So um…how about that Queen Latifah post eh guys?

In my last post there were three main things that were misunderstood and need to be explained.

1-Being overweight means being unhealthy?

I never said that. I did say that “this is about understanding what 50 extra pounds of fat CAN do to the body.”

Folks need to really analyze my statement.

50 EXTRA pounds of FAT means that you are 50 pounds, of pure fat, over the ideal/healthy body fat range, leaving you in the land of Obesity. This is not a 5′4″ woman weighing 160 pounds that has 28% body fat. This is a 5′4″ woman weighing 200+ pounds that has 35%+ body fat. So your joints, sugar levels, hormone function…you name it are all impacted; your body will not be ideal or healthy. Sure, a short-term visit to obesity-land isn’t going to do much damage right away, but neither does smoking or drinking like a fish. However, you only have so long before those bad habits catch up with you and start costing a price.

I can show you a lot of information, from good studies, explaining how that kind of excess weight leads to problems. Sometime it can be as simple as just joint/energy-based impacts, but trust me, everything has a chain-and-effect result, and the little things add up in the aggregate.

2-Now, a look like Dana Torres can only come from 4 hours a day in the gym or with athletic training.

This is not a mythical body for a female. This does not take drugs. This does not take 4 hours in the gym everyday.

Again the lack of education is where the problem is, the naysayers aren’t getting it.

Now let me pre-face this by saying that her ACTUAL AB and BODY structure is as unique as…well her face is. Different people have different abs. Below is another example of about the same body fat percentage, but with a completely different ab structure.

Now while the second example is about the same amount of leanness and a very similar ab structure, this woman would have to get a little more ab muscle and a little lower in body fat to see the sort of “six pack” ab that Dana Torres has. Even then her abs might not be shaped the same way or ever as pronounced as in the first example.

The second example is also of a fitness model/bodybuilder, not an Olympic athlete. I know nothing about her except she posts from Figure Athlete.com. I merely went there to look for a picture example and almost immediately landed on what I needed. This is because women like this are everywhere and their approach is simple to do…if you know how. Notice I didn’t say easy to apply. The second example woman busted her butt and is in every way an “athlete” in her own sport. However, to achieve her results is more about watching your nutrition and training BALANCE than it is deprivation and aggressive movement.

3-Lastly it is thought, even though I stated it a few times, that I seem to think that “thin” means healthy. Not at all. Personally, I think common sense means healthy…but that is another topic.

In the case of the ever so popular growing “study” (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26143255/) that overweight people can be healthy, well there are some problems with the methodology.

One, the study wasn’t even a study, it was a research article. It was put together from data collected through various methods of surveys over 5 years. It wasn’t controlled either. In short, it was not a “study” in the scientific sense (not that there isn’t something that we can learn from the interesting, elaborate…article…of collected surveys).

However, can any real definitive answer of the health of Overweight people really be given from this “study”?

Nope, not a little, not even close.

So the moral of the story is: NEVER trust a news source spin on a study. Always read the actual study and if you can’t get your hands on it, there are usually big hints in the article itself like this…

From the MSN article:

The new study, appearing in the latest issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine, used government surveys from 1999 to 2004 that included lab tests and height and weight measurements. Participants reported on habits including smoking and physical activity.

This is no different than filling out a quiz for a magazine while sitting in the weighting room of the doctors office.

Overall my point is…

-You can be whatever it is you want to be.
-There is nothing to celebrate in, at best, joint stress and postural dysfunction from being largely overweight.
-I still think U.N.I.T.Y is one awesome song.
-Education and the facts will set you free.