"Fat but fit is a big fat myth"

[Deleted]

This thread isn't about "the common fat guy", though. It's about whether someone who is considered as "fat" can also be considered "fit", and Roy Nelson is just one example of how that is, indeed, possible.

Everything else is semantics over what people interpret the word to mean.

Roy's health could improve by losing some of that fat. I would bet he doesn't have the best lipid profile among other thing. If you want to call that "fit" then ok. He's got decent cardio and strength for his size and for what his sport is but i could probably smoke him in most sports outside of the ring and yes i include weight lifting in that despite his weight advantage over me and i'm both older than him and not a professional athlete.

Also this was asserted in the original post and i see nothing about Roy Nelson that would disprove this. The thread is not about if a fat guy can be athletic or strong or have good cardio.

"The term "fat but fit" refers to the alluring theory that if people are obese but all their other metabolic factors such as blood pressure and blood sugar are within recommended limits then the extra weight will not be harmful."

So yeah you're wrong and i'm right.

[Deleted]

If you want to call that "fit" then ok.

Yeah, he's fat, but fit. I'm glad we got that sorted.

[Kujako]

Say Experts in Portugal....and that's where I found this silly. well to be fair I also found it silly because I've looked into this in depth before and know it's silly.

Put it this way. Common medical practice finds BMI ridiculous but they still use it. For my height I'm supposed to weigh 175 pounds. And not a pound more. At 220 I'm over 30 on the BMI scale and obese, but I guarantee I can outrun most of you, outlift most of you, and am sure as shit more fit than the vast majority of people out there. Blood pressure, cholesterol etc are all perfect.

So tell me again how I'm "Obese" and fat not at all fit.

You'd be better off using

Not even scatter graphs make BMI mean much of anything. It was not a measurement of health in the 1800's, and it's still not today.

[Tennis]

Raise of hands, how many expected this to be a @Tennisace thread?

Great thread. I'm glad I am inspiring others on here.

[Deleted]

"Obese" and "Fat" are different. the classic "strongman" had quite a bit of fat but also more muscle, an "Obese" person typically just has lots of fat, their's a big different there.

Actually, you are wrong here.
The thing that is measured here is BMI, with a BMI of over 30 being considered obese.
However the only things that go into calculating someone's BMI is gender, weight and height and occasionally age.
Fat percentage or muscle percentage is irrelevant.
Hence bodybuilders/gym people often have really high BMI's.
Having said that, BMI is a good population variable for measuring (over)weight but because of the aforementioned, especially for men who work out, it is a poor way to measure health/fitness.

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Being fat is unhealthy. Doesn't matter what you think.

Yep, but thinking you are fat or having a negative body image, let alone eating disorders and excessive jojo-ing is also unhealthy. So while I agree with your overall message you are missing some nuance.

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thank god its swimming, if she would be running, her joints would be fucked up in about 10 years. And what exactly do you define as 'obese'? What kind of height/weight we are talking about? btw please show me a 200 kg heavy person who is fit and healthy. Can't? then don't make claims you can't support.
But you are right, weight is a poor factor with most persons. 70kg on a woman of about 1.65(or lets say man with 100, 1.8 ) can be considered fat by some people. thats not the problem. the problem are people which shoot over those limits. and there are enough. and there weight becomes a very good factor of general health. The only sport they can be doing is swimming because you don't really have to support your own bodymass. well and maybe biking.

Jesus christ do people even read the OP?

In this research the definition of obese was a BMI of over 30, which takes into account age, gender, height and weight.

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You can absolutely be healthy at every size, that is, being healthy is not about your dress/jean size. HAEZ is a therapeutic and sustainable health approach that is much more healthier than yo-yo dieting and the unhappiness and self-hate that it leads to as well as the potential to spiral into an eating-disorder/mental health patient. HAEZ is a holistic approach that promotes the idea that you can adopt healthy lifestyle habits regardless of how much you weigh and just like you can be healthy and overweight. What do you call overweight people who exercise and diet in a bid to shed the pounds? Are they unhealthy? My answer: no.

HAEZ fulfills your social and emotional needs thereby restoring food to its rightful place as a source of nourishment and pleasure, and nothing more. Humans come in different shapes and sizes leading to body diversity in society no two people have the same body shape HAEZ uses this body shape spectrum and support others in recognizing their unique attractiveness. This approach does not focus on weight loss as the sole indicator of health or encourage self-destructive abandon in one’s eating. What I see is a weight-neutral approach and an opportunity to explore a more intuitive relationship with food, engaging in pleasant physical activity, and self/ size acceptance. It couldn't hurt!

While I mostly agree with what you are saying.

Do you believe that there is a causal relationship between BMI and things like heart disease, strokes and overall lower life expectancy?

Having said that, I fully agree with you that demonization of overweight people leads to the things that you mention and that the fixation on an (for many people) unrealistically body image is unhealthy as well.

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Got to wonder how many of the fat shaming people in this thread are also pro choice because "what someone does with their own body is no ones business"

Obviously you are just trolling, but for the people who think that this false equivalency is somehow relevant:
While I agree that being fat is a bad thing, I will defend someone's rights to eat whatever they want and to their body what they want.
Similarly, while I would personally never suggest to my GF to have an abortion, I will defend her and all other womens rights to have one if they so desire (within a reasonable timeframe ofcourse)

[Lex Icon]

that roy nelson guy reminds me of a wrestler i liked once upon a time called goldberg. they both got big upper bodies and skinny as hell legs
just one has a beer belly and the other muscles.

[Exeris]

You are 52 and put "*chuckles*" in a forum post on a fan-forum for World of Warcraft.
Just wanted to get that crystal clear.

Is there a specific age where you can't type "*chuckles*" anymore? (not sure I've seen that typed before)

Maybe you are reacting to that the same way I do when I see people over 20 typing "lol".

[Hotmail]

It's not the fat; it's the lifestyle which leads to being fat. People gonna people.

[Deleted]

2/3 of MMO posters aren't as fit as Sammo Hung and the other 1/3 is lying.

[Spectral]

Say Experts in Portugal....and that's where I found this silly. well to be fair I also found it silly because I've looked into this in depth before and know it's silly.

Put it this way. Common medical practice finds BMI ridiculous but they still use it. For my height I'm supposed to weigh 175 pounds. And not a pound more. At 220 I'm over 30 on the BMI scale and obese, but I guarantee I can outrun most of you, outlift most of you, and am sure as shit more fit than the vast majority of people out there. Blood pressure, cholesterol etc are all perfect.

So tell me again how I'm "Obese" and fat not at all fit.

You'd be better off using

Just to be clear, this scatter blot pretty much reinforces that the vast majority of people that are overweight by BMI are also obese by body fat. Even the ones that aren't quite to obese by body fat are very rarely in the obese BMI range; for those that are, something approaching zero of them are actually at what anyone would consider low body fat (there are no dots on that plot above 30 BMI and below 20% body fat). Particularly for women, nearly everyone with a BMI over 25 is just plain fat.

That there are also skinny-fat people (particularly women) shouldn't be a surprise, but it's not a positive commentary on people with high BMIs, but a further indictment of the general fitness of the population. Most Americans are either fat, sedentary, or both.

[Spectral]

It may be close-ish, but the fact that it's wrong roughly 20% of the time seems like a pretty good reason to ditch BMI in favor of more accurate and direct metrics. It's not like BMI is the best we can do.

Again, clarity is important here - this is split into only four quadrants. When we look at the obese category, which is a BMI over 30, it's almost always correct that people with BMIs over 30 are overfat. That it's usually correct regarding people between 25-30 is actually kind of surprising - that group is fatter that I would have generally thought.

Basically, I don't know what people's real objection to BMI as a general heuristic is. Every time someone complains, it's a fucking retarded complaint like, "what about bodybuilders?". The vast, vast majority of the time, if your BMI is over 30, you're just plain fat.

Really though, we don't even need a metric as good as BMI. You can mostly look at someone, regardless of weight, and know immediately if they're too fat.

[StrawberryZebra]

Of all the people who tell me that BMI is useless because "it classes rugby players as obese", not one of them had the physique of a rugby player. More like the physique of a man who drives to work, sits down all day, drives home, sits on his sofa eating chips.

It's funny how it's always the "Rugby Players" who complain about BMI the loudest. I've done Jiu-Jitsu for almost 6 years now, CrossFit for the last 4 and still go to the Gym for some weight training if I can squeeze it in. I've put on a lot of muscle from my lifestyle and it's put me in a position where I'm at 11% body fat and considered "overweight" according to my BMI. Admitedly, that was only by 1.5kg's at my last weigh-in but I was recorded as being "overweight" by the NHS when I visited my GP about a knee injury last year.

The simple fact is that BMI only works on a broad level, not an individual one. That's fine for policy makers who need those kinds of broad overviews, but it shouldn't really be held in high regard by medical professionals.

I think you've completely misunderstood the point of 'fat-acceptance' and the healthy message that is being promoted by the HAEZ movement. HAEZ promotes the idea that you can be healthy at every size by adopting healthy behaviours, including physical exercise and dieting, but first and foremost HAEZ breeds a message of self-acceptance and respect. Respect is important regardless of size and body diversity should be accepted in society because people come in different shapes and sizes - there's no one size fits all. Thin obsession has results in body preoccupation, self-hatred, eating disorders and even ironically poor health... Few of us are at peace with our bodies, whether because we're fat or because we fear becoming fat. HAEZ shifts the focus in health management from weight loss to a weight-neutral approach in individuals thereby avoiding said issues and promoting a happier and healthier lifestyle.

While I can appreciate what these people are trying to achieve, the idea that one can be "healthy at any size" is completely wrong. All movements like this really do is provide a shield from introspection for people who should be reconsidering their lifestyle choices and a way to shut down discussion of any potential solutions.

One of the biggest parts of self acceptance is accepting the things you can change as well as the things you cannot. Losing weight is one of the things that's very much within your control. It's not as if there's any great secret to it either, it takes diet, exercise and the self-discipline to stick to it. Creating a culture where it's fine to say "I'm morbidly obese and I'm okay with that because I'm never going to NOT be obese", should be frowned upon. Accepting that you're obese is one thing, but that should always come with acceptance that you have the power to change that about yourself. Creating a community that's actively working to improve themselves is far better than one that's given up at accepting they're overweight without taking any actions to deal with the problem.

[Spectral]

The complaint is that BMI isn't treated like a mere heuristic, but like gospel truth.

By whom? I have never seen anyway say, "well, that person does have a BMI of 25.1, so they're overweight and thus unhealthy". This is the straw-BMI user in the mind of people that think they're clever by pointing out that it isn't literally a perfect measure.

I swear, the impulse to say "BMI is invalid!" every time it comes up in an epidemiological study as heuristic for obesity must be a close cousin to the IQ-don't-real impulse.

[Celista]

Being fit while overweight is possible but is not the norm. I have met overweight women who run or walk up to ten miles a day. This is because you cannot outrun a high-calorie diet.

Again, clarity is important here - this is split into only four quadrants. When we look at the obese category, which is a BMI over 30, it's almost always correct that people with BMIs over 30 are overfat. That it's usually correct regarding people between 25-30 is actually kind of surprising - that group is fatter that I would have generally thought.

Basically, I don't know what people's real objection to BMI as a general heuristic is. Every time someone complains, it's a fucking retarded complaint like, "what about bodybuilders?". The vast, vast majority of the time, if your BMI is over 30, you're just plain fat.

Exactly. People who like to complain about BMI are typically sedentary and do not weight train significantly...

From what I can tell, people like to dismiss BMI because they do not think they look fat. They typically base this on comparative analysis of what they look like versus what other people look like. The problem when you utilize this metric is that the vast majority of Americans are now overweight or obese--approximately half of the population, and three out of four men. One-third of the population is obese or grossly obese.

[dcschess05]

How many obese 70 - 90 years old do you see now a days?

You can be fat and happy with your body. Don't expect anyone to think you are living a healthy lifestyle though...

[Polarthief]

I mean, define "fat". It's very subjective. People who are ~10lbs above average think they're "fat" when they're really not.

Though knowing MMO-C, most of the people here are a buncha fat-shamers so... whatever, they might consider that to be absurdly obese for all I know.

[Spectral]

I've definitely seen and heard people say practically that exact thing. Maybe the attitude towards BMI is changing, but we've had many threads on weight and fitness over the years and people have on numerous occasions defended BMI as being accurate even for individuals, such that anyone who challenged the validity was assured they were just an upset fatty. Rather than relying on some outdated proxy measurement, I see no reason to insist we must perpetuate it rather than just encourage people to use medical access to get actual direct measurements of various components relating to health.

Or just look in the mirror. Other than the insanely narcissistic impulses that many people have, there's nothing stopping people from noticing that they're fat. You don't even need a scale.

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I mean, define "fat". It's very subjective. People who are ~10lbs above average think they're "fat" when they're really not.

Being 10 pounds above the average weight in the United States is fat. Not subjectively.

[Celista]

I've definitely seen and heard people say practically that exact thing. Maybe the attitude towards BMI is changing, but we've had many threads on weight and fitness over the years and people have on numerous occasions defended BMI as being accurate even for individuals, such that anyone who challenged the validity was assured they were just an upset fatty. Rather than relying on some outdated proxy measurement, I see no reason to insist we must perpetuate it rather than just encourage people to use medical access to get actual direct measurements of various components relating to health.

Body fat measurement isn't really that complicated, there's no need to see a physician for it. Skinfold calipers are like $10. Or, one can buy measuring tape...calipers are sufficient for most individuals, DEXA scans and the like aren't necessary for anyone other than competitive bodybuilders.

[Spectral]

Well, I was getting at encouraging people to use a more complete view of health than just weight. People are too fixated on weight in and of itself, especially women, but health is a lot more than just a number on a scale. Just because you have a supposedly healthy weight doesn't mean you're healthy either, but that won't be addressed until we end the tunnel vision on weight.

I guess I don't get the point. People that look fat are mostly fat and unhealthy. I don't see how saying, "well, but some skinny people are unhealthy too" changes that picture at all. Yeah, sure, everyone should be active. That's a fine message, I know I'll keep messaging it accordingly. But... being fat is flatly unhealthy and most people that have high BMIs are fat and unhealthy. I don't know why there's such an impulse to beat around the bush and shift the focus. People with high BMIs should generally try to lose weight. Full stop.

[Deleted]

Well, I was getting at encouraging people to use a more complete view of health than just weight.

Like what?