maddmaxx 

Pre season physical done.

BP 117/74
Pulse 60
Blood Oxygen good
Blood Sugar 106
Cholesterol good
Spare tire present but going away at a satisfactory rate.

Dr. says I don't look like I'm 61.......(should you tip your doctor).

Since I'm now on the smallest dose of Attenalol used, she says that If I hit the weight target by summer, meds will stop.

This is why I ride......

jim p

You are a lucky dog. I have been riding for 3 years and doing about 2000 miles a year this year I got 3300 miles and my blood pressure would be over 200 without medication. My blood sugar would be over 400 without medication.

I do ride for my health and I know that the riding has to be doing some good but none of my lab work verifies that the riding is doing any good. On the bright side when I am feeling like warmed over death, I can go out and ride 20 miles and feel much better.

gear

I'm told that you just need to pet his seeing eye dog. No tip required.

Beverly

Those are great numbers. I like the idea of reaping health benefits from an activity that's just plain fun.

You might consider tipping as long as she thought you looked younger than 61

John E

Max, congrats.
Jim, don't give up.

Floyd

The main reason I ride is for health and of course it is fun...most of the time. I don't necessiarily watch my numbers on the BP and all but do know that a good ride is helping on keeping me fit...or at least more fit. I am not much of a cold weather rider, nothing below 40 degrees, so I am waiting for the warmer weather.
peace

rae

The key is not just exercise, but losing fat (if you are carrying extra). I had the same problem several years ago, 3 miles daily running & other exercises not budging the weight & I couldn't understand it. Finally went to one of the commercial diet programs & lost 9 pounds in 3 weeks. I simply didn't realize how much I was eating.

Hermes

Now if she tells you that you are hot and do not look 61, I will be impressed.

maddmaxx 

I'm going to hijack my own thread and enter a new discussion on some new thought toward weight loss.

There is a new set of theories surfacing with regard to the "Fat and Fit" slogan. (their words, not mine).

The theory is that Fat and Fit is better than thin and indolent. That would make the system look like this: Best Thin and Fit.....Next Best Fat and Fit.....Less Good Thin and Indolent.....Bad Fat and Indolent. Present thinking explains away previous theories with the "Data for all Heavy people was lumped together and the unhealthy results gave bad conclusions."

Could this be correct? It would seem that exercise and fitness would be good at any weight.
Could this be a modern world scam. Are so many people overweight that the facts are being bent by a desire for good news.

Input.......need input

maddmaxx 

I'm not sure if I would trust her opinion of "hot"

rae

Where did you get that picture of me?

Hermes

Second job is Paparazzi.

Hermes

Who knows. However, Friel discusses the difference between cross sectional studies and longitudinal studies. Longitudinal studies follow a specific group over a several year period versus cross sectional studies that take snap shots of populations. One has to look very carefully at claims to see what is the basis of the research.

Beverly

I agree that exercise and fitness are good at any weight but there are just too many health problems associated with excess weight for me to ignore those extra pounds.

If this is a result of the current obesity problem in our society then we really are in trouble

rae

Fit at any weight would of course be better, but over fat is so strongly linked with so many health problems (diabetes, sleep apnea, blood clots, leg cellulitis, hypertension, heart disease, gall stones, & more) that I doubt fit can trump it. For example, exercise can help control blood sugars in type 2 diabetes, but losing fat can make it go away entirely in many people. Same with sleep apnea & hypertension.

In our intensive care unit, obese people far far outnumber thin/normal. No matter what put them there (even trauma), they don't seem to recover as well, either.

My gut feeling is the "fit & fat" movement is more about feeling better about oneself. That's not a bad thing, except if it allows people to stay in denial about what they can do for themselves.

stapfam

I have related my Bypass to you severall times but on the radio the other night was a gentleman that has just retired at 65. weight- 150lbs- height 5'8" been riding a bike for many years. Eats a good healthy diet- never smoked- drinks moderately and does other exercise to keep fit like the gym and His cycling involves fairly long trips like John O Groats to Lands end, and plans North to South of France next year. Went to the doctors to have a full medical when he retired for no other reason that the wife was having one too. He went along to keep her company and had a Bypass a month later.

If we "Slim fit" ones can have a problem- then why do we bother. Heart problems and Cancer can hit the fittest of us but we are all doing the best we can to ward off those illnesses.

Difference is that those of us that realise we carry a bit of excess will be doing our best to work it off- By exercise and diet. I have many friends- that look slim- look fit but do nothing to ward off the illnesses that are going to hit them. I would class them as MaddMaxx's thin and indolent but they do enjoy their lifestyle and the drinking- and the smoking and the Burgers when they go shopping. Just a pity they will not have an Extended life to enjoy it in.

Pat

Well, medical studies can be confounded by stupidity.

Years ago, eating a good breakfast was considered a great thing to do for your health. I recall Lewis Thomas attacking this notion. He said that people who were very ill and fixing to die generally did not feel good enough to eat breakfast so they didn't. So for that group of very ill people, not eating a good breakfast was a symptom and not a cause.

So you get to fit and fat.

If you look at it, many thin people are unhealthy and should not be included. Those would be people with cancer or anorexics or chronic drug users and so on.

Also, are you healthy because you are fit or are you fit because you are healthy? Obviously, very ill people probably are not going to be fit.

But you can even get fat people who are unfit not because of lack of trying but because of underlying health problems. I recall that Henry the VIII was very fit until he was injured and then could not exercise. His being inactive resulted in his weight gain and corpulance.

Also, much of the cause of ill health in our society is caused by a terrible diet which leads to strokes, heart disease and diabetes. I would think that thin and fit people would avoid most of those circumstances. They are healthy because they work at it and not necessarily because they are fit and thin.

The problem is that being fit is certainly something a person has to work at. People who do it (whether fat or thin) probably avoid the well known risk factors that contribute to ill health like a diet high in saturated fat, chronic heavy smoking, alcoholism, drug abuse and so on.

Another thing that makes problems is what is being fat? Many studies just define fat as Body Mass Index which looks at only two variables: height and weight. Obviously a person can be heavy and short and still have a reasonably low percent body fat. So do lean heavy people get stuck into the group of fit and fat? I bet they do.

I really do not think that the studies are well enough designed to really address the question. If you look at data with confounding facters, of course, your results are going to be problematic.

jim p

We all know someone who is thin and can eat whatever they want and not gain weight. I have heard that these thin people who eat badly are in danger just like the person who eats badly and gains weight. In other works there is no free pass for eating badly. I am going to get my diet in good shape and then maybe I will get some added benefits from exercise. It is tough riding on low fuel. Which for me translates into a weak feeling and loss of power output. Maybe I can figure out some way to maintain power for 40 miles and still lose weight.

How many calories can you get from the bugs in your teeth?

WalterMitty

Some of the worst statisticians I have ever met are professionals in the medical, and other "organic" sciences.

The first problem *everybody* has is the understanding that correlation *is not* causation. For example, many more people die at hospitals than at race tracks. This is a provable, verifiable fact.

No thinking person should say that this proves that hospitals are inherently more dangerous than racetracks either for the customers or employees of either enterprise.
However, I know, and have known people that would make just that argument. Perhaps you know people that are deathly afraid of hospitals but would be happy to attend a race with you?

There are problems of adverse selection (more sick and dying people go to hospitals than race tracks) and problems of biased sampling (the fat guy killed in the crash at the race track may have his vital statistics added to an overall morbidity dataset even if weight was clearly not a factor).

If the headlines are to be believed, a significant percentage of us are over weight based on the BMI chart. I have been all my life; even the day after I graduated from ARMY BCT and could do a marathon in full combat gear in less than 12 hours.

So…if the entire population is already predefined as having an “undesirable” characteristic, you can easily prove that the majority of the people dying from heart attacks have this “undesirable” characteristic. This is also true if you die after a fall from a tall building, are killed in a car crash, or are struck by a meteor from outer space.

What gives me the giggles is that the same holds true for everybody that lives past 100. Most are “overweight” and many had “other bad habits”.

The problem this presents to us as a society is that serious study dwindles as soon as a popular consensus is reached based on correlation, which, rather than being a “cause” of the medical/social/physical problems is simply the statistical artifact of a dominant characteristic found in the greater population of data points.

Read about the “End of Medicine” (I apologize in advance for the commercial in the middle of it).

Until our medical professionals learn how to step up, our medical system will remain only one step above witchcraft and continue to get too expensive to buy.

Two Doctors having a conversation: “Well, it looks like we’ve got another stiff on our hands.” says the first. “Yep” replies the second, “but while everybody ever born for the past several thousand years has died (at least once) I’ve got data that indicates about 80% of them die in hospitals”. So, concludes the first, “natural causes complicated by sleeping in hospitals?” “That’s how it looks to me.” they both agreed, and headed off to the golf course for a quick round before dark.

michaelas6

You are lucky, I just turned 56 & had a stent implant two years ago "Artery was ninety-five percent closed" I ride a hundred miles a week & have run and & biked just about all my life. I rode twenty miles this morning & kept my heart rate between 110 and 120. Life is just too much fun to quit

Kurt Erlenbach

I suggest we all read and understand this article. The upshot of it is that research in all of these fields is weak and potentially infect with a variety of biases. I also suggest "Good Calories, Bad Calories" by Gary Taubes, which makes many of the same points. "The Omnivore's Dilemma" by Michael Pollan is good in the first half, after whihc it gets nutty.

Here's what I've learned. To lose weight, eat less junk (you know what that is), eat more good stuff (you also know what that is), eat less, and add exercise. The advice is very simple, but very hard to follow. The studies Taubes cites over a hundred years of research show that sugar and carbohydrates are bad, while protein and fats are good (something of an oversimplification). Exercise might help you live longer, but we all are testament to the fact that it will help you live better, and that is the key. Quality of life really, really matters. I long for the days when I ate what I wanted - there are days I want nothing more than a big, juicy burger. But I do not miss the 30 pounds I lost last year, and I love boggling the minds of people who think riding 40 miles on a Saturday is a spectacular feat of athleticism.

richking1953

The Gina Kolata article mentioned in Kerlenbach's post ("this article") is good. I love the quote about running 5 miles a day but eating 10 miles a day. But it has a misconception about exercise and weight loss. She says that resistance training will add about 4 lbs of muscle which only boost your metabolism 24 calories per day. The same misconception is in her book Ultimate Fitness and is based on data from an obesity researcher. But this assumes the metabolism boost from strength training comes from the extra muscle mass. It doesn't, it comes from boosting the metabolic rate of all your muscles- active muscles burn more calories than couch-potato muscles. This was shown in the classic Campbell study cited below which showed a 7% boost in metabolism from 12 weeks of strength training. That's more than 150 calories per day for the average person, a bit better than 24. Campbell never claimed the boost came from added muscle mass, in fact this quote appears in his article: “The increase in RMR is due to an increase in the metabolic activity of lean tissue and not an increase in the amount of lean tissue mass”.

As for fit and fat vs thin and indolent, I think there may be something to it. One of its main proponents is Dr Stephen Blair, himself a vigorous exerciser who is not thin. His arguments on this are presented in the Kolata article and in Ultimate Fitness. I also agree with Waltermitty about misleading statistics- you have to be very careful to correct the data for skinny smokers or people who are skinny because of illness, and many studies don't properly do that, and there's always the confusion of correlation and causality.
Another interesting take on this topic is in the book Breaking the Rules of Aging by Dr. David Lipschitz, He has a chapter "don't lose weight" in which he argues that many of us older types who try to lose weight end up malnourished and potentially protein deficient. This is a disaster if it speeds up age-induced loss of muscle mass. I think "don't lose weight" is carrying it too far. It should be something like "eat healthy and exercise, if weight loss comes from that fine, but don't force yourself to lose weight by not eating enough". That would be a long chapter title though.

Campbell, W, Crim, M, Young, V, and Evans, W. “Increased Energy Requirements and Changes in Body Composition With Resistance Training in Older Adults”, American Journal of Clinical Nutrition,60: 167, 1994.

oilman_15106

Recently read an article on nutrition that really drilled down to a balanced diet being the key. One of the things highlighted was the "fat free" craze and the problems that it has created in our aging population.

Diet, exercise go hand in hand.

stonecrd

Like many things health is based on so many variables and is so complex that research is difficult. But since researchers want/need funding studies get published, picked up by the media and we hear x causes y all of the time. Genetics plays a big role as well and now they are finding that the environment can influence your genetics in both the current generation and future generations. This just adds to the complexity.

In the end it is usually best to rely on common sense as much as science, did you feel better when you where 30+lbs overweight? I doubt it so common sense says stay at a sensible weight, same can be said for most things.