Controversy continues

Originally posted by ande On the fat thing, I think cool pool water temps may cause the body to have subcutaneous fat. So some swimmers appear softer than other types of athletes. It's amazing, I've swum with several if not many female swimmers who still had weight problems, despite training 10,000 or more a day, Some of it might be over eating, some of it might be genetics, some people have a tendancy toward carrying more weight than others. Some big girls are fairly fast, but I believe they aren't as fast as they could be if they lost 10, 15, or 20 pounds. The problems with our society are 1) bad-for-us foods are plentiful and advertised, 2) bad-for-us foods are easy to get, 3) some children grow up with terrible role models, which gives them terrible life habits. Like if a child grows up with obese parents and siblings. 4) people have terrible calorie ingesting habits, they eat too much, drink too much, just genrally take in too many calories, like they don't think about how many calories are in a can of soda, 5) people sit around too much and don't move. which could stem from sedentary jobs, watching too much TV, playing video, and computer games. The truth is, humans have been around a couple million years and for most of it, our race has had to struggle to survive. There weren't stores, restaurants, or processed foods. People probably ate more plants and less meat. People lived off the land, they had to find, hunt, or grow their own food. They had to move to get it. Food was fresh, it wasn't processed. Machines are now doing work people used to do, we eat more and don't have to move as much. Well said. I couldn't agree more. You wonder how fast they would be if they lost the extra weight. A "gut" on a 17 year old girl is not attractive...I think that it's difficult for the coaches to bring it up because they're afraid of "eating disorder" issues. If the girl's parents are not responsible enough to tell her to lose weight then the coach needs to. In the long run he/she is doing her a favor. Childhood obesity is a HUGE problem in this country for the reasons that Ande has listed...

Originally posted by ande On the fat thing, I think cool pool water temps may cause the body to have subcutaneous fat. So some swimmers appear softer than other types of athletes. It's amazing, I've swum with several if not many female swimmers who still had weight problems, despite training 10,000 or more a day, Some of it might be over eating, some of it might be genetics, some people have a tendancy toward carrying more weight than others. Some big girls are fairly fast, but I believe they aren't as fast as they could be if they lost 10, 15, or 20 pounds. The problems with our society are 1) bad-for-us foods are plentiful and advertised, 2) bad-for-us foods are easy to get, 3) some children grow up with terrible role models, which gives them terrible life habits. Like if a child grows up with obese parents and siblings. 4) people have terrible calorie ingesting habits, they eat too much, drink too much, just genrally take in too many calories, like they don't think about how many calories are in a can of soda, 5) people sit around too much and don't move. which could stem from sedentary jobs, watching too much TV, playing video, and computer games. The truth is, humans have been around a couple million years and for most of it, our race has had to struggle to survive. There weren't stores, restaurants, or processed foods. People probably ate more plants and less meat. People lived off the land, they had to find, hunt, or grow their own food. They had to move to get it. Food was fresh, it wasn't processed. Machines are now doing work people used to do, we eat more and don't have to move as much. Well said. I couldn't agree more. You wonder how fast they would be if they lost the extra weight. A "gut" on a 17 year old girl is not attractive...I think that it's difficult for the coaches to bring it up because they're afraid of "eating disorder" issues. If the girl's parents are not responsible enough to tell her to lose weight then the coach needs to. In the long run he/she is doing her a favor. Childhood obesity is a HUGE problem in this country for the reasons that Ande has listed...