It Used To Be Hard To Get Obese

Bigger Stronger Leaner
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I was thinking about old school lifters and their insane nutritional protocols and it dawned on me that it used to be legitimately HARD to get obese. These days, we have shows like “My 600lb life” and documentaries showing westerners that have achieved bodyweights in the 600+lb range with bodyfat percentages at 50% or greater and gameshows like “The Biggest Loser” wherein obese people are pitted against each other in a race to transform, and we have enough of these folks around that we can have multiple seasons of these shows and documentaries (currently TWELVE seasons of “My 600lb life” exist)…but back in the day?

Here’s Paul Anderson

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I tried to find the least flattering photo of him I could, as he was billed at his heaviest at 5’9 and 360lbs, although here he was in the 1955 Olympics at a “svelte” 304lbs

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Paul was one of the strongest humans to ever walk the planet, absolutely destroying strength records that existed in his day and doing so with ease. He made the connection early between increasing his bodyweight and getting stronger, and ALSO made a connection between consumption of sugar during training and it’s ability to help him digest protein, and so, in turn, Paul had a habit of drinking HALF A PINT OF HONEY alongside a muscle building beverage of ice cream, milk, soybean meal and raw eggs, all part of his regular consumption of a gallon of milk a day alongside very much in the way of solid food.

The dude was drinking honey and ice cream like they were beverages…but STILL only managed to get up to 360lbs at 5’9. He was barely halfway to “My 600lb life”.

How about Bruce Randall?

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I’ve written about my love an admiration for this delightful lunatic who managed to squat 680lbs with a leg he broke in 7 places after getting into a motorcycle accident, but part of him accomplishing that was by way of gaining up to a bodyweight of 401lbs at a height of 6’2.

How did he accomplish this? With a diet that included a breakfast of “two quarts of milk, 28 fried eggs and a loaf and a half of bread”. I did a quick number crunch, and that’s ,171 calories of milk (64g of fat and protein, 88g carbs), 2,262 calories of eggs (145g of fat and protein) NOT counting the butter they were fried in, and (assuming 20 slices per loaf and a wheat bread) 2100 calories of bread, (about 30g of fat, 100g of protein, and 360g of carbs): a total of 5,533 calories, about 240g of fat, 309g of protein and 448g of carbs…for breakfast! His other meal exploits are equally legendary.

But, again…you go into any Walmart today and you’re going to see SEVERAL residents that look much fatter than Bruce did at his fattest, before trimming down to 222lbs and winning some bodybuilding shows. Bruce made it his goal to become as big as physically possible so he could be as strong as humanly possible, but he still “capped out” at about 400lbs.

The Saxon Trio?

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Legendary strength performers, with Arthur Saxon being the breakout star, with a 2 hands anyhow lift of 448lbs among other just ridiculous feats for the late 1800s, but even more absurd was how these dudes ate

A typical day for these performers included breakfast of “24 eggs and 3 pounds of smoked bacon; porridge with cream, honey, marmalade and tea with plenty of sugar. At three o’clock they had dinner: ten pounds of meat was consumed with vegetables (but not much potatoes); sweet fruits, raw or cooked, sweet cakes, salads, sweet puddings, cocoa and whipped cream and very sweet tea. Supper, after the show, they had cold meat, smoked fish, much butter, cheese and beer.”

There are SO many more examples out there (J.C. Hise, John McCallum, Louis Cyr, etc), but it’s fascinating to think about how, today, mega obesity can be “accidentally” achieved through a long and dedicated campaign of physical neglect paired with consuming “foodlike products” that are readily available (to the point that, with door dash, we don’t even need to leave our home to have them brought to us), whereas, back in the day, if you were training hard, when you ate to the point that you’d put professional eaters on notice, you just got stupidly big and strong, and only “fat enough” to not even qualify to star on reality television.

I’d say there’s at least a few takeaways from there. I know our demographic is a little bit on the older side these days, but I STILL see tons of young trainees that are SO afraid to eat in pursuit of physical transformation out of this fear of “getting fat”. Social media has created this illusion that everyone is photoshoot ready 100% of the time, year round, with never even a blur to the abs. Instead, historically, we observe plenty of individuals that took the time to chow down and grow big in the pursuit of…well, growing big! And I feel like we can deduce that, so long as these dudes are eating quality food and training stupidly hard ( maybe something like THIS for example or this ) they’re going to see success: it’s when we break one of those 2 simple rules that we run into issues.

Because seriously: if you can drink honey and ice cream like a beverage or eat a loaf and a half of bread for breakfast and NOT end up on “my 600lb life”, it means something else must be going on!

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I think this is the biggest key. They weren’t eating ho-hos and Doritos. While i believe in the CICO model of weight gain/loss, not every calorie is utilized by the body the same way. I think science is still behind on how the body processes all these foods at a cellular level and what it does with the parts of the highly processed foods it can’t store.
I have been 250+ since essentially my sophomore year in high school, getting up to 320 at one point (thanks full time job, grad school, and Wendy’s). Hardly anybody believes me when I tell them I sit around 290 all the time (“you don’t look like 290lbs”). My coworkers seem amazed that while they all have grown guts and gotten weaker over the last 5 years I have generally remained consistent - and I don’t train that hard. Some basic daily movement and cutting back alcohol would do wonders for most people.

I have disney world passes this year and some of the folks I see walking around should probably not be outside in the Florida heat. And they wear horrible footwear for the day (I average 12 miles a day for a open-close disney day).

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Fully concur with this. As much as the “If It Fits Your Macros” crowd would love to offer the idea that it all boils down to macronutrient calculations and calories, this may be true as far as WEIGHT is concerned, but once we actually look at body composition, we’re going to see things take a dramatic turn. Hormone profiles are going to get wrecked eating this stuff, especially with the insane insulin and blood sugar spikes that accompany foods that are sweeter than anything we possibly achieve on earth and paired with seed oils and salt to create the unholy trinity of carbs/sugars, fats and salt that simply does NOT exist anywhere in nature and does a fantastic job of addicting us.

That Disney observation is too true. Getting out in public really goes to show you the sheer state of physical decline the majority of the population exists in every day without even being concerned about it.

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It’s sad, especially when it appears to be mostly Americans falling into that model at Disney World. Many of the international visitors (excluding the UK, they are on the same path as the US) are either in shape or carry a normal amount of a few extra pounds, very few fall into the obese category.

I get that food can be addicting and emotional eating/binge eating are serious problems that should be addressed by a mental health professional. But the bar of don’t look like total crap is so low these days.

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To really simplify this:

Calories determine your weight.
Macronutrients determine your body composition.
Micronutrients determine how you feel.

There’s some overlap between them, but that’s pretty much what it boils down to!

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In much earlier decades, food just wasn’t consumed in the quantities that it is today. It was just too expensive to eat and vegetate. Plus, today’s food is less nutrient dense than it was the mid 1900’s. Many eat way too much empty calories, which in most cases, leads to further eating of empty calories.

Though very few here remember when the test pattern on the TV came on at midnight, only to be followed by “snow” until 6:00am when the test pattern returned. So, if you can’t sleep at night, you will have to entertain yourself.

BTW, most had only two or three television stations before UHF came along.

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This is true, of course, but needs a qualifier. Calories on the package are determined by bomb calorimetry. That’s not to say that’s the same amount of calories your body derives from that food. For example, raw nuts. The calories per serving on the package are not the caloric hit your body will absorb. While highly processed foods are made up of calories that are easily digestible (and are not satiating on top of that).

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Just wish more people would understand this.

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My MIL lives in Florida, and had never been to Epcot, the Disney park she wanted to see. I held my objections and went along with her, my wife and siblings in law a few months back while we were visiting. I felt like I was raped financially by a mouse the entire time. That isn’t my point to this post. It was one of the saddest displays of masculinity I’ve ever seen. We were there all day, IIRC, Epcot averages about 25k-30k people a day. I identified one guy that objectively had a better physique than I do. About 2-3 others that were subjectively similar. Nearly the rest looked as if they had not been outside in a year, and ate oreos all day. Just soft and pasty. I started to wonder if it was Disney repelling masculinity, which I do think is true to an extent. It just seems like out of probably at least 10,000 males there should be more than a handful of men that look to take care of themselves.

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But it’s a family place. Plenty of arguably masculine dads out there take kids. It is weird though. I am not a super on shape dude but at Disney I feel like Achilles.

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These conversations always remind me of a quote from an article on the invention of rubberized asphalt.

“Industry despises waste.”.

The vast majority of food products that come in a box, bag, tub- what ever, are agricultural waste byproducts that someone figured out how to make edible. Not healthy, but edible.

They’re basically ruberized asphalt.

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I grew up with Walt Disney (and that is how we referred to Disney). My favorite Walt Disney TV show was the three, one hour episodes of Davy Crockett played by Fess Parker. Seemed like 100% testosterone to me.

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As a kid, I loved the Davy Crockett movie. Me and my best friend (still to this day) probably watched it 20 times when we were in grade school.

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A major aspect of “It Used To Be Hard To Get Obese” is the culture differences of the eras prior to today.

In the 1950’s if you didn’t work it isn’t likely that you would be getting fat, much less obese. Most work required some physical activity and sitting all day was left to bosses and his secretarial staff.

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And I can hear the tune in my ear, “Davy… Davy Crockett, king of the wild frontier.”

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:raised_hand: The biggest IIFYM cheerleader here. Idk, I just personally have not had this experience. Going on 15 years now of my journey into closely tracking and watching my diet for body comp goals and firmly came to the conclusion that macro breakdown is truly the only thing that matters. And this includes improvements in blood work and overall how I feel. Idk if I’m truly an exception. I certainly didn’t grow up with stellar genetics or anything and put on bad weight very easily. I’ve gotten as high as 235 lb and was eating the best I’ve ever eaten as far as micros, but was by far at my worst across all healthy metrics, even my mood. And each time I’ve gotten my leanest and had best bloodwork to date, I was eating cheetohs, skinny cow ice cream sandwiches and diet coke pretty much daily. And I swear on my mama’s life, all else equal, I actually look better with some junk thrown in daily than if I’m super strict. My hypothesis is that getting those little bits of enjoyment from fun foods each day reduce my overall stress levels.

I’m not gonna get dogmatic about it though and recommend it to everyone else. I think things like sensitivities can’t be emphasized enough. Last summer I became lactose intolerant overnight, so obviously that’s a consideration. But as long as we are generally tolerating our foods and getting enough variety around some staple “good” foods, I’m a huge proponent of IIFYM for overall peace of mind.

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I love this simplification!

That’s really just too true. At this point, you don’t even have to train to look better: you just have to keep from looking worse!

Spot on. The body hungers for nutrition and we just give it energy instead. It takes so long to actually GET nutrition from the nutrient void junk we have that we WAY overconsume energy as a result. You look at the food that those old lifters were putting away and it was FULL of solid nutrition, which is most likely why they grew so strong vs so fat.

This is a very salient point: appreciate you bringing it up. This paired with food intolerances that a lot of people have can really alter how nutrition works.

Hell, that’s the story of whey protein right there. It was a waste product of cheese manufacturing that someone was able to repurpose into a protein supplement and sell. And Jesus, the history of margarine is atrocious.

To say nothing of how much people simply walked more in general. Basic, regular physical activity was so much the norm.

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No shame in having a different experience or opinion here my dude: I’m glad it’s worked out for you.

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I very much enjoyed this.

My two cents:

  1. Getting obese was harder before sugar became widely available.
  2. Most people burn fewer calories through work and exercise than at most other times in history.
  3. Modern food is engineered to be more addictive than natural alternatives.
  4. Food is cheaper as a percentage of income than at most times in history.
  5. The number of products carried by a typical grocery store has increased by seven times over the last thirty years.
  6. Going through medical school twenty years ago, you might have spent less than five hours discussing “sleep” or “the gut microbiome”. You might have been taught nutrition did not generally affect the brain. You might have barely heard about “AMPK” or “mTOR”.
  7. Nutrition studies and reports are often useless. Good studies are very expensive, and hard to conduct. Our understanding of individual variations, the two pounds of gut bacteria that digest your food, the role of nutrition on thought, the detailed biochemistry of metabolizing specific foods, how the brain works (and 2/3 of your body’s nerves are in the gut), “inflammation”, neuroinflammation, sirtuins, autophagy, age as disease… are very incomplete. We don’t know which “generally accepted as safe” chemicals are safe, yet we also complain about things which are not that bad - such as saturated fats. Snackwells are not the answer that you seek.
  8. That said, of course healthier macros are better for you than highly processed crap even if you can achieve composition goals. Your mother was no fool.
  9. Weight training burns fewer calories than people think.
  10. People who appear on TV shows seek notoriety. Those who shop at Walmart seek low prices.
  11. Fast food restaurants have only been a thing for about a century. Ditto mass-produced cars.
  12. AI and smartphones will solve the problem! They have no disadvantages, and tech companies are primarily looking out for your interests to improve society and unite mankind/womankind/polykind under a banner of human flourishing and solidarity.
  13. Life expectancy in the US has basically doubled over just 150 years. Forty extra years to gain weight!
  14. People are not yeast, fruit flies or mice. Mice die if they go four days without food. Studies showing the benefits of nutrients are very interesting, and may be valid, but cannot be interpreted without human trials which take much time and money.
  15. You know nothing, John Snow.
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Your 2 cents is more like a 95 Theses!

Weight training burns fewer calories than people think.

I feel like this particularly deserves addressing. This is, once again, where CICO misleads people. So many folks in the fitness sphere are engaged in this race to try to burn off all the calories they consume in the pursuit of achieving a desired body, and frequently they employ exercise as a means to do this. In doing so, they tend to work against their own goals: the appetite generated through hard training tends to significantly outpace the energy consumed from it. Especially when we factor in that many folks try to burn calories through HARD training, which tends to rely primarily on sugar as a fuel source. This leads to a vicious cycle of burning sugar, craving sugar, eating sugar, spiking insulin, which then perpetuates craving more and more sugar.

Dan John has spoken that the 3 most effective fat burning activities we can engage in are sleeping, walking and sitting. No one likes to hear that. They wanna try to blast the fat off their body with some sort of intense cycling workout where they see the machine say “1000 calories burned”…but it just sets us up for failure.

The function of hard training isn’t to burn the calories: it’s to make it so that the food we’re eating turns INTO something that we want it to be. We better partition nutrients, prevent “metabolic derangement”, build muscle, improve our hormones, etc etc. Just the thing we saw with these champions of eating and training. They put a LOT of good fuel in their bodies and trained hard enough to turn it into something valuable.

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