Fatlogic

mackfoo
mackfoo Posts: 28 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
Good article in the Guardian. Finally an article on weight loss I agree with...

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2019/jan/05/truth-obesity-five-fat-myths-debunked

Replies

  • Fatty_Nuff
    Fatty_Nuff Posts: 273 Member
    mackfoo wrote: »
    Good article in the Guardian. Finally an article on weight loss I agree with...

    https://www.theguardian.com/society/2019/jan/05/truth-obesity-five-fat-myths-debunked

    Now all those "I'm gaining on 1000 calories" people are going to have a hissy fit. :fearful:
  • sivyaleah
    sivyaleah Posts: 51 Member
    Excellent article. Thanks for sharing. Rings very true for me personally.
  • RunsWithBees
    RunsWithBees Posts: 1,508 Member
    Good article, I had to learn all these things the hard way through trial and error :D oh well, live and learn!
  • yirara
    yirara Posts: 9,943 Member
    Fatty_Nuff wrote: »
    mackfoo wrote: »
    Good article in the Guardian. Finally an article on weight loss I agree with...

    https://www.theguardian.com/society/2019/jan/05/truth-obesity-five-fat-myths-debunked

    Now all those "I'm gaining on 1000 calories" people are going to have a hissy fit. :fearful:

    I think most of us have been there at one point or another.
    Hey, at a certain time I thought eating black bread, the stuff you get in Scandinavia is good and I will lose weight. Only thing is: I ate it additionally to what I'd normally eat :D
  • mackfoo
    mackfoo Posts: 28 Member
    AnnPT77 wrote: »
    Yeah, I like that, too, and find little to disagree with on the substance.

    One thing I'm curious about, slightly tangent to it: The whole fitness/health/obesity definition thing.

    To me, fitness is about athletic performance and athletically related markers (resting heart rate, endurance, strength, pace at some activity(ies), maybe competitive accomplishments, that sort of thing).

    To me, health is about relative freedom from active disease/disability, needing no/minimal medications for daily functioning, and health markers (blood chemistry including lipids/sugar metabolism, blood pressure, state of one's blood vessels/lungs/heart/bones/etc., and that sort of thing).

    Obesity is about some combination of assessments like body fat percent, BMI, etc. (I know that technically BMI defines obesity in one sense, but I'm trying to recognize that BMI doesn't *100%* capture what's relevant about body weight.)

    It seems like some sources conflate these - treat them as synonymous. I think you can be reasonably fit (by the measures above) while obese, and some few lucky (and probably still young) people could be fairly healthy (for the moment) as per above while obese. While I agree that people on average - as noted in the Guardian article - usually over-rate their fitness, under-rate their obesity, and over-rate their health, I think it still can be meaningful to assess them separately.

    I was reading a clickbait-thingie** today about very heavy (obese) football players (US football) who lost massive amounts of weight after retiring from football, typically becoming healthier . . . but I have trouble thinking of an active, and in many of these cases quite successful, football player as "unfit". In some respects, they may be fitter when thinner, too, but . . . unfit during their career? Gee, I dunno.

    I think in the overwhelming majority of real life cases, poor fitness, compromised health (current/outlook), and obesity do most often co-occur. But I don't think they always do, and it seems like we lose something by mixing the vocabulary. For one, my reading (and experience) suggests that there are benefits to fitness even while obese, when the comparison standard is both unfit and obese. Certainly, there are benefits to being at a healthy weight while unfit vs. both unfit and obese.

    Both fit and healthy weight is obviously the best plan, of course. But they're not inextricably linked. We see more people here - I think - pursue weight loss and ignore fitness, and not that many here who pursue fitness while staying obese, but the latter combination exists (and not just among football players). (Many, maybe most people here pursue both weight management and fitness, I understand - not saying otherwise. But that "fatlogic" definition of fitness is still pretty common: That tyranny of low expectations.)

    But I admit this is all a side trip to the provocative opinion piece you linked. :)

    ** https://thesportsdrop.com/20-nfl-players-that-lost-a-ton-of-weight/

    So that's interesting. My gut tells me it can't be healthy to be 300 lbs, even if you are a football player, but couldn't find any factual evidence to back it up.

    While I disagree with the methods of "Biggest Loser", I do recall (yes, I watched) that within the first week of intensive exercise, many of the participants improved their health significantly, though they were still very obese. (I'm recalling specifically one participant who completely got off his asthma meds on the first week.)

    Maybe intensive exercise can negate a lot of the effects of obesity? Maybe a good area for further research...
  • GottaBurnEmAll
    GottaBurnEmAll Posts: 7,722 Member
    mackfoo wrote: »
    AnnPT77 wrote: »
    Yeah, I like that, too, and find little to disagree with on the substance.

    One thing I'm curious about, slightly tangent to it: The whole fitness/health/obesity definition thing.

    To me, fitness is about athletic performance and athletically related markers (resting heart rate, endurance, strength, pace at some activity(ies), maybe competitive accomplishments, that sort of thing).

    To me, health is about relative freedom from active disease/disability, needing no/minimal medications for daily functioning, and health markers (blood chemistry including lipids/sugar metabolism, blood pressure, state of one's blood vessels/lungs/heart/bones/etc., and that sort of thing).

    Obesity is about some combination of assessments like body fat percent, BMI, etc. (I know that technically BMI defines obesity in one sense, but I'm trying to recognize that BMI doesn't *100%* capture what's relevant about body weight.)

    It seems like some sources conflate these - treat them as synonymous. I think you can be reasonably fit (by the measures above) while obese, and some few lucky (and probably still young) people could be fairly healthy (for the moment) as per above while obese. While I agree that people on average - as noted in the Guardian article - usually over-rate their fitness, under-rate their obesity, and over-rate their health, I think it still can be meaningful to assess them separately.

    I was reading a clickbait-thingie** today about very heavy (obese) football players (US football) who lost massive amounts of weight after retiring from football, typically becoming healthier . . . but I have trouble thinking of an active, and in many of these cases quite successful, football player as "unfit". In some respects, they may be fitter when thinner, too, but . . . unfit during their career? Gee, I dunno.

    I think in the overwhelming majority of real life cases, poor fitness, compromised health (current/outlook), and obesity do most often co-occur. But I don't think they always do, and it seems like we lose something by mixing the vocabulary. For one, my reading (and experience) suggests that there are benefits to fitness even while obese, when the comparison standard is both unfit and obese. Certainly, there are benefits to being at a healthy weight while unfit vs. both unfit and obese.

    Both fit and healthy weight is obviously the best plan, of course. But they're not inextricably linked. We see more people here - I think - pursue weight loss and ignore fitness, and not that many here who pursue fitness while staying obese, but the latter combination exists (and not just among football players). (Many, maybe most people here pursue both weight management and fitness, I understand - not saying otherwise. But that "fatlogic" definition of fitness is still pretty common: That tyranny of low expectations.)

    But I admit this is all a side trip to the provocative opinion piece you linked. :)

    ** https://thesportsdrop.com/20-nfl-players-that-lost-a-ton-of-weight/

    So that's interesting. My gut tells me it can't be healthy to be 300 lbs, even if you are a football player, but couldn't find any factual evidence to back it up.

    While I disagree with the methods of "Biggest Loser", I do recall (yes, I watched) that within the first week of intensive exercise, many of the participants improved their health significantly, though they were still very obese. (I'm recalling specifically one participant who completely got off his asthma meds on the first week.)

    Maybe intensive exercise can negate a lot of the effects of obesity? Maybe a good area for further research...

    I think this comes down to immediate effects vs. long term effects. Obesity is a ticking time bomb. You can likely mitigate or eliminate some short-term medical issues as an obese person by leading an active lifestyle, but over time, the risks of other medical issues are still there, lying in wait. Heart disease, high blood pressure, some forms of cancer, and a host of other issues are obesity related issues, and the damage with these diseases takes time to be done.

    I know that I personally had a big wake up call when meningiomas were added to the list of obesity related cancers since I have one. Again, the ticking time bomb analogy.
  • Eternally_Hers
    Eternally_Hers Posts: 26 Member
    mackfoo wrote: »
    AnnPT77 wrote: »
    Yeah, I like that, too, and find little to disagree with on the substance.

    One thing I'm curious about, slightly tangent to it: The whole fitness/health/obesity definition thing.

    To me, fitness is about athletic performance and athletically related markers (resting heart rate, endurance, strength, pace at some activity(ies), maybe competitive accomplishments, that sort of thing).

    To me, health is about relative freedom from active disease/disability, needing no/minimal medications for daily functioning, and health markers (blood chemistry including lipids/sugar metabolism, blood pressure, state of one's blood vessels/lungs/heart/bones/etc., and that sort of thing).

    Obesity is about some combination of assessments like body fat percent, BMI, etc. (I know that technically BMI defines obesity in one sense, but I'm trying to recognize that BMI doesn't *100%* capture what's relevant about body weight.)

    It seems like some sources conflate these - treat them as synonymous. I think you can be reasonably fit (by the measures above) while obese, and some few lucky (and probably still young) people could be fairly healthy (for the moment) as per above while obese. While I agree that people on average - as noted in the Guardian article - usually over-rate their fitness, under-rate their obesity, and over-rate their health, I think it still can be meaningful to assess them separately.

    I was reading a clickbait-thingie** today about very heavy (obese) football players (US football) who lost massive amounts of weight after retiring from football, typically becoming healthier . . . but I have trouble thinking of an active, and in many of these cases quite successful, football player as "unfit". In some respects, they may be fitter when thinner, too, but . . . unfit during their career? Gee, I dunno.

    I think in the overwhelming majority of real life cases, poor fitness, compromised health (current/outlook), and obesity do most often co-occur. But I don't think they always do, and it seems like we lose something by mixing the vocabulary. For one, my reading (and experience) suggests that there are benefits to fitness even while obese, when the comparison standard is both unfit and obese. Certainly, there are benefits to being at a healthy weight while unfit vs. both unfit and obese.

    Both fit and healthy weight is obviously the best plan, of course. But they're not inextricably linked. We see more people here - I think - pursue weight loss and ignore fitness, and not that many here who pursue fitness while staying obese, but the latter combination exists (and not just among football players). (Many, maybe most people here pursue both weight management and fitness, I understand - not saying otherwise. But that "fatlogic" definition of fitness is still pretty common: That tyranny of low expectations.)

    But I admit this is all a side trip to the provocative opinion piece you linked. :)

    ** https://thesportsdrop.com/20-nfl-players-that-lost-a-ton-of-weight/

    So that's interesting. My gut tells me it can't be healthy to be 300 lbs, even if you are a football player, but couldn't find any factual evidence to back it up.

    While I disagree with the methods of "Biggest Loser", I do recall (yes, I watched) that within the first week of intensive exercise, many of the participants improved their health significantly, though they were still very obese. (I'm recalling specifically one participant who completely got off his asthma meds on the first week.)

    Maybe intensive exercise can negate a lot of the effects of obesity? Maybe a good area for further research...

    The biggest loser was extremely dangerous, even under medical supervision. Kai Hibbard has said a lot about what they went through and even Jillian Michaels quit the show three times because she was concerned about the poor care of the contestants. From less then 1,000 calorie a day diets, there first workout was 4 hours long(it would go up to 8 hours eventually) and Hibbard's feet were constantly bleeding for the first three weeks of the competition. Serious injuries have happened, in an article in 2015 they were talking that there were two contestants hospitalized in the 2014 season. One contestant had a half torn calf, the doctors told her to rest but production told her that she can't. So on the show they asked her to run, she said no and when edited it looked like she was just lazy when she was seriously injured.

    Hibbard's period stopped, her hair is falling out, her thyroid is in poor condition thanks to the biggest loser. There was also an article about how the biggest loser lowered the bmr of the biggest loser contestants by 500 when compared to the regular person. Don't get tricked by shows that only show you the positives. https://www.businessinsider.com/biggest-loser-contestant-slams-show-treatment-2015-1
  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 34,226 Member
    Eternally_Hers wrote: »
    mackfoo wrote: »
    AnnPT77 wrote: »
    Yeah, I like that, too, and find little to disagree with on the substance.

    One thing I'm curious about, slightly tangent to it: The whole fitness/health/obesity definition thing.

    To me, fitness is about athletic performance and athletically related markers (resting heart rate, endurance, strength, pace at some activity(ies), maybe competitive accomplishments, that sort of thing).

    To me, health is about relative freedom from active disease/disability, needing no/minimal medications for daily functioning, and health markers (blood chemistry including lipids/sugar metabolism, blood pressure, state of one's blood vessels/lungs/heart/bones/etc., and that sort of thing).

    Obesity is about some combination of assessments like body fat percent, BMI, etc. (I know that technically BMI defines obesity in one sense, but I'm trying to recognize that BMI doesn't *100%* capture what's relevant about body weight.)

    It seems like some sources conflate these - treat them as synonymous. I think you can be reasonably fit (by the measures above) while obese, and some few lucky (and probably still young) people could be fairly healthy (for the moment) as per above while obese. While I agree that people on average - as noted in the Guardian article - usually over-rate their fitness, under-rate their obesity, and over-rate their health, I think it still can be meaningful to assess them separately.

    I was reading a clickbait-thingie** today about very heavy (obese) football players (US football) who lost massive amounts of weight after retiring from football, typically becoming healthier . . . but I have trouble thinking of an active, and in many of these cases quite successful, football player as "unfit". In some respects, they may be fitter when thinner, too, but . . . unfit during their career? Gee, I dunno.

    I think in the overwhelming majority of real life cases, poor fitness, compromised health (current/outlook), and obesity do most often co-occur. But I don't think they always do, and it seems like we lose something by mixing the vocabulary. For one, my reading (and experience) suggests that there are benefits to fitness even while obese, when the comparison standard is both unfit and obese. Certainly, there are benefits to being at a healthy weight while unfit vs. both unfit and obese.

    Both fit and healthy weight is obviously the best plan, of course. But they're not inextricably linked. We see more people here - I think - pursue weight loss and ignore fitness, and not that many here who pursue fitness while staying obese, but the latter combination exists (and not just among football players). (Many, maybe most people here pursue both weight management and fitness, I understand - not saying otherwise. But that "fatlogic" definition of fitness is still pretty common: That tyranny of low expectations.)

    But I admit this is all a side trip to the provocative opinion piece you linked. :)

    ** https://thesportsdrop.com/20-nfl-players-that-lost-a-ton-of-weight/

    So that's interesting. My gut tells me it can't be healthy to be 300 lbs, even if you are a football player, but couldn't find any factual evidence to back it up.

    While I disagree with the methods of "Biggest Loser", I do recall (yes, I watched) that within the first week of intensive exercise, many of the participants improved their health significantly, though they were still very obese. (I'm recalling specifically one participant who completely got off his asthma meds on the first week.)

    Maybe intensive exercise can negate a lot of the effects of obesity? Maybe a good area for further research...

    The biggest loser was extremely dangerous, even under medical supervision. Kai Hibbard has said a lot about what they went through and even Jillian Michaels quit the show three times because she was concerned about the poor care of the contestants. From less then 1,000 calorie a day diets, there first workout was 4 hours long(it would go up to 8 hours eventually) and Hibbard's feet were constantly bleeding for the first three weeks of the competition. Serious injuries have happened, in an article in 2015 they were talking that there were two contestants hospitalized in the 2014 season. One contestant had a half torn calf, the doctors told her to rest but production told her that she can't. So on the show they asked her to run, she said no and when edited it looked like she was just lazy when she was seriously injured.

    Hibbard's period stopped, her hair is falling out, her thyroid is in poor condition thanks to the biggest loser. There was also an article about how the biggest loser lowered the bmr of the biggest loser contestants by 500 when compared to the regular person. Don't get tricked by shows that only show you the positives. https://www.businessinsider.com/biggest-loser-contestant-slams-show-treatment-2015-1

    I think the point was that exercise/fitness has benefits, even without weight loss.

    There are sensible ways to get fit (even while fat), just like there are sensible ways to lose weight.

    That show isn't a sensible model for how to do anything, and I don't think anyone in this thread was saying that it was.
  • CarvedTones
    CarvedTones Posts: 2,340 Member
    I hate it when people quote studies they can't produce, but I have given up after Googling and will just make a general statement about what I read...

    A large percentage of morbidly obese people indicated that their obesity was in part or completely due to a diagnosed condition while doctors who were surveyed indicated that they rarely if ever gave any of their patients such a diagnosis.

    My highest BMI was "only" 35.0 and only for a short while, but I was around 32 for a few years and above 28 for decades. I thought I looked pretty good in the 28-30 range. My target weight that I managed to reach a couple of ties was a BMI of 26.6 and I thought that was amazingly healthy. Now at 23.6, it is beyond me how I ever believed all that, but I absolutely did. Sometimes people are in denial and they really know what they don't want to believe is true, but that wasn't the case. It wasn't until I was about 18 months from turning 60 (my current age) that I started really worrying about mortality and looking harder at the science.

Categories