Re: The nerve! The sweet tooth!

In alt.sysadmin.recovery, on 16 Sep 2008 09:36:32 GMT
Zebee Johnstone <zebeej@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
In alt.sysadmin.recovery on Tue, 16 Sep 2008 17:56:20 +1000
Bron Gondwana <brong@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Interesting. I've lost over 20kg through exercise and diet, and stayed
stable for over 2 years now since that point (actually, I've lost an
additional 2kg over that time, but only recently, and only because
I've stepped up the exercise level considerably in the past couple
of months.) Anecdote is not data, and I'm aware I need to keep living
this lifestyle if I want to maintain this body.

THere's a difference apparently between men and women in the ability
to change weight, and in different people as well.

Kate also has lost somewhat over 20kg so far, and seems to also be
stable and slowly decreasing. Her goal weight is still another 10kg
lower, but I can't see any reason why she won't get there eventually.
She certainly isn't putting any more on.


my body decide when it had enough. The key point here is that you
don't want your body to go into famine mode and become more efficient
at turning those calories into fat!

Which is what a lot of diets appear to do.

Yes. Also, people think of a diet as "what you do while you're trying
to lose weight". They they hit their goal and stop it. The point is
that if what you're eating now is making you fatter than you want to
be, then that's _not_the_eating_pattern_for_you_. Switching back to it
after losing weight and thinking that you'll miraculously stay stable
is insane. A diet _change_ is something for the rest of your life,
not just to lose a few kilograms (or pounds if you're that way inclined)

Nup. I don't think calories are the entire picture. That's massively
simplistic. Were they getting enough nutrients? Was their exercise
routine building lean muscle mass and changing how their body stored
and used energy, or was it pure-cardio. Even more importantly, were
they starving themselves so much that their body started canibalising
the muscles to provide energy for the exercise, lowering their resting
metabolism even further?

DUnno, usually they are cardio, few such tests use weight training.

Of course, given that I'm training as a Body Pump instructor:
http://www.lesmills.com/global/en/members/bodypump/bodypump-group-fitness-program.aspx
largely because I was so happy with the changes in my body from
doing it, and because I enjoy the group fitness environment...
I would be pushing the theory that weight training is worthwhile!

On the other hand, if you look at a sprint cyclist they build rather
impressive leg muscles!

Yeah, they are impressive - though mine are looking pretty tough
these days from Pump and other gym classes. I really should get
back on my bike into the city though.

Note that the definitions of obese and overweight changed some time in
the early 90s and were arbitrary lines on the graph anyway.

Good data is bloody hard to find. You'll note that most of the
numbers you see lump "overweight" and "obese" together, and
"overweight" is now a number such that many people who are reasonably
sized are so labelled.

Everyone thinks this "obesity" crisis is the invasion of the really
really fat people. The diet industry and the research industry has a
strong influence on the numbers and so until there are decent
numbers...

I'm more worried about the invasion of people who are so unfit that
they couldn't jog 100m without doubling over out of breath (I'm not
talking about legitimate injuries here, just atrophy due to inactivity)

I've always been heavy. My mother was always heavy even though in her
day the amount of food people ate was smaller than now. A single lamb
loin chop for dinner for example. The answer then was to put her in
corsets....

But we've also always been healthy despite living our entire lives as
"obese". Even now, she's classed as that and was told to lose weight
by a clueless doc when she was stringybark and greenhide and doing one
hell of a lot of physical work on the place at Wandi - looking after
several horses, pulling weeds from the swamp, hand mowing, scrub
clearing... Because she wasn't skin and bone. Just strong and
muscular with a layer of fat over.

I think you're very much the exception rather than the rule when it
comes to "heavy people" in the obesity claims. You can always find
people with a fitness level / BMI ratio that makes BMI look stupid -
that doesn't mean that it's not a useful indicator in the vast majority
of cases - just that you need to consider it one metric out of many
rather than the be-all-and-end-all-of-unfitness-measurement.

And just because BMI _is_ strongly correlated to risk of some health
issues in the wider population doesn't mean that a high BMI is a
significant risk factor for an individual...

Junk Food Science - it's an interesting blog. I take everything I
read there with a grain of salt and the knowledge that they have a
reporting bias same as everyone. This is a fine example:

http://junkfoodscience.blogspot.com/2008/08/robotic-perfection-free-people-are.html

"Even as China's opening ceremonies for the Olympics inspired awe, there
was something repellent in the exactitude of such mass perfection..."

Yeah, the same way I'm disgusted when I see an orchestra that's only got
good instrumentalists in it or a basketball team that's unreasonably
biased against short people. Of course they would pick people who are
good at the activities they're doing, and China has a _lot_ of people to
pick from:

"the writer's observation that such public perfection is only achievable
by sacrificing individual freedoms."

I sing in a choir, and you know what - we don't get the freedom to
choose how we pronounce the words we sing. Everyone sings the same
vowel for a word even if that's now how they would usually pronounce
the word because we're doing something _together_, and the intent is
to sound the same. No shit sherlock. That's not loss of individual
freedom to interpret the music how we want to, because the result would
be a mess that doesn't sound good.

When you're involved in a performance with a group, you hand your
freedom of choice over to a director/choreographer who decides how
everyone will move to make a pleasing whole.


I watched Australian Idol's "top 12" performance the other day.
Chrislyn (otherwise known as "the token fat chick") was amazing,
and my comment was that the only issue with her salability was
her size, which is "fixable" - some other people don't have the
talent (probably including me), which is nowhere near as easy
to change.

The judges agreed, and I think put the comment very appropriately -
the issue is not her size, it's her ability to keep her breath
control at that level for hours. She needs to be fit enough to
have the breath to control her voice for an entire concert, every
day. That's the real issue.


Similarly, the issue with obesity isn't that people are "fat", it's
they are unfit and unhealthy. People with no physical activity in
their lifestyle - that's the real problem. Fat is a symptom, but
it's a visible one, and hence easy to latch on to.

Bron.
.

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