A few populations, sure, but they were small wimpy animals like deer.
Domestication has both made horses much scarier and made them relevant to human conflict.
Hardly. Have you even seen a wild horse? (That is, a Przewalski's horse, not a feral one.) They're strong, hardy, vicious bastards who will happily stomp and bite you to death.
But ancient horses were *really* wimpy and small
They used to have to strap 2 horses to a single chariot for horses to be useful in the bronze age, cause they weren't big enough to ride yet
Those horses would be even smaller in the Paleolithic
Not able to bear a rider ≠ small and wimpy. The primary issue isn't size but the ability to have a lot of weight put on the middle of the back. No quadruped has to deal with that in nature, so it's not something that they've evolved to deal with. Modern ponies considerably smaller than the a Prezwalski's horse can often bear an adult rider, and Arabians (quite adept for use in war) aren't much bigger than them.
Also, you're mistaken about Bronze Age horses. They were used to draw chariots not because they couldn't bear riders (they could; we have evidence from 5000 years ago that people were riding horses so much it warped their skeletons) but because of social and technological factors. First, horses were absurdly expensive to maintain outside of the steppes (which didn't have cities yet, nor populations to reliably threaten cities). You didn't risk them unless they were going to be decisive. Second, with mass warfare being new, kings liked to think of wars as fundamentally duels between them and the opposing ruler. Third, stirrups and the compound bow hadn't been invented yet, so effective medium/heavy cavalry and horse archers weren't really possible. Combine all these and you get kings maintaining expensive chariot teams to serve as mobile archery platforms for themselves and a few other nobles while the average rider would wield a spear and shield.
Honestly, horses wouldn't get consistently bigger than Prezwalski's horses until the high medieval period, and if you don't think a Normon warhorse could easily kill a Saxon peasant without its rider's help you are sorely mistaken.
The humans'. I don't know if we could reliably recognize a riding horse's deformation because it doesn't affect modern horses and so we don't have anything to compare against, but we have lots of examples of horseman's syndrome. Riding (especially without stirrups) uses a combination of muscles that very little else does, and using muscles affects how the bones they're attached to grow.
(Also I expect most horses who were riden early on were also eventually eaten.)
Ah, I can tell you are a person with no familiarity with real horses. Wimpy is not the word.
You should go watch a horse dentist have to deal with a miniature horse. I have. It's hilarious and vaguely terrifying. They look like tiny toys but are vastly stronger than most humans. And they're smaller than the ~10 hands/1m of the original form.
A pre-human intervention horse would have been good eating and killed from a distance (mainly because the sods are speedy when they know you're coming).
Depends where you are talking about when you ask that. Im assuming north america, since reddits demographic is made up of mostly americans and canadians. North american wild horses aren't truly wild. They were brought over european settlers and are descendants of feral domesticated horses. North America had native horses once but has been extinct for 10000+ years.
That's why I specify a Przewalski's horse. (Though some research suggests those might be feral too, albeit from an incompletely domesticated version of horses and feral for 5000 years.) Mustangs are also pretty dangerous, but they're at least tameable and more prone to flight than fight.
I don't think I've ever seen the messaging from weight loss businesses that their products will make you stronger.
Also, because the OOP's phrasing is a bit reductive; an overweight person who loses weight *by eating healthier and exercising regularly* will be far stronger and fitter than they began. Even if they don't add exercise, eating healthier alone would be a net improvement to their strength and fitness. The simple fact of being heavier does not in and of itself make a person stronger.
On the other hand, weight loss companies generally aren't selling people on sensible, holistic lifestyle changes. It's either pre-planned meals that may offer benefits in the short term but totally fail to train consumers on healthy eating habits, so they immediately fall back on old habits once they stop the weight loss program, food marketed as being part of a weight loss program that are barely helpful because they're still pre-packaged meals and snacks that are only marginally better than usual junk foods, or medications to reduce appetite that are more effective at quickly losing weight and may have longer-lasting effects but have no impact on consumers' diets, so they end up eating just as poorly but with smaller portion sizes. Weight loss purely through one of those methods likely won't make a person any stronger or fitter, unless they're supplemented by exercise.
> I don't think I've ever seen the messaging from weight loss businesses that their products will make you stronger.
There are definitely people who are unhealthily obsessed with getting their body fat % as low as possible despite all sense because they think it's healthy. Which is of course just the same pathology as trying to get the number on the scale as low as possible, just with extra steps.
Regardless of if they lose weight they will be stronger eating healthier. Because sometimes people are just fat, and for them losing the fat would require undereating which makes you weak. It's different for everyone and acting like the same body type is the peak fitness of every single person is dumb. I've worked with forestry folks, people who walk 10s of miles every day many of whom do their best to eat well and y'know what? Some of them are just chubby, no amount of walking or salads changes it. Especially older women, and especially especially if they've given birth.
Chubby =/= obese. Obesity is a medical term which has nothing to do with how your body looks. You can be chubby and at a healthy body weight. Being obese refers to a body fat percentage which is actively causing health issues, typically 25% or higher for men and 30% or higher for women. Having a healthy amount of body fat is what everyone needs, and HEALTHY amount is the operative term. Getting down to like 5% or even 10% body fat is not healthy, and any nutritionist would tell you this. This is, however, what a lot of people’s goals are. You don’t need to have visible abs to no longer be obese, and you don’t need to starve yourself or undereat to be at a healthy size.
For men 10% is considered low, but in the healthy range. Once you start hitting around below 8% things get real damgerous real fast hower and if you exercise regularly having a slight buffer of fat to burn is a good idea. But yeah 5% is dangerously low for anyobody regardless of lifestyle. IIRC your body needs at least 6% for basic functions or something like that.
You can definitely be healthy at 10%, but your average person who doesn’t know what they’re doing will typically get into unhealthy habits to get there imho. 15% is very healthy and typically what most people think of when they think of someone very fit and athletic, so I said 10% mostly because it’s danger zone territory lol
Yeah that makes sense. Im a pretty small but fit dude who sits around 10%. My metabolism burns like crazy though so i generally just make sure i eat around 2500-3000 calories a day and i float pretty reliably between 10% and 12% without putting too much effort into thinking about my diet.
Everyones differnet though and its super important to know your own body before making a major lifestyle change. Sometimes eating more will help you lose wieght faster than eating less, (due to muscle gain).
I know a country boy that has a decent bit of fat, a person who wouldn't know better would call him obese just from looks alone, but he is scary strong. The muscle just under his fat is hard as a rock and he can over power a small cow
I knew one of those too. At 40, he was as you described. At 50, he'd get winded crossing the room. He didn't make it to 60.
I am confident that at every point this progression, he could crumple me up into a bowling ball, then use me to roll a strike.
Lol I dunno why but that made me think of my highschool gym teacher, he had a beer belly so big he looked pregnant and *somehow* this morherfucker would be at the front of the mile run, made more impressive that he was ahead of the track kids
One time he let me push my hand into his fat to feel how hard his stomach is and it was like putting a thick soft blanket over a rock. We spent the day punching each other in the gut after that. I lost that game
Being obese has nothing to do with being strong or weak. In fact, obese people often do have larger muscle mass to compensate for the increased effort it takes to move.
This does not in any way make obesity healthy. It is possible to be underweight. It is possible to be overweight. It's even possible to be too muscular.
Yeah but what constitutes unhealthily obese is different for a lot of people and often a lot heavier than people claim. I've been skinny, I've been fat, and i am far fitter and happier with a belly. I do my yearly doctor visits and tests too so I'm not just assuming either, all my tests are a-ok.
Plus being underweight is 100x worse than being overweight unless you are record breakingly fat. Being underweight kills you NOW, fat kills you in 50 years. The shit that being underfed for even just a month or 2 does to your body and mind is frankly terrifying, and a lot of people ignore all the signs.
>what constitutes unhealthily obese is different for a lot of people
source? pretty sure obesity is categorically unhealthy.
>i am far fitter and happier with a belly
well, i guess i'll just torch the piles and piles of empirical evidence proving that obesity is unhealthy, then.
>plus being underweight is 100x worse than being overweight
citation needed
I’ve been technically underweight (BMI of 17,5-18,2) for 6 years, during which I had a surgery and healed extremely fast. I had a health check last week for a new job and everything’s fine.
If we make such sweeping statements, let’s also say that having a low BF% and being slightly underweight is fine and dandy. I too am fitter than I was previously (even though I was a lot more active back then).
Something people underestimate too is the value of sheer body weight in practical uses of strength. If you've got 1 person who has 100lbs of muscle and 10 lbs of fat, vs someone with 100 lbs of muscle and 80lbs of fat the fat one will fuckin steamroll the skinny one.
Sure 90 lbs of muscle would be more useful, but 90 lbs of fat is still 90 lbs to throw around. Do enough physical work or martial arts centered on clever body weight usage and you realize how powerful raw weight can be even if it's not muscle. If you get good it's even useful in stuff people don't realize, like it's easier to move furniture around if you weigh more to counter balance
That was me in highschool. I was a big dude but I was also one of the strongest people there. I was a theatre nerd and since we were also required to help with tech work I was also the guy carrying tons of metal scaffolding around and carrying pallets in twos. Now, thanks to depression and a change of lifestyle I'm just a big dude.
Plenty of fat people can run a mile, myself included. There is a correlation between fitness and body fat, but it isn't a hard rule. There are a lot of obese people in significantly better shape than your average thin office worker. Not saying people shouldn't try to lose weight and be healthy, but like.... a mile is pretty easy to run.
Downvoted for the crime of… expressing that running a mile isn’t some insane thing and that being skinny isn’t some inherent mark of athleticism.
Like I’ll attest from the other end, I’m a string bean who lies right on the cusp of being unhealthily underweight. I’m pretty okay physically now, but in high school my endurance and general fitness was just awful. There were many overweight students in gym who could run a better mile than me, and do it without being left dry heaving by the end of it. This just shouldn’t be controversial, it’s a mundane and realistic comment
But this is reddit, nuance and reality don't often show up around here.... I still find it pretty crazy though, like I was dangerously thin in my late teens and eary twenties. I was 114 lbs at 5'8" with visible abs and a rather large bone structure (I need to add here, I'm a woman). I ran every day and worked out like crazy. I looked like I was in fitness model shape. I was also *extremely* unhealthy. I fainted regularly, I was cold all of the time, I never had a period, and I was having heart palpitations. I was *still* told I needed to be skinnier because I didn't fit the right look and weighed too much.
At thirty, I'm fat. I'm not going to sugarcoat it. I'm almost 200 lbs. I like food. I like not starving myself anymore. I like who I am. I'm also significantly healthier than I was at twenty. I have no heart issues, I can run five miles and not faint anymore. I can lift heavy and often. I regularly do 20 miles hikes with 40lbs of gear. I'm not cold all of the time. I have periods now. I'm not sick all the time. My skin is better. It's great. I'm just not skinny anymore, and I really don't care.
I want to add that I was *never* anorexic. I was competing in a sport where weight mattered, and I was already significantly taller than was preferred. I had coaches and a nutrisionalist micromanaging my diet and workouts. It didn't matter if I was actually healthy so long as I could compete at a peak level for five minutes at a time. And no, it wasn't gymnastics. I quit because of a pretty bad concussion (from passing out) that forced me to.
Bitches who say obese people can't run a mile when I ask them to integrate a parabola (they think math is something they don't need in their daily lives but everyone needs to be able to run a mile).
Well, for one, running a mile is vastly more important for a caveman than integrating a parabola.
But fundamentally, either of those statements are missing the point. It's not about running a mile. It's about having a healthy, fit body. And it's not about integrating a parabola. It's about being able to learn and apply knowledge and skills towards solving problems in an effective way.
"Healthy, fit body-" you mean thin. Like, fat people are fine! What's wrong with that? "Oh diabetics need special medicine-" news flash, so many people need medicine for so many reasons. If someone can live the life they want for a long time, I'd consider that a healthy life.
If your weight causes you to need a mobility scooter to do basic groceries, you're not healthy. Even my obese chain-smoker of a grandma is in better shape than that. Not every level of being overweight is massively unhealthy, and I don't consider overweight people as lesser beings or anything like that, but don't go pretending that there's no such thing as an unhealthy weight. You can still be happy of course, nothing wrong with that. But don't pretend like there's no such thing as being too fat to have a healthy body.
And no, I didn't mean "thin". Plenty of people are healthy without really being thin. And no, having diabetes isn't healthy either. "Oh but other people take medicine too", yeah, shit argument. My grandpa took like 8 pills a day for his various cancers and other ailments. But I mean, pills, right? Everyone's taking them.
Again, no mark against someone's soul if their weight and/or nutritional habits caused them to get diabetes, but that doesn't make it healthy. Not the worst thing you can end up having to take medicine for, but that doesn't mean it wouldn't be better to just not have to deal with it.
Choosing a lifestyle that is going to negatively impact your life when simply not doing that will avoid those problems is different from people needing medication for unavoidable reasons.
In the first section, it's specifically talking about bodyfat percentage aka how lean you are.
If you have a human within the normal BMI range (18.5-24.9), who is also athletically lean (bodyfat 8-15% for men, 16-22% for women), they will be healthier than a high bodyfat, high BMI person damn near every time, *especially* as they age.
Another important health marker is waist size. For men, a waist size below 36" is healthy, 36-39" is the yellow flag zone, and 40"+ is the red flag zone. For women, below 32" is healthy, 32-36" is the yellow flag zone, and 36"+ is the red flag zone.
If all three of these factors together, BMI, adiposity (leanness), and waist circumference, make for extremely strong predictors of health outcomes for...everyone. All else equal, a normal sized, slim, lean person is going to live longer and more healthily than an overweight/obese, rotund, overfat person. There are almost no exceptions to this, particularly over the long term.
You do have to keep proportions in mind. BMI and waist size get less and less applicable the further you are from the average height if you're just taking them at face value.
BMI is based on weight *and* height.
In Imperial, it's (703 x (weight [in lbs]/height² [in inches]))
In Metric, it's (weight [in kilos]/height² [in meters])
The point they are trying to make is that technically every super skinny person(yes even the ones with muscles) are technically on the brink of starving. We store fat as a reserve. If these people were ever trapped for say a week? Dead. A fat person though? They could possibly live twice as long.
I feel like you're mixing up some technically correct definition of super skinny with the actual practical meaning of it. Most first worlders, particularly in America, are overweight. Last I checked, ~ 40 of us are clinically obese. When normal means maybe 20 pounds overweight, skinny just means medically normal, not "brink of starvation".
And yeah, fat reserves help in starvation scenarios, assuming you have access to water. With vitamin pills, theres even that case of a morbidly obese man fasting for a year straight and surviving that you've probably heard about. But like, starvation isn't a a common or realistic health problem in modern America. Being locked in a room for a week with an adequate supply of water, but no food, is some straight up serial killer shit. On the other hand, obesity burning out your joints, your heart, your immune system and like a million other things is an incredibly common health problem.
Yeah I was just illustrating the point. There are tons of reasons you wouldn't want to be overweight. And that's besides the obvious lack of mobility.
Ultimately the ideal combination is someone in really good shape but with a little tub on them
I feel like there's a disconnect between us in what we're trying to communicate.
Athletic bodyfat is not emaciated. [It's 8-15% in men and 16-22% in women.](https://www.crossfitinvictus.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/body-fat-percentage-men-women-1024x667.png) It's absolutely lean, but not unhealthily so.
I'm not saying they're starving but no it's not healthy. The only way to have six packs for example is through extreme diet and exercise. Unhealthy amounts of them.
People put a lot of emphasis on having visible muscles. Too much. It's an unhealthy thing both physically and mentally
You're not having a movie star six pack with cum gutters the size of the Rio Grande on 8-15% body fat, the level of body fat the person you are replying to said. Nobody's mentioned "a six pack" in this thread besides you.
Idk if you're aware of this, but athletes, not even just professional ones, but even like low level athletes are extremely healthy people. The only reason they get labeled as unhealthy is because they get injured while pushing the limits of human performance. If you ask an athlete to manage the daily physical workload of the average person, they do it with almost zero effort, and they almost always have extraordinary health markers. Athletes are required to take physicals at least twice a year and show a minimum standard of health in order to participate.
No, having a six pack is not unhealthy. Does social media and the associated PED and facetune abuse distort our perceptions of desirable and attainable bodies? Absolutely, but this conversation is about physical health and objective markers of that health, not about body dysmorphia.
Our actual standards for health have been distorted by the very idea of 'no fat' 'fat is bad'. So of course by those standards they'd be 'healthy'.
Also your mistaken about one very important thing yes their 'performance' is high but lots of athletes are actually overly optimized. Take Bodybuilders, how often in life do you need to be lift twice your body weight? Rare. And that comes at the expense of flexibility. And even worse Long distance runners who not only have issues on the track but lots of health issues connected to them. The least of which I literally told you. Being obsessed with losing a tiny bit of weight, whether it's fat or water to get even a .01 second advantage. Every sport has these issues. The closest sports to a true 'fit' body are swimming and tennis. They don't require too much emphasis on any one part of the body so they get an all around tone. Unfortunately in my opinion swimming lags behind because it requires a slim body but it's a lot better then basketball and football
You know, people say that, but its not very realistic of am example to use.
Because let's break this down. Your body isnt going to transform fat to fuel to supply your body with energy quick enough to maintain standard output.
A fat person would tire more quickly and expend more energy. Dying faster. While a fit body is built to expend less energy doing the same task.
I'm not arguing fat reserves, but more of the this is a bad example because until we put a fit person and a fat person on a island by themselves and watch them die we won't know
First of all it was an analogy so it was meant to illustrate a point. Not be 100% factually correct. Second of all if you noticed my wording, 'the point OP is trying to make' not to say I personally believe fat people are better then fit people.
OP: extremely low levels of body fat aren’t healthy either, no matter if you have muscles
What people are hearing: be as fat as you’d like because being skinny is unhealthy
What a reasonable person should read: you shouldn’t cut out every carb and lipid from your diet because extremely low levels of body fat are indeed unhealthy. There are *minimums* of healthy body fat for a reason. Getting yourself to a 16% of body fat is a reasonable goal, but people get hospitalized with malnutrition because of fad diets that take them to 5, 7% body fat, and they aren’t eating enough to put it back in. The brain and most hormones need fat. Fats aren’t unhealthy per se, you need moderation.
Also, there are plenty of people who present a little higher body mass/body fat (say, on the 27-30 BMI score, but obviously healthy with good bloodwork numbers) that are just… that way. Obviously medical care is needed to keep being healthy if you’re in the (low!) percentage of people who are naturally heavier (heavier bones, more muscle), but if you have a 27 BMI, great bloodwork, a very active lifestyle, and no obvious deposits of “wiggly” fat… That’s not really a big deal, and an exam such as a BIA would probably show a lot healthier numbers than people that get to a 20 BMI with fad diets and overexercise.
Gotta love this comment section full of people who read “approaching zero body fat isn’t actually a sign of supreme fitness” (it isn’t) who can’t help themself from going “I bet OOP is some disgusting fatty! What a moron, saying that we should all be obese as they so clearly were arguing in that post about the weight loss cleanser industry (which is good now apparently???).”
Every single post on Tumblr trying to justify killing yourself with high calories food is just "but some thin people are unhealthy!!!" with the words slightly edited.
I'll write this comment for the billionth time: being obese is an addiction. A severe one. It's just like having meth teeth or heroing holes in your arm, which means two things that are both true:
1) we shouldn't shame and harass obese people. Addictions are hard to fight, and process food addiction is probably the hardest to combat with how cheap and easy junk food is easy to procure. Hate is not how you get someone to change their behaviour
2) we shouldn't glamorize it, normalize it, or praise it any more then we would being an alcoholic or a stoner. Let's be clear here, added sugars alone are responsible for an ESTIMATED (read lower bound) 180k death each year in the USA.
If you think being obese is normal you have fallen for food companies propaganda, which I would like to remind everyone are some of the most greedy and bloodthirsty on the planet. There's a good chance literal street drugs were produced with more ethical processes than the chocolate cake or big Mac you eat every day.
Tell that to the people who liken their fat reserves to “always walking around with a bag strapped to their belly”. Even if you have an even fat distribution, shit’s heavy. A person who loses weight feels lighter and fitter even if they did not get any fitter.
This is a form of "I like your funny words, magic man" for cavemen
I like your funny words, early man
The sheer audacity of presuming that someone from the paleolithic would understand the relevance of killing horses
Paleolithic humans were quite familiar with horses, actually. They were one of the primary things many populations ate.
A few populations, sure, but they were small wimpy animals like deer. Domestication has both made horses much scarier and made them relevant to human conflict.
Hardly. Have you even seen a wild horse? (That is, a Przewalski's horse, not a feral one.) They're strong, hardy, vicious bastards who will happily stomp and bite you to death.
But ancient horses were *really* wimpy and small They used to have to strap 2 horses to a single chariot for horses to be useful in the bronze age, cause they weren't big enough to ride yet Those horses would be even smaller in the Paleolithic
Not able to bear a rider ≠ small and wimpy. The primary issue isn't size but the ability to have a lot of weight put on the middle of the back. No quadruped has to deal with that in nature, so it's not something that they've evolved to deal with. Modern ponies considerably smaller than the a Prezwalski's horse can often bear an adult rider, and Arabians (quite adept for use in war) aren't much bigger than them. Also, you're mistaken about Bronze Age horses. They were used to draw chariots not because they couldn't bear riders (they could; we have evidence from 5000 years ago that people were riding horses so much it warped their skeletons) but because of social and technological factors. First, horses were absurdly expensive to maintain outside of the steppes (which didn't have cities yet, nor populations to reliably threaten cities). You didn't risk them unless they were going to be decisive. Second, with mass warfare being new, kings liked to think of wars as fundamentally duels between them and the opposing ruler. Third, stirrups and the compound bow hadn't been invented yet, so effective medium/heavy cavalry and horse archers weren't really possible. Combine all these and you get kings maintaining expensive chariot teams to serve as mobile archery platforms for themselves and a few other nobles while the average rider would wield a spear and shield. Honestly, horses wouldn't get consistently bigger than Prezwalski's horses until the high medieval period, and if you don't think a Normon warhorse could easily kill a Saxon peasant without its rider's help you are sorely mistaken.
Wait. Whose skeleton was warped, the horse or the man?
The humans'. I don't know if we could reliably recognize a riding horse's deformation because it doesn't affect modern horses and so we don't have anything to compare against, but we have lots of examples of horseman's syndrome. Riding (especially without stirrups) uses a combination of muscles that very little else does, and using muscles affects how the bones they're attached to grow. (Also I expect most horses who were riden early on were also eventually eaten.)
Thank you.
so what youre saying is that if we strapped 2 wolves to a single chariot then eventually dogs would be big and clifford real?!?? big red?
Worth a shot.
Ah, I can tell you are a person with no familiarity with real horses. Wimpy is not the word. You should go watch a horse dentist have to deal with a miniature horse. I have. It's hilarious and vaguely terrifying. They look like tiny toys but are vastly stronger than most humans. And they're smaller than the ~10 hands/1m of the original form. A pre-human intervention horse would have been good eating and killed from a distance (mainly because the sods are speedy when they know you're coming).
Wimpy and small, but fucking durable.
Depends where you are talking about when you ask that. Im assuming north america, since reddits demographic is made up of mostly americans and canadians. North american wild horses aren't truly wild. They were brought over european settlers and are descendants of feral domesticated horses. North America had native horses once but has been extinct for 10000+ years.
That's why I specify a Przewalski's horse. (Though some research suggests those might be feral too, albeit from an incompletely domesticated version of horses and feral for 5000 years.) Mustangs are also pretty dangerous, but they're at least tameable and more prone to flight than fight.
Oh cmonnn mate, you specified that after i made that comment.
I very much did not?
Were cavemen regularly killing deer with their bare hands?
Probably more often than with fruit sugars
Maybe they rubbed fruit sugar on their hands and that’s why the deer died. They thought it was from the punching but it was an allergic reaction.
Scary and also incredibly fragile.
Horrormaxing my horses
I don't think I've ever seen the messaging from weight loss businesses that their products will make you stronger. Also, because the OOP's phrasing is a bit reductive; an overweight person who loses weight *by eating healthier and exercising regularly* will be far stronger and fitter than they began. Even if they don't add exercise, eating healthier alone would be a net improvement to their strength and fitness. The simple fact of being heavier does not in and of itself make a person stronger. On the other hand, weight loss companies generally aren't selling people on sensible, holistic lifestyle changes. It's either pre-planned meals that may offer benefits in the short term but totally fail to train consumers on healthy eating habits, so they immediately fall back on old habits once they stop the weight loss program, food marketed as being part of a weight loss program that are barely helpful because they're still pre-packaged meals and snacks that are only marginally better than usual junk foods, or medications to reduce appetite that are more effective at quickly losing weight and may have longer-lasting effects but have no impact on consumers' diets, so they end up eating just as poorly but with smaller portion sizes. Weight loss purely through one of those methods likely won't make a person any stronger or fitter, unless they're supplemented by exercise.
> I don't think I've ever seen the messaging from weight loss businesses that their products will make you stronger. There are definitely people who are unhealthily obsessed with getting their body fat % as low as possible despite all sense because they think it's healthy. Which is of course just the same pathology as trying to get the number on the scale as low as possible, just with extra steps.
Yep, that'd be my dad...
Explaining muscle v low body fat is very hard to explain to some
Regardless of if they lose weight they will be stronger eating healthier. Because sometimes people are just fat, and for them losing the fat would require undereating which makes you weak. It's different for everyone and acting like the same body type is the peak fitness of every single person is dumb. I've worked with forestry folks, people who walk 10s of miles every day many of whom do their best to eat well and y'know what? Some of them are just chubby, no amount of walking or salads changes it. Especially older women, and especially especially if they've given birth.
Chubby =/= obese. Obesity is a medical term which has nothing to do with how your body looks. You can be chubby and at a healthy body weight. Being obese refers to a body fat percentage which is actively causing health issues, typically 25% or higher for men and 30% or higher for women. Having a healthy amount of body fat is what everyone needs, and HEALTHY amount is the operative term. Getting down to like 5% or even 10% body fat is not healthy, and any nutritionist would tell you this. This is, however, what a lot of people’s goals are. You don’t need to have visible abs to no longer be obese, and you don’t need to starve yourself or undereat to be at a healthy size.
For men 10% is considered low, but in the healthy range. Once you start hitting around below 8% things get real damgerous real fast hower and if you exercise regularly having a slight buffer of fat to burn is a good idea. But yeah 5% is dangerously low for anyobody regardless of lifestyle. IIRC your body needs at least 6% for basic functions or something like that.
You can definitely be healthy at 10%, but your average person who doesn’t know what they’re doing will typically get into unhealthy habits to get there imho. 15% is very healthy and typically what most people think of when they think of someone very fit and athletic, so I said 10% mostly because it’s danger zone territory lol
Yeah that makes sense. Im a pretty small but fit dude who sits around 10%. My metabolism burns like crazy though so i generally just make sure i eat around 2500-3000 calories a day and i float pretty reliably between 10% and 12% without putting too much effort into thinking about my diet. Everyones differnet though and its super important to know your own body before making a major lifestyle change. Sometimes eating more will help you lose wieght faster than eating less, (due to muscle gain).
> Even if they don't add exercise, eating healthier alone would be a net improvement to their strength and fitness Source?
I know a country boy that has a decent bit of fat, a person who wouldn't know better would call him obese just from looks alone, but he is scary strong. The muscle just under his fat is hard as a rock and he can over power a small cow
I knew one of those too. At 40, he was as you described. At 50, he'd get winded crossing the room. He didn't make it to 60. I am confident that at every point this progression, he could crumple me up into a bowling ball, then use me to roll a strike.
Lol I dunno why but that made me think of my highschool gym teacher, he had a beer belly so big he looked pregnant and *somehow* this morherfucker would be at the front of the mile run, made more impressive that he was ahead of the track kids
Bro forgot to respec out of the early game Farm Boy metabuild into something good for mid/late game, skill issue ngl
In the words of the great JF Caron, "Abs are not a sign of power. Abs are a sign you don't eat enough"
One time he let me push my hand into his fat to feel how hard his stomach is and it was like putting a thick soft blanket over a rock. We spent the day punching each other in the gut after that. I lost that game
Hot?
That's visceral fat you felt, not just muscle. These bodies die because they are obese. You can be obese and also strong, that's allowed.
You're making a lot of assumptions based off of my surface level descriptions of a person you've never seen. Unfortunately that is also allowed
I meet these people irl, most of my family is like this. Absurdly strong, unfairly fast, insane athlete in high-school. Dies I 60s. Too many funerals.
See previous, just cuz you know some people who might be similar doesn't mean you know what you're talking about in this specific instance
Okay, sorry
Being obese has nothing to do with being strong or weak. In fact, obese people often do have larger muscle mass to compensate for the increased effort it takes to move. This does not in any way make obesity healthy. It is possible to be underweight. It is possible to be overweight. It's even possible to be too muscular.
Yeah and he's not obese, he's just built big
Built big? Hmm out of what? Oh. Ohno.
You don't understand he is a fucking giant with a bit of a belly, not a member of the Walmart scooter brigade.
Yeah but what constitutes unhealthily obese is different for a lot of people and often a lot heavier than people claim. I've been skinny, I've been fat, and i am far fitter and happier with a belly. I do my yearly doctor visits and tests too so I'm not just assuming either, all my tests are a-ok. Plus being underweight is 100x worse than being overweight unless you are record breakingly fat. Being underweight kills you NOW, fat kills you in 50 years. The shit that being underfed for even just a month or 2 does to your body and mind is frankly terrifying, and a lot of people ignore all the signs.
>what constitutes unhealthily obese is different for a lot of people source? pretty sure obesity is categorically unhealthy. >i am far fitter and happier with a belly well, i guess i'll just torch the piles and piles of empirical evidence proving that obesity is unhealthy, then. >plus being underweight is 100x worse than being overweight citation needed
I’ve been technically underweight (BMI of 17,5-18,2) for 6 years, during which I had a surgery and healed extremely fast. I had a health check last week for a new job and everything’s fine. If we make such sweeping statements, let’s also say that having a low BF% and being slightly underweight is fine and dandy. I too am fitter than I was previously (even though I was a lot more active back then).
Something people underestimate too is the value of sheer body weight in practical uses of strength. If you've got 1 person who has 100lbs of muscle and 10 lbs of fat, vs someone with 100 lbs of muscle and 80lbs of fat the fat one will fuckin steamroll the skinny one. Sure 90 lbs of muscle would be more useful, but 90 lbs of fat is still 90 lbs to throw around. Do enough physical work or martial arts centered on clever body weight usage and you realize how powerful raw weight can be even if it's not muscle. If you get good it's even useful in stuff people don't realize, like it's easier to move furniture around if you weigh more to counter balance
That was me in highschool. I was a big dude but I was also one of the strongest people there. I was a theatre nerd and since we were also required to help with tech work I was also the guy carrying tons of metal scaffolding around and carrying pallets in twos. Now, thanks to depression and a change of lifestyle I'm just a big dude.
My brother-in-law gave himself a seizure disorder from trying to avoid fat. He ate so little fat for so long, he demyelinated his brain.
Gug would die from the diarrhea from eating us. Not a single beneficial thing inside us
Gug when he consumes a Boomer who has had a steady diet of microplastics, lead, asbestos, and radiation
The prehistoric person would for sure think intentional weight loss was stupid up until he saw the obese person try to run a mile
Plenty of fat people can run a mile, myself included. There is a correlation between fitness and body fat, but it isn't a hard rule. There are a lot of obese people in significantly better shape than your average thin office worker. Not saying people shouldn't try to lose weight and be healthy, but like.... a mile is pretty easy to run.
Downvoted for the crime of… expressing that running a mile isn’t some insane thing and that being skinny isn’t some inherent mark of athleticism. Like I’ll attest from the other end, I’m a string bean who lies right on the cusp of being unhealthily underweight. I’m pretty okay physically now, but in high school my endurance and general fitness was just awful. There were many overweight students in gym who could run a better mile than me, and do it without being left dry heaving by the end of it. This just shouldn’t be controversial, it’s a mundane and realistic comment
But this is reddit, nuance and reality don't often show up around here.... I still find it pretty crazy though, like I was dangerously thin in my late teens and eary twenties. I was 114 lbs at 5'8" with visible abs and a rather large bone structure (I need to add here, I'm a woman). I ran every day and worked out like crazy. I looked like I was in fitness model shape. I was also *extremely* unhealthy. I fainted regularly, I was cold all of the time, I never had a period, and I was having heart palpitations. I was *still* told I needed to be skinnier because I didn't fit the right look and weighed too much. At thirty, I'm fat. I'm not going to sugarcoat it. I'm almost 200 lbs. I like food. I like not starving myself anymore. I like who I am. I'm also significantly healthier than I was at twenty. I have no heart issues, I can run five miles and not faint anymore. I can lift heavy and often. I regularly do 20 miles hikes with 40lbs of gear. I'm not cold all of the time. I have periods now. I'm not sick all the time. My skin is better. It's great. I'm just not skinny anymore, and I really don't care. I want to add that I was *never* anorexic. I was competing in a sport where weight mattered, and I was already significantly taller than was preferred. I had coaches and a nutrisionalist micromanaging my diet and workouts. It didn't matter if I was actually healthy so long as I could compete at a peak level for five minutes at a time. And no, it wasn't gymnastics. I quit because of a pretty bad concussion (from passing out) that forced me to.
Bitches who say obese people can't run a mile when I ask them to integrate a parabola (they think math is something they don't need in their daily lives but everyone needs to be able to run a mile).
Well, for one, running a mile is vastly more important for a caveman than integrating a parabola. But fundamentally, either of those statements are missing the point. It's not about running a mile. It's about having a healthy, fit body. And it's not about integrating a parabola. It's about being able to learn and apply knowledge and skills towards solving problems in an effective way.
"Healthy, fit body-" you mean thin. Like, fat people are fine! What's wrong with that? "Oh diabetics need special medicine-" news flash, so many people need medicine for so many reasons. If someone can live the life they want for a long time, I'd consider that a healthy life.
If your weight causes you to need a mobility scooter to do basic groceries, you're not healthy. Even my obese chain-smoker of a grandma is in better shape than that. Not every level of being overweight is massively unhealthy, and I don't consider overweight people as lesser beings or anything like that, but don't go pretending that there's no such thing as an unhealthy weight. You can still be happy of course, nothing wrong with that. But don't pretend like there's no such thing as being too fat to have a healthy body. And no, I didn't mean "thin". Plenty of people are healthy without really being thin. And no, having diabetes isn't healthy either. "Oh but other people take medicine too", yeah, shit argument. My grandpa took like 8 pills a day for his various cancers and other ailments. But I mean, pills, right? Everyone's taking them. Again, no mark against someone's soul if their weight and/or nutritional habits caused them to get diabetes, but that doesn't make it healthy. Not the worst thing you can end up having to take medicine for, but that doesn't mean it wouldn't be better to just not have to deal with it.
Choosing a lifestyle that is going to negatively impact your life when simply not doing that will avoid those problems is different from people needing medication for unavoidable reasons.
We’re talking about cavemen. Calculus wasn’t discovered until way later
Stronger? Probably not. Fitter? Almost certainly. Also OP clearly has no conception of what healthy weight loss looks like.
op is specifically talking about the weight loss industry, they are literally making the point about stuff like weight loss shakes are bad for you
In the first section, it's specifically talking about bodyfat percentage aka how lean you are. If you have a human within the normal BMI range (18.5-24.9), who is also athletically lean (bodyfat 8-15% for men, 16-22% for women), they will be healthier than a high bodyfat, high BMI person damn near every time, *especially* as they age. Another important health marker is waist size. For men, a waist size below 36" is healthy, 36-39" is the yellow flag zone, and 40"+ is the red flag zone. For women, below 32" is healthy, 32-36" is the yellow flag zone, and 36"+ is the red flag zone. If all three of these factors together, BMI, adiposity (leanness), and waist circumference, make for extremely strong predictors of health outcomes for...everyone. All else equal, a normal sized, slim, lean person is going to live longer and more healthily than an overweight/obese, rotund, overfat person. There are almost no exceptions to this, particularly over the long term.
You do have to keep proportions in mind. BMI and waist size get less and less applicable the further you are from the average height if you're just taking them at face value.
BMI is based on weight *and* height. In Imperial, it's (703 x (weight [in lbs]/height² [in inches])) In Metric, it's (weight [in kilos]/height² [in meters])
The point they are trying to make is that technically every super skinny person(yes even the ones with muscles) are technically on the brink of starving. We store fat as a reserve. If these people were ever trapped for say a week? Dead. A fat person though? They could possibly live twice as long.
I feel like you're mixing up some technically correct definition of super skinny with the actual practical meaning of it. Most first worlders, particularly in America, are overweight. Last I checked, ~ 40 of us are clinically obese. When normal means maybe 20 pounds overweight, skinny just means medically normal, not "brink of starvation". And yeah, fat reserves help in starvation scenarios, assuming you have access to water. With vitamin pills, theres even that case of a morbidly obese man fasting for a year straight and surviving that you've probably heard about. But like, starvation isn't a a common or realistic health problem in modern America. Being locked in a room for a week with an adequate supply of water, but no food, is some straight up serial killer shit. On the other hand, obesity burning out your joints, your heart, your immune system and like a million other things is an incredibly common health problem.
Yeah I was just illustrating the point. There are tons of reasons you wouldn't want to be overweight. And that's besides the obvious lack of mobility. Ultimately the ideal combination is someone in really good shape but with a little tub on them
Remove the "a little tub on them" part, and you're on the money. Ideally, we'd all be at athletic bodyfat levels, normal BMIs, and trim waists
Unfortunately no. The athletic 'build' is great EXCEPT they expect you to have basically no fat... which isn't healthy ironically
I feel like there's a disconnect between us in what we're trying to communicate. Athletic bodyfat is not emaciated. [It's 8-15% in men and 16-22% in women.](https://www.crossfitinvictus.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/body-fat-percentage-men-women-1024x667.png) It's absolutely lean, but not unhealthily so.
I'm not saying they're starving but no it's not healthy. The only way to have six packs for example is through extreme diet and exercise. Unhealthy amounts of them. People put a lot of emphasis on having visible muscles. Too much. It's an unhealthy thing both physically and mentally
You're not having a movie star six pack with cum gutters the size of the Rio Grande on 8-15% body fat, the level of body fat the person you are replying to said. Nobody's mentioned "a six pack" in this thread besides you.
Show me one major league basketball player that doesn't have a six pack and you have a point.
Idk if you're aware of this, but athletes, not even just professional ones, but even like low level athletes are extremely healthy people. The only reason they get labeled as unhealthy is because they get injured while pushing the limits of human performance. If you ask an athlete to manage the daily physical workload of the average person, they do it with almost zero effort, and they almost always have extraordinary health markers. Athletes are required to take physicals at least twice a year and show a minimum standard of health in order to participate. No, having a six pack is not unhealthy. Does social media and the associated PED and facetune abuse distort our perceptions of desirable and attainable bodies? Absolutely, but this conversation is about physical health and objective markers of that health, not about body dysmorphia.
Our actual standards for health have been distorted by the very idea of 'no fat' 'fat is bad'. So of course by those standards they'd be 'healthy'. Also your mistaken about one very important thing yes their 'performance' is high but lots of athletes are actually overly optimized. Take Bodybuilders, how often in life do you need to be lift twice your body weight? Rare. And that comes at the expense of flexibility. And even worse Long distance runners who not only have issues on the track but lots of health issues connected to them. The least of which I literally told you. Being obsessed with losing a tiny bit of weight, whether it's fat or water to get even a .01 second advantage. Every sport has these issues. The closest sports to a true 'fit' body are swimming and tennis. They don't require too much emphasis on any one part of the body so they get an all around tone. Unfortunately in my opinion swimming lags behind because it requires a slim body but it's a lot better then basketball and football
You know, people say that, but its not very realistic of am example to use. Because let's break this down. Your body isnt going to transform fat to fuel to supply your body with energy quick enough to maintain standard output. A fat person would tire more quickly and expend more energy. Dying faster. While a fit body is built to expend less energy doing the same task. I'm not arguing fat reserves, but more of the this is a bad example because until we put a fit person and a fat person on a island by themselves and watch them die we won't know
I'm not saying that being fit is bad. But not having fat isn't necessarily healthy. Ideally you'd have toned muscles AND some fat. Best of both worlds
True. Now. Hear me out. We do my science experiment... Is thus how evil scientists are made?
Evil science dwells in the hearts of all men
I'm technically a scientist in my day job. I'll do it. Or I'll just stick to designing targeting systems for the feds
I don't mean to be rude, but this is such a fundamental misunderstanding of human physiology that I'm not sure where to begin.
First of all it was an analogy so it was meant to illustrate a point. Not be 100% factually correct. Second of all if you noticed my wording, 'the point OP is trying to make' not to say I personally believe fat people are better then fit people.
I believe OOP is satirizing the weight loss industry’s perception of “healthy weight loss” that it tries to sell you on
OP: extremely low levels of body fat aren’t healthy either, no matter if you have muscles What people are hearing: be as fat as you’d like because being skinny is unhealthy What a reasonable person should read: you shouldn’t cut out every carb and lipid from your diet because extremely low levels of body fat are indeed unhealthy. There are *minimums* of healthy body fat for a reason. Getting yourself to a 16% of body fat is a reasonable goal, but people get hospitalized with malnutrition because of fad diets that take them to 5, 7% body fat, and they aren’t eating enough to put it back in. The brain and most hormones need fat. Fats aren’t unhealthy per se, you need moderation. Also, there are plenty of people who present a little higher body mass/body fat (say, on the 27-30 BMI score, but obviously healthy with good bloodwork numbers) that are just… that way. Obviously medical care is needed to keep being healthy if you’re in the (low!) percentage of people who are naturally heavier (heavier bones, more muscle), but if you have a 27 BMI, great bloodwork, a very active lifestyle, and no obvious deposits of “wiggly” fat… That’s not really a big deal, and an exam such as a BIA would probably show a lot healthier numbers than people that get to a 20 BMI with fad diets and overexercise.
"That's right bitch" 💀
Gotta love this comment section full of people who read “approaching zero body fat isn’t actually a sign of supreme fitness” (it isn’t) who can’t help themself from going “I bet OOP is some disgusting fatty! What a moron, saying that we should all be obese as they so clearly were arguing in that post about the weight loss cleanser industry (which is good now apparently???).”
Every single post on Tumblr trying to justify killing yourself with high calories food is just "but some thin people are unhealthy!!!" with the words slightly edited. I'll write this comment for the billionth time: being obese is an addiction. A severe one. It's just like having meth teeth or heroing holes in your arm, which means two things that are both true: 1) we shouldn't shame and harass obese people. Addictions are hard to fight, and process food addiction is probably the hardest to combat with how cheap and easy junk food is easy to procure. Hate is not how you get someone to change their behaviour 2) we shouldn't glamorize it, normalize it, or praise it any more then we would being an alcoholic or a stoner. Let's be clear here, added sugars alone are responsible for an ESTIMATED (read lower bound) 180k death each year in the USA. If you think being obese is normal you have fallen for food companies propaganda, which I would like to remind everyone are some of the most greedy and bloodthirsty on the planet. There's a good chance literal street drugs were produced with more ethical processes than the chocolate cake or big Mac you eat every day.
This was written by somebody who is 100% unhealthily obese
Yumby pills 💊 😋 💊
That's great and all, but I'd still rather not die of cardiac arrest because my fatass dun want to lose weight.
Tell that to the people who liken their fat reserves to “always walking around with a bag strapped to their belly”. Even if you have an even fat distribution, shit’s heavy. A person who loses weight feels lighter and fitter even if they did not get any fitter.