Health, not weight page 30

[Warmbear]

Heya, Honestly if it were not for the fact that I am falling apart at 45, being heavy all my life has not been such a burden, pardon the pun. But I now have 2 bad knees, a badly herniated back, High BP and a host of other issues. I need to loose weight just to ease all this. Especially my knees. I am 6 foot 3 and 330 lbs. I am also quite massively muscled from a life of heavy work and in 10 years I will be a chair bound cripple if I dont do something.

[jimhensen]

That's your choice. I choose not to stress myself out about being fat. I don't want to be a ripped meathead athlete who only thinks about his body fat percentage and how big his muscles are getting; I have more important things to do with my time.

And I'll live as long as you will. Dismiss the research if you want, but it doesn't make it any less valid just because you don't like its conclusions.

This is the type of thing fat people say to feel better about being fat.

[john_e_turner_ii]

This is the type of thing fat people say to feel better about being fat.

I cannot disagree with this. It's one thing to carry a few extra pounds or even 10 - 20 pounds, but to downplay being 100 pounds overweight doesn't make sense. However, Griff did have some good initial success. Somewhere along the line he stalled out.

[jimhensen]

I cannot disagree with this. It's one thing to carry a few extra pounds or even 10 - 20 pounds, but to downplay being 100 pounds overweight doesn't make sense. However, Griff did have some good initial success. Somewhere along the line he stalled out.

Yes, Griff certainly did stall out. I believe he got to around 300 pounds and just stopped losing weight, all while chastising people for occasionally eating small amounts of rice. He was a funny one.

[sbhikes]

Four grandparents, 3 skinny, 1 of those an athlete. The three skinny ones died before age 70. One died before age 60. The fat one made it to 83.

[Bob-Tao]

Yeah, genetics is a bitch. My mother-in-law and father-in-law were a good 60-80 lbs overweight their entire adult lives until their 80's when they started losing weight by eating frozen dinners and canned soup as neither wanted to cook any more. Both were normal weight by the time they died in their early 90's. My Dad died of a massive heart attack at 64. Didn't have an ounce of fat on him, was a perfect weight and walked and bicycled for exercise regularly.

Four grandparents, 3 skinny, 1 of those an athlete. The three skinny ones died before age 70. One died before age 60. The fat one made it to 83.

[Zelli88]

I read the first 5 pages of this forum and then decided to skip all the way to here. So, I don't know if anyone has mentioned this, but here's my two cents.

First, I believe one gains weight for different reasons, other than metabolism/eating too much/junk food. I'm sure it definitely plays a role, but from what I've read from very credible sources is that the body creates this fat to store toxins in the body. By creating this fat, the organs of the body are spared from absorbing these toxins, and thus the body can continue to perform, until you become overloaded with toxins. Toxins such as mercury, cadmium, lead, aluminum, arsenic, BPA...etc...I was skinny all my life, but damn I wasn't athletic worth a crap. When I went to a Holistic Dr for help, he told me I had heavy metal poisoning and that they were all lodged in my tissues and organs - most in my brain. Think about it. Brain is made up of a lot of fat, so are organs. If I was skinny all my life, then the toxins went directly into my organs. Because I couldn't digest my food due to severe inflammatory issues from silver fillings and second hand smoke, I couldn't absorb any minerals to protect my body from absorbing these toxins either. So, inflammation + toxins, which sometimes go together and correlate with each other, are some of the main causes of obesity and failing health, in my opinion.

Maybe this is why people get the "Low carb flu" when they go Primal. Mainly because instead of some mysterious chemical transition from burning sugar to fat, you're now burning the fat, but it's releasing these toxins into your bloodstream and making you sick. Perhaps that's why people get so many common side effects when going VLC..

Second, blood tests are no where NEAR accurate or reliable for being a measurement of good health. The blood is what is recycled from the body's cells. Read this article for an explanation: Why Blood Tests Cannot Reflect What is Happening at a Cellular Level.
My blood tests come back perfect. My kidneys perform twice as good as a healthy person, my liver is perfect, everything is in the perfect range, except for my testosterone levels, which are low, and my iron, which is low too. But, I'm nowhere near as healthy as I should be, or what healthy was considered over 100 years ago. Obesity didn't seem an epidemic 100-200 years ago. As soon as this junk food was massively introduced and agricultural practices went way down in standards, we've begun to see obesity becoming a problem.

But, this is not just limited to fat people, but "skinny" people too. I believe it may be better to be fat rather than too skinny, because the fat is protecting your organs and tissues and cells, where a skinny person may have severely damaged organs (me). I'm aiming for being fit, not skinny. I can sublime myself into thinking that being healthy is fine enough, but the truth is I would be in such denial. Focusing on blood tests is the same as focusing on the scale, neither is a good measurement of one's health.