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It is significantly easier if you are starting from being totally sedentary. I've gone from fit and powerlifting for years to fat for years to trying to get ba

It is significantly easier if you are starting from being totally sedentary. I've gone from fit and powerlifting for years to fat for years to trying to get back into lifting, etc. (the latter, multiple times) and while age is a bit of a confounding factor, the fatter I am, the more difficult exercise is - both cardio and resistance training. It's just harder on your tendons and ligaments. It's not insurmountable, and training can make those more resilient as well, but when you're starting from effectively zero, doing that a 250lb is tougher than doing it at 200 is tougher than doing it at 175, etc. Running is pretty high impact, too. It's going to put quite a lot of stress on your joints. I'd recommend everyone incorporate exercise as much as they can regardless of their weight, but I've found it easier and easier to ramp mine back up as my weight has gone down.

hinkley 2y ago
You have to be able to do the activity long enough to get benefits, such as cardio. And an extra 20 lbs can put that in jeopardy. Once you hit that threshold, the weight doesn't matter. But getting off the plateau you're stuck on is the first big step.
chrisfosterelli 2y ago
By easier I was referring to intensity, rather than the experience of your ligaments. Presumably now that you've gotten into powerlifting you don't still lift the same weight you did when you started. If you did, it would indeed be easier. But you probably lift more weight, so that the intensity is similar. (To be completely transparent, I wasn't trying to state a universal truth. That phrase is just a common tongue-in-cheek joke among runners and cyclists; I misread the crowd a bit assuming it'd be recognized)
- cthalupa 2y ago
  Sure - you want to keep ramping up the intensity, otherwise yeah, you're not making any gains, be it in cardiovascular performance/VO2 max/max weight you can lift/number of reps you can do/etc. And yeah, I missed the joke. There are a lot of people that seem to think that obese people can fairly easily just stand up on day one and start working their ass off, though, and that this is the only thing holding them back from changing their lifestyle, so I made the faulty assumption your comment was along those lines. (These days I'm thinking I'm going to be move towards being more focused on the hypertrophy aspect - less likely to injure myself, and I gotta do something to fill out at least some of the loose skin that awaits me on the other end of the weight loss journey)

hinkley 2y ago

You have to be able to do the activity long enough to get benefits, such as cardio. And an extra 20 lbs can put that in jeopardy. Once you hit that threshold, the weight doesn't matter. But getting off the plateau you're stuck on is the first big step.

chrisfosterelli 2y ago

By easier I was referring to intensity, rather than the experience of your ligaments. Presumably now that you've gotten into powerlifting you don't still lift the same weight you did when you started. If you did, it would indeed be easier. But you probably lift more weight, so that the intensity is similar. (To be completely transparent, I wasn't trying to state a universal truth. That phrase is just a common tongue-in-cheek joke among runners and cyclists; I misread the crowd a bit assuming it'd be recognized)

cthalupa 2y ago
Sure - you want to keep ramping up the intensity, otherwise yeah, you're not making any gains, be it in cardiovascular performance/VO2 max/max weight you can lift/number of reps you can do/etc. And yeah, I missed the joke. There are a lot of people that seem to think that obese people can fairly easily just stand up on day one and start working their ass off, though, and that this is the only thing holding them back from changing their lifestyle, so I made the faulty assumption your comment was along those lines. (These days I'm thinking I'm going to be move towards being more focused on the hypertrophy aspect - less likely to injure myself, and I gotta do something to fill out at least some of the loose skin that awaits me on the other end of the weight loss journey)