interesting claims: (1) people who are overweight have less problem with
osteoporesis

The best preventatives for Osteoporosis a (1) weight-bearing exercise; and
(2) diet rich in calcium, vitamin D, and other bone-building nutrients. It is
the first of these that is important for cyclists, because medical studies have
shown that bikers tend to get lighter, less-sturdy bones because cycling is not
a "weight-bearing" exercise. Supplement cycling with running and you will have
the best of both worlds.

Why do the obese score OK on these two marks? (1) All of their exercise (such
as it it) is extremely "weight-bearing;" and (2) They eat so much of everything
that of course they have sufficient calcium intake and other trace nutrients.

But the cost to their health just for those 2 things? Sheesh. Let's cycle and
run instead.

In article ,
"Roger Zoul" wrote:

Paul Southworth wrote:

:: Back to the topic though, while active overweight people may have
:: a reasonably healthy heart, in the long run many of them will develop
:: joint problems due to excess weight (knees, ankles, hips).

How overweight do people have to be to develop joint problems? I see many
normal weight older people with joint problems, too. ARe you sure there are
not other reasons why people develop joint problems?

Do you have any data/cites on this or is this just more commonsensical
information?

Anecdotal evidence is fun!

I have had occasional back problems since I was in my teens. I'm pretty
lazy about doing the recommended strengthening exercises and so forth.

In the last four years I have slowly dropped from about 190 pounds to
about 150 pounds. Much of this was accomplished by adding a lot of
riding to my life, and I do little else for exercise (weekly intramural
gym sports during the Winter). Specifically, I should probably work on
my core muscles and upper body.

My back problems have all but disappeared. I can't remember the last
time I had a back spasm or any pain.

These
:: problems are very hard to fix later in life and often contribute
:: to further increases in weight - joint problems tend to increase
:: sedentary behavior since moving hurts. Debilitating back pain
:: caused/worsened by excess weight is epidemic in this country, it
:: virtually supports the painkiller industry.

On the other hand, my Achilles tendons are pretty sensitive, and the
knee issues can crop up if I don't do my knee exercises.

-RjC.

--
Ryan Cousineau, http://www.sfu.ca/~rcousine/wiredcola/
President, Fabrizio Mazzoleni Fan Club

the lowest death rate was found among fit men with waist measurements
of 40 inches or more.

I wish to take this opportunity to toast my fellow fat and fit
Falstaffian 40-inchers to a long, happy, hale and hearty life: Salud!

In article m,
"Mike Kruger" wrote:

The Guardian has an excerpt from a new book by Paul Campos, "The Obesity
Myth". The excerpt is titled "The big fat con story."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/weekend/st...200549,00.html

There are some interesting points made about the relative unimportance of
body weight per se; I realize that the Guardian is not a medical journal
(and I have no idea of Campos's credentials), but it makes interesting
reading.

I think the thesis of this article (fitness levels are more important
than BMI) is about as uncontroversial a medical statement as you could
make; as far as I know there isn't a doctor in the world who would be
especially worried about an active patient carrying 10 pounds above BMI.
And there's something the article doesn't point it out explicitly,
because it would spoil the fun: the common description of a person with
an active lifestyle and a BMI in the 25-30 range is "buff". I bet Brad
Pitt has a "bad" BMI because he's carrying movie-star grade muscle mass
around (also my excuse, of course). Lots of athletes (not GC cyclists,
mind; power-to-weight ratios are too important to hill-climbing
performance to carry much extra mass) carry around "fat" BMIs because
the BMI charts don't say anything sensible about well-muscled people.

What really worried me is that the article didn't contemplate a
relationship between BMI and fitness levels. I'll bet there is one,
based on the virtuous cycle that fat people (me, 4 years ago) who start
to take up some exercise (me, 3 years ago) start to become fitter, which
makes them able to exercise more, which makes them thinner. I predict it
would be a bell curve: you get more active (and fit) as you converge on
a weight around the high end of the BMI "normal" standard, or a bit
above that. become too fat or too thin, and both health and activity
levels probably decline.

On the reverse, I doubt that people who diet down to a weight get to
experience the same sort of virtuous cycle: dieting doesn't usually make
you want to get more exercise.

So the questions I'm asking are, are there really significant numbers of
obese-but-active people? Most of the really heavy people I know find
their activity levels curtailed by their weight.

Of most relevance here are the following paragraphs on the relative
importance of overweight versus exercise:

"Similarly, a 1999 Cooper Institute study involving 22,000 men found the
highest death rate among sedentary men with waist measurements under 34
inches, while the lowest death rate was found among fit men with waist
measurements of 40 inches or more. A 1995 Blair study found that improved
fitness (ie, going from "unfit" to "fit"), with the latter requiring a level
of exercise equivalent to going for a brisk half-hour walk four or five
times per week, reduced subsequent mortality rates by 50%. As Blair himself
puts it, Americans have "a misdirected obsession with weight and weight
loss. The focus is all wrong. It's fitness that is the key." "

The conclusion is correct, but I don't know what to make of the waist
measurement stat, which is either garbled reportage (from the Grauniad?
Shocked, shocked!) or a nonsense finding. Does this mean that tall men
live longer? Well, sucks to be me. Without controlling for body
proportions (as opposed to raw waist measurements) this study would seem
to be discovering a correlation between longevity and bigness, not
fatness. (But it also has the conventional finding that activity is an
excellent way to delay death).

Other interesting claims: (1) people who are overweight have less problem
with osteoporesis, (2) The diet Hillary put Bill Clinton on might have been
partly responsible for his obsession with Monica Lewinsky.

Blaming Bill's belly for his tryst with Monica seems to me to put the
blame just a few inches too high.

As for the osteoperosis claim, that's well-understood: fat people's
bones carry lots of load all the time, so it's like getting a constant
impact workout at a low-level.

Cyclists, by the way, are notoriously osteoperotic; any avid cyclist
should consider adding a small component of impact exercise (weights,
jump rope, punching people) to their routine for bone-building.

These articles get into a lot of "what are we doing to our girls?" body
image madness and so forth, but conveniently forget that while getting
really sick or dying from anorexia or bulimia is a really rare thing
even among the privileged-white-girl demographic in which it wreaks its
greatest havoc, getting really sick or dying from causes related to
being fat (or perhaps, as this article would prefer us to specify, from
being sedentary) is really common.

I'm also pretty appalled that it pulls fun stunts like lumping in the
"overweight" (BMI 25-30) and "obese" (BMI 30+) numbers to get the big
scary 64.5% figure. This allows fun fudges like pointing out that "fat"
people (meaning those 27 BMI types) have very good health if they keep
active, while ignoring the specific ailments that affect the (growing)
population of obese (30+ BMI) adults.

The article does some useful statistical skewering: it seems to be on
solid ground when it pokes a hole in the "300,000 annual deaths due to
overweight" stat, though even there I suspect that something is hidden
behind the curtain when they breezily disregard the death of anyone over
65 (and I don't want to make this post longer still, so I'll refrain
from my guesses about bad assumptions that might be causing problems
with the stats here).

On the whole, I think this article oversells the healthiness of being
fat, and undersells both the importance of exercise and activity, and
the extent to which they are already emphasized by most of the sensible
people in the health racket.

Would be a lot less concerned about BMIs if everyone was getting enough
exercise,

Ryan Cousineau, http://www.sfu.ca/~rcousine/wiredcola/
President, Fabrizio Mazzoleni Fan Club

"Badger_South" wrote in message
news
On Wed, 12 May 2004 03:51:36 GMT, Brunswick_kate
wrote:

I agree Mike, I found the article very interesting indeed. After years
of struggling with my weight, I've finally tossed out the scales. My
goal is to improve my fitness; if the wieght comes off or the dress size
goes down, that's nice but I'd rather be strong than slim and maybe I'm
one of those people who has to make a choice.

After 40+ years, I've finally accepted that I'm not going to be tall and
leggy. I'm short with a "mature" build. Now the goal is to make that
short mature build into a mean keen hill climbing machine....and God,
I'm having a blast doing it.

That's great. I'd set the limits (for me) at:
o No obvious sub-cutaneous fat bulging off of me
o Having a shape (waistline)
o Not carrying excess (fat) weight that it slows me down on the bike.

The goal would be:
o Being able to see my abs
o Getting back into the clothes I wore in college
o Working out enough that I'm in a slight caloric deficit.

I did this goal in 2001, but due to some setbacks, regained some weight.
I'm now hopefull with the extra mileage I'm putting in the recomposition
will be permanent. The last time I did it was pure diet (LC), and I did no
exercising at all.

Of course, we don't want to do so much cardio and diet that we become
catabolic and start devouring muscle. You can burn fat faster with strength
training and cardio/diet than with cardio/diet alone. The way racers lose
weight is crazy. Lance Armstrong doesn't eat all day, then rides 6 hours,
and only eats 1500 calories? His body's consuming itself...

"TopCounsel" wrote in message
...
The overall thrust of this story, that being fat is perhaps medically OK,
is
grossly wrong. But there is one point at the end that merits comment for
cyclists in particular:

Other interesting claims: (1) people who are overweight have less problem
with
osteoporesis

The best preventatives for Osteoporosis a (1) weight-bearing exercise;
and
(2) diet rich in calcium, vitamin D, and other bone-building nutrients.
It is
the first of these that is important for cyclists, because medical studies
have
shown that bikers tend to get lighter, less-sturdy bones because cycling
is not
a "weight-bearing" exercise. Supplement cycling with running and you will
have
the best of both worlds.


Better yet, how about weightlifting? Far less traumatic than running, plus
you get the benefit of actually building muscle, which burns more fat.

I agree Mike, I found the article very interesting indeed. After years
of struggling with my weight, I've finally tossed out the scales. My
goal is to improve my fitness; if the wieght comes off or the dress size
goes down, that's nice but I'd rather be strong than slim and maybe I'm
one of those people who has to make a choice.

After 40+ years, I've finally accepted that I'm not going to be tall and
leggy. I'm short with a "mature" build. Now the goal is to make that
short mature build into a mean keen hill climbing machine....and God,
I'm having a blast doing it.

I'm overweight - female, 40+. One of my docs thinks any woman who is overweight
is *obviously* depressed. He's a twit, especially as he's not exactly Mr Slim &
Trim himself. I'd like to lose some weight, and am careful about what I eat,
yet I still remain overweight. I can lose a bit and then I plateau at a weight
which is still considered to be overweight in terms of BMI. That plateauing is
a pain-in-the-arse. Yet thanks to cycling regularly, I'm fitter than I've been
in many a long year and a good deal fitter than many a slim & trim young thing
around. Yesterday, at the supermarket (where the shopping trolley was full of
fruit, veg, etc. and distinctly short on the bad stuff, the lady on the
checkout was passing the time of day about the weather (a British staple topic
of conversation). She was saying how it's forecast to be very good weather by
the end of the week, and my response was that I'd look forward to that, as it
means I can get out on my bike and really enjoy it. Anyhow - conversation
developed into cycling - and I said that on the last nice Saturday we had, I'd
done a 50 miler and that it was a joy due to the gloriously sunny but not too
hot weather with little wind. Said checkout person's bottom jaw dropped to the
ground. Similarly the person next in the queue who had been listening in, also
had the same phemonenon - bottom jaw dropping to the ground... They could not
envisage anyone doing that length of ride. Indeed the checkout lady, who
occasionally cycles, said anything over 5 miles and she was knackered. She was
about my age and a fair bit slimmer.

I usually cycle about 12 - 15 miles a day, so my cycling is regular exercise,
and often with a rear rack carrying a load of shopping - so it's useful
exercise. I'm getting to the point where the scales are going out of the window
and I'm concentrating on general fitness and finally realising that yes, there
is life for a woman even if she is bigger than a dress size 10 ;-) I may not be
a speed demon on my bike, but I'm fitter than many my age :-)

Cheers, helen s




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In article ,
says...

....

So the questions I'm asking are, are there really significant numbers of
obese-but-active people? Most of the really heavy people I know find
their activity levels curtailed by their weight.

Many professional football players (lineman, anyway) would fall into
this category, as would the guy I read about yesterday who is the top US
weightlifter: he's 5'9", weighs 370 lbs, and lifted 507 lbs over his
head.

As you say earlier, the BMI only has meaning for unfit/inactive people.
It's charts simply do not apply for active, fit people.

.....

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On Wed, 12 May 2004 00:15:05 -0700, Ryan Cousineau
wrote:

So the questions I'm asking are, are there really significant numbers of
obese-but-active people?

Well, the lower level of obesity calculated on the BMI scale probably
isn't what most people see as obese, so IMO, yes, there are a lot of
active obese people. Most people think of morbidly obese people when
they use the term obese.

I've read two papers, although they may be talking from the same
study, that one reason that heavier people have a lower death rate is
not from the 'normal' deaths, but because they have more resources to
survive diseases that task the body over one long sustained period -
often coming out much lighter. Those going in light end up dead more
often.

Unfortunately, read that long ago, so my memory is real generalized.

Curtis L. Russell
Odenton, MD (USA)
Just someone on two wheels...