The flip-side of the problem of obesity in our modern society is our obsession with being skinny.

An overweight person who exercises aerobically (heart and lungs) on a regular basis will soon be far fitter than a skinny person who does not exercise, but only diets. Many overweight people are very fit, and many skinny people are very unfit. The bottom line is not how skinny you are, but how healthy and strong are your cardiovascular (heart, artery) and pulmonary (lung) systems.

Skinny people who do not exercise are setting themselves up for weak muscles, fragile bones, narrow arteries and other age related diseases.
Skinny is not always beautiful, and healthy overweight people are absolutely gorgeous!

Yes I would agree with some of your points. Look at professioanl power lifters or those guys that compete in the world's strongest man competitions. Alot of those guys look real fat but they are in great shape. Both cardio and muscle wise. Then on the filp side look at pro cyclists or runners. Some of these athletes look amaciated! Then there are some female models that are cool to look at but are unhealthy because of their own personal narcisism. I see your point good observation.

Yes, this is a serious problem. Society has an obsession with people's weight and how they should look and it's really stupid. I say this as one of those really skinny people (61kg). The fact is still the same, if you can ride 240km+ in a day, you are healthy no matter what you look like.

Chris

The fact that too many people are either overweight or too skinny stems from lack of an exercise regiment and/or bad diet habits.
If most people would follow a regular exercise routine and kept a half-way decent diet then you could eat more and you wouldn't have to worry about being either too skinny or too fat.

Joe,
That is not entirely true. Up until about 2 years ago at 6ft. 2" I weighed anywhere from 165 to 170 dpending on the season. Now at 34 I find myself at 200 and still I am called slender or thin. At the time when I was lighter I was riding 175 miles a week back and forth to work. I also am a martial artist and have been for 20 years. My diet now is better than it was a few years ago, and pound for pound I was as strong if not stronger than most people I knew. I am not trying to brag just make a point. Being either big or thin is irrelevant. How healthy are your bones, muscles and cardio condition? That is important At the time as I mentioned before when I was a lighter person I could not put on weight if I paid for it. I was the same weight for 12 years wore the same clothes size from high school. Genetics has a great deal on your body size. Look at Bruce Lee for example he was 5 ft. 5" and weighed 135 pds. at the time of his death. Skinny, yes unhealthy, absolutely not! Then look at former world record holder in the deadlift Alexi Alexef, big absolutely at 6 ft and ?? and around 300+ missing 2 fingers on his left hand. Could he have done the stuiff he did while being unhealthy or not eating right? No he could not have, he was huge and he was healthy.

I am 5'9 " and my weight now is around 160lbs, and I am not skinny:cool:and can still ride a 200 k on any given day and I feel great at my age, with a max heart rate at 150

Very true.
I knew someone really thin, and one time I took that person biking and she had a hard time moving the pedals unles they were in the biggst cog smallest chainring position,and even then she was still huffin' and puffin'.
I am 5'9, and I wiegh 140, but I'm not unhealthy or weak!!

of course, I am only 17.

Hunter, you took my statement way too literal and missed the point. My point was not that if you weigh under a 130 pounds or over 200 pounds you are automatically out of shape.

My point is that way too many people in our society do not eat properly or have any kind of an exercise regiment.

Joe

How about some of those professional football players.

Some of them are FAT with big ol' bellies hangin' out all over the place. Yet, they are physical for a living.

Now there is an example of someone who is fat and physical and still not what I would call healthy.

Professional athletes sometimes focus so narrowly on success in their given sport that they can become unbalanced. Sad to say, professional athletes sometimes put success above health.

Aren't linebackers more effective when they weigh more? I noticed Sumo wrestlers make no bones about being as fat as possible!

Ya, Pete, but let's face it. In Japan, the whole Sumo thing is about sex.

I am sorry, but that is just the ugly truth. I mean, what's with those big dudes going out and shaking some sugar around the ring, getting all slippery, slapping each other around, and sometimes pulling each other's loin cloths off?

You won't find skinny guys doing that kind of thing. It just would be too unattractive. A skinny guy couldn't do that to show off to a girl. It wouldn't work.

But in Japan - Oh, in Japan, it is a different story all together! Sure, how many evenings I spent in Japan in front of the television watching my girlfriends gawk all slackjawed while watching the Sumo tournaments.

When it was all over, they would look over at me and I knew what they were thinking, "Oh, you pitiful rail of a thing. You could never handle yourself in that kind of power-slap contest. Oh, you..." and then they would start thinking in Japanese language and I couldn't figure out what they were thinking any more.

But, so anyway, I forgot what this has to do with bikes, but Man, whew. The sumo thing; ya Pete that's just like too weird.

I don't really have an opinion on body weight but I just have to say that I'm 6'2" and weigh 145. I'm almost 26 years old.:)

Chris, you cannot be a Japanese Sumo.

Sorry, dude. That's life.

No one has mentioned so far that there are different body types, with a weight, or better, a range of weights, appropriate to each.

I believe that Ectomorphic, mesomorphic, and endomorphic are the terms used in the West.

The East Indian tradition of Ayurveda calls the same body types by the names Vata, Pitta, and Kapha. In layman's terms, these would amount, simplistically, to skinny, medium, and heavy.

Being fit has a lot more to do with living a balanced life than obsessing over whether at 6'1" and, say, 175 lbs, you're just right, underweight, or too heavy. The answer has a lot more to do with your body type than some arbitrary number.

In his writings, Depak Chopra, M.D.--who has done much to make the wisdom of Ayurveda available to us in the West--emphasizes that there is no ideal body type and no ideal weight. Real health and longevity have much more to do with your own lifestyle and personal expectations, than with experts' charts that proclaim a healthy male, aged 55, 6'1" tall, should weigh xxx--xxx lbs.

Hi, Rich,

I guess if I believe that I am special, but no more special than anyone else, and I seek to fulfill who I truly am, rather than become like someone else, I will be wise.

:)!

Thanks--

You have to be jokin or you got some faulty scales...

Chris - assuming you're not trolling, your Body Mass Index of 18.6 places you approximately in the 2nd percentile for your height (i.e., 98% of people your height are heavier than you). That puts you in anorexia territory.

http://www.halls.md/body-mass-index/bmi.htm has more info on this.

billboards, magazine covers, TV and movies say otherwise, skinny physic is what people want, it's true what you say about health and appearances, supermodels are lust after yet they starve and chain smoke

There's stateside Sumo--one night a few years ago when listening to a San Francisco radio station (KGO) that was skipping through to my area, a commercial aired advertising same. It sounded like it was part of an ongoing series.

That puts him in the shredded territory nevermind being lean & cut.

Bless you! :D

Gymnasts. Pure athleticism. Pound for pound, muscle for muscle, world-class gymnasts must be the epitome of body-mass efficiency. And gorgeous to boot!

my BMI at my best is 20.6 - in the 34th percentile. I always thought I could lose some more weight...I'm at 21.1 at the moment after xmas :D

Brendon

my BF is 6'2 and 135. He's thin, but not unhealthy. He eats, and eats, and eats. He just doesn't gain weight. He actually threatens to take my mirror away because he says I give it "too much weight" on my opinion of myself. I think it'd be okay if he took the mirror away.

With a Body Mass Index of 17.3, there is a very high probability that your boyfriend is bulimic or anorexic, or perhaps has some other disease. See this web page for more information correlating BMI to eating disorders: http://ensbay.com/bmi.htm. According to the information on that page, a BMI less than 17.5 should be cause for alarm, and immediate consultation with a medical professional.