J. D. Stembal Posted June 23, 2015 Posted June 23, 2015 Not at all. I'm curious as to the value of having chiseled abs when you don't need them to be healthy. As I said before, obviously you want to avoid obesity, but there is a point of diminishing returns. ... I have no problem with people who choose to get defined abs or with people who wear high heels and makeup, however all the time you spend doing crunches is time your not doing other things, and until you can provide evidence that the additional muscle mass is beneficial besides the visual appeal, I will choose to spend the time doing other things. I have three (well, four, actually) magic doves up my sleeve, and with persistence, I can make a convincing case for you. I am not a concern troll. I genuinely trust in what I am espousing. Abs are not only aesthetic in my eyes! I am using spoilers as this post is quite lengthy. 1) Chiseled abs vs. ill health is a false dilemma, of course. I'm not going to scream, "You must have washboard abs or you will die!" because I would have one foot in the grave. However, being able to see the abdominal wall through the skin, without subcutaneous fat around the midsection obscuring it, is an empirical example of how much body fat a person is carrying around with them. The level of body fat carried over time scales with the likelihood of future health risks such as type II diabetes, cancer, cardiovascular disease, and stroke. It's a scale of risk, not a binary selection of health and non-health. If you would like to see a quick visual guide on how to determine body fat in men, take a look at this blog: http://athleanx.com/blog/workout-tips/body-fat-percentage-where-are-you-at-and-whats-your-goal?utm_medium=video&utm_source=youtube&utm_campaign=body-fat-comparison 2) I'm not a proponent of isolation work on the abdominals and especially not crunches. I do planks infrequently. It's not extremely vital for your fitness to crush only eight muscles when there are many more supporting your spine. The core muscles as a unit contribute to every full body movement. What the prominent abs signify is a lower body fat ratio, and as I mentioned in point one, this is the fact that is important to the long view of health. This means that what you eat is much more important than how much time you are sweating in the gym. People gain weight as body fat because they eat sugars. This is biological reality. You mentioned having a flat stomach but no prominent abs. This is what is called skinny fat. Some people carry the majority of their body fat within their viscera surrounding their organs. My father and I carry fat in this manner. Three year ago, I was 200 lbs. and was wearing 34 inch waist pants with not too much lean muscle mass to speak of. Most of my fat was hiding inside me. I suspect this is the reason that my father had a heart attack at 47. He was a lean-looking man and very tall, but he had the capacity for fat storage within his body cavity next to his liver and heart. It nearly killed him, and I'm sure he still suffers daily due to the consequences of surviving a heart attack. 3) This is the one that will blow your mind. Adding skeletal muscle mass increases your capacity for glycogen storage, which means you will be more sensitive to insulin, and thus, glucose, which suspiciously appears in all manner of modern food. I will attempt to describe this feeling for you if you are not familiar. You eat a piece of fruit or two, and ten to fifteen minutes later, you feel the desire to go run a couple miles. For the heck of it, I ate twelve bananas because I wanted to see how it affected my blood sugar. Instead of continuing the experiment, I ventured across town and back on foot, running some of it, a total of nine miles, and I still had plenty of energy left over. It was like swallowing a steam engine, and becoming a bionic man. The post-prandial glucose numbers were shot to hell. All the glucose was sucked out of the bloodstream by my skeletal muscles, so I had a lower measurement two hours after commencing eating the twelve bananas. When one is overweight, the effectiveness of insulin to respond to the need for blood sugar equilibrium (very low means instant death and very high means death years from now), transporting the glucose into the muscle cells for the mitochondria to use is impaired. This deteriorating process, which happens over the term of decades, is known as insulin resistance, specifically the resistance of the skeletal muscles to take up all excess sugars and convert them into human kinetic energy. If the skeletal muscles cannot absorb the blood glucose spike, adipose tissue has to welcome it home. The more body fat deposited, the worse the insulin resistance will become. At some point, years down the road, a doctor officially proclaims you as diabetic, but it was a long and slippery slope to get there. A person who gets this far into metabolic disorder is beyond the aid of eat less, exercise more advice for the reason that their body (brain and heart excepted) is no longer able to metabolize blood glucose to do anything useful like exercise. It will go to their fat tissues, pit-stopping at the liver, and contributing to non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, which is the human version of foie gras. Insulin resistance is the root cause of metabolic disorder as we now understand it, which leads to heart disease, cancer, dementia, diabetes, auto-immune disorders, and on... the list and scope of human disease caused by the over consumption of grain, high glycemic foods, and refined or processed sugars is staggering. What I have described above is the main contributing factor behind the state of health in the modern world. In summation... That brings it full circle for now. If you want citations or links, let me know. I've presented various portions of this information in many threads around the forum. I will even dare to say that there is personal virtue in having some half-decent abs because it means that in the long run, you will strain the health care system far less than the average person. This is also the triple insult of Obamacare for the fit and health conscious. We end up paying more than others in three different respects. 1) The food we eat isn't subsidized. Compare the price wild salmon and pasture-raised beef to Doritos or rice-crispy treats, and what I am speaking of is very clear. 2) The healthy subsidize the ill in socialized medicine through government force. This is a clear moral hazard against pursuing health, which is why I don't find it very surprising that statements like physical fitness is relative are popping up in the Dad Bod thread. No one is offering an economic incentive to pursue it. The reality is quite the contrary. People get sick and then they worry about getting better when they haven't saved money on the chance that they may have medical expenses. 3) In most cases, exercise costs money and resources, unless you are doing the prison cell body weight workouts. All I see fat people do is run, which is completely useless to them for losing weight. They are hurting themselves more through possible injury than they could possibly help by running. See metabolic disorder above. Have I made the case that Stud Bod is moral, or that Dad Bod is not? No, since you cannot have positive moral obligations, but considering the data and presentation of the health consequences of metabolic disorder, it is clearly aesthetically preferred behavior to lean as close as you can to Stud Bod in your own life. Of course, there will be men that declare that they are as strong as an ox when they eat fast food a lot of the time, and obese women who think they look beautiful at 250 lbs. These are individuals dealing with choices, although we can no longer afford to ignore the choice and look the other way when we are forced to pay for the ill-effects down the road, through the coercion of the state. 5 1
MagnumPI Posted June 23, 2015 Author Posted June 23, 2015 Fair enough, man, excellent points. I don't think there's anything I can say about that besides "right on." ... Hey man, just do you. Like JD was kinda saying, there's a little negativity from the club here but be the person you want. Red rover, red rover send Tyler Durden on over. Look how you want to look, act how you want, be who you want. If that's a burly mountain goat motor scootin lumberjack then get at it. Plenty of time for Socrates before bed and the fresh air will help you suck it in. 1 1
James Dean Posted June 24, 2015 Posted June 24, 2015 JD, I responded to your last post much more positively than the other ones... which of course doesn't mean you were wrong before, just saying this really connected with me. I especially liked all the science you brought into it. I mentioned it before, but I'm currently changing a lot of things about my habits, and you've given me a lot to think about. I will seriously consider everything you said, and with all the evidence you provided, I am seriously considering that I have, up until now, neglected aspects of my health. It seems you have gone through a similar experience, I would really appreciate if you'd PM me some resources that you found helpful. Like I said, I have always gotten most of my exercise through active hobbies that I have and aren't very good with deliberate "working out." Frankly, it all seems kind of intimidating, so any tips are highly appreciate. Love that body fat chart, so just to clear up/conclude the "dad bod" conversation, which percentage range did you have in mind when talking about "dad bod" ? 3
J. D. Stembal Posted June 24, 2015 Posted June 24, 2015 JD, I responded to your last post much more positively than the other ones... which of course doesn't mean you were wrong before, just saying this really connected with me. I especially liked all the science you brought into it. ... Love that body fat chart, so just to clear up/conclude the "dad bod" conversation, which percentage range did you have in mind when talking about "dad bod" ? I saw that you added me as a friend, and I accepted it, but I have no idea how to send you a private message. I used to have the ability to send and receive private messages, but that function has since been removed from my panel, or I am overlooking it. It's great that we've made a connection! I admit that some of my earlier replies were a bit adversarial or challenging by my own intention. Jeff Cavaliere, the Athlean-X host, has a great channel on Youtube for all manner of exercises, and yes, he is way more obsessed with core work and abdominals but the intention with his program is to train athletes, or wanna-be athletes. The visual body chart is great, but as he points out, it is of limited value since it is so broad and individuals carry fat differently based on their genetic predisposition, age and the level of the "male vitality" hormone. When I was 200 lbs., I estimate that I was between 20-24% body fat but I looked more like 16-19%. This is my subjective assessment, but I would call Dad Bod anything from 20-40% along the bottom of the chart. Stud Bod is the three on the top, and in the middle is the average. On Sunday, I took progress pictures of myself for the third time ever, and it seems like I'm still in the 13-15% range. To know for certain, and with accuracy, I would have to do an Archimedes test where the techs dunk you under water in a tank to estimate the body volume to mass ratio. https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=1454554784862344&set=pcb.1454559238195232&type=1&theater If you prefer books with technical and scientific explanations regarding nutrition, check out Voleck and Phinney The Art and Science of Low-Carbohydrate Living: http://www.amazon.com/The-Art-Science-Carbohydrate-Living/dp/0983490708 That is a good book to start with and it touches on most of the items in my previous reply except they do not discuss Dad Bod, Obamacare or the abdominal muscles. Edit: Well, look at that, Jeff Cavaliere released a video today about eating for abs. He's a big fan of poultry, and protein supplements. I'm not, but he has a ton more muscle mass than me. Do whatever works and whatever tastes right, and makes you feel stronger. 1
shirgall Posted June 25, 2015 Posted June 25, 2015 In contrast, the "Mom Bod": http://www.foxnews.com/health/2015/06/25/mom-honest-photo-perfect-post-baby-body-goes-viral/?intcmp=features
J. D. Stembal Posted June 26, 2015 Posted June 26, 2015 Thank you, Shirgall. Now, I can't help but imagine what my mother's beer gut looks like.
J. D. Stembal Posted July 6, 2015 Posted July 6, 2015 I'm not just posting this video here because there is Dad Bod in the title. Intermittent fasting is another great tool in the tool shed for the overweight or obese. The interviewee talks about his five month battle plan to attack body fat with strategic fasting. You'll never eat breakfast again! Ok, well, sometimes you will. 1 1
MagnumPI Posted July 7, 2015 Author Posted July 7, 2015 In contrast, the "Mom Bod": http://www.foxnews.com/health/2015/06/25/mom-honest-photo-perfect-post-baby-body-goes-viral/?intcmp=features The side of cougars they don't tell you about. I found out the hard way. Like 6 times. I need a woman my own age...
J. D. Stembal Posted July 10, 2015 Posted July 10, 2015 A photograph of man-bear-pig should be incredibly valuable.
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