Controversy continues

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. Ande, I do agree with you and Heather Reitz on these components. For me, it was number 4 that got to me along with this common swimming mentality, "oh, you can eat whatever you want." (I know not every swimming family feels this way). It was sort of an accepted lifestyle to eat pizza, poptarts, hotdogs, etc. Well, as a kid and young adult, I did eat whatever I want. A typical dinner after a swim meet would be a big salad w/ blue cheese dressing and all the fixings, a huge steak and loaded baked potato topped off by a huge piece of pie or cake - this kind of eating started at 10 and continued until sort of recently for me. And many of my swimming friends ate similarly. Needless to say, even with 2 hours of swimming a day, my calories in were still more than my calories out. I see that now, and with more "moderation" and watching what I eat (without going to extremes), those extra few (I'm not implying I'm obese or overweight by any means) pounds do seem to come off. On the flip side, there were some elite age groupers I also swam with. Their coach was a stickler on what they could and could not eat. I remember being at Juniors and their conversation was completely about being fat or not fat and what was fattening and not fattening (we were around 15 to 17 yrs old.) I must say that I was happy to just be a kid and not worry about all that until years later - just from a mental perspective. Now, as to whether or not I'm less healthy as a result of eating what I wanted when I was a kid. . . I don't know. But, I can say, in keeping in touch with some of my age group swimming friends, eating disorders are present across the board in those who ate what they wanted and in those who had restrictive diets as youngsters. I also feel that kids are VERY AWARE as to whether or not they are overweight. Kids/ teens are, in some ways, more perceptive than adults. I'm not sure that telling them flat out is helping them. I believe they know. If they are overeating, it's often for a very specific reason, frequently not related to food at all. Then, if they have a trusted adult tell them, "You need to lose weight," it's additional blow to their already fragile psyche. They try to reduce calories, find out they can't do it via eating less or better (as they aren't addressing the true problem to begin with), and then resort to very, very unhealthy methods for getting that bottom line result of weighing less. I think parents and coaches should live that healthy lifestyle themselves and that's more powerful than telling a youngster to drop some weight. :2cents:

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. Ande, I do agree with you and Heather Reitz on these components. For me, it was number 4 that got to me along with this common swimming mentality, "oh, you can eat whatever you want." (I know not every swimming family feels this way). It was sort of an accepted lifestyle to eat pizza, poptarts, hotdogs, etc. Well, as a kid and young adult, I did eat whatever I want. A typical dinner after a swim meet would be a big salad w/ blue cheese dressing and all the fixings, a huge steak and loaded baked potato topped off by a huge piece of pie or cake - this kind of eating started at 10 and continued until sort of recently for me. And many of my swimming friends ate similarly. Needless to say, even with 2 hours of swimming a day, my calories in were still more than my calories out. I see that now, and with more "moderation" and watching what I eat (without going to extremes), those extra few (I'm not implying I'm obese or overweight by any means) pounds do seem to come off. On the flip side, there were some elite age groupers I also swam with. Their coach was a stickler on what they could and could not eat. I remember being at Juniors and their conversation was completely about being fat or not fat and what was fattening and not fattening (we were around 15 to 17 yrs old.) I must say that I was happy to just be a kid and not worry about all that until years later - just from a mental perspective. Now, as to whether or not I'm less healthy as a result of eating what I wanted when I was a kid. . . I don't know. But, I can say, in keeping in touch with some of my age group swimming friends, eating disorders are present across the board in those who ate what they wanted and in those who had restrictive diets as youngsters. I also feel that kids are VERY AWARE as to whether or not they are overweight. Kids/ teens are, in some ways, more perceptive than adults. I'm not sure that telling them flat out is helping them. I believe they know. If they are overeating, it's often for a very specific reason, frequently not related to food at all. Then, if they have a trusted adult tell them, "You need to lose weight," it's additional blow to their already fragile psyche. They try to reduce calories, find out they can't do it via eating less or better (as they aren't addressing the true problem to begin with), and then resort to very, very unhealthy methods for getting that bottom line result of weighing less. I think parents and coaches should live that healthy lifestyle themselves and that's more powerful than telling a youngster to drop some weight. :2cents: