Swimming to lose weight?

The posters (aquageek et al.) who are taking a tough stand on obesity in America are aiming their remarks at the wrong audience. Those of us who read this board are swimming! we are exercising! And we still are not thin! or even normal BMI... and I doubt we are all eating bags of potato chips after each workout. Have a bit of empathy there -- For sure this society does have a problem with obesity; this is linked to all of the factors pointed out above; but it is not fair and quite unkind to jump from those facts, to individual judgements. It could be argued that those of us with heavier bones (mine verified by the bone density scan that I had when I 'reached a certain age') ; who run to heavier muscles; and who spend a good deal of time in the gym or pool have more not less discipline that those for whom a slim figure comes easily. I am off to the pool.

Hi- Growing up an age-group swimmer and logging up to 10,000m/day, I still gained weight when puberty hit. I was VERY strong in my arms, legs, and abs but it was my awful diet. I didn't eat a lot, it was just crap,and I didn't drink enough water. Now as a masters swimmer, something weird has happened. I did the Feb Fitness Challenge 2 years ago, swam about 6,000y/day on average and lost 15 pounds in February! I kept it off until I got pregnant with number 3! In my experience swimming can help to lose weight. However, I have found swimming and running to be an amazing combination for losing a lot of weight. As far as the BMI and athletes being "different" I never understood that statement. Yes, swimmers probably have a lot more muscle, but if your body fat is 28%, it will be no matter how much muscle you have, it's still not healthy. I think that's what they mean about the NFL lineman?

So here I was, trying to be more sympathetic to the plight of those with weight issues. Folks on this forum were helping me. Then, yesterday, I witnessed what can only be described as a full-on fat assualt and, regrettably, I'm back to my old pessimistic self. I was at my daughter's swim meet and this couple in front of me was quite large (250+ each). That, in itself, is no big deal these days. However, in the course of a 2.5 hour swim meet I witnessed the most unabashed display of horrific eating. Mid afternoon I watched them consume two hot dogs, all the way, a gigantic bag of popcorn, a gallon size bag of halloween type candy bars and 2 liters of Diet-Coke. It was unbelievable, I felt like I was on some show and was being filmed to see how much I could take without cracking. Care to guess their kid's size? HUGE also, very sad. Anyway, instead of watching their children, going to workout out in the building, these two consumed 10 pounds of crap while reading romance novels. Everyone on this forum, if you are swimming and losing weight, congrats because I saw the dark (chocolate) side and no one should consume like that.

Yes, and what a difference this couple is, sedentary, eating badly, probably not a bit of muscles is to the size 14 196 pound swimmer who is 5-10 and while overweight, still greatly better off and in much better shape. When I was fit and fat at 180, you would not have found me eating crap at a swim meet. I always brought fruits and veggies for myself and the kids to munch on. And my kids are thin....

A bit of kerosene to the fire: 1) On average, the weight women tend to put on--so-called stabile fat that accumulates in the hips and thighs--is notoriously resistant to dieting and exercise. One researcher suggested to me that the only good way to get rid of this is to A) be starving and B) breastfeeding at the same time. Sorry to report this, but evolution appears to have programmed a certain fat-retaining stubborness in many females' physiology that serves a reproductive purpose. Back in antiquity, when vast quantities of savory food were not easily obtainable, and when starvation WAS a real threat, such women were arguably much better off than the rare Twiggy genotypes so lionized today. On the plus side, stabile fat does not seem to be nearly as much a health risk, at least for the cardiovascular system, as the "labile" kind described in item #2. 2) On average, the weight men tend to accumulate--so-called labile fat that accumulates inside the abdominal wall--is much easier to shed with exercise. But because of its proximity to the portal vein (among other things), this can enter the blood stream much more readily and is consequently much more dangerous to the heart (increased plaque formation, etc.) Males have the advantage of being able to work off their excess weight by diet and especially exercise, but they still get felled by the Grim Reaper at much younger ages, on average, than women. John Gray said Men and from Mars, Women from Venus; perhaps a better way of looking at the genders (again, on a statistical average basis) is that Men are Apples and Women are Pears, with the latter type of tubbyhood being generally accepted as the much healthier physique. 3) An editorial in one of the leading medical journals a few years back (pretty sure it was JAMA) concluded that while being overweight is linked to a host of specific disorders, from heart disease to diabetes to arthritis (hard to carry around excessive weight and not hurt your joints), the subset of overweight people who don't have these diseases are no less healthy than normal weight people. More importantly, there has not been much, if any, data to show that losing weight makes you healthier, despite the overwhelmingly "intuitively obvious" supposition this would, in fact, be the case. In other words, a formerly obese person who has starved himself or herself into a normal BMI may not have done themselves any good. (Histological slides of such individuals post-wt. loss are actually impossible to distinguish from slides of "normal" people in the throes of real starvation.) Stephen Blair at the Cooper Center for Aerobic Fitness in Dallas is an extremely fit but overweight guy who has authored numerous papers on the distinction between fit and fat. His data has shown time and again that overweight but otherwise fit individuals are much healthier than normal weight or even thin but non-fit people. Final point: notwithstanding the counterexample of those 250-lb. parents engorging themselves in the stands of the swimming meet, the data shows that the thinnest people actually tend to eat the most food. To me, weight regulation is among the most complex aspects of human physiology, with a host of poorly understood compounds from leptin to neuropeptide Y that conspire to make many of us find A) delicious food (especially fat and sugar combos) extremely difficult to resist and B) exercise all too easy to avoid. Many of our prehomind ancestors eons ago survived simply because their genes inspired them to eat as much as humanly possible during those rare times of plenty, then take a long nap. In our supersize me era, where food requires no exercise to obtain and is plentiful and cheap, who amongst us is entirely deaf to the genetic puppetmasters within us, puppetmasters whose foremost fear--despite all evidence--remains starvation? The discussion of weight should, in my mind, have ABSOLUTELY NO MORAL COMPONENT--beyond, perhaps, some censure for the shameful behavior of candy and fast food makers who, knowingly or not, prey upon and profit from our once adapative genes. It is not a character issue but a biochemical one, a bedevilingly complicated one at that. If Iran gets the bomb and we're someday teleported back to the hardscrabble existence of our ancient progenitors, all of us running around like maniacs in pursuit of non-radioactive squirrels to eat, I think today's overweight people will have the last laugh.

Originally posted by aquageek Mid afternoon I watched them consume two hot dogs, all the way, a gigantic bag of popcorn, a gallon size bag of halloween type candy bars and 2 liters of Diet-Coke. Hey, cut them some slack. At least they were drinking Diet Coke! :D

Alas, Aquageek, maybe you aren't as pessimistic as you think..... Now, you have a distinguishing comparison to people that we are all referring to, as opposed to people who are not concerned with their health. Preachin' to the choir, sugar. We were never advocating habits like that, and it's good that you saw that, as you can now appreciate all the lovely ladies on here (and gentlemen too, I guess), for all our beauty and self-motivation. :D

Yes Diet Coke makes it OK :) and desert eaten first does not count! Having been dieting since I was my daughter's age, I was always envious of the skinny girls who never had to watch what they ate. But now I see how hard it is for someone who never had to be disciplined on their diet, aquire some of the habits that are needed to maintain a healthy weight. Jim quite a post, I knew my hips were there for a reason, radiactive squirrels, yum...

Body fat % and BMI are two different things. When I got measured last year for bodyfat, it was 21% and BMI was 26. BF was in normal range, BMI was considered overweight. BMI is purely a calculation of how tall you are and how much you weigh. Muscle and bone density are not taken into account. As far as exercise, I throw a little bit of everything in the pot. The pool is not always the most convenient form of exercise so I run with the dog, lift weights at home, have step video tapes, use the exercise room while my daughter has swim practice. To lose weight, you have to make it a priority to exercise, and a priority to eat right. I have seen the girls on my kids swim team hit puberty and get heavy. In general, it is because they eat badly. A great many kids these days eat very badly. You can get the junk out of the house, but at school they are served school lunches swimming in grease, have pop machines and candy machines assessable as yound as 3rd grade.

Dear Fetch: The secrets to loose weight swimming: a) Swim gently, maintain your heart rate below 125 that's about 19 to 21 in 10 seconds b) You need to last minumum 40 minutes, but it is not necessary to go over 90 minutes c) Approximately 3 to 4 weeks of 3 to 6 times per week into your routine, start doing workouts that you will find in this same site, I post Why Swim, If You Can Fly?! Swimcerely, Coach RS