See, not many people know this, but there are two kinds of fat people. There are people that were born fat, and then there are people that were once thin, then became fat.
May 10, 2007 7:25 PM   Subscribe

"Being thin doesn't automatically mean you're not fat." According to the data, people who maintain their weight through diet rather than exercise are likely to have major deposits of internal fat, even if they are otherwise slim. "The whole concept of being fat needs to be redefined," said Bell, whose research is funded by Britain's Medical Research Council.
posted by mr_crash_davis (78 comments total) 6 users marked this as a favorite
 
*looks at skinny-assed self in mirror, decides to become bulimic*
posted by jonmc at 7:26 PM on May 10, 2007 [1 favorite]


Well, you're pretty much 80% pastrami and beer, dude.
posted by mr_crash_davis at 7:30 PM on May 10, 2007


the other 20% is nicotine and spicy peanuts.
posted by jonmc at 7:32 PM on May 10, 2007 [2 favorites]




being fat and having fat are two entirely different things. Don't they know appearance is king?
posted by pmbuko at 7:38 PM on May 10, 2007 [1 favorite]


This makes me sad. So very, very sad.
posted by milarepa at 7:42 PM on May 10, 2007


True, true. As Fernando would say, "It's not how you feel, it's how you look."
posted by mr_crash_davis at 7:42 PM on May 10, 2007


people who maintain their weight through diet rather than exercise are likely to have major deposits of internal fat, even if they are otherwise slim.

Yes. A skinny cow is only ever a skinny cow, not a gazelle.
posted by UbuRoivas at 7:44 PM on May 10, 2007


I can't see my feet.
Please advise.
posted by Dizzy at 7:44 PM on May 10, 2007


duh. Now get your fat 105 pound ass outside and put some miles under you
posted by caddis at 7:45 PM on May 10, 2007


Dizzy-
Have you tried removing your shoes?
posted by lekvar at 7:49 PM on May 10, 2007 [2 favorites]


They were covered in empty Snackwells cartons.
Thank you, lek!
posted by Dizzy at 7:57 PM on May 10, 2007


Please avoid trans fats if you don't want diabetes. I've been trying to figure out the best way to shed visceral fat to get my insulin to carb ratios under control. So far, exercising 6 hours a week has helped a little.
posted by BrotherCaine at 8:02 PM on May 10, 2007


"I can't see my feet.
Please advise."


Look down.
posted by mr_crash_davis at 8:07 PM on May 10, 2007 [1 favorite]


This assumes someone cares about their health rather than their appearance. Which is only true for people who have found someone who likes them fat or who is fat and can't do any better him/herself. I wouldn't object except that, at least where I live, it seems that absolutely everyone weighs more than Mama Cass ever did.
posted by Grod at 8:08 PM on May 10, 2007


I have this fear that one day I will die.
posted by srboisvert at 8:11 PM on May 10, 2007 [7 favorites]


...and some have fatness thrust upon 'em.
posted by erniepan at 8:30 PM on May 10, 2007 [2 favorites]


Medical Research Council: "You're never good enough."
posted by watsondog at 8:34 PM on May 10, 2007


You know, time and again people have said a reasonable amount of calories combined with a reasonable level of physical activity is the best overall solution...
posted by Matt Oneiros at 8:39 PM on May 10, 2007


Isn't it the case that fat cells never truly ... go away? They only shrink to negligible size? This makes it easier for once-fat people to become fat again, IIRC, and is a major reason people get lipo.
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 8:40 PM on May 10, 2007


I don't want to have a heart attack in my fifties or sixties, but I sure would rather die that way than a number of other likely ways one dies when one avoids heart disease. Of course, diabetes sucks.

My arthritis is so bad that the only exercise I think I could do would be water exercise. Which would be a damn good idea, if I were motivated enough to do it. But, the point is, because I'm so necessarily indolent because of my joint pain, my metabolism has slowed down a lot. I'm slightly overweight but I eat little. I only eat once a day, normally, and not that much. On the other hand, I don't eat very healthily. I wouldn't be surprised if I had too much internal fat.

For the second half of last year, for some reasons that may have medical significance, I started having a notably lowered appetite and would go a day without eating every week or so. My weight at the end of the year was dropping close to my teenage-to-mid-twenties weight. But my damn belly still was too rotund. This is why there's nothing that substitutes for exercise.
posted by Ethereal Bligh at 8:40 PM on May 10, 2007


Of the women scanned by Bell and his colleagues, as many as 45 percent of those with normal BMI scores (20 to 25) actually had excessive levels of internal fat. Among men, the percentage was nearly 60 percent.

So half of America is fat, and half of the half that's not fat is also fat? What about the not-fat half of the not-fat half? Are any of them fat?
posted by agentofselection at 8:43 PM on May 10, 2007 [5 favorites]


Oh good, another article on metafilter LOLFATTIEZFILTER about fat.
posted by UbuRoivas at 8:49 PM on May 10, 2007


Unfortunately (thanks again, bloody effin' genetics), I am 90% internal fat, and, frankly, not skinny to begin with...

Ummmm, non-yay me.
posted by Samizdata at 9:02 PM on May 10, 2007


What, no comments about how people who exercise regularly are "not enjoying life"?

This is not up to the usual MetaFilter standard.
posted by dreamsign at 9:46 PM on May 10, 2007


I'm not sure what the typical Mefi thread on fatness goes like, besides morons irrationally ranting about insurance premiums as a cover for firebreathing moralism, but dreamsign, my understanding is that exercise is majorly overrated when it comes to moderating body fat (besides the metabolistic effects.) Basically, exercise is for your heart & other health reasons: as for calories, you can just skip a cookie instead of doing a half hour of a moderately strenous activity.
posted by Firas at 9:54 PM on May 10, 2007


"Republican Pro-War Evangelical Group Attacks Obese Abortion Doctor in No-Smoking Zone Outside Circumcision Conference".

Well, maybe not exactly that, but someday the perfect storm of MeFi hot-button issues will come...
posted by Sangermaine at 10:02 PM on May 10, 2007 [2 favorites]


FAT MAN EAT TINY LITTLE SKINNY MAN!

RAAAAAHR!

Oooooooh, a pound of butter...
posted by Samizdata at 10:04 PM on May 10, 2007


Doctors are unsure about the exact dangers of internal fat, but some suspect it contributes to the risk of heart disease and diabetes. They theorize that internal fat disrupts the body's communication systems. The fat enveloping internal organs might be sending the body mistaken chemical signals to store fat inside organs like the liver or pancreas. This could ultimately lead to insulin resistance, type 2 diabetes, or heart disease.

So, do they actually know anything...or is this a case of the news just not bothering to tell us that they do? Because otherwise OMG WE'RE GONNA DIE.

Fat is just an organ, but one that freaks us all the fuck out because we think we should be aerodynamic or something. I think a lot of researchers are struggling with moving from "fat bad!" to "fat has A function, but we think we can have too much/ the wrong kind but we don't really know for sure." Newspapers, however, are firmly in the FAT BAD WILL KILL YOU SKINNY WON'T SAVE YOU NO BE AFRAID camp.
posted by emjaybee at 10:14 PM on May 10, 2007


You know, Firas, your comment directly contradicts the posted link.

What, no comments about how people who exercise regularly are ‘not enjoying life’?

But it's equally wrong to claim that everyone will enjoy exercise. For a good number of people, exercising for its own sake isn't pleasant and represents a considerable amount of time "not enjoying life". However, there are exercise options that are enjoyable indepedently of the exercise itself, so for those people that should be taken into consideration.
posted by Ethereal Bligh at 10:17 PM on May 10, 2007


What? The link also says that exercise is for health, not cutting body fat.
posted by Firas at 10:23 PM on May 10, 2007


My assumption is that fat deposits within the body aren't as extensive as those under one's skin/belly etc.
posted by Firas at 10:24 PM on May 10, 2007


Also while we're talking, I like to go by those nifty body fat % measurements, I assume they're better than BMI when it comes to this 'holistic view of fat deposits' stuff?
posted by Firas at 10:26 PM on May 10, 2007


My reading of the links says that only exercise will actually reduce all the fat in the body, including internal fat.
posted by Ethereal Bligh at 10:27 PM on May 10, 2007


Republican Pro-War Evangelical Group Attacks Obese Abortion Doctor in No-Smoking Zone Outside Circumcision Conference

Did anybody manage to capture this attack on video & post it on YouTube?
posted by UbuRoivas at 10:31 PM on May 10, 2007


...Outside Circumcision Conference

...with a declawed cat.
posted by pompomtom at 10:34 PM on May 10, 2007 [1 favorite]


When I was a young man, I could make a circle out of my hands, with the tips of my thumbs and the tips of my pointer fingers touching.

Around my waist.

Nowadays, I only weight about 25 pounds more than that, and I have a flat stomach, but my waist (when crushed down physically by my hands) is more than twice the circumference that it used to be.

I have no doubt whatsoever that I'm filling up with fat inside, even if I'm skinny-as-the-dickens on the outside -- I can only hope the fat I am storing is a delicious, blueberry-jelly type of fat with which I can enjoy on my toast if the fat ever starts seeping out of my pores.

note to self: don't post while sleepy.
posted by davejay at 10:36 PM on May 10, 2007 [4 favorites]


it's equally wrong to claim that everyone will enjoy exercise.

I have never, not ever, heard that claim on MeFi.


For a good number of people, exercising for its own sake isn't pleasant and represents a considerable amount of time "not enjoying life".

Well of course. But what I hear a lot of in these kind of threads (though not here yet, as I said) is the "you can be a freak ultramarathon runner or you can be a normal, happy person" kind of false dichotomy, which is defensive bullshit.
posted by dreamsign at 10:37 PM on May 10, 2007 [1 favorite]


Well, maybe no one is making an absolute claim about enjoying exercise, but there is a bias against anyone that just doesn't like physical exertion. From the perspective of the people who don't like physical exertion, this bias seems like other people moralizing about doing "what's good for them" even if they don't like to do it. So their response is "I don't want to devote a considerable portion of my life to doing something I don't enjoy, and even actively dislike". I think that's a reasonable point of view and, frankly, a lot of other people don't.

I won't deny that I fall in line with the people who defend being fat. That's probably wouldn't be the case if there weren't such a pervasive, unapologetic and often deliberately hurtful moralizing tone among the anti-fat contingent. I mean, I agree that the public health concerns are important. On the other hand, I think there's a whole bunch of other things that people do that have negative public health ramifications and yet most of the anti-fat folks support people's rights to decide what to do with their own bodies and what activities they enjoy. In short, I strongly believe that, among the left especially, anti-fat sentiment has become the social and psychological repository of the puritanical ethos that is so firmly embedded into the American psyche. The same folks who today firmly (and rightly) support the healthiness of lust, even unrestrained lust, blithely accept the traditional sinful, moralizing view about "gluttony". Additionally, I think there's a similar dynamic going on with regard to the contemporary American ethos of "being healthy", especially with regard to eating healthily. There's big, honking moralizing components to the rhetoric that proponents of this point-of-view. In fact, it's a "value" and most people who hold it are unapologetic (if they are self-aware of it) about it being a "value". As a result, there's a social condemnatory aspect of it, as well. And I honestly believe, after many years of thought and observation about it, that this is a social phenomena relating to the shaming instinct and conformity. While the stated rationales behind being against obesity and being against "unhealthy" eating and lifestyles certainly have merit, I think that as a social phenomena, they aren't what they claim to be. And, what I think they actually are, as social phenomena, are bad things coming from some of the uglier places of human and social psychology.
posted by Ethereal Bligh at 11:02 PM on May 10, 2007 [12 favorites]


Well, maybe no one is making an absolute claim about enjoying exercise, but there is a bias against anyone that just doesn't like physical exertion. From the perspective of the people who don't like physical exertion, this bias seems like other people moralizing about doing "what's good for them" even if they don't like to do it. So their response is "I don't want to devote a considerable portion of my life to doing something I don't enjoy, and even actively dislike". I think that's a reasonable point of view and, frankly, a lot of other people don't.

Count me amongst those that don't.

It's all in your framing: "exertion", "considerable portion of my life" etc. Nobody says that exercise needs to be strenuous, time-consuming, or unpleasant. There are all kinds of activities that are enjoyable & fall within what could be termed exercise.

Sex is one example that most would see as enjoyable rather than a strenuous chore, but anything else with a fun component would also count - surfing, cycling, kicking a football around in the park, frisbee, table tennis, badminton, splashing about in the pool or at the beach, martial arts, horse riding, skiing, boardsailing, kayaking, tennis, dance dance revolution, oozinator fights, herding kittens, playing sports or other outdoorsy games with kids...the list is near-endless.

I would suggest that if anybody not in serious physical pain cannot find some form of semi-vigorous physical activity that they enjoy, then they suffer from a failure of the imagination more than anything else.
posted by UbuRoivas at 11:24 PM on May 10, 2007 [1 favorite]


So we're all brimming with resentment against strawmen then? Strawmen nobody wants to personify?

Right-ho. So that's settled then. Excellent.
posted by Firas at 11:37 PM on May 10, 2007 [1 favorite]


Ethereal Bligh: paragraph breaks are your friend.
posted by rsanheim at 11:50 PM on May 10, 2007 [1 favorite]


That's it, I'm taking up a collection for a health club membership. Contributors get to see video updates; big contributors will get videos of me in action. File under "Comedy."
posted by davy at 11:55 PM on May 10, 2007


So we're all brimming with resentment against strawmen then? Strawmen nobody wants to personify?

Yeah, maybe so. But that's not a devastating criticism. There are strawmen that people set-up in the classic sense of the fallacy. Then there are other strawmen that people set-up because it's a caricature of something real and actually represents an exaggerated truth. And you're right: both those who condemn and those who defend obesity tend to think of their opposite numbers in terms of these sorts of caricatures. And, as a result, they erect strawmen and argue against them.

And, yeah, discourse would be a million times healthier and more productive if we all avoided doing that. But we don't. Furthermore, in these sorts of cases, while it's true that most of those on the opposite side of the fence aren't much like the strawman that's set-up to represent them, it often happens that someone comes along who completely validates the strawman. For example, look at how many mefites think about conservative Christians and, as a result, constantly argue against strawmen that are caricatures of such. Yet there are people exactly like this caricature. On the other hand, as people get more upset and partisan, the more they are sure that everyone in that group is exactly like the worst of what they don't like.

So in these MeFi fat threads what happens is that the majority of comments that are nuanced and friendly are upstaged by the few that most closely represents the caricature that each side has of each other and this just reinforces it. And people then argue against what may in fact be more a strawman than not.

Applying this same analysis to my own reaction to fat threads and how I remember them, I realize that the most hostile, most condemnatory comments completely dominate my thoughts about them.

So what do we do about this? Most of us who are inclined to be more nuanced and reasonable already are doing so. Those who feel like the web is the perfect opportunity to throw out intemperate, provocative, and hostile comments are going to continue to do so. And those comments will get stuck in our memories as representative of "the opposition". (Of course, when they come from our side of the fence, we either applaud them or we avow that they don't represent our views.)

Ethereal Bligh: paragraph breaks are your friend.

Yeah, that was a long paragraph. But I think I have a good working sense of where to break paragraphs—and it's not for length, but for content. Usually I keep those thought chunks about the right size. In this case, I didn't. It needed a rewrite, not enforced paragraph breaks.
posted by Ethereal Bligh at 11:57 PM on May 10, 2007 [1 favorite]


I was "scary" thin (like 5'7" & 123#, 26" waist jeans hung on my hipbones) until I went on an SSRI at 29, then slightly paunchy till I quit smoking at 37. Now I'm a roly-poly old troll. The neighbor kid's autistic and "hard to manage" and three weeks ago they put him on a very new atypical antipsychotic whose name I can't remember; he's already gained 20 pounds (and his new twitches apparently burn few calories).
posted by davy at 12:01 AM on May 11, 2007


Firas: So we're all brimming with resentment against strawmen then?

I dunno if that was directed at me, but I've often heard people here & elsewhere trotting out the "I don't like exercise, so I don't do it" line, to which my response is as above: "You're just using the wrong definition of exercise". It's an actual response to an actual argument, so I don't see where strawmen come into it.

EB: nah, paragraph breaks are for length more than content. Great solid chunks of text are a massive turnoff for readers. White space breaks makes text into more digestible morsels & thereby makes it less formidable.

And it doesn't really matter much where you place those breaks.

/ex technical writer
posted by UbuRoivas at 12:06 AM on May 11, 2007


Ah, well, I was a tech writer, too. As I said, in my opinion the right choice is to rewrite, not to arbitrarily break into paragraphs.
posted by Ethereal Bligh at 12:14 AM on May 11, 2007


(but if you choose not to rewrite, then you might as well slot some white space into your stream-of-consciousness outpouring)
posted by UbuRoivas at 12:18 AM on May 11, 2007


I won't deny that I fall in line with the people who defend being fat. That's probably wouldn't be the case if there weren't such a pervasive, unapologetic and often deliberately hurtful moralizing tone among the anti-fat contingent.

I mean, I agree that the public health concerns are important. On the other hand, I think there's a whole bunch of other things that people do that have negative public health ramifications and yet most of the anti-fat folks support people's rights to decide what to do with their own bodies and what activities they enjoy.

In short, I strongly believe that, among the left especially, anti-fat sentiment has become the social and psychological repository of the puritanical ethos that is so firmly embedded into the American psyche. The same folks who today firmly (and rightly) support the healthiness of lust, even unrestrained lust, blithely accept the traditional sinful, moralizing view about "gluttony".

Additionally, I think there's a similar dynamic going on with regard to the contemporary American ethos of "being healthy", especially with regard to eating healthily. There's big, honking moralizing components to the rhetoric that proponents of this point-of-view. In fact, it's a "value" and most people who hold it are unapologetic (if they are self-aware of it) about it being a "value".

As a result, there's a social condemnatory aspect of it, as well. And I honestly believe, after many years of thought and observation about it, that this is a social phenomena relating to the shaming instinct and conformity.

While the stated rationales behind being against obesity and being against "unhealthy" eating and lifestyles certainly have merit, I think that as a social phenomena, they aren't what they claim to be. And, what I think they actually are, as social phenomena, are bad things coming from some of the uglier places of human and social psychology.

posted by UbuRoivas at 12:21 AM on May 11, 2007


I talked a bit about lefty puritanism here. You can see it in full force when it comes to eg. smoking and environmental issues. Basically leftism, even though I'd count myself among its cohorts, isn't a very consistent political stance. We borrow libertarian rhetoric when we feel like it and collectivist rhetoric when it suits us better.

One thing that's different about obesity is that it's not as if there aren't legion social pressures to not be fat anyway. Hating fat people isn't exactly sticking it to the man.
posted by Firas at 12:28 AM on May 11, 2007


Hating fat people isn't exactly sticking it to the man.

But accepting that fat is ok removes one of the arguments against the cliched lefty enemy #1: McDonalds.
posted by UbuRoivas at 12:33 AM on May 11, 2007


So cliched enemies are out of bounds? Guess no more complaints about Bush.

Those who feel like the web is the perfect opportunity to throw out intemperate, provocative, and hostile comments are going to continue to do so. And those comments will get stuck in our memories as representative of "the opposition".

I guess that's basically what I've taken from previous fat threads -- a bunch of denouncements of fat people (lazy, gluttonous, burden on society) and a bunch of people denouncing fit people (self-absorbed, devoid of pleasure, attitudes of superiority) when neither characterization fits the majority of either group when it comes to real people.

And apparently it's ok on MeFi to bash both vigorously. I'm tired of it.
posted by dreamsign at 1:04 AM on May 11, 2007


Firas, the new thinking is for men to measure their waist as the metric to determine fat fitness. If you are storing fat around your waist primarily you probably have visceral fat, even if your arms are skinny.

As for body fat %, the most accurate measure is to be weighed in a tank and factoring out the air in your lungs to determine your density.
posted by BrotherCaine at 1:22 AM on May 11, 2007


So, I'm fat on the inside. Oh, OK. *goes on about business*
posted by chuckdarwin at 1:59 AM on May 11, 2007


[more inside]
posted by the cuban at 2:40 AM on May 11, 2007 [6 favorites]


people who maintain their weight through diet rather than exercise are likely to have major deposits of internal fat

and then, in the article:

The good news is that internal fat can be easily burned off through exercise or even by improving your diet

Urmmmmm?
posted by Deathalicious at 3:42 AM on May 11, 2007


Ethereal Bligh: paragraph breaks are your friend.

Ethereal is king of comment-braindumps, he can't interrupt his tought stream for formalities so frivolous as a "paragraph break" and formatting . So leave him be you formatting feticist !
posted by elpapacito at 4:18 AM on May 11, 2007


(ex-TWs -- represent!)

I fully realize that the plural of "anecdote" is not "data," but here goes:

I'd tried cutting back on calories and eating a bit more healthily when I noticed incipient chipmunk cheeks and could grab a double fistful of flab at the sides of my waist. The only result was that I was eating less; my appearance didn't change. Presumably my body interpreted the lesser fat and overall caloric intake as famine signals and banked the fires, so to speak, trying to conserve stored calories.

Once I started exercising a few hours a week, I dropped weight steadily and visibly in spite of going back to eating pretty much whatever the hell I felt like. Apparently the difference has been that my metabolism ramped up a little and began burning extra calories to deal with the effects of 90-min. sessions of exercise.

But then, genetics plays into it, too: Neither of my parents and only one of my grandparents had any problems with obesity or diabetes. There are plenty of people I see jogging or walking on the trail who are obviously dealing with ongoing obesity issues.
posted by pax digita at 4:23 AM on May 11, 2007


Do these jeans make my interior fat look fat?
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 4:40 AM on May 11, 2007


However, there are exercise options that are enjoyable indepedently of the exercise itself

It's called fucking. Aside from that, exercise kills.
posted by trondant at 4:45 AM on May 11, 2007


Once I started exercising a few hours a week, I dropped weight steadily and visibly in spite of going back to eating pretty much whatever the hell I felt like. Apparently the difference has been that my metabolism ramped up a little and began burning extra calories to deal with the effects of 90-min. sessions of exercise.

Yeah, that is what happens for me, too. Cutting back calories does nothing for me - it's exercising for nearly an hour a day or more that does.

Personally I find it easier to motivate myself to exercise instead of counting calories or writing down everything I eat. I know those tactics work for some people, but they make me absolutely crazy and want to eat everything in sight. When I just focus on exercising as much as I can, I try to eat healthfully - less junk food, more vegetables - but I don't beat myself up over an extra cookie.

This recent article from the NYTimes suggests that genetics plays a huge part in one's weight:
"fat people who lost large amounts of weight might look like someone who was never fat, but they were very different. In fact, by every metabolic measurement, they seemed like people who were starving.

Before the diet began, the fat subjects’ metabolism was normal — the number of calories burned per square meter of body surface was no different from that of people who had never been fat. But when they lost weight, they were burning as much as 24 percent fewer calories per square meter of their surface area than the calories consumed by those who were naturally thin."

It sounds a little discouraging to me, actually.
posted by sutel at 4:59 AM on May 11, 2007 [1 favorite]


What, no comments about how people who exercise regularly are "not enjoying life"?

Wow, classic trolling. Complaining that no one is making the arguments you disagree with, just so people will jump in and defend them.
posted by smackfu at 5:00 AM on May 11, 2007


> morons irrationally ranting about insurance premiums as a cover for firebreathing moralism

firebreathing moralism needs a cover?
posted by jfuller at 5:08 AM on May 11, 2007


fat is the new thin
posted by mrmojoflying at 5:19 AM on May 11, 2007


People, you have to exercise so your body will properly be able to use fat for fuel. Strenuous exercise is counterproductive in the beginning. The best thing in the world to do is go for long walks to start with. (Or water aerobics, EB. It's fun.)

Dieting without exercise simply gets rid of fatburning musclemass which puts you in worse shape than you started with.
posted by konolia at 5:42 AM on May 11, 2007


However, there are exercise options that are enjoyable indepedently of the exercise itself

It's called fucking. Aside from that, exercise kills.
posted by trondant at 4:45 AM on May 11


Dancing?
posted by vacapinta at 5:53 AM on May 11, 2007


Speaking on behalf of myself, my boyfriend, and computer geeks everywhere, vacapinta -- I'm gonna guess that you do not want to see us dance.
posted by bitter-girl.com at 6:41 AM on May 11, 2007


As I mentioned in the previous thread about internal fat, a skinny friend of mine waited three days to go to the hospital after his appendix burst; he survived this commonly fatal event only because he had a thick layer of internal abdominal fat surrounding his appendix, which contained its septic contents and prevented a generalized abdominal infection.

Internal fat does indeed seem to be associated with bad things such as diabetes and metabolic syndrome, and I would be surprised if it isn't often present at high levels in irritable bowel and celiac disease.

That does not mean it is a cause of those things; in fact, as in the case of my friend, I think we have enough information to begin to see that internal fat is part of the defense against them, part of the way the body copes with various diseases and conditions.
posted by jamjam at 7:12 AM on May 11, 2007


I have trouble believing Mama Cass is still fat. Death is like South Beach on steriods. It just plain works.
posted by and hosted from Uranus at 7:27 AM on May 11, 2007 [1 favorite]


I was thinking about buying one of those skinfold calipers to measure my body fat.

Does this mean that I'd just be wasting my money?

There's no way a skinfold test could measure this visceral fat.
posted by jason's_planet at 7:36 AM on May 11, 2007


Ok, that's it, I'm getting a bike.
posted by Skorgu at 8:41 AM on May 11, 2007


Fat guy in a little coat....
posted by NationalKato at 8:50 AM on May 11, 2007


bulmc?

*spews up fusillade of Budweiser, pastrami & spicy peanuts*
posted by jonmc at 9:10 AM on May 11, 2007


Dieting without exercise simply gets rid of fatburning musclemass which puts you in worse shape than you started with.
posted by konolia


Completely wrong. Exercise plus a good diet is the holy grail, but a good diet alone does make you healthier and does get rid of fat.
posted by justgary at 10:51 AM on May 11, 2007


Sutel, the NYTimes article put obese people on an extreme diet (600 liquid calories a day until they lost 100 lbs). It's generally excepted that drastic changes like that cause havic on your system, especially your metabolism. Are there any studies done about a more gradual/healthier weight loss program?
posted by Crash at 11:33 AM on May 11, 2007


All Your Weight Are Belong To Us
posted by ZachsMind at 3:50 PM on May 11, 2007


Ahh, so they're saying that the Spot Reduction Myth is NOT a myth - you can acheive spot reduction (ie the visible bits) by diet, just not by exercise. :)
posted by -harlequin- at 9:09 PM on May 11, 2007


What, no comments about how people who exercise regularly are "not enjoying life"?

Wow, classic trolling. Complaining that no one is making the arguments you disagree with, just so people will jump in and defend them.


Yeah, boy you sure got me, smackfu. I really drove this fat thread to places all the other fat threads on MeFi never went. Good on ya, copper.
posted by dreamsign at 1:15 AM on May 14, 2007


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