I usually spend about 5 years on the upper edge of obese/morbidly obese and 5 years rail-thin- I have now been fat for about six, so it is time to fix this.
I lost quite a bit last year, and then managed to gain most of it back during this little episode of back pain and the resulting pain meds over the last six months.
Even when losing last year, people at the office would make snarky little comments about how I had already lost a lot, I could eat some candy/cake/doughnuts/extra food at the near-weekly party at the office.
I take them as complements when I am in the right headspace, and that is, I believe, the spirit in which they are intended- goodnatured semi-jealous ribbing.
When I was very slender/athletic, however, there was quite a bit of antagonism involved if the people did not know that I am periodically fat.
My daughter is recently addicted to Ninja Warrior (a Japanese show), and the other day we saw one with a competitor who the narrator kept referring to as though she was the fattest woman alive. And make no mistake about it, she was fat. Hugely, grotesquely fat, for Japan. But she wouldn’t look remotely out of place in Minnesota.
Everyone’s misunderstood the comment in the OP. A 100 pound starve-herself-to-get-there girl feels totally comfortable looking at Nicole and calling her unhealthy. Nicole’s response is, ‘well, If I’m so unhealthy, then come throw these bales of hay.’ That’s it. That’s all she’s saying. You may be skinny, but you may not be able to do what she can do, so don’t feel so free to throw judgments around. There are some very sensitive people in this thread who read way too much into that.
You’ve got to be kidding me. How hard is this to get?
Does Nicole not feel perfectly comfortable in her assumed hay-bale-throwing superiority? She is clearly fine with stating that anyone more thin than her is probably bulimic and not capable of lifting the sandwich they’ll vomit up later.
You really think that in this society Nicole has NEVER been told by women thinner than her that she’s unhealthy? Especially in the Equestrian world? You don’t think she’s responding to that? She’s also not suggesting that hay baling makes her better than anyone else. It’s simply a demonstration of her physical fitness, which people assume from her appearance does not exist.
And no, she’s not saying that anyone more thin than her must puke up their sandwiches, you are choosing to read that into her statement.
My mother struggled with the exact same problem. In fact, much of her adult life she was underweight yet her cholesterol was over 400 (at times much higher than that.
On the upside, despite her cardiovascular problems, she did live to be 77 which pretty darn good for someone who started seeing a cardiologist at 30 due to heart disease. Keep working on staying healthy and you, too, could live a long wonderful life despite a health issue.
In fact, at a certain point we figured out that it was the skinny people in mom’s family who were at greatest risk due to a hereditary problem with how their bodies handle fats and lipids. The following is simplified greatly, but part of the problem is that the fats are never deposited in cells, they just hang out in the bloodstream. Really, mom would have been better off being normally fat that her version of skinny.
Although, as my doctor likes to point out, just because I didn’t inherit that bad gene doesn’t mean I can be complacent - I’m still at normal risk of heart disease!
And you seem to be choosing to ignore that every other person featured managed to celebrate their bodies/lives without the need to be negative about any other body type/stupid stereotype.
Perhaps Nicole would feel better if she stopped her steady diet of sour grapes.
Personally, having been “in her shoes” for a good portion of my life, I can understand Nicole’s comment, but still think it was inappropriate for the article. I’ve always been the “tall fat girl”, and I’ve gone through periods of being bigger, smaller, fitter and more out of shape than now-- at any point during those cycles, I’ve had someone comment inappropriately about my size, and it’s always been a “fat” comment. Despite this, I can refer to myself as overweight but in shape without comparing myself to the smaller/thinner people with whom I work out. I’m one of the biggest ladies training at my dojo, and I’m certainly not in the top three of “Who’s in the best shape among the ladies”, but I work hard at maintaining and improving how far I’ve gotten. I also encourage my peers to work hard toward their goals, even if it takes baby steps or just a ton of repetitions to get there. My weight bounces up and down depending upon whether I’m gaining muscle, losing fat, or just in a “heavy” part of my menstrual cycle, but it’s not nearly as important as how I look and feel on a day-to-day basis.
It’s tough to keep a positive attitude when those around you are throwing their negativity in your face, but it’s not hard to avoid retaliating to others’ negativity when speaking positively about yourself. Do we really have to put others down in order to emphasize our own accomplishments?
Vinyl Turnip, like I said, my weight usually fluctuates by about five or ten pounds. So yeah, maybe, as I said, about ten pounds. But if I didn’t, I’d be fine too.
I think a lot of people have problems with the BMI is because it doesn’t account for a person’s frame, or shape. I carry my weight mainly in my hips and my breasts. My waist and my legs are pretty slim (I’m your classic “hour-glass”).
I have an aunt, on the other hand, who is literally, what you’d call, “big-boned/framed.” She’s 6ft, big broad shoulders, large rib cage, wide hips, LOOOONG legs and big feet. Yet she’s not fat – she’s always been very athletic, and hell, she’s a dietician, so she’s not laying around, munching on cheetos all day. You can’t eat yourself into big feet, or long legs.
Incidentally that 80lb bale is a lower proportion of Nicole’s bodyweight than it is the 100lb woman’s. It’s a lot more difficult to lift 80% of your bodyweight than it is 40% - nobody expects lighter people to be as strong as heavier people, which is why there are weight categories in lifting and fighting comps.
Yeah but they don’t bale hay into different sizes for different strengths of people (they do come in a few different sizes, but not many). You need to move hay, you need to be able to move hay. And if you’re too weak to do so your body isn’t keeping up with your needs.
Well, different people are built differently. That’s about all you can derive from this conversation.
at 6’5" I’m a crummy weight lifter. My arms are too long to do anything dramatic on a weight bench. It’s a matter of leverage. (Believe me, I’ve tried, I bike in the summer and lift weights in the winter.) Where a 5’10" guy would have little problem getting to the point where he could bench-press his weight, it’s something I could never HOPE to do.
That said, I’m a monster on a bike. My legs and cardio ARE suited to that kind of excercise.
I think the secret is to honestly look at the body your genetics have given you, the time you’re willing to put into excercise, and do what you can withwhat you’ve got, realizing that there are aspects of society that don’t have your best interests in mind.
ETA: you might as well ask me to do a triple sowchow, double toe-loop. Does it make me unhealthy that I can’t?
a) the study is pretty controversial, just read the letters underneath the report on that journal page to see. There’s at least three doctors who write to note that: elderly people lose weight prior to death, and being underweight is often associated with chronic underlying health problems. This will significantly skew the statistics in favour of being slightly overweight.
b) the introduction to the special issue of JAMA in which the journal paper appeared makes it clear that this study contradicts several other studies previously published in the same journal. To
So there’s one possibly flawed studied showing that being slightly overweight (not obese) is healthier than what’s to be expected, versus many studies strongly contradicting this claim. Until more studies are done confirming this study, I think it’s safe to conclude that being overweight is still unhealthy.
When I am running on a regular basis, I’m 6’0", 250lbs, and I can run a 5’30" mile–and eat a dozen cupcakes afterwards, because cupcakes are good and so is clearing up incorrect beliefs.
At that weight and speed, you probably burned about 250 calories doing that mile run. Average cupcake also has about 250 calories. So if you’re going to eat those dozen cupcakes, you better keep running for 11 more miles if you want to burn the calories off.
This isme(blue dress) 15 to 20 lbs. overweight according to charts.
I am 5’ 2(ish)". I am supposed to weight no more than 118-120 lbs. I was 140 in those pictures. See my arms in the blue dress? That’s muscle. I lifted and ran 5K 6 days a week.
The point I am trying to make is that some of us are outliers, and it pisses me off enormously to have been judged by my weight by the medical establishment, even if the doctor who told me to lose 20 lbs. when I was 140 couldn’t catch me if he ran after me. *Some *doctors are lazy, and just spout whatever the chart says without asking much beyond that. I couldn’t lose those 20 lbs. because when I starved myself to try it I felt like crap, couldn’t run worth a shit and looked like a prison camp survivor, and I only lost 10 of those!.
Right now I am 20 lbs. over that weight (I am losing them), but even now I am in perfect health. I don’t fool myself into thinking that I am healthy *because *I am overweight, I am healthy because, *despite *being overweight, I was active even before I started losing weight, I have little stress, and have a great diet. I am also sure my running will improve enormously from not having to carry the extra weight.
If you stay 5’3" and 135, your BMI is normal - at 145 you’ve crossed into overweight. (You cross at 141, by the way, at 140 you are still “normal.” However, of course, there isn’t a shiny bright line that at 140 you are the picture of health and you have a piece of cheesecake and balloon up to a weight where small children point at you. And you don’t hit obese on the BMI scale until you are 170 pounds.)
The problem - and it seems to be particularly important for women - is that as we age an extra five pounds a year ‘suddenly’ is 40 pounds sitting on your hips. And then a baby is born. And you have ten pounds of baby weight. And you don’t loose that. And you have a second baby, and its another ten pounds…
So, be comfortable with the body you have - - but if you inch much over that 145 lb mark, don’t become complacent. Its easier to lose ten pounds than forty. And its easier to loose it in your twenties than when you hit menopause and all sorts of shit happens.
Its really the complacency in these things that gets me. I don’t think people need to fight to be model thin - or even so their BMI is 25 - but there is a certain fatalism in the “accept me as I am” that I think pushes a lot of people from “yeah, I could drop five pounds” into “I’m carrying enough weight that its not healthy.” I know a lot of people who will never have a normal BMI - which is why I like essays like this which show that you can be overweight and active.
(And I’m a 5’6"ish 43 year old “hourglass” shape. So I’m familiar with 'but ten pounds of that are in my chest!")
