wolfchild

People who are overweight have a much higher chance for developing diabetes, stroke, cancer and heart disease... Being extremely skinny and underweight is not healthy but neither is it healthy to be overweight...As far as mortality rates go and who is going to live longer, it's like trying to predict the end of the world, too many variables, nobody knows, not even science.

Machka 

+1

Being overweight also increases your risk of sleep apnea and of joint issues ... which may result in mobility issues.


And for me personally, all of that is less about mortality, and more about quality of life.

Roody

Again, this is your opinion and it does not coincide with the actual real-world findings of the JAMA article. I'm not at all sure that you are aware of the difference between "overweight" and "obese." Again, the JAMA article reported that overweight people had less sickness and death than normal people. Obese people, on the other hand, had more sickness and death than both overweight people and normal people.

Also, you're making a lot of conclusions as if you know for a fact that they're true. But you're not giving us any indication of how you know these things to be true. So really you're just shouting into the wind, as far as I'm concerned. I'm not going to believe you just because you have a computer and access to the internet!

Roody

This is a very good point.

It's hard to do a scientific study of quality of life because we all have different definitions, and the definitions change as our lives change over the years. Currently, quality of life is a clinical question, not a scientific question. It's a decision of individual patients, along with their health providers and families. I wish doctors would spend more time trying to understand individual quality of life concerns.

(BTW, this point was discussed in the JAMA article I linked to. The scientists are certainly aware of this issue.)

Mvcrash

Sounds like a plan. I'll now stay a little fat, dumb and happy.

enigmaT120

My BMI is on the upper reaches of normal. I doubt my body fast percentage is very high but I don't have any way to nor interest in measuring it. If I stopped lifting weights I would only loose about 5 - 10 pounds. But I would be a lot more likely to injure myself in the woods on my days off.

Porschefan

^^^^^^^^^
Plus 1 billion.

Source: ME. Qualifications: 69 years on planet earth with periods of being fat and not-fat.

STP

Greybeard712

16.5 mile ride @15mpg in sunny, 70° weather. It seems the body reaches a plateau and stays there. I'm still hovering around 218.
Hmm, there may be a direct correlation between staid weight and the amount and type of food I eat. Potato chips are part of an essential food group are they not?

2015 (Mar 27): 878 Miles—64 Days—84 hrs ♂ Weekly Avg: 100

I didn't fight my way to the top of the food chain to be a vegetarian.

Roody

I'm sure you already know this, but you don't have to be a vegetarian in order to eat a nutritious diet and lose weight.

Roody

Some people feel they can have a better quality of life if they eat healthy and stay skinny. For other people, quality of life means being able to eat whatever they want. I'm kinda on the fence about this one!

wolfchild

I can eat whatever I want and I can enjoy 2-3 beers with my meals few times per week and still remain lean and have a healthy BMI...I do try to eat mostly whole unprocessed foods, but I also regularly eat foods which some health conscious people would consider junk and fattening. A lot of people think that alcohol is fattening, in my experience it's not as long as the alcohol intake is moderate.. It's all about physical activity, as long as I am physically active I won't gain extra weight.

Roody

Ah, you're very fortunate.

wolfchild

Yes I agree with that...I personally believe that vegan and vegetarian are just "fad" diets" which eventually can lead to health problems and nutritional deficiencies and affect athletic performance. A lot of vegans also suffer from moral superiority complex and self-righteousness. I don't think I've ever seen a vegan win an Olympic gold, OTOH vegans do make excellent eco warriors.

Roody

Great Vegan Athletes | The World's Best

Ekdog

Top 10 Historic Vegetarian and Vegan Olympians | Ecorazzi

wolfchild

This only proves that vegan athletes are in a small tiny minority. Only two of those athletes competed in power sports such as track sprinting and wrestling... BTW Carl Lewis was not a 100% vegan when he was at his best. He became a vegetarian later and that's when his sprinting performance went down hill from then on. Those type of articles are twisted and never 100% accurate, there is always two sides to the story.

Roody

Yes, two sides. In this case, your side and the correct side!

Walter S

Vegan people are a tiny minority. No surprise that the same is true among athletes. I don't think they have an advantage. I think a disadvantage is speculative. And athletic performance is one small slice of life.

loky1179

As my older brother always says, "it is easy to enjoy some of the luxuries in life - you only need to sacrifice some of the necessities"!

Greybeard712

Yeah, I know that. That comment was just one from my list of 'musings' of smarrty a**ed comments

As for diet, I'm reminded of a sign in a restaurant: Eat Here, diet home.
I'm a firm believer that life's too short (especially at my age) to worry too much about what you eat. Enjoy life, just do it in moderation. The main thing is to move and stay reasonably healthy.

2015 (Mar 29): 909 Miles—66 Days—87 hrs ♂ Weekly Avg: 100


Knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is not putting a tomato in a fruit salad.

Walter S

Very good advice. Conserving your output of energy is instinctual behavior. I think that in the modern world, those are instincts that work against us. With the technology and infrastructure we have today, most people are subject to new threats to health because in evolutionary time scales, we've only recently found it possible to conserve so much energy. Now, the natural conversion of excess calories into fat, can work against us. It was never so practical to become so fat on the prairie in ancient Africa. So evolution had little challenge to actively prevent it.

I have less concern for the actual fat content in my body. Being active is IMO more important. But if you're active enough, you won't be very fat.

Excess weight also works on your joints. If I gain ten pounds it makes me feel sluggish and heavy. Watch out. That's just the kind of feeling that makes one want to throw in the towel and grab another slice of pizza (made with refined flour that will have you hungry again in a little while).

The instinct to conserve energy has become the instinct to be lazy. Watch out because your power to rationalize what you want to do as "good for you" or at least "ok" is strong! If there's one thing humans are good at, it is rationalization. We all have a hearty power to ignore what doesn't fit and validate what does in spite of skimpy evidence.

Rationalization is uncanny in the way it works. I recall a study that was done in the 60s on patients that had suffered injuries that severed the connection between the hemispheres of their brains. They put a patch over the right eye (or the left - I can't recall enough about left/right brain functions). Then during an interview, the doctor holds up a card that says "go into the break room and get a coke and come back". Then the patient does just that and comes back sipping the coke. The doctor says why did you go get that drink. The patient shrugs and says "I was thirsty!". The point is that for perhaps even most of what we do in life, you do it, then you "figure out" why you did it. The reason that you rationalize may have very little to do with the real reason.

So when you read a study and find it to be a open invitation to eat whatever you want to and quit monitoring your weight, remember there's a lazy emotional creature inside of you that is not only simply waiting for news like that, this creature is ready to actively distort reality to get what she wants.

Roody

I hope I'm not stretching this out too long, but I want to point out that the authors of the scholarly article did not conclude that uncontrolled eating should be recommended, even if that's your personal take-away.

Rather, they conclude that their findings should be used as one piece of evidence by policy makers who are trying to get the most bang out of the public health care buck. It might not make sense to spend millions of dollars on weight loss programs if a) the programs almost never result in significant weight loss and b) even when weight loss does occur, the cost benefit is less than it would be for other prevention strategies.

Walter S

Makes complete sense. I think the reason weight does not stay off is primarily because if you have to restrict your food intake daily and be hungry to lose weight, eventually you'll give up. It's just not worth it. Then a stressful situation or just mental fatigue has you gaining 10 pounds in a couple weeks. After that you feel hopeless and say screw it!

I lost 40 pounds by going from a sometimes-rider to a every-day rider. That was 1997 and I've kept that off by keeping up the activity level. Everybody has to find the balance that works for them personally. I'm glad I found the right thing for me. I look in the mirror and see somebody that I can respect. And he's not bad looking either.

Greybeard712

That's so true about daily exercise. Diets generally don't work long-term because most people go right back to the same eating habits. The trick is to find a balance of protien/carbs/fat in the things you will and like to eat. (I doubt potato chips are in there but I find a way to make them work). A good balance makes you feel full and you don't have to go hungry.

My problem is I eat out of boredom, snacking while watching TV shows/movies. Once I started riding regularly (daily-weather permitting) I lost 73 lbs over a period of about a year and a half (18 of those twice). I'm still chunky, or as I like to say, pleasingly plump, but I'm not terribly worried about losing another 40 lbs. Some people don't look good skinny. I'm hefty but carry the weight well, not being obese. Still working on it, tho.

2015 (Apr 3): 977 Miles—70 Days—41 hrs ♂ Weekly Avg: 96
2013 to Present: 5,650 Miles—391 Days—481 Hrs



Compromise means I'll get my way and you'll find a way to be okay with that.

savagethespian

i did the pacific highway tour years ago from Portland to LA and i went from 360LB down to 270LB and then 270LB down to 210LB on the way back to Portland. iv packed on the weight since then and im now like 290. my current plan is to restore the bike i have now and then bike like 126 miles a week to and from work so hopefully will lose some weight.