Why fit = slim?

beatricegasti

Why everywhere I go, healthy and fit must equal skinny? I don't have a weight problem, I don't need to lose weight, but every app and website tries to starve me in order to give me a "healthier" diet. Setting myfitnesspal to "gain / maintain" weight does little to nothing, the app still marks in red the calories that would help me gain weight and in green when I'd lose weight, and the blog posts are still adressed to people who want to be skinnier instead of, say, become stronger, or get more muscle mass. What can I do to get healthier without going dangerously underweight and put my health in peril?

livingleanlivingclean

I don't correlate fit with Skinny, or healthy with Skinny. You can be fit and healthy at different sizes, and different bf %'s. There is plenty of info out there about being fit and healthy, or gaining muscle without the need to lose weight. No one is trying to "starve" you to be Skinny or healthy.

At the end of the day, you choose how you want to look, and what you put in your mouth. Your definition of healthy would be different to mine, and you should eat accordingly if you're trying to be the healthiest version of yourself. You can eat at "maintenance" level, or above, whilst eating predominantly "healthy" foods, no one is restricting your intake... with that comes the potential to put on excess body fat. There is increased issues with being overweight and underweight, neither is ideal.

sijomial

Skinny is a negative term to me, suggests underweight and under-trained which to me sounds unhealthy rather than healthy. Some people regard the term as a positive and aspirational aim, I'm just not one of them!

What can I do to get healthier without going dangerously underweight and put my health in peril?

You have control over your destiny and the choices you make on how you live / eat / exercise.
The colour of numbers on a web or phone app have zero power over me and shouldn't have any power over you.
You choose your calorie goal too, the app is a only a tool and it's up to you how you use it.

The majority of people here are probably seeking weight loss despite the "fitness" part of the site name so the blog posts reflect that. Pick and choose what you read. The quality of the articles on here is really poor too IMHO.

I mostly lurk in the weight maintenance and fitness forums on here as the subjects of interest to me. You can also join groups that reflect your interests.

Why fit = slim?

I wouldn't always link the two things, there's a general link but not a universal link.

There's plenty of elite fitness level athletes who aren't slim - where strength and power are bigger parts of their chosen sports compared to power to weight ratio or speed for example.
At an everyday levels even when I was 30lbs overweight (fat in other words!) I had higher than average fitness levels but now I'm what I regard as my best weight my fitness levels are much higher.

stevencloser

Because it's hard to be fit when you're 50 pounds overweight from fat? And the MFP app will not try to make you starve or underweight, it does exactly what you tell it to do, it's just a piece of software.

Maxematics

I don't get that impression in general or from this website at all. The fact of the matter is that the majority of the population is far from fit; they are grossly overweight. Due to that fact, of course the blog posts are going to be addressed to the majority of MFP's userbase. There are plenty of fit people here or people who use MFP to maintain or even gain weight, but the majority are still using the site/app to lose weight.

The green/red numbers are not a big deal. If your goal on MFP is to maintain, of course you're going to see the red font when you go over your goals because the site is telling you that the action of eating over your calorie allotment will hinder the goal you set for yourself. The same with gaining weight; it will only go red when you eat over the surplus you already set for yourself. The green for being under gives you the green light to eat a little more if you want but is letting you know you're okay. It's not trying to starve you. If so, the food diary wouldn't issue a warning when you close it out eating less than 1200 calories.

As written above, in the end it's just a website/app. It's up to the individual to control their own health and decide how much influence something does or doesn't have.

CipherZero

What's seen as "slim" is actually a normal and healthy body fat level.

stevencloser

CipherZero wrote: »

What's seen as "slim" is actually a normal and healthy body fat level.

"regularly downing a pizza for "fuel" before lifting isn't going to give you the muscle you desire"

zyxst

CipherZero wrote: »

What's seen as "slim" is actually a normal and healthy body fat level.

I like the armpit hair on the bulky guy.

ninerbuff

Lots of NFL linemen are pretty fit and aren't skinny. The issue is that media and Hollywood have set this dumb standard for what is perceived as "fit" while being skinny.

A.C.E. Certified Personal and Group Fitness Trainer
IDEA Fitness member
Kickboxing Certified Instructor
Been in fitness for 30 years and have studied kinesiology and nutrition

cwolfman13

I'm not sure what your definition of "slim" or "skinny" is...in my mind it's someone with little fat and little in the way of muscle. I know a lot of fit women, including my wife...none of them are "skinny"...they look healthy and vibrant and athletic...they have lower body fat but have muscles so they have a nice physique.

Savyna

CipherZero wrote: »

What's seen as "slim" is actually a normal and healthy body fat level.

The lean and hot guy's hair makes me think it was drawn after Sadik Hadzovic.

TavistockToad

OP do you have an eating disorder? It seems rather extreme thought process to jump from 'slim' to 'dangerously underweight' just because your counting calories?

JustSomeEm

zyxst wrote: »

CipherZero wrote: »

What's seen as "slim" is actually a normal and healthy body fat level.

I like the armpit hair on the bulky guy.

And the knee braces on the bulky lady... At least she doesn't have armpit hair too...

I don't think that fit necessarily equals slim.... Less fat = more fit than more fat. (did that even make sense?). I know plenty of slim folks who get winded going up stairs. I know a few overweight folks who don't. What's your definition of fit, OP?

Elise4270

OP, what are your stats? And your goals?

AnnPT77

beatricegasti wrote: »

Why everywhere I go, healthy and fit must equal skinny? I don't have a weight problem, I don't need to lose weight, but every app and website tries to starve me in order to give me a "healthier" diet. Setting myfitnesspal to "gain / maintain" weight does little to nothing, the app still marks in red the calories that would help me gain weight and in green when I'd lose weight, and the blog posts are still adressed to people who want to be skinnier instead of, say, become stronger, or get more muscle mass. What can I do to get healthier without going dangerously underweight and put my health in peril?

Most of the widespread, common mass-media stuff you see on any specialized topic, not just weight loss, is oversimplified, filtered in distorting ways through arbitrary cultural preferences, shored up by platitudes with an inadequate factual foundation, etc. These things are aimed at "the masses" (whatever the heck that is), and mostly exist to sell products, advertising, magazines, etc.

You're not "the masses", you're you, with your own personal goals & needs.

All you can do is recognize this; dig deeper; look for the accurate, well-founded kernels of good info hidden amongst the chaff; seek out information sources that have integrity; learn to recognize those when you see them; and use those rather than the crock'o's*** stuff.

Clarify your own goals. Work on them using the best information you can find. Don't get distracted or annoyed by things like color-coding of goals. Try to feel a sense of glee when you're using a tool in ways other than what the designers may've intended, turning it to achieve your personal goals.

Personally, I've been fat and unfit (obese, inactive); fat and reasonably fit (competitive rower, medaled - not just participation medals! - in races); and now thin and reasonably fit. Personally, I'm finding the latter category the most rewarding, but that's based on my goals and preferences.

What can you do to get healthier without putting your health in danger?

• Assess the nutritional quality of your eating, and improve it over time. MFP food logging can be a help here - set some solid macronutrient/micronutrient targets; log; review your diary looking for weak spots; replace foods that don't contribute well to your goals with others you like that have more nutritional benefits.
• You can use the calorie tracking component of MFP to assess how best to maintain your weight while your eating is changing. If you set your MFP profile to maintain, but still lose, manually add calories to your daily goal 100 or so at a time, then wait a couple of weeks to see if you've found the sweet spot of stable weight. If you see red or green or both, but you're hitting your personal targets, just pretend it's Christmas (yay!).
• Find some active pursuits you personally enjoy a lot (sports, exercises, dances, whatever), things that you actively want to do and are inherently motivated to become better at. (This may require trying out a bunch of activities - that can be fun, too.) Once you find the right activity/activities, work on them. After a while, you'll find that some aspect of yourself (strength, flexibility, cardiovascular fitness, balance, . . . .) is a limiting factor in how well you can do activity-X-you-enjoy. Find another relatively fun activity that improves that aspect. Use the fitness forums and others here to help you identify and improve things, reading selectively and ignoring irrelevant BS.

At least that's what I'd do.

Need2Exerc1se

Just apply common sense. If you don't need to lose weight and you want to get fit and healthy, then eat a healthy diet of sufficient calories to maintain your healthy weight and exercise. Include both aerobic and resistance in your workouts and/or activities.

earthnut

Read body recomposition threads, and turn off the blog feed on your home page. This site is a tool, and you can use it however you need to.

extra_medium

beatricegasti wrote: »

Why everywhere I go, healthy and fit must equal skinny? I don't have a weight problem, I don't need to lose weight, but every app and website tries to starve me in order to give me a "healthier" diet. Setting myfitnesspal to "gain / maintain" weight does little to nothing, the app still marks in red the calories that would help me gain weight and in green when I'd lose weight, and the blog posts are still adressed to people who want to be skinnier instead of, say, become stronger, or get more muscle mass. What can I do to get healthier without going dangerously underweight and put my health in peril?

It's really not hard to figure out. Most fitness apps and blogs are geared toward the majority of people using/reading them and the majority of people need to lose weight.

If you don't need to lose weight then don't use MFP to lose weight. You can set it up for whatever goals you want.

You can also visit blogs and forums dedicated to gaining muscle. There are even some on this very site.

Cylphin60

There are likely a few here that know of Eric Esch AKA Butterbean, I couldn't help but think of him reading this thread. He's anything but slim at 5'11" and 425lbs, but I wouldn't dare tell him he's not fit.

I mean, he may not be in the classical sense, I just wouldn't tell him that.

mburgess458

ninerbuff wrote: »

Lots of NFL linemen are pretty fit and aren't skinny. The issue is that media and Hollywood have set this dumb standard for what is perceived as "fit" while being skinny.

A.C.E. Certified Personal and Group Fitness Trainer
IDEA Fitness member
Kickboxing Certified Instructor
Been in fitness for 30 years and have studied kinesiology and nutrition

I'm not sure which linemen you think are pretty fit. None of them are skinny. As a group they are highly overweight and tend to die very young. I don't see how that fits anyone's definition of "fit". You can be good at some sports despite being fat but that doesn't make you "fit" or healthy.

http://www.espn.com/nfl/news/story?id=2313476

mburgess458

Cylphin60 wrote: »

There are likely a few here that know of Eric Esch AKA Butterbean, I couldn't help but think of him reading this thread. He's anything but slim at 5'11" and 425lbs, but I wouldn't dare tell him he's not fit.

I mean, he may not be in the classical sense, I just wouldn't tell him that.

If he survives as long as the average overweight American I would be shocked. He can kick butt, he's not at all "fit".

Everyone doesn't need to have "fit" as a goal. If you want to be an NFL lineman or follow in Butterbean's footsteps that's great, but go into it knowing that's not healthy and highly likely to shorten your life.