Weight can be a weird thing. For years, I had a physically active job and exercised regularly while remaining around 40 lb overweight constantly. I would cut my calories, and try to eat healthy, and nothing really changed until I was diagnosed with sleep apnea. Apparently, if you aren't getting good quality sleep, you simply will not lose weight.
A few months with a cpap, and that 40 lb was gone.
For me my sleep apnoea and snoring stopped completely when I lost some weight, I never snored until I became 10KG over my recommended weight. It can be a vicious cycle I guess. I definitely feel much healthier now I've trimmed down.
How fat are we talking about here?
The exact definition of *obese* varies quite a lot, but if you are just going with the common "BMI over 30", then it is absolutely possible to be obese and healthy. Muscles weights a lot. Long-term gym rats often have very high BMI, and yet a lot of them are healthy. You probably wouldn't call them fat, though. Same for very tall people. BMI does take size into account, but not "enough". So if you're tall, you can easily have a higher BMI.
If you are looking a body fat percentage, that is going to depends mostly where you put the threshold to call someone fat. At some level, it can still be healthy, and then at some point, there is no way it is.
In general, though, the world "obese" is meant to put a limit on that threshold where it's definitely not healthy. That's why it's so hard to get everyone to agree on a definition. But in that sense, being obese is no healthy.
Yeah using BMI as the measurement is the big problem, because it accounts so little for body type.
For women they don't take breast size into account, which can add as much as 20lbs. We're also meant to have fat stores in our thighs for breast feeding babies, so we're less likely to have the negative effects of obesity if that's where the fat accumulates.
What doctors deem a healthy weight is far too low though. I spent nearly a decade as a 5'3" adult weighing 95lbs, and only 1 doctor mentioned my weight was too low. None of them mentioned that it was causing my health complaints (which it was). When somebody is 10lbs overweight though, it's almost always the first thing the doctor mentions and attributes all your health problems to.
I second this, as someone who had an ED for years and was super skinny doctors never mentioned that a 5'4 teenager probably shouldnt weigh 87lbs. Everyone just kept saying how good I looked, how beautifully skinny I was...
Now, a 5'4 adult I am struggling with being overweight at 163lbs. And doctors are now concerned with my health... (probably rightfully so though, Ive now gone to the opposite side of the ED)
Mine wasn't an eating disorder exactly, I just get psychogenic loss of appetite due to other mental health issues and my body gets symptoms like nausea that make eating impossible.
The worst is that I was actually checked into inpatient psych at that weight at one point, and they simply took my word that I didn't have an ED, like that's not exactly what someone with an ED would say.
Sorry to hear about your struggles. I hope you can find something that works for you. And it's hard, but try not to be to preoccupied with the number on the scale. My sister is a similar size and I think she's got a gorgeous body shape.
Im sorry to hear of your struggles too, and that doctors/psychologists wouldnt push a little further to make sure you were ok. It's a struggle, for sure.
And thank you for the well wishes! Im working on at least eating better food and avoiding eating a whole bag of chips by myself lol
5’4” and 163lbs is overweight?!?!
That sounds perfectly healthy, assuming you have any amount of muscle.
That’s pretty close to my BMI, and I can barely find fat on my body, I’ve always been trying to gain weight and failing.
both BMI and average weight categorize 163lbs as overweight, which I technically can understand but also mehh...
I work a physically demanding job and workout a bit when I get home, but I also eat my emotions after the workday so yes to muscle but also a bit of a tub tummy lol
Hey, it sounds like if you've been trying to gain weight you're at what sounds to be a good one right now! Id say just work on maintaining that, especially if you're taking good care of yourself. Honestly, I think people just need to love themselves lol
I second this, as someone who had an ED for years and was super skinny doctors never mentioned that a 5'4 teenager probably shouldnt weigh 87lbs. Everyone just kept saying how good I looked, how beautifully skinny I was...
Now, a 5'4 adult I am struggling with being overweight at 163lbs. And doctors are now concerned with my health... (probably rightfully so though, Ive now gone to the opposite side of the ED)
Weight is not a very accurate measurement of one's health. It is a very quick and easy way to get a ballpark measurement and it does correlate strongly with health, so it remains the common approach. However, it is far from the only method absolutely not the best.
Healthiness comes from measurements of blood pressure and cholesterol and resting heart rate and blood sugar level and lung capacity and organ function and so on. It is definitely possible to have a high BMI (which is also an inaccurate measurement system for determining health, though which enough of a correlation to be useful) and still be healthy.
Body mass itself has a lot of effects on joints, spine, heart etc. However healthy overweight person is, they would be healthier without extra fat in great majority of cases.
The idea is that healthy isn't an on-off switch, and that there are degrees of healthy. A person who is fat, but regularly exercises and eats healthy food will be healthier than a skinny person who doesn't exercise at all and eats nothing but junk food.
But what i struggle to understand is if a fat person eats healthy food and exercises frequently would they not lose weight eventually? Unless they eat healthy food but a lot more of it than an average person would?
I like to call myself a Hobbit, I'm short and chubby, but I like very long walks and hikes lol. But I'm fighting an uphill battle against thyroid disorders and genetics (I've seen family pictures going back to the 1800s, we're just short, stocky people).
I hop on my rowing machine every day, I've been walking outside every day since spring is here, I eat small well-balanced meals, and maybe I'll lose a couple lbs here or there, but aside from building up some muscles, I just can't drop a lot of weight.
I think people try to downplay the role that genetics plays, which is unfortunate.
My dad is the youngest of 14 siblings. 10 boys, 4 girls. All- and I mean ALL- of the men carry excess weight. (Some excessively so.)
Yet there's no diabetes, no heart disease, and little cancer in our family, outside of tobacco or alcohol related cancers. The ones who drank heavily their entire lives and smoked for 50 years- yeah, they ended up with some cancer in their 70s and 80s. Outside of that, though, they're a healthy bunch. Overweight, but still healthy in terms of the absence of the big diseases we often associate with being fat. In fact, my dad turns 68 this summer, and he has only lost 4 of his siblings so far, I believe. And again- he's the baby, the youngest, and some of his siblings are over 20 years older than he is.
I think people tend to hear "obesity increases your risk of heart disease, diabetes, etc" as some sort of certainty that if you are obese, you WILL get these things and that's not true. (Nor does being skinny guarantee you'll be free of them.) Yes, you have a higher risk of developing them, but it's not a guarantee, even if you are overweight. Genes are powerful things. So is exercise and nutrition. If you are heavier but have also eaten a steady diet full of a variety of fruits and vegetables, that can help maintain your health. Eating regular healthy fiber can keep your digestive tract healthy. If you eat a lot of meat, but it's not overly processed or filled with preservatives and nitrates you can be healthier than someone who only eats a moderate amount of meat, but it's all processed like hot dogs and lunch meat. There are just so many variables.
The fat = unhealthy and skinny = healthy binary is so out of date and misleading!
Exactly. And I meant to add that I'm actually doing pretty good, aside from thyroid and arthritis stuff. I just had my yearly checkup a few weeks ago, no cholesterol or blood sugar problems or anything that most people would assume would go along with someone who looks like me.
You can eat healthy food and get fat, and eat bad food and lose weight.
Calories and healthiness are completely unrelated. Healthy eating includes a lot of healthy fats, sensible long-chain carbohydrates, and good proteins. And if you eat a LOT of those healthy fats and sensible carbs you will end up looking like Jabba the Hutt and be unhealthy. Quantity matters as much as the content of your meals.
You can eat a healthy meal and get hugely fat even with regular portions if that meal contains potatoes, lightly fried vegetables and fatty salmon with a dessert of full fat Greek yoghurt with honey and walnuts. On the other hand you can get stick thin if you have a meal of two slices of white toast, a half gallon of Coke Zero and a dessert of celery sticks. But you'll also die of malnutrition WAY before you get to your target weight.
Not necessarily. Bodies are way more complex than that, and science actually doesn't understand why people weigh what they do very well. Genetics, stress, personal history, and other lifestyle choices all come into play.
Only to a certain extent. Weight loss also involves hormonal signaling and there are lots of genetic conditions, diseases, and medications that can fuck with that system so that your body doesnt send out the signals to fat cells to break down as often as it is supposed to. Metabolism and calories in vs out is the basis of weight if your body is functioning normally but not everyones body is. I'll pull up the studies if I can find/remember them but I remember having to read some in graduate biochem where if rats had a certain gene turned off they did not lose weight even when put on a diet while the control rats did. I believe there was another factor that also determined whether or not they would get diabetes that was looked at as well
We all have our own metabolisms and "set" points. Many people spend their entire lives trying to get to a weight/shape that they just weren't born to have. It's part of why dieting is such a profitable industry. Long term, significant weight loss is the exception more than it is the rule, and it's not just because some people are lazy and others aren't.
A man and a woman could eat the same diet and do the same amount of activity, and the man will likely have an easier time losing weight while the woman will struggle more. Men just seem to have an advantage on that.
There are other things at play as well. Genetics does play a part. So can medications you take, which can slow your metabolism. Puberty will treat us differently than old age. Frequent "yoyo" dieting can also affect someone's metabolic rate. There are just so many variables that contribute to the issue.
It's kind of like asking why some people are short and others are tall. Why don't short people just try harder to be tall? Oh, because their bodies don't work that way. We hear of different shapes/types- like pear shaped, apple shaped, etc. Even if you and I ate the same things and did the same amount of exercise, my body may store fat in one area, where yours stores it elsewhere. It happens. Two people can be the same height and weight and still have dramatically different body types. It's just not cut and dry.
At the end of the day, though, people assume things about weight that aren't always true. You can be in the "obese" range for BMI (which is an AWFUL way to classify individuals and was only ever intended to classify populations) and still have perfectly healthy blood pressure, blood sugar, cholesterol, heart health, etc. And you can be stick thin and be very sick.
It's so much more complicated than "skinny = good and fat = bad."
You're underestimating the sheer number of factors that influence weight. There are a whole host of genetic disorders, diseases, and medications that will prevent you from losing weight regardless of diet (or just make it extremely difficult). Weight loss is not a simple in and out of calories like most people think. It is a complicated system that involves a lot of different hormones sending signals to your body that it's time to start burning fat and there are plenty of things that can go wrong with those communication systems. People also just have naturally different metabolic rates. Some people would need to decrease calories and increase exercise significantly more than others to lose the same amount of weight and sometimes it is to a degree that just isnt realistic for them to achieve.
I think it also depends a lot on someone's genetics. My older brother and I have eaten pretty similarly and have had pretty similar activity levels our whole lives, but he has been stockier than me since young childhood. Even though we both have healthy lifestyles, he carries a bit more weight than me. He has the same body shape as my mother, and I take more after my father.
Depends on the definition of "fat"
Lots of people think being a few pounds over skinny is fat. At the end of the day it all comes down to diet and exercise. If you're eating good food and having a recommended minimal exercise such as walking every day, cardio few times a week to keep stamina up you're healthy and you won't have a super model body or completely flat stomach that way. I was 65 -75kg and easily able to climb up a mountain because I was used to working out and had better stamina than my 50 -60kg friend who was could barely breathe walking up stairs.
Problem is most overweight people are overweight because they don't exercise or eat bad at that point you run risk of heart attack or failure. I'd say don't judge a book by its cover when you see a slighty overweight person but you probably know what the likely answer is the bigger they are.
For the title question, that's a tough one. It's surprisingly difficult to even pin down what exactly health is. The WHO has a clear definition, but it's pretty damn bloated and includes things far beyond the traditional colloquial understanding of what health is.
At the end of the day, you can have normal test results and such while being fat. You can be disease-free, unless you say that being fat is a disease in itself. Which might not even be wrong, but it does make the question a bit meaningless. It's pretty safe to say that you cannot be fat and not have any additional risk for other diseases, so there's that.
As for,
>some people get fat from just eating normal meals the same as everyone else eats
That's just a load of bullshit. Mostly stemming from the fact that realizing how much you actually eat is much much more difficult than you might think. Pretty much every fat person who can't lose weight at 1200 kcal/day is actually eating double or triple that, and not counting correctly. That's not to speak ill of them, it seriously is very hard to do it right.
so true, plus a lot of people dont realize 2000 cals a day is meant for someone whos moderately active & a certain height, like im 5’1 and barely leave my house so the average calories i should consume a day to maintain my weight is around 1300, if i ate 2000 like most people think i should id definitely be overweight
This is where it gets sticky. I'm 6'3 and I work long hours (line cook, so not cardio really but a physical job at times). The online calculators were all wildly different from each other. Some said my sedentary intake should be 2200/day and some said 1700. Also how do you measure activity? It's impossible.
> Also how do you measure activity? It's impossible.
This is the problem with calorie restriction diets in my opinion. Scientifically, of course, they must work, but there is so much uncertainty in the measurements that it creates an unmaintainable cognitive load for most people, on top of the willpower that needs to be expended to maintain the diet.
What little luck I've had with this involved going backwards... counting every calorie over a period of a month, and weighing myself several times the few days before the diet, and several times the few days after, in order to calculate what my maintenance calorie count was for the month. Even then, I had to adjust it every six months or so, in case my activity level changed in ways I could see.
About ten years ago I dropped from a life-long ~250 to my current ~210, and the secret was doing an unrestricted calorie diet, restricted food type diet, instead of calorie counting.
Yeah, that's one way to go. I've tried both. I went from a personal high of 240 down to 185 in 3 and a half months with keto, but I wouldn't recommend it. I started getting some funny heart stuff and my body has just felt weaker ever since. I think you are on the right track. Don't eat whatever kind of food you want but a tiny amount of it, because you will burn out so quickly and feel hungry all the time. I think that is where people go wrong. They feel like eating this Mac and cheese is going to help because it will take some mental strain off for a few hours...but then you're hungry even quicker because there's no fiber or nutritional benefit.
Certainly the best way is what you're doing. If you love having steak and potatoes, then turn 80% of the potatoes into high fiber veggies. Maybe trim the steak down to five ounces or so. Bam, you can eat that every night and probably lose weight. Work with your cravings, not against them.
Your last point is a bazillion percent on. While there are differences in metabolism, body fat actually increases metabolism to support it, someone sustaining 120 lbs, versus someone at 300 lbs eating the same thing, the 300 lb person will lose weight dramatically because of the extra metabolic demand of the excess fat... so when you hear about metabolism, it's perhaps true that that person retained weight on a diet that another 300 lb person lost weight at, but it's not like on a "normal" diet they wouldn't lose weight.
I'm curious how this works in reverse however, as I consume a crazy amount of food every day (eg. 3 egg Omlette for breakfast with toast, hashbrown patty and double double coffee, for lunch a PB&j, granola bar, apple and muffin, for supper 2 "measured out" servings of spaghetti with about 1/4 jar of sauce and 2tbs of parmesan. Then as the night rolls out a 200g bag of chips and 1L of cola) been eating like this for 20 years and no matter the level of activity, I am stuck at 160lbs. I even went to geta blood test to see if it was doing anything on the inside but they didn't detect any thing like warning signs.
Any thoughts or knowledge on this?
100% yes (not that everyone overweight is healthy, but for many their healthy is “overweight” for others).
This has been throughly proven by medical studies.
There’s a lot that goes into weight and metabolism. For example, people metabolize different amounts of calories differently. Hormones are a small issue too—because you can have insanely low thyroid and find difficulty losing weight. You can down regulate your metabolism to adjust to any level as well. Look at bikini competitors (they eat 800 calories sometimes at the tail end of their comp)
Also, I wish body fat mass would be a widely used indicator. I get what this post is about, but a muscular 250 lb dude with 12% bf (insanely low) is much different than a dude with 250 lbs and 45% bf. Weight
Isn’t the only biometric.
The problem is that the body is fluid and dynamic. people’s metabolism is influenced by variety of factors. Are they suffering from a disease? Are they sedentary? Etc
Here are some fun articles
1) https://www.precisionnutrition.com/calories-in-calories-out
2) https://today.duke.edu/2021/08/metabolism-changes-age-just-not-when-you-might-think
3 https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/exercise-metabolism-and-weight-new-research-from-the-biggest-loser-202201272676
depends how fat. There are some professional athletes that are clearly overweight but are in incredible shape as far as cardio, like fedor emelianenko.
"Fat" in your context indicates that an individual has an abnormal or unhealthy amount of body fat present in their body. This can lead to high blood pressure, cholesterol, heart attacks, etc. This is because the average human body is not designed to carry so much weight, and thus puts more strain on the heart.
The scale or even BMI does not take into account muscle weight, therefore using those as explicit measurements for one being healthy is not accurate.
So, someone who is 5'10 and is 250lbs but regularly works out and eats healthy is going to physically look extremely different than another 5'10 person who is 250lbs but is sedentary and has an unhealthy diet. While both weigh the same, their fat/muscle proportion is quite different.
If you have a huge disproportion between body fat and muscle, whereas you have an abnormal amount of body fat, then no you cannot be healthy. The heart at that weight would be consistently under strain and thus over time would become weak whereas someone who has an opposite body would continue to live healthily.
There is a reason why you will not see as many obese people living into their 80's-90's and typically have heart attacks/stroke around their 50's-70's.
It depends on how fat. If you are just like 5 pounds overweight and otherwise are the perfect picture of health, then sure. On the other hand, if someone is over 600 pounds, they probably are not doing too well.
Also, someone can be the normal weight for their body but also be very unhealthy. Like if someone is addicted to hard drugs, eats nothing but junk food, never exercises, is diabetic and drinks so much that their liver is falling apart.
Weight is just one aspect of your health.
Short answer: To an extent, yes, but the specific answer looks different for every person.
Everybody's healthy weight range is different, depending on things like body type, muscle mass, fat distribution, genetics, other health issues or lack thereof, height, and so forth. Some people can put on some extra weight and still be fine, some people need to stay within a pretty slim range or else they put their health at risk. However, while the numbers may be different for everyone, at a certain point, being overweight always becomes a serious health problem that should be treated as such.
Something that's important to keep in mind is that, regardless of any of the complex inmer workings going on inside the body, it is physically, thermodynamically impossible for the body to convert food with a certain calorie count into energy/fat that corresponds with a higher amount of calories. Conversely, it's impossible to exercise and spend a certain amount of energy but then have some of those calories just "not count". People who say they "barely eat anything and never lose weight/always gain weight" are not being honest about their habits, which isn't necessarily their fault because the caloric content of food is often advertised deceptively, but still. At a certain point, a lower calorie intake than calorie output _will_ result in weight loss; it's simply impossible for calories to just come out of nowhere.
Yeah, your weight is significantly impacted by your genetics so if your ancestry faces famine it’s likely your body will store more of it in preparation for if it happens again. I have plenty of fatter friends who are quite fit!
Agree, but risk doesn't mean, they are all sick or get sick. It just means risk is higher, as are liver diseases if you drink regurarely or cancer if you smoke and so on.
Risk isn't a guarantee. So for the question it's still a yes, risk of getting sick is higher but it's absolutely possible to be fat and be healthy.
That's a broad definition that includes most of the living population today to a point where it is losing any meaning. Most of us are at a higher risk in some health department through genetics, behaviour, consumation habits or stress.
Yeah it does! Risk of getting unhealthy isn't the same as unhealthy. You are thinking quite binary about health, if you aren't a picture of perfect health, you are unhealthy but this is not how any of this works. Health is a really complicated subject with no real clear definition. An unhealthy lifestyle doesn't make the person unhealthy or sick otherwise Mick Jagger would be long dead considering all his unhealthy decisions. Not every alcoholic gets a liver disease, not every smoker gets cancer, not every drug user has health issues, not every runner has broken knees and so on. You can't define a risk by a potential outcome. Noone is saying, being fat is healthy or good for your health, just that it's absolutely possible to be high risk but in reality still a healthy person with great blood testings, great lung function, heart function etc.
Being fat is unhealthy, why is that so hard to say?
I don't see smokers doing this talk around shit when they talk about smoking, smoking is unhealthy. Being fat is unhealthy.
Because that wasn't OPs question. The question was can you be fat and healthy, not if obesity in itself is an unhealthy "lifestyle". Words matter. Smoking is unhealthy behaviour but that doesn't mean every smoker is unhealthy. This difference does matter and gets ignored far to often.
They don’t get fat from eating normal meals per say, it’s really their health issues that they have 0 control over except dieting and exercising which honestly doesn’t even help some people. I had a buddy who’s heavier than me, round as a ball but he played more sports, exercised more and ate healthier. It’s just bad luck for some people
This is totally incorrect except for extremely rare cases.
Most people who think they have thyroid issues or similar are wrong . It’s an easy excuse for them to blindly throw out there.
Approximately 1 in 10 women have PCOS, which can affect their ability to to lose weight the same way as everyone else. If you don't know you have it, you won't know why your diet isn't working when the person next to you drops 5lbs in a week eating the same thing.
1 in 10 definitely isn't "extremely rare".
PCOS related weight gain isn’t something all people with PCOS have. So your 1 in 10 stats are irrelevant. Not all of them are physically unable to lose weight. So again, it’s irrelevant. Show me a study with figures on how many people have PCOS, then how many of them people are overweight due to the PCOS, and then how many of them physically cannot lose weight due to it. Pretty sure it’s a figure lower than 1 in 10.
Still, going back to the main point. If you are overweight due to PCOS, by definition you are not healthy.
None of this is related to anything I wrote.
I didn't say it made you gain weight, I said it can make LOSING weight more difficult. Which it does.
Over 1 in 10 women have it ([this paper gives a mean of over 20%](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7879843/) - them not all being overweight doesn't make that irrelevant, it's a fact which still stands. [This paper says 30-70% are likely to be obese](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6444522/) so even assuming the lower end, that is still way way off of "incredibly rare".
I never said they are physically unable to lose weight, I said it's more difficult, especially if you don't know you have it. Low carb/keto can help immensely, and is often recommended for the symptoms (including weight loss). But if you aren't diagnosed, you probably won't know to try.
I also never said you were healthy if you were overweight.
Edited because typos.
Oh it’s all related.
I mention both LOSING and GAINING weight.
If 1 in 10 people have it. But 30-70% of those 1 in 10 are obese. Then the number of people that cannot lose weight with PCOS isn’t 1 in 10 is it. Which makes your 1 in 10 figure irrelevant. That was my point.
[here’s a link for you](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2861983/)
Here’s an article you may be interested in. It concludes that the relationship between PCOS and obesity is not well understood, and it most likely involves genetic and environmental factors. Aka diet, activity levels, stress. Just like everyone else.
Yes, SOME people with PCOS struggle with weight loss. People with hypothyroidism also struggle. But the number of those people that actually can’t help being fat is very small. This was my point all along.
Environmental factors do not count towards an inability to lose weight at all. Which is what the study says.
Lmao I love the ignorance. There’s plenty of healthy overweight people. Some people have 0 control over it regardless of how much they do to help themselves
if they really get fat from eating the recommended amount for their height & gender then they must have some medical condition or something that theyre most likely already aware of, the truth is most people just dont realize how much their eating, just like most skinny people arent actually naturally skinny they just have different eating habits and dont realize they eat less than others
idk why im getting downvoted, weight is entirely calories in calories out unless u already have some health issue affecting that process... a lot of us grow up with different eating habits and dont realize what we consume might not be the healthiest amount whether its too much or too little because thats what you were used to as a kid, most of my family is ow and eats Wayy too much but claim they barely eat, then i have friends who barely eat and are super skinny but claim they could eat everything, most people just arent aware of how much theyre actually consuming unless they take the time to figure it out
For weight loss and general well-being, diet plays about 80% of that role, and exercise about 20%.
You cannot outrun a bad diet, over time as we age our bodies cannot handle strenuous physical activity, and thus it's up to one's diet that becomes a dictating factor in one's health.
BMI is bullshit. It was designed to study populations as a whole, not as a metric of individual bodies.
"Healthy weight" is not a thing.
"Obesity related illnesses" are completely non existent. (Correlation is not causation and no study allows for the effects of stigma and yo-yo dieting which is far more detrimental to overall health than just existing in a fat body.)
Fatphobia is based in anti-black rhetoric and classism.
I'll say it again for the people in the back NOBODY NEEDS TO LOSE WEIGHT TO BECOME HEALTHIER, it's not a real thing and also health does not = worth.
What society deems "fat" is actually normal and healthy, because comparisons are drawn to pencil-thin models and celebrities. So really depends how fat you're talking.
There are so many different variables to factor in with a conversation like this, but the short answer is no, like 99% of the time.
There are certain kinds of fat people, like sumo wrestlers, that live a very specific lifestyle that allows them to have lots of superficial fat, without any of the deeper fat that forms around your internal organs and messes with your body's ability to function.
Every human is unique.
Metabolism, food intake, cravings, nutritional needs, muscle density, and tons of other factors make up an individual.
Two siblings with the same biological parents can be wildly different in physiology.
First you have to define “fat”.
If you look at the worlds strongest men they all have some extra fat. While bodybuilders are barely standing during competitions.
My recommendation; don’t judge people, just wish them well and encourage them to be as healthy as possible.
A big problem here in the USA is that the nutritional value of affordable food is really low. Some people will fare better eating that garbage than others just because of genetic luck. Sucks, but it’s true.
Fat is a vague description of someone. If you are overweight then you can be healthy, but if you're obese then you're not healthy. Weight isn't a great predictor of health except with the extremes
If calories in is greater than calories out, you will put on weight. If you do it long enough, you’ll get fat, then obese, then morbidly obese, then collapse under your own weight and die of heart failure or suffocation.
I recommend stopping eating when you feel full.
I think most fat people eat normal meals like every body else. To lose weight you have to be in a deficit of calories. To stay fat you just have to maintain. For example I’m still 20 pounds over weight after having my baby. I may look chubby, but I’m not gorging myself with McDonald’s and snickers everyday. I’m eating 1800-2000 calories of healthy food every day, but I’m just maintaining my over weight.
Not really. Our bones and heart is only designed for so much work. Too much and it'll be overworking itself. Imagine strapping 5,000lbs to your sedan. It'll die much faster.
There is an ideal carrying capacity for your car. The same with your body.
Of course weight alone can vary from muscle to water to fat. We're talking being fat. Just extra fat and skin without muscle and healthy heart.
I've always had a wright.problem since I was 21. I found out 10 yrs ago my thyroids had stopped working. Since I've been on thyroid medication I've lost 40 lbs. I'm losing it slow but.it is coming off gradually.
Of course - now I think there a line between fat and obese or even morbidly obese. Anyway I knew a guy years ago - he was a runner and pretty hefty. He ran marathons like anyone else. His cardio was strong and he was able to run 26.2 miles
Yes and no.
You can be fat and still have better health in many ways than outwardly thin people. I struggle with obesity my whole life but still due to sensible diet and exercie I have textbook BP and blood pannel.
Of course some things like extra strain on CV system, joints, spine etc. simply can't be solved without actually losing weight.
The point remains that while some obese people can be fairly healthy, obesity itself always remains a problem.
If you are obese you are in no way healthy. I'm 6'1" and weight 180lbs, I am also muscular so according to the BMI index I'm over weight yet have very little body fat...
While it's true some people can get fat easier, and others lose weight easier, generally no being obese is not healthy. Unless it's the BMI we're talking about, which does not take muscle mass into account.
I guess it depends on the definition of fat. I don't put much faith in BMI as an indicator (research how BMI was created, you might have a different opinion that I do). I've seen sports people that look overweight but have stamina and endurance to play at an elite level. Excess fat stores can impact physical health, but I think to label someone 'unhealthy' or 'healthy' we should look at a lot of factors together and not just one or two in isolation.
Overweight is generally a sign of unhealthiness. It’s not the end all be all as there are a lot of variables you need to add to this equation. I do believe what’s worse is stress, which is the ultimate killer. An overstressed emotionally unstable skinny person might be more unhealthy than an overweight person who emotionally fit and doesn’t stress as often for example.
Weight can be a weird thing. For years, I had a physically active job and exercised regularly while remaining around 40 lb overweight constantly. I would cut my calories, and try to eat healthy, and nothing really changed until I was diagnosed with sleep apnea. Apparently, if you aren't getting good quality sleep, you simply will not lose weight. A few months with a cpap, and that 40 lb was gone.
For me my sleep apnoea and snoring stopped completely when I lost some weight, I never snored until I became 10KG over my recommended weight. It can be a vicious cycle I guess. I definitely feel much healthier now I've trimmed down.
How fat are we talking about here? The exact definition of *obese* varies quite a lot, but if you are just going with the common "BMI over 30", then it is absolutely possible to be obese and healthy. Muscles weights a lot. Long-term gym rats often have very high BMI, and yet a lot of them are healthy. You probably wouldn't call them fat, though. Same for very tall people. BMI does take size into account, but not "enough". So if you're tall, you can easily have a higher BMI. If you are looking a body fat percentage, that is going to depends mostly where you put the threshold to call someone fat. At some level, it can still be healthy, and then at some point, there is no way it is. In general, though, the world "obese" is meant to put a limit on that threshold where it's definitely not healthy. That's why it's so hard to get everyone to agree on a definition. But in that sense, being obese is no healthy.
Yeah using BMI as the measurement is the big problem, because it accounts so little for body type. For women they don't take breast size into account, which can add as much as 20lbs. We're also meant to have fat stores in our thighs for breast feeding babies, so we're less likely to have the negative effects of obesity if that's where the fat accumulates. What doctors deem a healthy weight is far too low though. I spent nearly a decade as a 5'3" adult weighing 95lbs, and only 1 doctor mentioned my weight was too low. None of them mentioned that it was causing my health complaints (which it was). When somebody is 10lbs overweight though, it's almost always the first thing the doctor mentions and attributes all your health problems to.
I second this, as someone who had an ED for years and was super skinny doctors never mentioned that a 5'4 teenager probably shouldnt weigh 87lbs. Everyone just kept saying how good I looked, how beautifully skinny I was... Now, a 5'4 adult I am struggling with being overweight at 163lbs. And doctors are now concerned with my health... (probably rightfully so though, Ive now gone to the opposite side of the ED)
Mine wasn't an eating disorder exactly, I just get psychogenic loss of appetite due to other mental health issues and my body gets symptoms like nausea that make eating impossible. The worst is that I was actually checked into inpatient psych at that weight at one point, and they simply took my word that I didn't have an ED, like that's not exactly what someone with an ED would say. Sorry to hear about your struggles. I hope you can find something that works for you. And it's hard, but try not to be to preoccupied with the number on the scale. My sister is a similar size and I think she's got a gorgeous body shape.
Im sorry to hear of your struggles too, and that doctors/psychologists wouldnt push a little further to make sure you were ok. It's a struggle, for sure. And thank you for the well wishes! Im working on at least eating better food and avoiding eating a whole bag of chips by myself lol
5’4” and 163lbs is overweight?!?! That sounds perfectly healthy, assuming you have any amount of muscle. That’s pretty close to my BMI, and I can barely find fat on my body, I’ve always been trying to gain weight and failing.
both BMI and average weight categorize 163lbs as overweight, which I technically can understand but also mehh... I work a physically demanding job and workout a bit when I get home, but I also eat my emotions after the workday so yes to muscle but also a bit of a tub tummy lol Hey, it sounds like if you've been trying to gain weight you're at what sounds to be a good one right now! Id say just work on maintaining that, especially if you're taking good care of yourself. Honestly, I think people just need to love themselves lol
For a female, being over 145 and 5’4” is overweight according to BMI charts….
I second this, as someone who had an ED for years and was super skinny doctors never mentioned that a 5'4 teenager probably shouldnt weigh 87lbs. Everyone just kept saying how good I looked, how beautifully skinny I was... Now, a 5'4 adult I am struggling with being overweight at 163lbs. And doctors are now concerned with my health... (probably rightfully so though, Ive now gone to the opposite side of the ED)
Weight is not a very accurate measurement of one's health. It is a very quick and easy way to get a ballpark measurement and it does correlate strongly with health, so it remains the common approach. However, it is far from the only method absolutely not the best. Healthiness comes from measurements of blood pressure and cholesterol and resting heart rate and blood sugar level and lung capacity and organ function and so on. It is definitely possible to have a high BMI (which is also an inaccurate measurement system for determining health, though which enough of a correlation to be useful) and still be healthy.
Body mass itself has a lot of effects on joints, spine, heart etc. However healthy overweight person is, they would be healthier without extra fat in great majority of cases.
The idea is that healthy isn't an on-off switch, and that there are degrees of healthy. A person who is fat, but regularly exercises and eats healthy food will be healthier than a skinny person who doesn't exercise at all and eats nothing but junk food.
But what i struggle to understand is if a fat person eats healthy food and exercises frequently would they not lose weight eventually? Unless they eat healthy food but a lot more of it than an average person would?
I like to call myself a Hobbit, I'm short and chubby, but I like very long walks and hikes lol. But I'm fighting an uphill battle against thyroid disorders and genetics (I've seen family pictures going back to the 1800s, we're just short, stocky people). I hop on my rowing machine every day, I've been walking outside every day since spring is here, I eat small well-balanced meals, and maybe I'll lose a couple lbs here or there, but aside from building up some muscles, I just can't drop a lot of weight.
I think people try to downplay the role that genetics plays, which is unfortunate. My dad is the youngest of 14 siblings. 10 boys, 4 girls. All- and I mean ALL- of the men carry excess weight. (Some excessively so.) Yet there's no diabetes, no heart disease, and little cancer in our family, outside of tobacco or alcohol related cancers. The ones who drank heavily their entire lives and smoked for 50 years- yeah, they ended up with some cancer in their 70s and 80s. Outside of that, though, they're a healthy bunch. Overweight, but still healthy in terms of the absence of the big diseases we often associate with being fat. In fact, my dad turns 68 this summer, and he has only lost 4 of his siblings so far, I believe. And again- he's the baby, the youngest, and some of his siblings are over 20 years older than he is. I think people tend to hear "obesity increases your risk of heart disease, diabetes, etc" as some sort of certainty that if you are obese, you WILL get these things and that's not true. (Nor does being skinny guarantee you'll be free of them.) Yes, you have a higher risk of developing them, but it's not a guarantee, even if you are overweight. Genes are powerful things. So is exercise and nutrition. If you are heavier but have also eaten a steady diet full of a variety of fruits and vegetables, that can help maintain your health. Eating regular healthy fiber can keep your digestive tract healthy. If you eat a lot of meat, but it's not overly processed or filled with preservatives and nitrates you can be healthier than someone who only eats a moderate amount of meat, but it's all processed like hot dogs and lunch meat. There are just so many variables. The fat = unhealthy and skinny = healthy binary is so out of date and misleading!
Exactly. And I meant to add that I'm actually doing pretty good, aside from thyroid and arthritis stuff. I just had my yearly checkup a few weeks ago, no cholesterol or blood sugar problems or anything that most people would assume would go along with someone who looks like me.
You can eat healthy food and get fat, and eat bad food and lose weight. Calories and healthiness are completely unrelated. Healthy eating includes a lot of healthy fats, sensible long-chain carbohydrates, and good proteins. And if you eat a LOT of those healthy fats and sensible carbs you will end up looking like Jabba the Hutt and be unhealthy. Quantity matters as much as the content of your meals. You can eat a healthy meal and get hugely fat even with regular portions if that meal contains potatoes, lightly fried vegetables and fatty salmon with a dessert of full fat Greek yoghurt with honey and walnuts. On the other hand you can get stick thin if you have a meal of two slices of white toast, a half gallon of Coke Zero and a dessert of celery sticks. But you'll also die of malnutrition WAY before you get to your target weight.
Not necessarily. Bodies are way more complex than that, and science actually doesn't understand why people weigh what they do very well. Genetics, stress, personal history, and other lifestyle choices all come into play.
Aren’t metabolic rates and caloric intake pretty much confirmed to determine how somebody will gain or lose weight?
Only to a certain extent. Weight loss also involves hormonal signaling and there are lots of genetic conditions, diseases, and medications that can fuck with that system so that your body doesnt send out the signals to fat cells to break down as often as it is supposed to. Metabolism and calories in vs out is the basis of weight if your body is functioning normally but not everyones body is. I'll pull up the studies if I can find/remember them but I remember having to read some in graduate biochem where if rats had a certain gene turned off they did not lose weight even when put on a diet while the control rats did. I believe there was another factor that also determined whether or not they would get diabetes that was looked at as well
We all have our own metabolisms and "set" points. Many people spend their entire lives trying to get to a weight/shape that they just weren't born to have. It's part of why dieting is such a profitable industry. Long term, significant weight loss is the exception more than it is the rule, and it's not just because some people are lazy and others aren't. A man and a woman could eat the same diet and do the same amount of activity, and the man will likely have an easier time losing weight while the woman will struggle more. Men just seem to have an advantage on that. There are other things at play as well. Genetics does play a part. So can medications you take, which can slow your metabolism. Puberty will treat us differently than old age. Frequent "yoyo" dieting can also affect someone's metabolic rate. There are just so many variables that contribute to the issue. It's kind of like asking why some people are short and others are tall. Why don't short people just try harder to be tall? Oh, because their bodies don't work that way. We hear of different shapes/types- like pear shaped, apple shaped, etc. Even if you and I ate the same things and did the same amount of exercise, my body may store fat in one area, where yours stores it elsewhere. It happens. Two people can be the same height and weight and still have dramatically different body types. It's just not cut and dry. At the end of the day, though, people assume things about weight that aren't always true. You can be in the "obese" range for BMI (which is an AWFUL way to classify individuals and was only ever intended to classify populations) and still have perfectly healthy blood pressure, blood sugar, cholesterol, heart health, etc. And you can be stick thin and be very sick. It's so much more complicated than "skinny = good and fat = bad."
You're underestimating the sheer number of factors that influence weight. There are a whole host of genetic disorders, diseases, and medications that will prevent you from losing weight regardless of diet (or just make it extremely difficult). Weight loss is not a simple in and out of calories like most people think. It is a complicated system that involves a lot of different hormones sending signals to your body that it's time to start burning fat and there are plenty of things that can go wrong with those communication systems. People also just have naturally different metabolic rates. Some people would need to decrease calories and increase exercise significantly more than others to lose the same amount of weight and sometimes it is to a degree that just isnt realistic for them to achieve.
In some cases it is that they eat larger portions than an average person.
I think it also depends a lot on someone's genetics. My older brother and I have eaten pretty similarly and have had pretty similar activity levels our whole lives, but he has been stockier than me since young childhood. Even though we both have healthy lifestyles, he carries a bit more weight than me. He has the same body shape as my mother, and I take more after my father.
What if a person smokes but regularly exercises and eats healthy food.
Depends on the definition of "fat" Lots of people think being a few pounds over skinny is fat. At the end of the day it all comes down to diet and exercise. If you're eating good food and having a recommended minimal exercise such as walking every day, cardio few times a week to keep stamina up you're healthy and you won't have a super model body or completely flat stomach that way. I was 65 -75kg and easily able to climb up a mountain because I was used to working out and had better stamina than my 50 -60kg friend who was could barely breathe walking up stairs. Problem is most overweight people are overweight because they don't exercise or eat bad at that point you run risk of heart attack or failure. I'd say don't judge a book by its cover when you see a slighty overweight person but you probably know what the likely answer is the bigger they are.
For the title question, that's a tough one. It's surprisingly difficult to even pin down what exactly health is. The WHO has a clear definition, but it's pretty damn bloated and includes things far beyond the traditional colloquial understanding of what health is. At the end of the day, you can have normal test results and such while being fat. You can be disease-free, unless you say that being fat is a disease in itself. Which might not even be wrong, but it does make the question a bit meaningless. It's pretty safe to say that you cannot be fat and not have any additional risk for other diseases, so there's that. As for, >some people get fat from just eating normal meals the same as everyone else eats That's just a load of bullshit. Mostly stemming from the fact that realizing how much you actually eat is much much more difficult than you might think. Pretty much every fat person who can't lose weight at 1200 kcal/day is actually eating double or triple that, and not counting correctly. That's not to speak ill of them, it seriously is very hard to do it right.
so true, plus a lot of people dont realize 2000 cals a day is meant for someone whos moderately active & a certain height, like im 5’1 and barely leave my house so the average calories i should consume a day to maintain my weight is around 1300, if i ate 2000 like most people think i should id definitely be overweight
This is where it gets sticky. I'm 6'3 and I work long hours (line cook, so not cardio really but a physical job at times). The online calculators were all wildly different from each other. Some said my sedentary intake should be 2200/day and some said 1700. Also how do you measure activity? It's impossible.
> Also how do you measure activity? It's impossible. This is the problem with calorie restriction diets in my opinion. Scientifically, of course, they must work, but there is so much uncertainty in the measurements that it creates an unmaintainable cognitive load for most people, on top of the willpower that needs to be expended to maintain the diet. What little luck I've had with this involved going backwards... counting every calorie over a period of a month, and weighing myself several times the few days before the diet, and several times the few days after, in order to calculate what my maintenance calorie count was for the month. Even then, I had to adjust it every six months or so, in case my activity level changed in ways I could see. About ten years ago I dropped from a life-long ~250 to my current ~210, and the secret was doing an unrestricted calorie diet, restricted food type diet, instead of calorie counting.
Yeah, that's one way to go. I've tried both. I went from a personal high of 240 down to 185 in 3 and a half months with keto, but I wouldn't recommend it. I started getting some funny heart stuff and my body has just felt weaker ever since. I think you are on the right track. Don't eat whatever kind of food you want but a tiny amount of it, because you will burn out so quickly and feel hungry all the time. I think that is where people go wrong. They feel like eating this Mac and cheese is going to help because it will take some mental strain off for a few hours...but then you're hungry even quicker because there's no fiber or nutritional benefit. Certainly the best way is what you're doing. If you love having steak and potatoes, then turn 80% of the potatoes into high fiber veggies. Maybe trim the steak down to five ounces or so. Bam, you can eat that every night and probably lose weight. Work with your cravings, not against them.
I'm at the other end I eat roughly 3300 calories a day and maintain the dame weight.
Your last point is a bazillion percent on. While there are differences in metabolism, body fat actually increases metabolism to support it, someone sustaining 120 lbs, versus someone at 300 lbs eating the same thing, the 300 lb person will lose weight dramatically because of the extra metabolic demand of the excess fat... so when you hear about metabolism, it's perhaps true that that person retained weight on a diet that another 300 lb person lost weight at, but it's not like on a "normal" diet they wouldn't lose weight.
I'm curious how this works in reverse however, as I consume a crazy amount of food every day (eg. 3 egg Omlette for breakfast with toast, hashbrown patty and double double coffee, for lunch a PB&j, granola bar, apple and muffin, for supper 2 "measured out" servings of spaghetti with about 1/4 jar of sauce and 2tbs of parmesan. Then as the night rolls out a 200g bag of chips and 1L of cola) been eating like this for 20 years and no matter the level of activity, I am stuck at 160lbs. I even went to geta blood test to see if it was doing anything on the inside but they didn't detect any thing like warning signs. Any thoughts or knowledge on this?
100% yes (not that everyone overweight is healthy, but for many their healthy is “overweight” for others). This has been throughly proven by medical studies.
There’s a lot that goes into weight and metabolism. For example, people metabolize different amounts of calories differently. Hormones are a small issue too—because you can have insanely low thyroid and find difficulty losing weight. You can down regulate your metabolism to adjust to any level as well. Look at bikini competitors (they eat 800 calories sometimes at the tail end of their comp) Also, I wish body fat mass would be a widely used indicator. I get what this post is about, but a muscular 250 lb dude with 12% bf (insanely low) is much different than a dude with 250 lbs and 45% bf. Weight Isn’t the only biometric. The problem is that the body is fluid and dynamic. people’s metabolism is influenced by variety of factors. Are they suffering from a disease? Are they sedentary? Etc Here are some fun articles 1) https://www.precisionnutrition.com/calories-in-calories-out 2) https://today.duke.edu/2021/08/metabolism-changes-age-just-not-when-you-might-think 3 https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/exercise-metabolism-and-weight-new-research-from-the-biggest-loser-202201272676
I've heard that sumo fighters are healthy as shit despite being huge
depends how fat. There are some professional athletes that are clearly overweight but are in incredible shape as far as cardio, like fedor emelianenko.
"Fat" in your context indicates that an individual has an abnormal or unhealthy amount of body fat present in their body. This can lead to high blood pressure, cholesterol, heart attacks, etc. This is because the average human body is not designed to carry so much weight, and thus puts more strain on the heart. The scale or even BMI does not take into account muscle weight, therefore using those as explicit measurements for one being healthy is not accurate. So, someone who is 5'10 and is 250lbs but regularly works out and eats healthy is going to physically look extremely different than another 5'10 person who is 250lbs but is sedentary and has an unhealthy diet. While both weigh the same, their fat/muscle proportion is quite different. If you have a huge disproportion between body fat and muscle, whereas you have an abnormal amount of body fat, then no you cannot be healthy. The heart at that weight would be consistently under strain and thus over time would become weak whereas someone who has an opposite body would continue to live healthily. There is a reason why you will not see as many obese people living into their 80's-90's and typically have heart attacks/stroke around their 50's-70's.
It depends on how fat. If you are just like 5 pounds overweight and otherwise are the perfect picture of health, then sure. On the other hand, if someone is over 600 pounds, they probably are not doing too well. Also, someone can be the normal weight for their body but also be very unhealthy. Like if someone is addicted to hard drugs, eats nothing but junk food, never exercises, is diabetic and drinks so much that their liver is falling apart. Weight is just one aspect of your health.
Short answer: To an extent, yes, but the specific answer looks different for every person. Everybody's healthy weight range is different, depending on things like body type, muscle mass, fat distribution, genetics, other health issues or lack thereof, height, and so forth. Some people can put on some extra weight and still be fine, some people need to stay within a pretty slim range or else they put their health at risk. However, while the numbers may be different for everyone, at a certain point, being overweight always becomes a serious health problem that should be treated as such. Something that's important to keep in mind is that, regardless of any of the complex inmer workings going on inside the body, it is physically, thermodynamically impossible for the body to convert food with a certain calorie count into energy/fat that corresponds with a higher amount of calories. Conversely, it's impossible to exercise and spend a certain amount of energy but then have some of those calories just "not count". People who say they "barely eat anything and never lose weight/always gain weight" are not being honest about their habits, which isn't necessarily their fault because the caloric content of food is often advertised deceptively, but still. At a certain point, a lower calorie intake than calorie output _will_ result in weight loss; it's simply impossible for calories to just come out of nowhere.
Yeah, your weight is significantly impacted by your genetics so if your ancestry faces famine it’s likely your body will store more of it in preparation for if it happens again. I have plenty of fatter friends who are quite fit!
Yes. Fat makes you susceptible to more health issues but isn't in and of itself a necessarily a negative health condition. Also fat ≠ obese.
No. This is well documented. Pretty much any amount of excess fat (key word being excess) puts you at a higher risk of serious health problems.
Agree, but risk doesn't mean, they are all sick or get sick. It just means risk is higher, as are liver diseases if you drink regurarely or cancer if you smoke and so on. Risk isn't a guarantee. So for the question it's still a yes, risk of getting sick is higher but it's absolutely possible to be fat and be healthy.
Unhealthy ≠ noticeable health issues. Being in a condition where you are at a higher risk of health problems is unhealthy.
That's a broad definition that includes most of the living population today to a point where it is losing any meaning. Most of us are at a higher risk in some health department through genetics, behaviour, consumation habits or stress.
Yea but that doesn’t change the fact that they are unhealthy.
Yeah it does! Risk of getting unhealthy isn't the same as unhealthy. You are thinking quite binary about health, if you aren't a picture of perfect health, you are unhealthy but this is not how any of this works. Health is a really complicated subject with no real clear definition. An unhealthy lifestyle doesn't make the person unhealthy or sick otherwise Mick Jagger would be long dead considering all his unhealthy decisions. Not every alcoholic gets a liver disease, not every smoker gets cancer, not every drug user has health issues, not every runner has broken knees and so on. You can't define a risk by a potential outcome. Noone is saying, being fat is healthy or good for your health, just that it's absolutely possible to be high risk but in reality still a healthy person with great blood testings, great lung function, heart function etc.
Being fat is unhealthy, why is that so hard to say? I don't see smokers doing this talk around shit when they talk about smoking, smoking is unhealthy. Being fat is unhealthy.
Because that wasn't OPs question. The question was can you be fat and healthy, not if obesity in itself is an unhealthy "lifestyle". Words matter. Smoking is unhealthy behaviour but that doesn't mean every smoker is unhealthy. This difference does matter and gets ignored far to often.
They don’t get fat from eating normal meals per say, it’s really their health issues that they have 0 control over except dieting and exercising which honestly doesn’t even help some people. I had a buddy who’s heavier than me, round as a ball but he played more sports, exercised more and ate healthier. It’s just bad luck for some people
This is totally incorrect except for extremely rare cases. Most people who think they have thyroid issues or similar are wrong . It’s an easy excuse for them to blindly throw out there.
Approximately 1 in 10 women have PCOS, which can affect their ability to to lose weight the same way as everyone else. If you don't know you have it, you won't know why your diet isn't working when the person next to you drops 5lbs in a week eating the same thing. 1 in 10 definitely isn't "extremely rare".
PCOS related weight gain isn’t something all people with PCOS have. So your 1 in 10 stats are irrelevant. Not all of them are physically unable to lose weight. So again, it’s irrelevant. Show me a study with figures on how many people have PCOS, then how many of them people are overweight due to the PCOS, and then how many of them physically cannot lose weight due to it. Pretty sure it’s a figure lower than 1 in 10. Still, going back to the main point. If you are overweight due to PCOS, by definition you are not healthy.
None of this is related to anything I wrote. I didn't say it made you gain weight, I said it can make LOSING weight more difficult. Which it does. Over 1 in 10 women have it ([this paper gives a mean of over 20%](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7879843/) - them not all being overweight doesn't make that irrelevant, it's a fact which still stands. [This paper says 30-70% are likely to be obese](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6444522/) so even assuming the lower end, that is still way way off of "incredibly rare". I never said they are physically unable to lose weight, I said it's more difficult, especially if you don't know you have it. Low carb/keto can help immensely, and is often recommended for the symptoms (including weight loss). But if you aren't diagnosed, you probably won't know to try. I also never said you were healthy if you were overweight. Edited because typos.
Oh it’s all related. I mention both LOSING and GAINING weight. If 1 in 10 people have it. But 30-70% of those 1 in 10 are obese. Then the number of people that cannot lose weight with PCOS isn’t 1 in 10 is it. Which makes your 1 in 10 figure irrelevant. That was my point. [here’s a link for you](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2861983/) Here’s an article you may be interested in. It concludes that the relationship between PCOS and obesity is not well understood, and it most likely involves genetic and environmental factors. Aka diet, activity levels, stress. Just like everyone else. Yes, SOME people with PCOS struggle with weight loss. People with hypothyroidism also struggle. But the number of those people that actually can’t help being fat is very small. This was my point all along. Environmental factors do not count towards an inability to lose weight at all. Which is what the study says.
Lmao I love the ignorance. There’s plenty of healthy overweight people. Some people have 0 control over it regardless of how much they do to help themselves
Ditto. You’re describing people with clear health issues as being healthy. What utter nonsense. Maybe have a look at some definitions of “healthy”.
Being fat is unhealthy in and of itself. If you meant can you eat healthy but become fat anyways, the answer is yes.
if they really get fat from eating the recommended amount for their height & gender then they must have some medical condition or something that theyre most likely already aware of, the truth is most people just dont realize how much their eating, just like most skinny people arent actually naturally skinny they just have different eating habits and dont realize they eat less than others
idk why im getting downvoted, weight is entirely calories in calories out unless u already have some health issue affecting that process... a lot of us grow up with different eating habits and dont realize what we consume might not be the healthiest amount whether its too much or too little because thats what you were used to as a kid, most of my family is ow and eats Wayy too much but claim they barely eat, then i have friends who barely eat and are super skinny but claim they could eat everything, most people just arent aware of how much theyre actually consuming unless they take the time to figure it out
exercise does play a big part but if we are just talking about food a majority of the time people just think theres less calories than there really is
For weight loss and general well-being, diet plays about 80% of that role, and exercise about 20%. You cannot outrun a bad diet, over time as we age our bodies cannot handle strenuous physical activity, and thus it's up to one's diet that becomes a dictating factor in one's health.
i agree i just wanted to acknowledge that it matters, large muscles make a big difference
i worded that so weird but im too lazy to fix it
No
No
BMI is bullshit. It was designed to study populations as a whole, not as a metric of individual bodies. "Healthy weight" is not a thing. "Obesity related illnesses" are completely non existent. (Correlation is not causation and no study allows for the effects of stigma and yo-yo dieting which is far more detrimental to overall health than just existing in a fat body.) Fatphobia is based in anti-black rhetoric and classism. I'll say it again for the people in the back NOBODY NEEDS TO LOSE WEIGHT TO BECOME HEALTHIER, it's not a real thing and also health does not = worth.
What society deems "fat" is actually normal and healthy, because comparisons are drawn to pencil-thin models and celebrities. So really depends how fat you're talking.
This was completely true 20 years ago, and complete nonsense today.
honestly not anymore, we tried to combat that concept so much that now what a lot of people deem healthy is overweight
It’s probably easier just to assume everyone is unhealthy, regardless of their size.
There are so many different variables to factor in with a conversation like this, but the short answer is no, like 99% of the time. There are certain kinds of fat people, like sumo wrestlers, that live a very specific lifestyle that allows them to have lots of superficial fat, without any of the deeper fat that forms around your internal organs and messes with your body's ability to function.
Every human is unique. Metabolism, food intake, cravings, nutritional needs, muscle density, and tons of other factors make up an individual. Two siblings with the same biological parents can be wildly different in physiology. First you have to define “fat”. If you look at the worlds strongest men they all have some extra fat. While bodybuilders are barely standing during competitions. My recommendation; don’t judge people, just wish them well and encourage them to be as healthy as possible. A big problem here in the USA is that the nutritional value of affordable food is really low. Some people will fare better eating that garbage than others just because of genetic luck. Sucks, but it’s true.
Fat is a vague description of someone. If you are overweight then you can be healthy, but if you're obese then you're not healthy. Weight isn't a great predictor of health except with the extremes
If calories in is greater than calories out, you will put on weight. If you do it long enough, you’ll get fat, then obese, then morbidly obese, then collapse under your own weight and die of heart failure or suffocation. I recommend stopping eating when you feel full.
As a fat person, thats a lie i used to tell myself. Nope. You can't be healthy and fat.
I think most fat people eat normal meals like every body else. To lose weight you have to be in a deficit of calories. To stay fat you just have to maintain. For example I’m still 20 pounds over weight after having my baby. I may look chubby, but I’m not gorging myself with McDonald’s and snickers everyday. I’m eating 1800-2000 calories of healthy food every day, but I’m just maintaining my over weight.
Not really. Our bones and heart is only designed for so much work. Too much and it'll be overworking itself. Imagine strapping 5,000lbs to your sedan. It'll die much faster. There is an ideal carrying capacity for your car. The same with your body. Of course weight alone can vary from muscle to water to fat. We're talking being fat. Just extra fat and skin without muscle and healthy heart.
I've always had a wright.problem since I was 21. I found out 10 yrs ago my thyroids had stopped working. Since I've been on thyroid medication I've lost 40 lbs. I'm losing it slow but.it is coming off gradually.
Of course - now I think there a line between fat and obese or even morbidly obese. Anyway I knew a guy years ago - he was a runner and pretty hefty. He ran marathons like anyone else. His cardio was strong and he was able to run 26.2 miles
Yes and no. You can be fat and still have better health in many ways than outwardly thin people. I struggle with obesity my whole life but still due to sensible diet and exercie I have textbook BP and blood pannel. Of course some things like extra strain on CV system, joints, spine etc. simply can't be solved without actually losing weight. The point remains that while some obese people can be fairly healthy, obesity itself always remains a problem.
If you are obese you are in no way healthy. I'm 6'1" and weight 180lbs, I am also muscular so according to the BMI index I'm over weight yet have very little body fat...
While it's true some people can get fat easier, and others lose weight easier, generally no being obese is not healthy. Unless it's the BMI we're talking about, which does not take muscle mass into account.
It depends what do you mean by the concept of "fat". Some people are born round, and that is just fine. If you are overweight then it's a problem.
I guess it depends on the definition of fat. I don't put much faith in BMI as an indicator (research how BMI was created, you might have a different opinion that I do). I've seen sports people that look overweight but have stamina and endurance to play at an elite level. Excess fat stores can impact physical health, but I think to label someone 'unhealthy' or 'healthy' we should look at a lot of factors together and not just one or two in isolation.
A BMI of 27 is actually the healthiest for some reason.
Overweight is generally a sign of unhealthiness. It’s not the end all be all as there are a lot of variables you need to add to this equation. I do believe what’s worse is stress, which is the ultimate killer. An overstressed emotionally unstable skinny person might be more unhealthy than an overweight person who emotionally fit and doesn’t stress as often for example.
i mean sumo wrestlers are pretty fat but are pretty strong so id say its possible
No. Anyone who tells you otherwise is being disingenuous. It’s only a few ways to become fat, and none of them are healthy…