That study is one of the worst kept secrets in medicine. Quoting that to a patient can get you sued under the ADA. Many patients now are refusing to be weighed, and can get quite militant if you suggest knowing such data is in their best interest.

I think the entitlement mentality and victimhood play right into the obesity epidemic.

Just sayin'.

yes but not for someone who is 700lbs

Al was kind of fat too.

Taken from Gary Taubbes Why we get fat:



ca 1900.

wut

7 skinny dudes at the end of WW1 = skinny world?

You don't know much about world history, do you?

The exceptions have been posted here in rebuttal to surgeonstone's observations, not the rule.

And you might want to read more carefully.Note that I did not say that mental illness and obesity were not related. With regards to the super morbidly nowhere did I state that mental illness was not an issue. Indeed there are studies in the bariatric surgery literature of up to 80 percent of obese females desiring or undergoing bypass surgery having depression and a substantial percentage of these patients having been sexually abused in their youth with the suggestion that the pathologic eating is a way of
repulsing the offending sex.
But these issues are separate from the discussions above and even if included, raise the valid question " so what".... after all sexual abuse and depression are not new issues however the prevalence of obesity we are seeing now clearly is a unique contemporary phenomena. And please don't assume that I am judging these individuals in a derogatory manner...I am not. I work with obese and super obese patients every day. They get my love, my energy and my attention every day. They also get the truth as I see it and not the deflected responsibility that seems the current craze in the bariatric practices I have been involved with.
Oh and it was a great ride, just got back. While returning I was swallowed by a gaggle of over 30 turkeys. They ran, flew with me in their panic for a fairly long time. I thought they must have recognized my obvious leadership qualities. I could see in my mind their accolades as I rode....." Surgeonstone.... a leader of turkeys". Were I a hunter I could have filled the freezer pretty darn quickly.

i'm sorry i didn't clear my comment, first....

i know enough to know that there were fat people in this very country then. i don't think those are "the" exceptions, but i can admit that, no, obesity wasn't the obvious problem then, as it is now. still, to say that "no one" was fat? come on....

Getting flamed, maybe I deserve it. However I do think my observations on obesity are, despite the exceptions noted, fairly right on.
As an example, googled images people 1900. First photo was this....

Not a fat person by todays standards in sight.
and then typed in same thing- church picnic 2010 and this was the first photo.

Quite a difference.

[MENTION=42883]surgeonstone[/MENTION], not flaming, hard, just poking fun. i haven't taken this thread seriously from the beginning.

however...

i think food security is something that a lot of people take for granted, and probably don't know how easy it was for people to go hungry at the turn of the century. throughout history the rich and gluttonous have always been portrayed as, if they weren't actually, fat or heavy. such access to food was only for the rich. as food security has grown, so have we. add to that the preservatives and mostly man made sugars, it's literally a recipe for heart disease and obesity. sadly, information about food and proper diet gets lost in the crowd of loud colorful food adverts and the glut of low priced fast casual dining.

Perhaps you were taking me too literally. perhaps I led you to such a clear action with the use of " no one". Incorrect of me. We have and always will have obesity. Just not like the current epidemic.

And I think you are exactly right.

no, i knew you had overstated the reality of the situation and i was just having a little fun.

I find the topic of Taft interesting. He was decried as being hugely fat but look at the picture. Clearly obese but in a crowd of today's bariatric surgery patients he would be on the small side of things.

And lastly.


Look at what she is eating..... enough calories to last me a week.
The sad thing is that once a person gets to this size ( BMI over 40), the obesity begets greater and greater obesity. A cycle of illness, inability to move , diabetes, arthritis all perpetuate the problem making it close to impossible for anything short of surgery to be effective.
And believe me when I say surgery IS a drastic cure not to be taken lightly ( no pun intended). It can be a tremendously challenging operation and the risks can be daunting. People die from this kind of stuff. And they are not 80 year olds with cancer. They are young mothers and fathers with young children.

that load of calories is almost superfluous. eating that food is doing nothing but feeding an addiction. the amount of sugar she's ingesting is, literally, mind numbing. it doesn't actually nourish you, so you eat more thinking it will, but you're just sucking down sugar, evidenced by the nuclear orange soda beside this "meal", and fake food and starch. she's an addict. that's a little heart breaking, honestly.

And on that note I'm done. Time for a late supper. Don't even ask.

The fitter you are, the more efficient your body is ... and the longer you can go without having to eat when you ride. Up to a point, of course.

I started as a very fat cyclists, now I'm a less fat cyclist working on becoming a healthy weight cyclist. I know many exceptional riders both lighter and heavier than I and don't judge any of them. While the OP makes some interesting observations he comes across as being rude and judgemental which is helpful to no one. IMHO, XL spandex and all.

1) What do you eat before your ride? As I mentioned earlier, if it has been a few hours since lunch and you're about to head out on a ride, it is not a bad idea to have a banana or something similar.

2) What do you have in your water bottles?

3) If your ride is going to be a century, then you might want to start eating at the 1 hour point.

A question about this ...

I spent 2 weeks in hospital a few years ago, and was fed a small breakfast, a small lunch, a small dinner, and a very small supper. And they brought me water and fruit once or twice in between.

If she were fed that, she'd lose weight.

Presumably she is too large to get up and get food herself ... so who is providing her with all the extra food?

I rode for the first time with power today and logged it on my phone as well my Garmin 510 to see what Strava would estimate with, and without, power. It was very close, within about 2-3% of each other. Garmin Connect does seem to be a little low with a power meter but I just started using that so I don't have anything to compare it to.

The numbers I've seen indicate 175-200W for a 170lb rider is right around 800 calories per hour. That was measured in a metabolic chamber which is the most accurate way to measure calorie burn. So 600-700 calories per hour at a 150W average power doesn't seem unreasonable.

https://www.strava.com/activities/102488050

My personal anecdote for the day:

I was up at 4:30 am and made bulletproof coffee for myself and my wife and after taking her to work came home and had a little nap before I got things ready for an out of town trip we had to make.

A luncheon was served but the only thing my wife could eat was a little cheese so I did the same, we brought a thermos full of bulletproof (fat loaded coffee) with us and had a cup of that on the way home and got back at 6 pm so our day was already 15.5 hours long.

Calorie intake by this point had been less than 600 for the day and we each had a little slice of liverwurst when we got home.

It is nearly 8 o'clock and I am not hungry, I don't feel like I am going to bonk (feeling quite perky actually), and my wife is taking a nap... I will make dinner when she gets up.

I bet if you measured my blood sugar I would be fine as this has been a common occurrence where not eating has not diminished our ability to get stuff done as any extra energy we need comes from fat stores, which are your body's primary fuel reserve, and our bodies know how to tap that.

Our last meal was last night's dinner (we ate at 8pm last night) and had roasted pork and a healthy serving of peas and green beans in butter and we did not do any snacking after dinner save for enjoying a small portion of unsalted nuts.

I am now as lean as I should ever be and you can't pinch an inch... but I am not so lean that I don't have some reserves.

My wife continues to get curvier and curvier...