I’ve always wondered about the muscle strength of morbidly obese people. Literally hundreds of pounds of fat is going to require some strength to tote around. So what would we have if say a man of average height but weighing about four hundred pounds woke up one morning to find himself at his ideal weight? Would his muscle mass also be average, or would he be ripped from years of carrying around what was essentially a second person? Thoughts?
WAG: Probably not by much, if at all. The morbidly obese don’t exactly excersise or work out to build muscle mass. And just having to lug the weight of their body around isn’t exactly a good substitute.
If anything, they’d find themselves of average or below-average muscular build, wearing a skin-suit 4 sizes too big.
I’ve discovered that as I lose weight, I’m smaller in size than I was the last time the scale reads what it does now. That is, I’m now at 202 lbs, down from a top weight of 252 in May; I fit into the jeans that I outgrew last time I was at 180 lbs and gaining. Not just the same size label, but the same actual garment that’s been stuck in a box under my bed for 10 years. (Yes, they’re a decade out of date; I refused to get rid of them all these years just out of principle that Someday I would lose the weight and fit into them again!)
Since I am smaller in inches all over than I was when I was lighter before, not just in some body parts, I can only conclude that I did develop muscle as I gained fat, and I’m hanging on to at least some of the muscle that I developed lugging around all that fat, and I’m losing the fat.
Of course, I’d have to know what I could lift back before I was fat to compare it to what I can lift now to know how that muscle mass translates to actual strength/power. I really don’t know, not being a workout kind of gal. I feel stronger, but it’s entirely subjective without data. Sorry.
You could probably test this yourself. Consider a 450 pound man. Now, how much do you weigh? If you weigh 200 pounds, build yourself a little suit of 250 pounds to wear (water works well, try filling tons of plastic bags of water and hanging them on your shoulders on strings or something)
. Can you manage to walk around? Compare how you manage it with how you see actual 450 pound people achieve it. If you watch these people, getting up from a sitting position, walking up stairs, walking around for any length of time, etc, you can see how hard it is for them. If it is similarly hard for you, then I’d say you probably have about the same amount of muscle mass as they do.
Not exactly what the OP was asking about, but I always find it fascinating to watch super heavyweight weightlifters. If you didn’t know that these people are top athletes, you would, judging from their appearance, think they are just very obese and horribly out of shape.
Their muscles are hidden under huge layers of fat.
Morbidly obese person checking in. When my husband and I are out walking, I notice that we get the same level of ‘puffed-ness’ when we’ve been walking up an incline. He’s been carrying around 82kg, I’ve been carrying around (currently) 108.6kg. Surely I need to have a greater muscle mass if I’ve been carrying 26kg more than him? Or is that more about cardio fitness?
Surely you mean 1/8 of a ton.
No data to add, just wanted to congratulate you!
Some actual data. Enjoy.
The short version is that yes carrying around more fat mass results in more skeletal muscle mass but the relationship is such that each additional pound of fat results in decreasing additional amounts of skeletal muscle mass. Plus weight loss almost invariably also causes skeletal muscle mass loss along with the fat loss.
Weight-loss surgery patient checking in here.
At my biggest weight (309) I was considerably “stronger” than I am now at ~160. I lost plenty of muscle mass along with the fat. Even though I would never consider myself in shape at 309 (I was a “fat” 309, not an “NFL player” 309), I was far stronger then (no hard numbers, sorry, but simply anecdotally my lifting abilities were dramatically more than what I can lift now).
Note that in all my weight loss I emphasized cardio over lifting-- I wanted to “reach bottom” before I worried about packing back on muscle, so I’ve only recently begun lifting again.
That said, there was a point about ~220 lbs on my way down that something appeared to “click” in my weight loss where a transition point occured: I had lost plenty of fat but still had a large portion of my big guy muscle remaining. I distinctly recall this point because I could *actually see my ab muscles *in the mirror, and feel them somewhat defined. Never before in my life had that occured.
Alas, as the weight continued to come off, and I did nothing to keep the muscles up, those ab muscles disappeared underneath the saggy skin that now constitutes my gut.
So, anecdotally: I was really freakin’ strong as a fat guy-- but most of that strength was all dedicated to moving said fat guy around.
What about the (Japanese) “Sumo” wrestlers? They are enormous, but physically powerful.
Incidentally, does anybody know what these guys do when they retire? Go on a massive weight loss program? I hear many of them die young.
I’ve heard Doug McGuff, who’s a physician and author of “Body by Science”, mention that the CT scans of his obese patients had tiny muscles despite their huge body mass. He felt that the muscular atrophy he observed was the result of nutrient partitioning that occured as a result of their metabolic derangement:
I went from around 238lbs at my highest to 155lbs at my lowest a few years ago, and while I felt better than ever back then (I was very thin and fit looking) I had lost a LOT of fat-guy strength. I was always short and fat as a kid, and I always noticed I was a lot stronger than any other kid but the best athletes, which I attribute to carrying around more weight (but I was not obese and just laid around…active kid but fat).
Yeah, anecdotes are not data though, I’d love to see some science.
Since people have to work their way up to ‘buried in a piano crate’ size they will probably develop some additional muscle on the way. But once they get too big too move that muscle won’t be getting any bigger, but they’ll keep getting bigger. So it’s likely they’ll have more than average muscle mass, but way, way, way more than average percentage of body fat. The ratio between the two will be ridiculously off.
I’ve always been both overweight and active, from a teenager on. Softball, soccer, marching band, gym class. Could never fit in the uniforms but I was out there.
So I’ve always been carrying around tons of extra fat (100-150 lbs) and keeping my body moving.
I started lifting about 2.5 years ago at 330 lbs. I wasn’t watching my diet so I wasn’t losing weight. This January I started watching my diet and kept up my lifting and have dropped 60 lbs.
My biceps are huge from upper body work in the weight room, but my thighs and glutes are crazy huge not from lifting (I don’t do much legs) but from the cardio I do. Walking, elliptical, swimming. I’m adding resistance with the elliptical but otherwise I’m lugging around an extra 100 lbs. I definitely have fat on my legs but the muscles are really defined and rock-solid.
My core’s not exceedingly strong but I’ve got some decent ab muscles. If I had better posture I’d have stronger back muscles (it’s got a lot of front to lift!)
Another point is that I’m so muscular and my frame is so large (heredity but probably also due to a lifetime of being over weight) that I could never be in the “right” weight range for my height (I think 165 for female 5’8") but I will look smokin’ hot at my goal of 180. It’ll be all muscle and bone!
Anyway just thought I’d throw myself in as a data point. I am morbidly obese but not the sort of blob who sat all day and ate food, so I’ve got a pretty hefty set of muscles under all this fat, yes.
If anyone would like to come by and give me a poke, I’m free every day but Saturday.
More evidence that fat people have skinny muscles:
http://www.nature.com/oby/journal/v12/n6/full/oby2004107a.html
I suspect this wouldn’t tell you much, as it would be impossible to distrbute the extra weight on a thin person as evenly as an obese person has it distributed.
If you hang 20 pounds of water from your shoulders, it is going to reduce your mobility and agaility quite a bit, but most people can gain 20 pounds without any serious impact to their movement.
How much do you bicep curl, or better yet bench press?
At the moment biceps are 20# x 12 x 3 (each arm) and press is only bar+15# x 15 x 3. I haven’t tried either for full weight (I’m not a goddamn bodybuilder! :)) When I was a teen I think I could press 185#.
My triceps are sad 
I’ve heard for every 2-3 pounds of fat you gain, you gain a pound of muscle to carry it around. However I have no idea if that trend continues irrelevant of whether you gain 40 or 400 pounds. I doubt people who weigh 500 pounds have an extra 100 pounds of muscle underneath the 200 pounds of extra fat.
Also, despite conventional wisdom, being slightly overweight in the 25-29.9 BMI seems to offer some health benefits over being in the 18.5-24.9 BMI category. There is speculation that at that weight the fat doesn’t do much harm (if it isn’t belly fat) but the extra muscle provides metabolic and cushioning benefits, so in that scenario LBM does go up in a meaningful way to carry the extra fat around. But again, maybe it is some kind of situation where the returns drop off with time. ie, an extra 50 pounds means 15 is muscle, an extra 150 pounds means 30 is muscle. I don’t know.
I’m checking online to find info on the bodyfat percent of people who weigh 500 or 600 pounds, but can’t find anything.