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I never understood why “weight” is such a strong proxy to “fitness” in the popular mind. I usually don’t care how much I weigh, as long as I look fit. Building

by seer 3y ago

I never understood why “weight” is such a strong proxy to “fitness” in the popular mind. I usually don’t care how much I weigh, as long as I look fit. Building muscle increases your weight, but makes you look better and be healthier. Also muscle burns more calories to maintain, so you can eat more. Some of my friends who are fitness buffs track weight too but seek “gainz” not weight lossesss… I guess BMI is slightly better but not that great. I hope people come up with a better stat that encourages us to be “healthier” instead of lighter.

rpmisms 3y ago
Bodyfat percentage is usually a good indicator, but an even better one is what percentage of your bodyweight you can deadlift. A healthy adult should be able to deadlift their bodyweight. A fit adult: 1.5x. 2x is the line for really being strong (or thin and strong!)
- seer 3y ago
  While probably a very good indicator, I refuse to deadlift out of principle. You have to be _really_ careful especially as you get more fit, as one mistake and you just wreck yourself for life. And I’m not particularly risk averse (went on a motorbike ride in the mountains of vietnam last year). Just don’t see the gainz from that particular exercise worth the risks.
  - Kirby64 3y ago
    Sounds like you’re buying into fear mongering on deadlifts, frankly. You do have to have good form, but it’s not some insurmountable task. And a singular injury is extremely unlikely to ruin your back forever. There’s also multiple variations or techniques to make them safer. RDLs, using a lifting belt, lighter weight and more reps, to name a few.
  - rpmisms 3y ago
    I love motorcycling too, but I'm cautious. As long as you build your strength carefully and lift with good technique, you'll not injure yourself. Same principles apply. Know what you're doing, have good fundamentals, and don't take unnecessary risks.
  - safety1st 3y ago
    I would like to dispel this myth that deadlifts are dangerous. They are a very natural movement that strengthens a huge percentage of the muscles in the body. What's dangerous is doing very heavy deadlifts with poor form. The solution is to just keep your lifts light and do higher reps, most exercise bros are simply too macho to admit that you can lift surprisingly light weights and still get muscle growth with a much better safety profile, especially as a non-advanced lifter. Sure get a trainer to show you how at first, but it doesn't take a lot of training to be able to deadlift your body weight many times with complete safety. All the risk is in pushing the weight and reps harder than you should and unfortunately a lot of exercise programs emphasize constant progression in terms of weight. Once you know this exercise you're able to safeguard like half of the muscle mass on your body from atrophying for the rest of your life which is an enormous health benefit. Doing safe, light-to-moderate deadlifts for decades is the way to not be a brittle dude at 78 and not have your musculoskeletal system fall apart, it is not necessary to become a power lifter.
  - sn9 3y ago
    Motorcycling is WAY more risky than deadlifting. Deadlifting is one of the safest forms of exercise there is. Compare injury rates of strength training to any other sport. It's empirically lower. And the ROI is huge in terms of your long-term health. This is not an evidence-based choice you're making.
- lazyasciiart 3y ago
  The average adult does not have time and space to do a quick warmup and deadlift in the bathroom each morning.
  - prepend 3y ago
    Speak for yourself. I think there’s strong correlation between people who have deadlift home gyms and good health. So therefore, the average person should have this setup :) All joking aside, it’s pretty easy to have a kettlebell or some other heavy thing to lift every day. Not the same as deadlifts, but still fits into the “lifting heavy things above your head” category that weights are good for.
  - rpmisms 3y ago
    Get a pair of 100lb dumbbells. Congratulations, you can deadlift every morning.
Aurornis 3y ago
> I usually don’t care how much I weigh, as long as I look fit. You can’t visually spot a couple pounds difference when it’s spread over your entire body, but the scale will reveal it. Visual alone is a very lagging indicator. Furthermore, visual checks are prone to drift over long periods of time. Weight (fat) gain doesn’t happen suddenly, so relying on visual indicators is prone to error. It’s not hard to see why people use the scale. It’s a precise device with a short feedback loop and the numbers don’t lie. People aren’t dumb, if they gain muscle they will update their target weight.
hombre_fatal 3y ago
Come on. It’s because most people are visibly fat, not looking in the mirror wondering where the pounds are coming from.
zhdc1 3y ago
> I usually don’t care how much I weigh, as long as I look fit. Building muscle increases your weight, but makes you look better and be healthier. Also muscle burns more calories to maintain, so you can eat more. I completely agree, but the ratio of overweight/obese to "I have a slightly high BMI because I lift 4x a week" has to be somewhere in the range of 100-1.
- Aurornis 3y ago
  > but the ratio of overweight/obese to "I have a slightly high BMI because I lift 4x a week" has to be somewhere in the range of 100-1. Way too many people try to discredit BMI by bringing up the hypothetical trained weightlifter example. It is possible to have a moderately low body fat percentage (12-15%) and fall into the overweight BMI category if you're very trained and muscular, but the number of people in this situation is very small. Moreover, they're well aware that BMI is not a useful indicator for them. A 6 foot tall person would have to weigh 221 pounds to get all the way into the "obese" range of the BMI scale. A 6' tall man weighing 221 pounds with low body fat percentage is a seriously fit individual, not someone who casually goes to the gym several times a week. I don't think people realize how hard it is to get to this level of fitness. BMI really isn't a bad for the average person, even if they lift weights.
  - Fluorescence 3y ago
    You seem to describe using BMI in casual conversation or as a personal goal but there are other issues. Doctors use BMI as a filter for medications, surgery and such. With increasingly tele-medicine, I only get to fill my height/weight in a box and not treat a doctor to the gun show. I don't know what other uses it has - insurance maybe, medical fitness standards for jobs etc. Other criticism is about not capturing the variation between different ethnicities or builds so applying a numerical limit can be quite prejudicial. On the otherhand, in some cases, weight is weight. There are some things where body-mass, muscle or fat, increases the relevant risk.
- seer 3y ago
  Its more about incentives. If I’m trying to chase the weight number obsessively, as is the case with my level of OCD, I’ll be prone to eat less, run more or do other things to loose weight. But I don’t want to loose weight, I want to look good and be healthy. And I don’t really like myself in that life - worrying about this almighty number, and measuring my actions to change it usually makes my life less worth living. When I concentrate my efforts to general health/happiness - e.g. eat less carbs, move around more, stand in front of a screen instead of sit in front of one, go dancing … just try to increase “healthiness” level as I see it, I can actually enjoy life more. I mean I love eating out, especially when I travel, and trying to eat less on a vacation is not fun at all. But if I go hiking/social dancing/just walking about, suddenly I can do that and have more fun and am still be “fit” as per my personal definition. I like to think about it in terms of system. I don’t want to loose weight now cause I know I’ll immediately gain it back the moment I get tired/bored/depressed. I want to build a habit (system) that would naturally bring me to my goal without exerting much willpower. And chasing weight has never given me personally enough of a mental boost to keep at it in and off itself.
safety1st 3y ago
Because in a country like the US where half the population is obese, the biggest health marker they need to improve is body fat percentage, and there's no easy way to measure that accurately and directly, the most convenient proxy is weight. I enjoy strength training and would recommend it to anyone, I've put on roughly 25 lbs of muscle in the last ~18 months. Realistically however it's very easy to put on fat as well when you're going for gains. If you're a typical American fatty who's sitting at 40% body fat you're probably out of shape, you probably don't know how to lift with good form, you don't know what a good routine looks like, you're probably prone to injury if you push it too fast, the thing to focus on today is probably to clean up the worst offenders in your dietary habits and lose a few pounds. Weight lifting in my opinion would be #2 after that for immense and varied benefits but it's a slower burn.
Fluorescence 3y ago
> I usually don’t care how much I weigh, as long as I look fit. Who are you going to believe, the scale or your lying eyes? It's kind of crazy how much weight you can gain without noticing it in the mirror. It's a combination of frog-boiling and the very weird psychology of self-perception. Modern stretch fabrics add to this curse lol. Back in the day your very non-stretchy denim would raise an alarm bell. If you are trying to do something, lose fat, gain muscle, the scale is a simple measuring tool for what the eyes can't see.

by seer 3y ago

rpmisms 3y ago

Bodyfat percentage is usually a good indicator, but an even better one is what percentage of your bodyweight you can deadlift. A healthy adult should be able to deadlift their bodyweight. A fit adult: 1.5x. 2x is the line for really being strong (or thin and strong!)

seer 3y ago
While probably a very good indicator, I refuse to deadlift out of principle. You have to be _really_ careful especially as you get more fit, as one mistake and you just wreck yourself for life. And I’m not particularly risk averse (went on a motorbike ride in the mountains of vietnam last year). Just don’t see the gainz from that particular exercise worth the risks.
- Kirby64 3y ago
  Sounds like you’re buying into fear mongering on deadlifts, frankly. You do have to have good form, but it’s not some insurmountable task. And a singular injury is extremely unlikely to ruin your back forever. There’s also multiple variations or techniques to make them safer. RDLs, using a lifting belt, lighter weight and more reps, to name a few.
- rpmisms 3y ago
  I love motorcycling too, but I'm cautious. As long as you build your strength carefully and lift with good technique, you'll not injure yourself. Same principles apply. Know what you're doing, have good fundamentals, and don't take unnecessary risks.
- safety1st 3y ago
  I would like to dispel this myth that deadlifts are dangerous. They are a very natural movement that strengthens a huge percentage of the muscles in the body. What's dangerous is doing very heavy deadlifts with poor form. The solution is to just keep your lifts light and do higher reps, most exercise bros are simply too macho to admit that you can lift surprisingly light weights and still get muscle growth with a much better safety profile, especially as a non-advanced lifter. Sure get a trainer to show you how at first, but it doesn't take a lot of training to be able to deadlift your body weight many times with complete safety. All the risk is in pushing the weight and reps harder than you should and unfortunately a lot of exercise programs emphasize constant progression in terms of weight. Once you know this exercise you're able to safeguard like half of the muscle mass on your body from atrophying for the rest of your life which is an enormous health benefit. Doing safe, light-to-moderate deadlifts for decades is the way to not be a brittle dude at 78 and not have your musculoskeletal system fall apart, it is not necessary to become a power lifter.
- sn9 3y ago
  Motorcycling is WAY more risky than deadlifting. Deadlifting is one of the safest forms of exercise there is. Compare injury rates of strength training to any other sport. It's empirically lower. And the ROI is huge in terms of your long-term health. This is not an evidence-based choice you're making.
lazyasciiart 3y ago
The average adult does not have time and space to do a quick warmup and deadlift in the bathroom each morning.
- prepend 3y ago
  Speak for yourself. I think there’s strong correlation between people who have deadlift home gyms and good health. So therefore, the average person should have this setup :) All joking aside, it’s pretty easy to have a kettlebell or some other heavy thing to lift every day. Not the same as deadlifts, but still fits into the “lifting heavy things above your head” category that weights are good for.
- rpmisms 3y ago
  Get a pair of 100lb dumbbells. Congratulations, you can deadlift every morning.

Aurornis 3y ago

> I usually don’t care how much I weigh, as long as I look fit. You can’t visually spot a couple pounds difference when it’s spread over your entire body, but the scale will reveal it. Visual alone is a very lagging indicator. Furthermore, visual checks are prone to drift over long periods of time. Weight (fat) gain doesn’t happen suddenly, so relying on visual indicators is prone to error. It’s not hard to see why people use the scale. It’s a precise device with a short feedback loop and the numbers don’t lie. People aren’t dumb, if they gain muscle they will update their target weight.

hombre_fatal 3y ago

Come on. It’s because most people are visibly fat, not looking in the mirror wondering where the pounds are coming from.

zhdc1 3y ago

> I usually don’t care how much I weigh, as long as I look fit. Building muscle increases your weight, but makes you look better and be healthier. Also muscle burns more calories to maintain, so you can eat more. I completely agree, but the ratio of overweight/obese to "I have a slightly high BMI because I lift 4x a week" has to be somewhere in the range of 100-1.

Aurornis 3y ago
> but the ratio of overweight/obese to "I have a slightly high BMI because I lift 4x a week" has to be somewhere in the range of 100-1. Way too many people try to discredit BMI by bringing up the hypothetical trained weightlifter example. It is possible to have a moderately low body fat percentage (12-15%) and fall into the overweight BMI category if you're very trained and muscular, but the number of people in this situation is very small. Moreover, they're well aware that BMI is not a useful indicator for them. A 6 foot tall person would have to weigh 221 pounds to get all the way into the "obese" range of the BMI scale. A 6' tall man weighing 221 pounds with low body fat percentage is a seriously fit individual, not someone who casually goes to the gym several times a week. I don't think people realize how hard it is to get to this level of fitness. BMI really isn't a bad for the average person, even if they lift weights.
- Fluorescence 3y ago
  You seem to describe using BMI in casual conversation or as a personal goal but there are other issues. Doctors use BMI as a filter for medications, surgery and such. With increasingly tele-medicine, I only get to fill my height/weight in a box and not treat a doctor to the gun show. I don't know what other uses it has - insurance maybe, medical fitness standards for jobs etc. Other criticism is about not capturing the variation between different ethnicities or builds so applying a numerical limit can be quite prejudicial. On the otherhand, in some cases, weight is weight. There are some things where body-mass, muscle or fat, increases the relevant risk.
seer 3y ago
Its more about incentives. If I’m trying to chase the weight number obsessively, as is the case with my level of OCD, I’ll be prone to eat less, run more or do other things to loose weight. But I don’t want to loose weight, I want to look good and be healthy. And I don’t really like myself in that life - worrying about this almighty number, and measuring my actions to change it usually makes my life less worth living. When I concentrate my efforts to general health/happiness - e.g. eat less carbs, move around more, stand in front of a screen instead of sit in front of one, go dancing … just try to increase “healthiness” level as I see it, I can actually enjoy life more. I mean I love eating out, especially when I travel, and trying to eat less on a vacation is not fun at all. But if I go hiking/social dancing/just walking about, suddenly I can do that and have more fun and am still be “fit” as per my personal definition. I like to think about it in terms of system. I don’t want to loose weight now cause I know I’ll immediately gain it back the moment I get tired/bored/depressed. I want to build a habit (system) that would naturally bring me to my goal without exerting much willpower. And chasing weight has never given me personally enough of a mental boost to keep at it in and off itself.

safety1st 3y ago

Because in a country like the US where half the population is obese, the biggest health marker they need to improve is body fat percentage, and there's no easy way to measure that accurately and directly, the most convenient proxy is weight. I enjoy strength training and would recommend it to anyone, I've put on roughly 25 lbs of muscle in the last ~18 months. Realistically however it's very easy to put on fat as well when you're going for gains. If you're a typical American fatty who's sitting at 40% body fat you're probably out of shape, you probably don't know how to lift with good form, you don't know what a good routine looks like, you're probably prone to injury if you push it too fast, the thing to focus on today is probably to clean up the worst offenders in your dietary habits and lose a few pounds. Weight lifting in my opinion would be #2 after that for immense and varied benefits but it's a slower burn.

Fluorescence 3y ago

> I usually don’t care how much I weigh, as long as I look fit. Who are you going to believe, the scale or your lying eyes? It's kind of crazy how much weight you can gain without noticing it in the mirror. It's a combination of frog-boiling and the very weird psychology of self-perception. Modern stretch fabrics add to this curse lol. Back in the day your very non-stretchy denim would raise an alarm bell. If you are trying to do something, lose fat, gain muscle, the scale is a simple measuring tool for what the eyes can't see.