Americans are disgustingly fat!

Most of these people will burn no more than three or four hundred calories per gym session. and they will probably reward themselves with a milkshake or something afterward. Proper diet is the answer for most people. Of course that requires a wholesale rejection of our current culinary culture.

I also see the whole "New Year's Resolution" crowd in the gym. It is pathetically humorous to watch them "workout." It usually consist of standing around talking for twenty minutes. Then attempting to figure out how to use a treadmill, step machine, bike, etc for five to ten minutes. Finally they towel off their machine, drink some Gatorade, and leave.

People need to understand that their presence alone in a gym is not considered working out.

This has got to be one of the most-often quoted lies in the "fitness world". Muscle that is not active is not particularly metabolically active. The majority of calorie expenditure during rest is primarly due to non-muscle tissue.

Calculations from Obesity Reviews Volume 3 Page 113 - May 2002: In a 75-kg male adult with a resting energy expenditure (REE) of about 2800 kcal or 11.7 MJ d1, muscle mass (MM) is about 30 kg and organ mass (OM) covers 5 kg. Thus, muscle accounts for 450 kcal or 1.9 MJ and OM accounts for 2340 kcal or 9.8 MJ d1, which is 16 and 84% of the REE, respectively.

Based on these calculations they determined that the resting energy of skeletal muscle is 15kcal/kg per day.

Now think about the 45 minutes of intermitant resistance training with a relatively low metabolic cost that would be required to add and maintain a few lilos of muscle. Assume now that those extra kilos of muscle get you about 50 kcals of energy expenditure each day. Does that amount justify choosing weight training over aerobic activity?

Of course those extra kilos of muscle mass would enable the person to burn more calories while they used that muscle group. But what limits the ability to use a large percentage of the total muscle mass? That's right, endurance, the kind you develop by doing something other than weight training. By increasing their aerobic capacity the individual could work at a higher workload ehile on the treadmill (or whatever) utilize more muscle mass, and actually burn calories at a higher rate and for a longer time.

God I hate how personal trainers just parrot whatever passes as commmon knowledge among the fitness scene.

wow. The fat people on this link are just like the posters on letsrun. It's amazing.

can you believe it?? wrote:

wow. The fat people on this link are just like the posters on letsrun. It's amazing.

Except that they hate on lean fit attractive people instead of on Gallowalkers. Actually they would hate on Gallowalkers too since those people are exercisers. What a crappy and depressing life. I can see why you have to be registered to comment there because those people are utterly full of shit.

JY wrote:

This has got to be one of the most-often quoted lies in the "fitness world". Muscle that is not active is not particularly metabolically active. The majority of calorie expenditure during rest is primarly due to non-muscle tissue.

This person is exactly right. More muscle does NOT create a faster metabolism, and any personal trainer who proliferates this myth (read: nearly ever one) is incompetant.

I was at the Boeing flight museum a few weeks ago..... there was a large photograph of a congregation of people that was taken in the 1920s.... it was possible to clearly see the faces and figures of dozens, if not hundreds of people in the crowd, and I could not find more than 2-3 individuals who could have been described as even "husky". These days given a crowd of the same size, you'd be lucky find more than 2-3 people who aren't fat.

Right up there with the myth of "muscle weighs more than fat."

One of my (nonrunner) friends from college was on an exercise and weight loss kick her senior year. I ran into her on her way back from the gym one night and asked how her training was going. She said it was going well, and even though she gained some weight, it was okay, because she was converting her fat into muscle. She even said her trainer told her a pound of fat would turn into a pound and a half of muscle. I was just confused by this.

Dude, the fat blog was hilarious.

son of ryan wrote:

Right up there with the myth of "muscle weighs more than fat."

Your wrong. A pound of Muscle weights about 15% more then a pound of Fat, under conditions of rest. This is because of the desnity of Proteins (Actin & Mysosin) as compared to Adipose. Maybe you shoudl do a little reading before you start blabbing about things you known nothing about?

NFPT wrote:

son of ryan wrote:

Right up there with the myth of "muscle weighs more than fat."

Your wrong. A pound of Muscle weights about 15% more then a pound of Fat, under conditions of rest. This is because of the desnity of Proteins (Actin & Mysosin) as compared to Adipose. Maybe you shoudl do a little reading before you start blabbing about things you known nothing about?

Wow...that is all I have to say.

This was the dumbest comment I read on the fat blog:

"This just reminds me of how everything for fat people costs more.

I'm always amazed how much more clothing for bigger sizes goes up, not just a little, but A LOT.

I truly feel like it's the price they want us to pay, like a penalty, for being fat.

I also have to fly this year. I always take Delta because it's the only non-stop that goes where I have to go (Nice, France)...and they also have put in more seats, which seem to always be packed. Fortunately my hubby travels with me and he is average-sized, but he too complains about being packed like a sardine. So it's not just fat people.

Not looking forward to it, though."- lildee

No crap larger clothing costs more, it takes more material to make.... UUUUUUUGGGGHHHHHH. But in her book it's just discrimination.

Now, I agree with you that muscle does weigh more than fat, but I find your assertion that a pound of muscle weighs more than a pound of fat to be a little puzzling, as this is physically imposible.

This was posted on another thread.

http://www.hame.ca/blog2/images/fatty.jpg

This is just sad - and you can't blame the kid. You've got to blame the parents. The parents need to force this kid to eat less, exercise more, get his ass off the computer and away from the TV, get outside and play, and eat nutritious food. If you give a kid a choice between a healthy meal and McDonalds, the kid will obviously choose McDonalds. I heard somewhere that a by the age of 2, an American child's favorite "vegetable" is French fires.

These parents are giving this kid a lifetime of ridicule and harassment, and ultimately heart disease, diabetes, and an early death. I don't feel a shred of pity for obese adults, but I do feel bad for kids like this.

quack attack wrote:

This was the dumbest comment I read on the fat blog:

Actually I thought this was the dumbest...

"Have you ever tried to open a bag of airline pretzels while holding a flimsy plastic cup of Sprite in your other hand, with nowhere to set either one? It's quite a feat of dexterity, let me tell you."

So here's someone too fat to sit in an airplane seat comfortably, complaining that part of that discomfort involves difficulty in feeding herself snacks.

Actually that isn't funny at all. Pathetic is more like it.

I think you mean Freedom fires.

She is probably bumping her personal trainer!!!

People's perceptions of fat have completely changed over the years.

If you are old enough to have been in grade school in the 70s or earlier, take out your class pictures and look at the "fat kid" you remember. Chances are he would be "average" today and that there was nobody approaching the girth of some of the ten year olds you see at malls today.

Same with fat actors / comedians. I remember Tim Conway as chubby, Fred Mertz as fat, and Jackie Gleason as an enourmous blimp. Chris Farley or John Candy could have eaten Jackie Gleason for lunch. Somebody Farley's size was found only in freakshows a generation ago. Leo DiCaprio occasionally balloons up past Conway-size.

Great...I'm flying across the country this weekend. I just know I'm going to get stuck next to this woman and she struggles with her pretzels and Sprite.

GastricBypass-ClosedForRepairs wrote:

Actually I thought this was the dumbest...

"Have you ever tried to open a bag of airline pretzels while holding a flimsy plastic cup of Sprite in your other hand, with nowhere to set either one? It's quite a feat of dexterity, let me tell you."

So here's someone too fat to sit in an airplane seat comfortably, complaining that part of that discomfort involves difficulty in feeding herself snacks.

Actually that isn't funny at all. Pathetic is more like it.