The reason why all of these talks (the ones about accepting being overweight) don’t come from men is because this whole body acceptance thing is coming straight from modern feminist movements, that are known to be utter crap.
They’re trying to shoe-horn the notion that being overweight is perfectly fine both for aesthetics and health. While aesthetics end up being subjective, health is not.
People like that girl have no idea what they’re talking about, simple as that. They don’t even realize (or they pretend not to realize) that all “fat” athletes have strict training regimes, strict diets and overall a lifestyle that the average obese person can only dream of.
EDIT: ok I missed the blabbering about the capitalist patriarchy the first time I saw the video. Gonna stick with my initial remark, this is just a third wave feminist in her final form, there’s just no amount of reasoning or intelligent thought left into her.
In truth, I have been trying so hard to not be like everyone else for so long that I can’t even fathom the desire for acceptance by the majority.
For the specific topic of BMI and being fat; it’s mixed. I think you can have an obese BMI and be sub 20% bodyfat. The health industry considers sub 20% healthy, the lifting community considers it fat, so here things get muddy. If you try to be obese by BMI and not fat by lifting standards, that gets tough. And then, are we talking powertlifter not fat, strongman not fat or bodybuilder not fat? 15% is probably not fat for the first 2, but still fat the bodybuilder.
And that’s where the wheels fall off on these discussions. We all use the same words but mean different things.
Chubby vs getting fat? I don’t really see the difference. You can gain lots of muscle and still be fat. 5’ 9’ 200+ and not chubby at all is a beast. Most people who think they fit this description could probable stand to lose 20 pounds.
Yup. 200lbs has always been the threshold for me. Once I cross it, the lovehandles show up and the face gets puffy.
Now, in modern society, I wouldn’t be called fat at all. I still have a flat stomach and a chest that sticks out further than my belly. But for a lifter? Yeah: I am at least “husky”, haha.
This is exactly right. Punisher is a beast in the 190s at 5 9. Is it possible you are a lean 205 at 5 9? Yeah, but 9 out of 10 lifters who think that aren’t beasts. To be that developed is very rare, and he still isn’t in the obese range.
To be fair, 9 out of 10 people aren’t strong by any means, whatsoever. Most people think they’re stronger/better looking/smarter than they actually are. It isn’t exactly hard to differentiate this people from said beasts.
##Just use some common sense and approach the situation with a reasonable amount of skepticism.
this pretty much solves most problems as far as I know.
Ya, lol, this is why I mentioned it’s really just going to depend on your perspective about what you consider fat.
Anyway, I don’t disagree with your and Brick’s sentiment. I’, 5’9" at 210 and could stand to lose 30lbs…
My comment is really just to say that I think the scale is limiting. You can have a skinny-fat guy that’s 20% bf and only “overweight” because they have no muscle mass to speak of and someone with appreciable muscle at 15% that’s considered “obese”.
Guy A: 165lbs @ 20% = 33lbs of fat. BMI = 24ish
Guy A increases his weight to 185 & drops to 15% bf (all other things equal). He’s still at about 28 lbs of fat. He reduced his BF by 5lbs, but his BMI is now closer to obese (27ish) than overweight and even further from normal.
But, generally, it’s a fine enough scale as far as one-size-fits-all scales go.
I actually think percentages are another thing lifters hide behind. While that guy made tremendous progress, 30 pounds of fat on your frame is 30 pounds of fat on your frame, whether you have muscle or not. It’s still producing the same amount of estrogen, it’s still requiring the same amount of effort from your heart to pump blood through it. Is 30 pounds of fat any healthier just because you also carry more muscle?
And again, this is an extreme example. 165 at 30% to 185 at 15% is an incredible transformation.
I understand that. I’m just pointing out the limitations of the chart. I think pretty much everyone would agree that an increase in muscle mass and a decrease in BF is an improvement, but BMI does not.
Actually, the BMI would just put you in the same category. But we need to be careful here about what you mean by improvement. BMI is about health, not bodybuilding. Physique and health improvements are 2 different things. And as I mentioned before, even in that extreme case, just body comp changes probably haven’t improved that person’s health much. Their general health hasn’t changed much due to body comp and the BMI does say that, even in that extreme case.
But anyone actually doing that would know it and that’s like a 1 in 1000 case. Again, there are far more people out there fooling themselves into disbelieving what they should believe than the other way around.
Not necessarily. If you go from 162 @ 20% to 175 @18% you’ve gone from “normal” to “overweight” with about 32lbs of fat on your body in both cases.
The problem I have with it is that it tries to apply the same formula to a significant amount of variation. A 5’9" Asian, a 5’9" Samoan, and a 5’9" white potato farmer from Idaho are going to, more than likely, have significantly different builds.
Is the 5’9" Asian @ 162 that sits at his desk all day and does no physical activity healthier than the 5’9" farmer @ 175 that does manual labor all day? All things being equal, intuitively, we’d say the farmer is healthier yet he’s “overweight” and the Asian is “normal”.
It could cost the farmer too.
I’m not sure I agree with that.
Probably, but I still think the value of the BMI chart is extremely limited.
Forgive the dumb picture, but I was around 160 in it (I only remember because we get weighed in the Marine Corps. every 6 months and I weighed around 160 around the time of the pic). I have no idea what my BF is, but probably at least 12%. That’s a BMI of 23/24. 25 is “overweight” at 69". I had yet to touch a weight in my life. This was just sports, boot camp, and BW exercises.
Lol, my point is that I’m barely in the range in the picture and I was running 10 plus miles a week + sprint work 3 days a week + going to the gym (mostly body weight stuff. I did start lifting while I was there) 4-5 days a week.
If I added just 9lbs of LBM to where I was in that picture I’d be considered overweight.
What I’m gathering from this thread is that BMI for certain individuals may be useful to the trained eye in a medical context but has very little value to the average person, especially if they have engaged in any type of weight training at all.
