sacrifice

Full Article: Study finds obesity may not lead to poor health

Last visit to the doc and the nurse took a very long time checking my pulse - she seemed concerned that my resting pulse rate was so low - told her what my exercise routine was and she understood why.

I think I will have a Twinkie tonight!

Neil_B

I'm tempted to yawn again, but that sets some folks off, so I won't. The study only tracked a couple of items that, as they note, a person can suffer from without being overweight. The full range of problems brought on by or worsened by obesity weren't studied. So I don't find much to cheer about there. It's a typical 'fluff' story, IMO.

flip18436572

I agree.

I am still in the OBESE catagory by BMI, yet I have dropped my waist line from 48 to 33. I still have approximately 40 pounds of fat that I want to loose over my entire body. I am in better shape than I have been for years, but that may have been very hard on my heart and other organs because of all of my body fat not allowing those organs to work properly.

atcfoody

Don't take this the wrong way folks, but BMI is a bunch of BULLS#&! I can't say that any nicer, it's just the way it is. According to the BMI calculator I found, I need to loose another 53 lbs, just to be at the top end of the "normal" section. For me, that would be about 183 lbs. If I got back down to the weight I wrestled at in highschool (168 lbs, 171 lb weight class, then), I still wouldn't be anywhere near the low end of "normal". By the way, when I was at 168, my doctor told my parents to watch me very closely, because I was on the ragged edge of being unhealthy. At that point, I might have had 4-6% body fat, which is the lowest end of the healthy spectrum for men (women shouldn't ever go below 14%, or they risk loss of reproductive function). These so-called fitness calculators do not take in to account any body morphology or activity level. If you want to know if you are healthy, look at your pulse rate and blood pressure. The lower your pulse rate, and the lower your blood pressure, especially the diastolic pressure (the second number), generally speaking, the better shape you are in. 3 weeks before the last bike tour I did, I donated blood at the Red Cross. The tech took my pulse for a full 30 seconds. Then she asked if I worked out much. When I told her about biking, she looked a little relieved. My pulse was 54 bpm, with a blood pressure of 110/70. I still weighed 230ish at the time, and I probably always will.

77midget

Agreed, atc! The BMI is a 'cover everything' index to gauge a person's situation, but in no way takes into account body type or makeup. I am 5'11", but when I was in college on the rack team, I ran and also threw hammer and 35# weight. I ran, maybe, 5% BF, and was 205. Now, I was much more muscular then, but the BMI chart is crazy wrong for a person of my frame type. This is the reason that I have set my goal to be 210lbs-it will give me a good idea of where I stand against 15 years ago when I was around the same weight, but with more muscle. I can, at that point, assess how much further to take it.

BMI is just swag.

flip18436572

I agree the BMI is not an accurate way to test body fat. The only real test is to do the water displacement.

I have done the BMI, compared to the electronic testers and others and they come out very similar. I am not paying for the water displacement testing, so I don't know where I am exactly with body fat. I can say that i can tell by my body that I need to lose at least 40 pounds, and that will still leave a lot of body fat on my body. That will get me to the top of the BMI for healthy. It is NOT exact, and if you are very active body builder, it is not accurate.

krazygluon

The only credibility I would give this is that I do generally believe, its not so much the fat, but the inactivity that makes fat people unhealthy. That said, I agree that BMI is ****e and that I too get dubious results on my electronic scale. (I keep getting only 56ish %water...I thought human body was 70+% by nature? No way I'm that dehydrated on a constant basis)

Wogster

BMI was developed by insurance companies to allow easy rate setting off simple morbidity tables. A morbidity table is a table that states the risk a person is going to die during the term of the policy. Such tables use a number of factors, age, marital status, sex, smoking and BMI among them. BMI is a simple calculation that states for a certain height you should be in a certain weight range. It does not account for muscle mass, so a person who is very muscular would have a high BMI, but could still have a healthy body fat percentage.

Electronic scales are not accurate for water percentage calculations, they work with averages as well.

jaxgtr

Yea, the woman that sits next to me at work is 55, weighs about a 100 lbs and has cholesterol through the roof, high blood pressure, heart conditions and yet, she would be a lower risk cause her BMI is lower.