What’s the point of being thin?
If you were to see me, you wouldn’t think “fat person.” But you wouldn’t think “thin person” either. You might think “there goes a woman who looks pretty good for her age”—if you knew my age, that is. But you wouldn’t think “there goes a woman who was once a very serious ballet dancer” (oh, maybe you would if you spied the legs, but we all know the legs are the last to go).
But I’m also a person who is always trying to lose fifteen or so pounds, and failing no matter what I do. And no, please don’t tell me about Taubes or Atkins; I’ve written several times before about how those things don’t work for me. In my dancing days I was very thin, probably close to forty pounds thinner than now, which made me fairly emaciated. But that’s what dancers need to be. And even though I was young, it wasn’t my natural state to be thin, and so I accomplished this feat only by dint of constant daily starvation, eating between 900 and 1000 calories every day although I was extremely active. This went on for years, and when I finally gave up my professional dance aspirations I gave up the daily and seemingly-unending starvation as well.
But enough about me. For the moment.
This PJ article on body fat and age is one of the best I’ve ever read. It puts the quest for that magical fifteen-pound loss in perspective:
Visible abdominal muscles are fashionable in Western society these days, but in some cultures visible abs mean poverty and privation, which is never fashionable anywhere among those who must endure it. Strength and health are not dependent on low bodyfat levels, which occur as a genetic predisposition among some people. Varying levels of bodyfat distribution are largely determined by both genetics and environment. Some people are fatter than other people, some people get fat easier than other people, and some people lose fat easier than other people. Losing fat that has been there a while requires that things be done differently, and just exactly how differently things must be done varies with the individual too. For people who naturally carry higher levels of bodyfat, attempts at radical bodyfat reduction can be expensive in terms of the psychological and physiological costs necessary for dropping below what for them would be normal healthy levels.
Let me just add that visible abdominal muscles are an even more elusive goal for woman in general than for men, and for older women they are rare indeed. Nature wants that layer of fat to cover them up, and gravity makes sure of the rest.
The mortality line is a not a hockey stick, folks. It is a “U,” slightly shifted towards the right…In fact, people of normal BMI have the same mortality rate as “moderately obese” people. According to the studies of all-cause mortality, mild obesity is protective, and both severely underweight and morbid obesity are, uh, not protective…
As we age and changes take place in our hormonal milieu, the physiological environment necessary for the growth of muscle and the loss of fat erodes. When you were young, you swam with the current; when you were fully mature, you swam in the lake; now that you’re older, you’re swimming upstream. I’m as sorry about that as anybody, but getting older simply makes staying skinny and muscular harder to do. It certainly doesn’t make it impossible…
For women, whose muscle mass and proclivity to create muscle mass is less than men to begin with, it’s even more difficult.
The answer for both sexes is strength training. For me (okay, so we’re back to me) I’ve unfortunately not been able to successfully add strength training to my aerobic regimen despite many attempts, because my chronic injuries have meant that every single effort so far at weight training (and that includes weights, bands, and/or machines, both with and without coaches) has ended in a significant increase in daily pain. But I advocate the practice in principle, and I keep trying to find a way.
I’ve been over my recommended weight since puberty. It became a real problem in the Army (although they didn’t mind initially since Vietnam was going on). And now my BMI is about three million. But as I’ve told my doctor, he may think of me as morbidly obese, but I think of myself as cheerfully obese.
Last week I read an article that drinkers, even those that have more than four drinks a day, live longer than teetotalers. Now, I find out it’s okay to be “moderately obese.”
It’s been a good two weeks.
I am a 68-year-old man and have always had an easy time looking and being fit. Although I eat sensibly and exercise very regularly, I think most of the credit is due to my particular genetics. Last week, a voluptuous woman who is a new romantic prospect for me, wrote an email expressing frustration at losing weight. I wrote back, “Of course you know I think some animal flesh is good nutrition. But I also think worrying about losing weight is bad for happiness. Love your body!
She wrote back, “I love love love my body!”
I find that normal women who dress and act like they believe they are sexy, are sexy to me.
“Visible abdominal muscles are fashionable in Western society these days, but in some cultures visible abs mean poverty and privation, which is never fashionable anywhere among those who must endure it”. Really? Check out the Apollo Belvedere. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_Belvedere
Sorry to be so particular but it’s Atkins, not Atkinson
Ripple Earthdevil:
No need to apologize. I welcome corrections, and I’ll fix it.
I think I was already thinking about this post, and conflated the two names. It’s a good excuse, anyway.
Paul in Boston:
So, why do you think there’s any contradiction?
The quote says “some cultures,” not “all others but ours.” What’s more, it says that “poverty and privation” are “never fashionable anywhere among those who must endure it.”
The sculptors and admirers of Apollo Belvedere were not forced to endure poverty and privation.
In cultures that face a constant struggle for food, those with a fat covering over their abdominals tend to be the envied and admired ones. Not the morbidly obese (although sometimes that is even true), but the not-so-lean.
Paul in Boston:
One more thing—
If you study the abdominals of Apollo of Belvedere, while he’s certainly a muscular and fit person, his abdominals are nowhere near as cut as the amount of definition most admired these days, and Apollo has a significant amount more body fat than that ideal. See also this for the standard for male models today, and compare to the statue of Apollo.
Michaelangelo’s David comes close to having the definition, although not all that close either. And he was meant to be a youth rather than a man, and youths are naturally leaner.
This guy comes the closest, I think. The Greeks and Romans did have a muscular ideal, but unless I’m mistaken the ordinary citizen didn’t pursue it with anything like the zeal we do today, and particularly not when over 40, nor was he/she shamed when he/she failed to achieve it.
For some reason this reminded me of a (former Men’s Health editor) Greg Gutfeld ‘Gregalogue’ on ripped abs, specifically that they are pointless:
http://www.foxnews.com/story/2007/07/11/abs-are-pointless/
So much of one’s body shape is tied to genetics that the ongoing attempts to isolate the secret diet/exercise solution is pointless. What’s great is that there are so many options available – if one doesn’t work, you can try another.
What’s important is what they call functional strength. Not the imbalanced large muscle groupings.
People who count on society to tell them how to live, are merely drones. They can be happy if they wish, but they aren’t in charge.
The point of being thin
Is you’re welcomed in
the beautiful people’s club
The beautiful people’s club
The beau eu u UUUUUUU, CLUUUUUUB!
(The last line is sung, of course, very Disneyland and opera like.)
With a shout at the end:
I WANT TO BE THIN!
But we all learn in the end, after lots of fun and song, that being thin, if you’re not yourself, is, is, is, oh fuck it, I can’t say it. I love being thin. It’s great. It’s wonderful, ohh so wonderful. The purges, oh the wonderful cleansing purges. I had them there, and I showed them with geometric purges, ha ha, hee hee, they’re coming to take me away. What, let go of me, let go.
I can attest to what age does to one’s ability to maintain weight and muscle tone.
14 years ago I was in great shape. I was participating in Master’s Bodybuilding and kept myself pretty close to 5-10% body fat. My body building mentor got injured and I drifted away from the sport. I had tired of the strict dieting it required.
I have been working out continuously for the last 14 years but have not watched my diet as carefully as required. I’m not fat, but my abs now have a layer of fat on them. Two years ago I decided I would try to get back in shape and do a few more shows. Hah, I wanted to do a show as an 80 year old. 🙂 I dieted very hard and got down to my old contest weight, but was still a bit flabby in the abs. Obviously I had lost some muscle mass in the ensuing years and would now have to get maybe 10 pounds lighter to be ripped. Then I got sick with the flu and ended up in the hospital with pneumonia. That, I think, was a signal. Since then I’ve quit dieting strenuously because I think I’m healthier when I eat a bit more. So, here I am now, 20 pounds over my contest weight with a beer gut. 🙁
My goal now is not to be ripped but to be strong. For the last 18 months I have been using the strength building ideas of mark Rippetoe, author of “Starting Strength.” It’s worked pretty well. I am squatting, bench pressing, dead lifting, and doing good mornings with more weight than I ever did back in the old days when I was working for definition. I have also lost a nagging hip pain that had settled in about five years ago. 🙂
I hope it’s true that being stronger allows you to have a better quality of life in old age. At 81 I’m definitely approaching the 18th hole of life. Staying strong may help me get there and stay active most of the way.
For the best diet for both health and weight control check out perfecthealthdiet.com. I have read a lot of nutrition books over the years and this one is the best. 22 pounds down and unlike all the other diets I have tried this one makes me feel calmer and healthier instead of deprived and stressed.
Thanks for the link, Peter. It makes sense to me. I do the Paleo/Atkins, but it just doesn’t seem right to me that so much of what God created isn’t for consumption. So, I eat quite a bit of carbs, mostly potatoes and rice. Kind of nice to see that the perfect health plan affirms that.
What is it you Americans have against women’s bellies, that beautiful dewdrop of soft flesh? It’s not a recent aversion, the pin-up girls of the 1950s sucked their tummies in. Why this denial of one of the fundamentals of women’s anatomy?
So glad to have permission to be fat!
Peter: Thanks for sharing this website.
My daughter is doing something like this. She’s 26 yrs old, it’s baby fat-pregnancy leftovers. She’s lost about 50 lbs, painlessly, over the course of a year. I started to do it too. I’ve lost 22 lbs in 10 months.
I started Tai chi last fall. I was skeptical. I hate sports, I hate to sweat but I like this. I am stronger, my bat wings are getting firmer and best of all, I can bend my knees again and squat just like I did when I was 20. I also feel better mentally, like I have more emotional stamina.
I used to be very thin but age and stress have caught up to me. I lost 50 lbs a few years ago but have gained about 35 of it back. Damned hormones and adrenal fatigue have undermined me for the past several years. Grrrr!!
I regularly workout 3 – 4 days a week by running, biking and weight lifting. The adrenal fatigue makes it very tricky to lose weight. If I work out too much my energy crashes and my body goes into a “starvation” emergency where it actively hangs onto weight. I have to do all my workouts now at a low-and-slow pace so that I don’t spin my adrenals up too quickly. At least I have stopped the weight gain and with a Paleo diet I am hopeful that I will be able to keep it off.
I am appalled that as I turn 50 I am not super thin with the abs and other muscles that I used to have in my 20’s. However, my husband seems to be happy with my more curvy body and since he is the only person I am interested in impressing, am I trying to be happy with myself too. 🙂
I am having to work hard on not seeing myself as fat. I am 5’8″ and about 185. I tell myself that I am not a little girl but I am not a big girl either. It sure is difficult to look in the mirror and not see the mental picture of myself that I keep in my head. The important thing is that I do workout and do things (run half marathons, bike 50+ miles) that none of my friends can do and I am healthy. Healthy is where it is at…not abs.
ArmyMom, I’m hesitant to give diet or exercise advice (I’ve found that people vary so much and so much is personal experimentation); however I do see a lot of people that put a lot of time on a treadmill or on the seat of a bicycle and do not lose weight. I’ve seen a fair amount of people increase their time spent on either or both and gain weight.
Body type and gender and age and metabolism (and genetic factors) all matter (a lot), but I will say that, personally, I can ride a bike for 2 ½ hours at a moderate pace and not feel anywhere near as good as riding 20 minutes at a fast pace. And I notice a big difference the next day and the next time I ride. I love to cycle and run, and I’ve done a lot of long runs and rides, but as I age (I’m slightly north of 50) I find myself doing more sprinting and feeling much better.
Regarding pure weight loss, based on what I know of my own metabolism and body I would never expect to lose weight doing long, moderate bike rides or runs. I still do both (because I like to go slow and far sometimes), but I know that does not help me stay thin. I lose weight when I sprint, jump rope and do push-ups, pull-ups and sit-ups (and avoid sugar like the plague).
It’s odd that so much advice centers on a “one size fits all” approach. As most have written here; I experiment on myself. I try eating different things, at different times and see what works. For the last few years I have found that I have much more energy the less I eat. I don’t eat much for breakfast or lunch and I feel good all day. I am doing the opposite of what our mothers and the cereal boxes told us in the 60’s and 70’s and have found it works well for me. I’ve practically turned the food pyramid upside down; limited grains and fruits. And, rather than breakfast being the “most important meal of the day” it is my least important. But I know other folks who do great eating 5 small meals throughout the day. Try different stuff. Pay attention to your body. Talk to parents and siblings (if you have any). And find a body size that you feel good in. I have friends with lots of adipose tissue hanging on their skeletons who have a lot of energy and feel very good. Find the body you feel good in and forget about what Madison Avenue is telling you.
I’ve just had my check up and I got a perfect score in all but one number – blood sugar, cholesterol, etc. The only “bad” one was my BMI. So even though my doctor said people of my size are usually described as “a heart attack waiting to happen”, that’s not my case. I’m talking his advice, which is the same as yours, to work on strength training. Whatever else happens is a bonus.
The study saying that being moderately obese is beneficial has been solidly refuted, and was never widely accepted to start with.
Ken, Ph.D.
Ken:
No, it has not been refuted. Do you have a link that says it has?
There was a study that said being slightly overweight was not protective for Type II diabetics, however, as had been originally thought.
http://www.ox.ac.uk/media/news_stories/2009/090317.html
Here’s a new study that just came out:
Obesity-Related Ills May Shave Up to 8 Years Off Your Life: Study
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/12/05/obesity-and-life-expectancy_n_6275710.html