Re: Bike/trike design for the morbidly obese

Michael Press wrote:

Our physiology adapts to what is asked of it. A sedentary
person does not have the concentration of hormones for
mobilizing fat, the concentration of mitochondria, etc.
that a physically active person has. Someone who engages
in regular physical activity will burn off more calories
JSA (just sitting around) than a sedentary person.

Individual differences can outweigh those effects, though. We've all
known guys who eat everything they can get their hands on, don't go out
of their way to exercise, and yet somehow remain rail-thin. And we've
all known folks who undertake systematic dieting _and_ exercise, yet
struggle to shed even a little bit of weight. Just as some folks are
naturally powerful and athletic, or some people are naturally frail and
slight, some people are naturally fat. And when someone who exhibits
another body type says things to the effect that "well it's just so
simple to fix", it looks to me like they're prattling on out of
ignorance of both the prospects for changing it and the degree to which
is is necessarily a problem.

Scrawniness is not currently a fashionable thing to want to "fix", like
it has been at other times and in other places, but you could probably
better understand the idea of someone who is naturally thin and weak,
and for whom lifting weights and adding second helpings at the table is
not going to change that very much. You'd think, "he's just built that
way, but at least the exercise and good nutrition are healthy for him."


My point is that obesity is considered a problem to the degree it
exists, not just a problem to the degree it is a cause or a symptom of
ill health. That's why BMI categorizes me, a much healthier than
average person, as "morbid". That's why, if you are a nonsmoking fat
person with a normal resting heart rate, normal blood pressure, low
cholesterol and triglycerides, good nutrition and good physical
fitness, you still can't get supplemental life insurance. Because body
mass is considered to be a problem by definition. That's simply not
true, in my opinion.

I *like* being a great big guy, and I know from being one that it is
not an indicator of illness or morbidity. If someone is obese and
debilitated, the part that needs to be addressed is the debilitated
part. If their obesity is a symptom of disorder, then remedying the
disorder will remove the obesity. If they are restored to good health
and remain obese, then fine-- mission accomplished.

Fatness is a "problem" like pale skin is a problem. It can be a sign
of underlying illness, or of an unhealthy lifestyle, or neither of
these things. And treating fatness as a problem in itself is like
treating paleness of skin as a measure of ill health-- in many cases
it's just fallacious and misguided.

Chalo Colina

.

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