Can you be fat & fit?
Discussion
MC Bodge said:
This mirrors my own experience of attending (non-activity) events and even just encounter in the public. People, even from their late 20s onwards, are fat. Men and women of my age (late 30s) appear to be mostly overweight.
Within my group of friends, a generally active bunch, most are lean, fit and able to do things.
Clothes are annoying. As has been said, the typical clothes are shaped for fat people, not men with narrow waists and larger chests and legs/glutes . Trousers are particularly difficult. "Modern fit" seems to involve no quad muscles or glutes. American ones actually seem to fit me best.
Im in good shape, so they say. I am 12st, 5'10', 30 inch waist with a chest of 40. Do cardio and some light weights.Within my group of friends, a generally active bunch, most are lean, fit and able to do things.
Clothes are annoying. As has been said, the typical clothes are shaped for fat people, not men with narrow waists and larger chests and legs/glutes . Trousers are particularly difficult. "Modern fit" seems to involve no quad muscles or glutes. American ones actually seem to fit me best.
I wear Diesel jeans which are good, but find Next jeans baggy on me. Superdry t-shirts are good along with Thomas Pink shirts , their slim fit, super slim fit and Athletic shirts are fantastic.
You guys are correct, the amount of males and females out of shape has really gone up the past 3 years. NHS will be absolutely financially run dry paying out for diabetic patients.
I am now 95kg from 118kg 8months ago. Now down to 36" waist. It's not all fat, I used to do a lot of heavy weights and rugby but I am aiming for another 10kg drop or at least a good bit more bf reduction, basically until I am happy with shirt off. I wouldn't class myself as fit, or unfit. I can cycle consistently >30km/hr for an hour in the bike, I can do 5 pull ups and multiple sets of dips and do a lot of walking. Still eating too much I think to reach my target, probably need to be net <2000 calories. If I am not in the gym, I am out walking, active most days.
Still enjoy a beer too much which is holding me back.
/2p
Still enjoy a beer too much which is holding me back.
/2p
Nice work. To be honest you'll need to hold back like you are to lose weight, but once it's off you'll be able to drink more and eat more, provided that you exercise as well. My weight's stable and I get through 5 or 6 belgian beers a week and a bottle of wine, and whilst my taste is for healthy food, I do eat rather a lot of it!
ps I was going to wind you up about only managing 5 pull ups, but then I realised your weight and actually that's pretty impressive!
As with our running comments above, I doubt I could do 5 pull ups with 30kg tied around my waist, in fact I doubt I could do 1 
ps I was going to wind you up about only managing 5 pull ups, but then I realised your weight and actually that's pretty impressive!
As with our running comments above, I doubt I could do 5 pull ups with 30kg tied around my waist, in fact I doubt I could do 1 RobM77 said:
Nice work. To be honest you'll need to hold back like you are to lose weight, but once it's off you'll be able to drink more and eat more, provided that you exercise as well. My weight's stable and I get through 5 or 6 belgian beers a week and a bottle of wine, and whilst my taste is for healthy food, I do eat rather a lot of it!
ps I was going to wind you up about only managing 5 pull ups, but then I realised your weight and actually that's pretty impressive! As with our running comments above, I doubt I could do 5 pull ups with 30kg tied around my waist, in fact I doubt I could do 1
You’re right Rob. I need to knock the booze on the head / or close to in order to get rid of the last 10kg/significantly lower bf%. (A previous weight where people said I look too thin but in reality I was just a sensible bf% that they weren’t used to seeing me at).ps I was going to wind you up about only managing 5 pull ups, but then I realised your weight and actually that's pretty impressive!
As with our running comments above, I doubt I could do 5 pull ups with 30kg tied around my waist, in fact I doubt I could do 1 I want to keep the doing heavy weights in the gym to keep my strength up: previously I could do sets of 10 pull ups with weights tied round my waist and dips with even heavier weights, which was enjoyable. I find doing a lot of walking really helped me before, so I have been averaging 10,000 – 15,000 steps a day for the last 8 months.
I do believe you’re right though, if I can get the weight off, I will be able to train harder (get a bike), walker further easier (hills) and will feel better for it. I lift the 10kg ball for one of the exercises I do when warming up, quite scary to think I could lose that weight, and possibly more!
RobM77 said:
Cybertronian said:
RobM77 said:
The one thing I do find annoying about the above figures is that despite being a normal weight I now have to buy most of my clothes in France 15 years ago I was a UK 'medium', then clothes gradually got bigger as that mean average BMI increased and I passed below a UK 'small' in most shops about 5 years ago. It's not all bad though, if there was a zombie apocalypse we'd be able to stay out of the way quite easily.
This. 15 years ago I was a UK 'medium', then clothes gradually got bigger as that mean average BMI increased and I passed below a UK 'small' in most shops about 5 years ago. It's not all bad though, if there was a zombie apocalypse we'd be able to stay out of the way quite easily. Edited by RobM77 on Wednesday 26th August 10:35
Like you, I struggle with some brands in the UK like Ted Baker where their small is still at least one size too big. Places like H&M or Gap do extra-small, which helps, but the items aren't as readily available in all stores.
I've just come back from Thailand and it was refreshing to be a medium over there!
The other issue with sizing is where people are putting the weight on, so the shape of clothes and this particularly annoys me with shirts, as I like to look smart if I'm wearing one. I find that anything that fits me in the chest is enormous in the waistline. Next's slimfit range are ok, although annoyingly they assume a tiny rib cage as well, but the selection abroad is indeed just so much better.
Another thing is that buying something that includes your height and needs to fit well (wetsuits, drysuits, motor racing suits etc) is almost impossible, because an SX/S person is supposed to be about 5'4"! For wetsuits I now have them altered to fit, which is surprisingly affordable, but sadly nomex motor racing suits are coming in at almost a grand for made to measure (that's Stand 21's cheapest), and that's just too expensive.
The even stranger thing is that measured sizes are changing. I've got a photo on my phone of a new pair of 30" waist jeans from Next lying on a 32" from a few years ago and the 30" ones are bigger... I realise that we wear jeans on our hips, so the measured size is just a guide, but even so..
Not quite the same issues, but can I find some things? More likely to find the Holy Grail, or the only remaining Jimmy Saville fan
.Jeans are built for people with twig legs, shirts similar in terms of arms (or if not, nothing else fits) and suits are the biggest 'mare of the lot, if you don't want to spend tailored in some form money, for whatever reason. Is a standard 6 inch drop remotely relevant now, one way or another?
Sizes are all over everywhere, but for me generally on the mean side - is 42 chest, 32-33 waist really XL territory when average height & build is generally increasing?
RobM77 said:
This cuts to the chase of it. If you define fitness by pure cardiovascular measures, then a fat person could be fit, yes. However, that same person might not be able to achieve the basic level of sporting ability described above or similar. To be fair, even though I would regard myself as pretty fit, I very much doubt that I could run 8 minute miles carrying a 20kg suitcase, which believe it or not is the difference in weight between me, a totally normal healthy 38 year old who does a bit of sport, and the mean average man in the UK at the moment. 
To me, this is what someone who is fit & some looks like, as an example:
http://www.redbull.com/uk/en/adventure/stories/133...
Anyone who looks like Homer Simpson, while suggesting they do anything near to even 50%, without changing shape, has some serious explaining to do, IMHO.
DukeDickson said:
RobM77 said:
This cuts to the chase of it. If you define fitness by pure cardiovascular measures, then a fat person could be fit, yes. However, that same person might not be able to achieve the basic level of sporting ability described above or similar. To be fair, even though I would regard myself as pretty fit, I very much doubt that I could run 8 minute miles carrying a 20kg suitcase, which believe it or not is the difference in weight between me, a totally normal healthy 38 year old who does a bit of sport, and the mean average man in the UK at the moment. 
The other thing is the skeleton - I struggle to imagine how the joints (specifically knees, ankles and hips) could cope with that sort of weight and anything strenuous like jogging, running or jumping; of course I don't expect they do cope, and anyone of that sort of weight must have constant joint pain and probably a very limited healthy lifespan for their joints.
RobM77 said:
DukeDickson said:
RobM77 said:
This cuts to the chase of it. If you define fitness by pure cardiovascular measures, then a fat person could be fit, yes. However, that same person might not be able to achieve the basic level of sporting ability described above or similar. To be fair, even though I would regard myself as pretty fit, I very much doubt that I could run 8 minute miles carrying a 20kg suitcase, which believe it or not is the difference in weight between me, a totally normal healthy 38 year old who does a bit of sport, and the mean average man in the UK at the moment. The other thing is the skeleton - I struggle to imagine how the joints (specifically knees, ankles and hips) could cope with that sort of weight and anything strenuous like jogging, running or jumping; of course I don't expect they do cope, and anyone of that sort of weight must have constant joint pain and probably a very limited healthy lifespan for their joints.My knees and ankles are stuffed. Yes, I probably 50%+ did for one knee before being lardy, but now all don't like me.
Even now not a total lard-arse, the after effects are still there. A 15-20 mile bike ride (not that great in the grand scheme of things) is painkillers beforehand territory. I don't even think about running, although part of me wants to do a triathlon of the shorter form, while I still have a chance.
This kind of impact is another tick in the box as to why I find it hard to believe that you can be very big (in a not good way) and yet do large amounts of exercise by almost all standards every day without effect. It must be the most detrimental if you're bad big, rather than good big.
FredClogs said:
RobM77 said:
FredClogs said:
One of the simplest ways of measuring "fitness" is heart and lung function via heart rate recovery. You can do this in a few minutes. Measure you heart rate (for me resting bpm is about 60)- do a blast of exercise (anything) that pushes your heart rate up to about 80% of max (max calculated as 220 - age) for me this is about 150bpm, you don't need to hold it there for long. Now stop exercising and wait for 2mins, measure heart rate again. Subtract your resting heart rate from the one post exercise and 2 minute rest... You should get a number greater than 50. If it's much less than 40 your unfit, much more than 60 you're very fit.
That doesn't sound quite right to me, could you clarify further? I always thought that speed of recovery was a good indicator of fitness, so surely the closer you get to your resting heart rate after two minutes rest from 80% MHR the fitter you are? If in your above example your heart was still racing at 140 after two minutes, you'd personally get a result of 100 ('very fit' in your classification), but if it had dropped right down to 80 in the two minutes you'd be 'unfit'?My MaxHR is about 185, so 80% is 148. We did plenty of work in the session and I've looked at an end-of-rep HR plot. HR at the end of the rep was 163 (so higher than required), 2 mins later it was 101. That would give a measure of 84 by the above MaxHR-RecoveredHR calculation. I am a competitive runner so this isn't that surprising. However, it also highlights the "fit for what?" caveat - I'm fit for distance running, but not for powerlifting (for example). I know my strength is poor at the moment and I have plans to work on that over the winter. Good cardio fitness though.
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