I saw this article and to be very honest I HATE this rag but this caught my attention. This should be interesting. I'm just going to point out the fact that, you be you for sure BUT it's no secret that being overweight is just in no way good for you. So to try and justify it this was is kinda crazy, but hey, you be you. I'm in NO WAY trying to belittle or disregard what someone may be trying to do to be healthy but rather what I'm saying is if you're overweight and you're ok with that and want to have a positive image of yourself that's awesome but it doesn't negate all that is bad for you. So just a few key points of being over weight according to the CDC People who have obesity, compared to those with a normal or healthy weight, are at increased risk for many serious diseases and health conditions, including the following:1,2,3 All-causes of death (mortality) High blood pressure (Hypertension) High LDL cholesterol, low HDL cholesterol, or high levels of triglycerides (Dyslipidemia) Type 2 diabetes Coronary heart disease Stroke Gallbladder disease Osteoarthritis (a breakdown of cartilage and bone within a joint) Sleep apnea and breathing problems Many types of cancerexternal icon Low quality of life Mental illness such as clinical depression, anxiety, and other mental disorders4,5 Body pain and difficulty with physical functioning6 https://www.bicycling.com/culture/a...2HozeNOPqN4tOCdzhzi6All3yCvCSKvPpM_FTU0UuCsWg
A year or two ago, I noticed they’ve fully embraced relativism in their publications. Makes me wonder how they achieve “fact” in their cycling evals.
Nobody knows when they are going to die, or why. People have died while riding Grands Tours ... they sure weren't fat. I think the idea is that shaming fat people (and I say this as a very fat person who doesn't give a .... frog .... ) is even more debilitating because fat people who feel fat and useless and then are judged badly by much of society, are even less likely to get up off the couch and do something. If we tell fat people that it is fine to be fat and fine to get up and ride a wide-saddle, upright bike slowly around the neighborhood ... that is Step One. Telling them they are fat and wrong and doomed to a horrible future ... makes that future more likely. Yeah, I know all about what being fat is about .... I used to be super-fit until 20 years ago when everything changed .... I see the contrasts quite starkly ... the health issues, the mental issues, the long-term issues with accelerated decay of the body .... But the idea that being thin is being healthy is wrong. The idea that being fit will automatically give you a longer or a better life is wrong. Generally, sure .... but each of us is an individual. We have all heard about the unhealthy, unfit hard-drinking smokers living on fried fat and bacon, who live to be 106. Further, some people are never going to be athletic. People who naturally value fitness and enjoy exercise sometimes can't understand that other people are totally different. We all have different paths, we all lead different lives. People don't have to be fit or even healthy to be valid, valuable people .... something people sometimes forget. Living longer isn't necessarily better, anyway .... live the life you love, for as long as you can. And yes, a lot of overweight, unhealthy people have a host of other issues which lead to them being overweight and unhealthy. I am not saying that fat people are fine ... a lot of them have mental and emotional issues (and so do a lot of fit people ... but ... ) and a lot of those folks lack the coping mechanisms and just get worse and worse----part of why in general people have tired to stop burdening the already (physically and mentally) overburdened. I am not defending fat people or people being fat ... but in a lot of ways our culture attacks fat people ... and that is itself unhealthy.
I'll agree with you and knew that someone would go this way and honestly I counted on you to You took that in every possible direction and included some nice spin offs My point is that this article is trying to justify the condition and I was not making any claims whatsoever that being thin implies healthiness but rather it is a well documented health risk to be overweight. Same can be said for people who suffer from anorexia, it's not normal or healthy. America has without doubt become a rather "heavy" country. I had entire page on this and examples but meh, I've had enough today
No, I agree that way too many Americans eat way too much food and most get way too little exercise .... and yes, this will tend to shorten their lives, and run up health care costs (of course, a lot of things do that--most not at all related to health care itself.) I don't think many people would sincerely argue that given the options, health is better than poorer health or ill health. My thinking is, you have to grab the clay to mold it. if you are fat, that is what you have to work with. If you are thin, crippled, broken stupid, unwell ..... whatever .... you need to accept where you are at before you can change it. Speaking as a person who has been trying to lose a lot of weight for a long time, I can tell you that being fat flat sucks .... but if you don't like me fat you don't like me. It's like the people who look down on cyclists who ride less, or who don't do intervals and hill repeats, and all that .... this is who I am and what I do, and if you cannot accept it .... let me show you the outside of my door, it's really interesting as it swings shut.
One last thought (yeah, right) on weight and fitness. I did an awesome charity tour in 2015---a couple dozen amazing teens from all over the world, who had lost parents or relatives to the Chinese Communist Party's persecution of Falun Dafa qigong. These were all top two percent of the class, multiple athletic letters, masters of some musical instrument, (of the girls, many studied Chinese classical dance which is something like ballet.) These kids were Fit. By the end of the LA to Washington DC tour, I was able to pretty much keep up with the fast group (at least for a while) despite being hugely fat---because I was putting in the miles and pushing really hard to keep up. The lady in the article seems to be of the sort who is genetically overweight---mesomorph, some call it---but still athletic. Does the extra weight put more stress on the joints? yes, but possibly offset by the extra support the trained muscles can give. or maybe she is accelerating the wear on her joints .... but I know a whole bunch of typically "athletic" guys who are getting or have gotten knee replacements .... from riding or running too hard. My point (hah ... like I have a point) is that "fat" and "athletic" are not mutually exclusive. And further, the habit we have lately of putting down fat people leads to everything bad and in now way promotes getting fit----independent of weight or weight loss. The author seems ot be saying, "Hey, if we stop umping on fat people, maybe we'd have fewer inactive, dangerously obese, sedentary fat people .... or maybe the fat people who Are athletic won't get scorned for BMI before anyone even looks at their FTP." I know in some parts of Europe, getting fat in middle age was a sign of success and respectability---a person who was overweight could afford to eat richly, and didn't have to be out busting his butt doing physical labor---it was a sign of respectability---and as for the extra few years of life, meh ... people were going to die anyway. In some cultures, being fat was the ultimate sign of success, because only fat people could afford to overeat---and they probably lived as long because of the lower stress and better medical care. Attitudes and how they change over time and circumstance. The article isn't really about being fat---it is about the popular perceptions of being fat.
While none of these folks are morbidly obese, neither are any of them exactly svelte ... but they are all competing in a bike race, and working hard, too.
She (the author of the article) has a point in that if overweight riders are occasionally used in ads for gear and clothing .... maybe some overweight people might think, "Hey, I could do that." However, a lot of those ads cater to people who already ride. Oh, well. In my case, being active is much more of a mental than a physical thing. When I was young and full of hormones---up until 40 or 42, before I got married and ruined for life-- --being active was natural and easy. After I took several years off to sit behind a computer 14 hours a day and was Completely sedentary .... now getting out of a chair or off the couch takes a huge effort. Stuff like seeing cycling on TV can actually help ... so there is potentially some validity to the idea that showing fat people in cycling ads might help get fat people moving. But, as with all things .... I don't know anything, and I am not even sure what I believe.
All great points. I don't have anything to add except a little about my wife's and my weight loss and the noticeable benefits from it. I weighed over 210 at one point and could feel it in my joints and how I moved, I kinda felt like that was a precursor to what would happen if I didn't do something about my weight. I had always been thin and active but even with just maybe 50 extra pounds I could feel the difference in my life. My wife lost over 225 pounds, she had gotten very large yet we both tried to walk and hike as much as we could. But with extra weight it was hard to do very much, especially for her. So we had two perspectives on being overweight - mine from being somewhat overweight to her's which crossed into the morbid obesity area. Both affected most aspects of our lives in one way or another, things that disappeared when we lost the weight.
Yeah .... for most of us, being fat sucks. I guess people who have always been heavy have nothing to contrast it against, but I feel every extra pound .... and there are a lot of them. Gaining and losing weight are simple matters .... calories in versus calories burned ... but the psychology and physiology involved is exceedingly complex. I have a lot of respect for people who are able to drop big poundage. Grats to you both.
Ten years ago, when I first starting riding again, I went from the verge of being obese to well within my weight range for my height and age. And it stayed that way until the beginning of 2018. For some reason, I started gaining weight and it didn't seem to matter what I did, it wouldn't come off. Then came this year when I crashed and broke my clavicle. Being off the bike put another 10-12 pounds on me in a two month period. I've been trying my best to lose it with eating less and not snacking as often but to no avail. And of course I now have this anemia issue that is keeping of the bike more days than I want. At 168 pounds, I'm now overweight for my height and age and if I don't figure this out soon, I'll be back to borderline obese. I agree with maelochs (in post #6) "that "fat" and "athletic" are not mutually exclusive." There are tons of people who go to Flatwoods to ride, run and walk. Some of them being pretty heavy, but you see them on their bikes pedaling away. There's this one guy that's in his 50s and he has a gut on him that hangs down below his waistline. You will see him always riding with the 24-25 mph group. At this point, I can only wish. However, it doesn't mean that we don't have an obesity issue in this country. Regardless of the reason, there seems to be more obese and morbidly obese people in this country than anywhere else I have been to. We've been to seven European countries and Australia in the past 6 years. With the exception of the older generation in Italy, we didn't see many heavy people in Europe; unless they're American tourist. In Australia, the only obese person I remember seeing was my son-in-law's aunt that came on the trip with us. I think that one of the biggest reasons for the weight disparity between the US and other countries is the way we eat. We didn't see a lot of processed food in the grocery stores in Europe or Australia. They also don't have fast food outlets on every corner and places in between like we do here. We stayed in downtown Sydney, and I remember seeing just one McDonalds and a Burger King (which is under a different name) the four days we were there. However, pizza places are almost everywhere, including a Dominos that was a block from our hotel.
I'm 6' and have been around 205-215 for the last 40 years. I do not have a "biker" body other than maybe legs. I get a lot of lifting in my new job so the 185 I was at riding every day while in between jobs and on sabbatical for 10 months in 2019 has gone back to 205 but I have put on good bit of upper body muscle. I have a small bit of a donut that'll never go away but have been same 34-36 waist size forever and just short of olympic training, nothing's gonna change that. I feel great for 60, ride all I want, do whatever physical stuff is on the table in hot or cold weather and have a moderate diet....which means I eat moderate amounts of good and bad. I go to wife's crossfit class and get the wut just happened response from people doing that stuff everyday. I do feel it afterwards more than work or riding but nothing crippling...it's a good hurt. I really don't care what my height/weight/BMI are or "say" about me.....I have low resting heart rate in low 60s to upper 50s, 120/80 blood pressure, less than 200 cholesterol, no aches/pains other than from vigorous exercise, no prescription nothing, blood sugar OK so I eat what I want within reason, exercise within reason, hardly drink - except lots of water and generally do whatever needs doing and/or I feel like doing. I feel blessed, take nothing for granted, know my limits and exist within them, conscious of family histories.........cuz i12ride Everybody is different and have different needs and challenges.....nothing is absolute for everyone other than GOD. Live it up. Get out and do what you can and be happy about it as much as possible. (I'll never ride a pink Specialized no matter what tho)
