Good morning sir!
I have only recently joined this forum and wished to introduce myself personally. My name is xxx xxxx. I live in xxxxx, xxxx. I'm 26. I am also very overweight. This fact , as well as money problems, has kept me from pursuing my undying resolve to become a Martial Artist. I feel as though I am destined to study and excel in Chinese Gong Fu. I have had no formal training in any fighting art. I also eat too much and do not excercise enough. My question is this. Am I perpetuating a fantasy? Am I too old, too fat, too lazy? Am I fit to practise this ancient and beautiful technique , of self awareness and expression, only in my dreams? I apologise if I seem depressed. It is only one of my many ambitions. But if I could somehow find the will and support to pursue this desire, I know in my heart of hearts I could be very good. I have even decided what styles I want to learn ( I realize these may change of course, but for now... whats the harm in fantasizing!). I wish to study Wushu Shaolin style. Shaolin Five-Animal Style. Northern Praying Mantis. Chi Kung. Tai Ji Juan. I wish to learn the use of the staff and spear as well. I know this is alot for someone who has no knowledge of these things, but these styles are what appeal most strongly to me. Sorry to run-on so. Please reply at your conveinience, do not trouble yourself if you do not wish to take the time. I am sorry if I have been offensive or brash or presumptuous.
Thank you for your time.
xxxx xxxxx
Good question. Let's look at someone else that I know real well.
He's a relatively older gentleman, compared to you, if you want to call him that. Had a bad accident, which, among other things, destroyed his sense of balance. It also ruined his proprioceptive abilities, especially in his right arm (didn't know where his right arm was unless he was able to see it). He suffered three separate strokes over the previous year, which left his right side weak, an injury which left his ability to walk properly impaired. And because of near-constant headaches, he was drinking a lot of Coca Cola during the day. He had discovered that the only thing, other than sleep, that helped him live with his headaches, was Coca Cola. Something to do with the sugar, the caffeine, and that damned secret ingredient that is found only in Coca Cola (Coke was originally an anti-migraine syrup; its creator in the late 1800 suffered from terrible migraines. During the early 1900's, when carbonated beverages started to soar, he made a soda out of it). The problem was, he was drinking upwards of, and over, twenty cans of Coke. Each and every day. That, and the complete lack of physical activity, had it's effect upon him.
So, from a muscular and kind of lithe 207 pounds, he blossomed, within months, into a 260 pound mass of not very easily movable flesh. Mix that with poor proprioception, and a very poor sense of balance, and you had a martial artist's nightmare.
But, due to other problems that we won't get into, he felt a need to go to Shaolin to train. So, one October, not certain if he would ever see his friends or family again due to the instability of his neurological condition, he got on a plane and spent over two months in China. One month was spent training, one on one, with a monk. A very understanding monk, one who recognized his problems, and who was patient enough to spend the time with him, to help him with his chronic pain, his lack of balance, strength, and flexibility, and his serious problem of being overweight. Day in and day out, they worked together, slowly but surely, going over the basics, going over forms, learning once again all that he had once known, and had either forgotten, or was completely unable to do. And with some understanding, and time, slowly but surely, he picked up some skills. He developed some flexibility. He regained some strength. He lost weight.
And by the time he got home, he was about 202 pounds. He moved well. His gong fu had improved. His sense of well being had reappeared. His balance was slightly better, as well as the muscular strength in his right side. He still had chronic severe headaches, but he had a much better attitude to deal with them. He wasn't the perfect picture of the Shaolin martial arts, but, he had learned a fair amount, and had regained a fair amount of lost abilities.
The physiology of fat
Let's talk about fat. What it means, what it does, what the problems are, how to get there, and how to get away from it.
It's a simple concept actually. Forget all of this shit that you read in all of these diet books. Forget carbohydrates, protein, saturated and unsaturated fats. Forget Ornish, vitamins, Dexatrim, forget everything that you get bombarded with on a daily basis about all that girth around the middle. Forget the electronic muscle stimulators and the vibrating waist belts that will give you a six pack, and bigger breasts to boot. Forget all of the shit.
Let's keep it simple. Caloric intake minus caloric expenditure equals fat storage.
If you eat a lot, and don't burn it off, you will get fat.
If you eat a little, and do burn it off, you will lose weight.
Doesn't matter what the food is. It could be a purely protein diet, with no carbohydrates at all. If your caloric intake exceeds your caloric expenditure, you will store the remaining calories as fat. Though, as we'll see later, there is an energy expenditure cost associated with respect to the kind of foods that you eat.
Your basal metabolic rate (what you burn at rest on a daily basis), is a bit over two thousand calories, all depending upon your body mass. To be more specific, one formula that can be used to calculate your basal metabolic rate (BMR) would approximately be the following (there are different formulas for men and women, though, they are close):
Males: BMR = 66.5 + (13.75 x body weight) + (5 x height) - (6.75 x age)
A few things to notice about your BMR. If your body weight is larger than average, your BMR will be higher than average. Shorter people have lower BMR's than taller people. And, older people have lower BMR's. The components that make up your weight are important too; if you have a lot of muscle, your BMR will increase, because muscle burns more energy than fat. A higher BMR means that you burn a lot more calories than someone with a lower BMR.
So, if you're old, short, flabby, and fat, you're ****ed.
Now, to put this into perspective, a pound of body mass is usually gained with an excess of 3500 calories (a calorie is nothing but a measurement tool, to give one a way of describing energy increments, kind of like a "gallon" of gasoline; one calorie is a measure of the energy required to raise one gram of water by one degree centigrade). If you take in 3500 calories more than you expend, you will gain one pound of fat. If you burn five hundred calories more in a day than you eat, you will lose one pound a week. (I've actually gotten to the point during some trips in Shaolin, that I lost one pound each day).
The type of food you eat will dictate how many calories you ingest. Protein and carbohydrate will give you four calories for each gram that you ingest; fat will give you double that, nine calories for each gram of fat. That's why Baskin Robbins is no good for you. You get more than twice the amount of calories from fat than you do from protein and carbs. And, to make matters worse, ingested fat is the easiest food substance for humans to process into body fat. Turning ingested protein into fat requires a significant amount of energy; if you ingest one hundred calories of protein, you can use upwards of twenty to thirty calories to process that into fat (The end result being, less fat storage). Carbohydrates are easier to process into fat, costing somewhere between ten and twenty percent of the ingested total.
So, to put this into perspective, if you burned four thousand calories a day (BMR plus exercise), and you ingested four thousand calories of protein a day, you'd actually lose weight. There is an energy cost associated with breaking down the protein chains in your gut and bloodstream. There is an energy loss associated with breaking down fat molecules into something "burnable" by the body, ie, glucose, but, once BMR and energy expenditures are met, excess ingested fat can more easily be converted to body fat.
Let's look at a few scenarios.
Weightlifters sometimes ingest upwards of six thousand or more calories per day. But, they don't get fat. The reason is, the excess muscle that they have leads to an increase in BMR (they are constantly burning up more energy just "existing", (which most of these guys do well), and, their increased exercise rate (from their weight lifting program), leads to increased energy expenditure. I've known some guys to eat upwards of eight times per day, just to maintain their body weight. Also, high protein diets are harder to process into fat (consume more energy) than high fat or carb diets. However, there is a danger associated with high protein diets; metabolic acidosis can occur from the increased protein load and consumption; if inadequate water intake is associated with these diets (the metabolic acids are excreted into the urine), serious health problems can arise.
Computer geeks, especially, for some reason, Apple users, lol, (just look at the editorial pictures of any Apple related magazine), tend to be fat. Their BMR may be relatively normal, compared to the general population, but their energy expenditure, via exercise, is far diminished. Plus, eating Cheetos and Frito Lays and drinking Pepsi while you pound away at the keyboard (lots of fat and carbs), adds easily digested, and easily "converted to fat", calories.
People on starvation diets (self imposed or otherwise), can eventually get by on a caloric intake far less than the average population. People that were found in concentration camps during WWII were found to have caloric intakes sometimes of only a thousand calories per day (and less), far below the average BMR. But, their weight loss was not as great as expected. The reason for this is, when a body suffers a decrease in caloric intake, it readjusts its BMR to compensate. This is why, those of you who partake in these so-called "starvation diets", tend not to lose as much weight as expected. The reason being, when you go into starvation mode, your body eventually drops its basal metabolic rate to compensate, that is, to survive, thus, the difference between calories ingested and consumed, diminishes. You starve, you drop your BMR, your weight loss decreases. Starvation diets do not always work well for this reason.
These three scenarios demonstrate a few things that are important to keep in mind. First, weight loss or gain is directly related to the amount of calories that you ingest compared to the amount of calories that you consume. Second, increased muscle mass leads to an increase in BMR; surfice it to say, the more athletic you are, the higher your BMR. Third, increased activity leads to an increase in metabolic rate; the more you move around, the more calories you burn. Fourth, you can temporarily increase your BMR by having a regular exercise program; the more active you are, the more muscle you develop, the more calories you burn at rest. And, your BMR will continue to remain elevated, for a few hours after you finish your exercise, another plus for a regular exercise regimen. Fifth, being sedentary leads to a decrease in BMR, and a greater propensity for gaining weight. Sixth, starving yourself may not result in as great a weight loss as expected, for the body goes into survival mode and drops its BMR.
Let's revisit our fat calculation now:
Change in Body Weight = Calories consumed minus BMR minus EMR (metabolic rate from exercise) minus Food Digestive Costs (protein is more costly to digest than fat).
From this simple example, it's easy to see, that to lose body weight, you need to minimize your calories consumed, maximize your BMR, maximize your EMR, and decrease your fat intake. And, because of the body's survival mode, you are best to alter all three components (BMR, EMR, and type of food). If you only decrease your caloric intake, your body might try to compensate by decreasing your BMR. Also, you might get more tired with a decreased caloric intake, thus leading to a decreased exercise ability, and its related EMR. You really need to try to alter all three components, if you want to lose weight.
Are you fat?
Society has a way of categorizing everything, including us. But when it comes to obesity, it gets kind of difficult sometimes. In the world of medicine, we tend to refer to people who are twenty percent over their expected average weight, to be obese, those who are thirty percent overweight are considered morbidly obese, and females who are forty percent overweight invariably find themselves incredibly attracted to me. The problem is, what exactly is your expected average weight. This seems to change every year the insurance tables come out, and for some reason, keeps going down (most likely, the insurers prefer skinny people to insure, as they have less health problems. What a great way to raise rates for the rest of us....). Quite disturbingly, some weight tables that I've seen recently, puts a man my size at a normal weight of 175 pounds. (I'm 6.3", 204 pounds). I can't remember the last time I was 175, I think it was in high school. And these weight tables do not take into consideration the fact that some people are just larger, or more muscular, than others. (Muscle weighs five times a comparable mass of fat weighs; muscular people will normally weigh more). So, weight tables are fairly inconsistent.
To compensate for this tragedy (yikes, me being considered to be "morbidly obese"!), BMI calculations are commonly used. Body Mass Index is a better way of assessing your weight compared to your height.
BMI = Weight (in kilograms) / (Height (in meters) x Height (in meters))
or
BMI = W/HxH
The number you get can best describe your "condition":
Underweight: below 18.5
Normal weight: 18.5-24.9
Overweight: 25-29.9
Obese: 30 or above
The problem with this calculation, again, is that it doesn't compensate well if you have more than the average bear's amount of muscle. Those with more than average muscle, will weigh more comparatively, yet, still be in the "normal range". The converse is also true though; those with a below average amount of muscle, may not be considered to be obese or overweight by this formula, even though they are. Like everything else we humans design, it's meant to be used for the "average" person. Yet, it's a good guideline, understanding its limitations.
Gong fu for the obese
Those who are overweight or obese need to understand a few things before attempting an exercise program of some sorts. There are health issues associated with being overweight or obese, regardless of your age. There is an increased incidence of heart disease, hypertension and diabetes, among other things, in the "larger" segment of our population. Starting an exercise program with these diseases previously undiagnosed could lead you into a nasty situation where they get diagnosed unexpectedly, and quickly, when you don't want them to. Older people who are overweight are more likely to develop these diseases than younger, though, you can find these ailments in younger obese people. Also, the extra weight that a body has can lead to an increased incidence of joint problems; human joints were designed to carry a certain amount of weight. Injuries to joints during exercise in these people is increased because of the increased stress placed upon the joints. The excess of body fat can decrease one's ability to bend at certain joints, thus leading to an apparent diminishment in flexibility. And, the heavier that you are, the less likely you are to move in an agile, lithe, quick fashion, something which is helpful in the sphere of martial arts exercise.
So, should you do it?
The first thing that a seriously overweight person (or anyone for that matter), prior to starting an aggressive and strenuous exercise program, is to obtain a good and proper physical examination, by a trained health professional. Better if you find out you've got some nasty disease and get it taken care of, before you over exert yourself, and suffer the unexpected complications of it.
Second, find a good, understanding, instructor. Someone who will be patient, someone who will cater the instruction to your needs. Your needs are going to be different than the average student; you're not going to be able to exercise as much as the average bear. Your heat production is going to be increased, your ability to get rid of it will be lessened. Your exercise tolerance will be diminished. Your cardiovascular capacity will not be as great as the next student's. Your physiology is different, so your training and instruction will have to be different.
You'll need to go slowly, and surely, and purposely. It will be difficult in the beginning, your body is just not configured properly to do gong fu well. But you'll get there. Take it easy. Remember what Shi De Cheng says all the time. You climb a mountain one step at a time. You certainly won't turn into some gong fu superstar overnight. You won't lose the weight overnight either; it will take some time. Be patient, go slowly, build up your exercise tolerance slowly, adjust your diet appropriately, drink plenty of water (avoid soda and alcohol like the plague, talk about empty calories), and get plenty of rest. And be persistent.
It will take some time, but, after a while, you'll notice, that as you lose weight, your flexibility will increase, your speed and power will improve, and your ability to move around will get better. And, as that happens, your ability to lose weight will increase, thus leading to an increase in your ability to move, etc, etc. It will happen, you have to be persistent and patient. And, do it.
You can do it.
I did.
I have only recently joined this forum and wished to introduce myself personally. My name is xxx xxxx. I live in xxxxx, xxxx. I'm 26. I am also very overweight. This fact , as well as money problems, has kept me from pursuing my undying resolve to become a Martial Artist. I feel as though I am destined to study and excel in Chinese Gong Fu. I have had no formal training in any fighting art. I also eat too much and do not excercise enough. My question is this. Am I perpetuating a fantasy? Am I too old, too fat, too lazy? Am I fit to practise this ancient and beautiful technique , of self awareness and expression, only in my dreams? I apologise if I seem depressed. It is only one of my many ambitions. But if I could somehow find the will and support to pursue this desire, I know in my heart of hearts I could be very good. I have even decided what styles I want to learn ( I realize these may change of course, but for now... whats the harm in fantasizing!). I wish to study Wushu Shaolin style. Shaolin Five-Animal Style. Northern Praying Mantis. Chi Kung. Tai Ji Juan. I wish to learn the use of the staff and spear as well. I know this is alot for someone who has no knowledge of these things, but these styles are what appeal most strongly to me. Sorry to run-on so. Please reply at your conveinience, do not trouble yourself if you do not wish to take the time. I am sorry if I have been offensive or brash or presumptuous.
Thank you for your time.
xxxx xxxxx
Good question. Let's look at someone else that I know real well.
He's a relatively older gentleman, compared to you, if you want to call him that. Had a bad accident, which, among other things, destroyed his sense of balance. It also ruined his proprioceptive abilities, especially in his right arm (didn't know where his right arm was unless he was able to see it). He suffered three separate strokes over the previous year, which left his right side weak, an injury which left his ability to walk properly impaired. And because of near-constant headaches, he was drinking a lot of Coca Cola during the day. He had discovered that the only thing, other than sleep, that helped him live with his headaches, was Coca Cola. Something to do with the sugar, the caffeine, and that damned secret ingredient that is found only in Coca Cola (Coke was originally an anti-migraine syrup; its creator in the late 1800 suffered from terrible migraines. During the early 1900's, when carbonated beverages started to soar, he made a soda out of it). The problem was, he was drinking upwards of, and over, twenty cans of Coke. Each and every day. That, and the complete lack of physical activity, had it's effect upon him.
So, from a muscular and kind of lithe 207 pounds, he blossomed, within months, into a 260 pound mass of not very easily movable flesh. Mix that with poor proprioception, and a very poor sense of balance, and you had a martial artist's nightmare.
But, due to other problems that we won't get into, he felt a need to go to Shaolin to train. So, one October, not certain if he would ever see his friends or family again due to the instability of his neurological condition, he got on a plane and spent over two months in China. One month was spent training, one on one, with a monk. A very understanding monk, one who recognized his problems, and who was patient enough to spend the time with him, to help him with his chronic pain, his lack of balance, strength, and flexibility, and his serious problem of being overweight. Day in and day out, they worked together, slowly but surely, going over the basics, going over forms, learning once again all that he had once known, and had either forgotten, or was completely unable to do. And with some understanding, and time, slowly but surely, he picked up some skills. He developed some flexibility. He regained some strength. He lost weight.
And by the time he got home, he was about 202 pounds. He moved well. His gong fu had improved. His sense of well being had reappeared. His balance was slightly better, as well as the muscular strength in his right side. He still had chronic severe headaches, but he had a much better attitude to deal with them. He wasn't the perfect picture of the Shaolin martial arts, but, he had learned a fair amount, and had regained a fair amount of lost abilities.
The physiology of fat
Let's talk about fat. What it means, what it does, what the problems are, how to get there, and how to get away from it.
It's a simple concept actually. Forget all of this shit that you read in all of these diet books. Forget carbohydrates, protein, saturated and unsaturated fats. Forget Ornish, vitamins, Dexatrim, forget everything that you get bombarded with on a daily basis about all that girth around the middle. Forget the electronic muscle stimulators and the vibrating waist belts that will give you a six pack, and bigger breasts to boot. Forget all of the shit.
Let's keep it simple. Caloric intake minus caloric expenditure equals fat storage.
If you eat a lot, and don't burn it off, you will get fat.
If you eat a little, and do burn it off, you will lose weight.
Doesn't matter what the food is. It could be a purely protein diet, with no carbohydrates at all. If your caloric intake exceeds your caloric expenditure, you will store the remaining calories as fat. Though, as we'll see later, there is an energy expenditure cost associated with respect to the kind of foods that you eat.
Your basal metabolic rate (what you burn at rest on a daily basis), is a bit over two thousand calories, all depending upon your body mass. To be more specific, one formula that can be used to calculate your basal metabolic rate (BMR) would approximately be the following (there are different formulas for men and women, though, they are close):
Males: BMR = 66.5 + (13.75 x body weight) + (5 x height) - (6.75 x age)
A few things to notice about your BMR. If your body weight is larger than average, your BMR will be higher than average. Shorter people have lower BMR's than taller people. And, older people have lower BMR's. The components that make up your weight are important too; if you have a lot of muscle, your BMR will increase, because muscle burns more energy than fat. A higher BMR means that you burn a lot more calories than someone with a lower BMR.
So, if you're old, short, flabby, and fat, you're ****ed.
Now, to put this into perspective, a pound of body mass is usually gained with an excess of 3500 calories (a calorie is nothing but a measurement tool, to give one a way of describing energy increments, kind of like a "gallon" of gasoline; one calorie is a measure of the energy required to raise one gram of water by one degree centigrade). If you take in 3500 calories more than you expend, you will gain one pound of fat. If you burn five hundred calories more in a day than you eat, you will lose one pound a week. (I've actually gotten to the point during some trips in Shaolin, that I lost one pound each day).
The type of food you eat will dictate how many calories you ingest. Protein and carbohydrate will give you four calories for each gram that you ingest; fat will give you double that, nine calories for each gram of fat. That's why Baskin Robbins is no good for you. You get more than twice the amount of calories from fat than you do from protein and carbs. And, to make matters worse, ingested fat is the easiest food substance for humans to process into body fat. Turning ingested protein into fat requires a significant amount of energy; if you ingest one hundred calories of protein, you can use upwards of twenty to thirty calories to process that into fat (The end result being, less fat storage). Carbohydrates are easier to process into fat, costing somewhere between ten and twenty percent of the ingested total.
So, to put this into perspective, if you burned four thousand calories a day (BMR plus exercise), and you ingested four thousand calories of protein a day, you'd actually lose weight. There is an energy cost associated with breaking down the protein chains in your gut and bloodstream. There is an energy loss associated with breaking down fat molecules into something "burnable" by the body, ie, glucose, but, once BMR and energy expenditures are met, excess ingested fat can more easily be converted to body fat.
Let's look at a few scenarios.
Weightlifters sometimes ingest upwards of six thousand or more calories per day. But, they don't get fat. The reason is, the excess muscle that they have leads to an increase in BMR (they are constantly burning up more energy just "existing", (which most of these guys do well), and, their increased exercise rate (from their weight lifting program), leads to increased energy expenditure. I've known some guys to eat upwards of eight times per day, just to maintain their body weight. Also, high protein diets are harder to process into fat (consume more energy) than high fat or carb diets. However, there is a danger associated with high protein diets; metabolic acidosis can occur from the increased protein load and consumption; if inadequate water intake is associated with these diets (the metabolic acids are excreted into the urine), serious health problems can arise.
Computer geeks, especially, for some reason, Apple users, lol, (just look at the editorial pictures of any Apple related magazine), tend to be fat. Their BMR may be relatively normal, compared to the general population, but their energy expenditure, via exercise, is far diminished. Plus, eating Cheetos and Frito Lays and drinking Pepsi while you pound away at the keyboard (lots of fat and carbs), adds easily digested, and easily "converted to fat", calories.
People on starvation diets (self imposed or otherwise), can eventually get by on a caloric intake far less than the average population. People that were found in concentration camps during WWII were found to have caloric intakes sometimes of only a thousand calories per day (and less), far below the average BMR. But, their weight loss was not as great as expected. The reason for this is, when a body suffers a decrease in caloric intake, it readjusts its BMR to compensate. This is why, those of you who partake in these so-called "starvation diets", tend not to lose as much weight as expected. The reason being, when you go into starvation mode, your body eventually drops its basal metabolic rate to compensate, that is, to survive, thus, the difference between calories ingested and consumed, diminishes. You starve, you drop your BMR, your weight loss decreases. Starvation diets do not always work well for this reason.
These three scenarios demonstrate a few things that are important to keep in mind. First, weight loss or gain is directly related to the amount of calories that you ingest compared to the amount of calories that you consume. Second, increased muscle mass leads to an increase in BMR; surfice it to say, the more athletic you are, the higher your BMR. Third, increased activity leads to an increase in metabolic rate; the more you move around, the more calories you burn. Fourth, you can temporarily increase your BMR by having a regular exercise program; the more active you are, the more muscle you develop, the more calories you burn at rest. And, your BMR will continue to remain elevated, for a few hours after you finish your exercise, another plus for a regular exercise regimen. Fifth, being sedentary leads to a decrease in BMR, and a greater propensity for gaining weight. Sixth, starving yourself may not result in as great a weight loss as expected, for the body goes into survival mode and drops its BMR.
Let's revisit our fat calculation now:
Change in Body Weight = Calories consumed minus BMR minus EMR (metabolic rate from exercise) minus Food Digestive Costs (protein is more costly to digest than fat).
From this simple example, it's easy to see, that to lose body weight, you need to minimize your calories consumed, maximize your BMR, maximize your EMR, and decrease your fat intake. And, because of the body's survival mode, you are best to alter all three components (BMR, EMR, and type of food). If you only decrease your caloric intake, your body might try to compensate by decreasing your BMR. Also, you might get more tired with a decreased caloric intake, thus leading to a decreased exercise ability, and its related EMR. You really need to try to alter all three components, if you want to lose weight.
Are you fat?
Society has a way of categorizing everything, including us. But when it comes to obesity, it gets kind of difficult sometimes. In the world of medicine, we tend to refer to people who are twenty percent over their expected average weight, to be obese, those who are thirty percent overweight are considered morbidly obese, and females who are forty percent overweight invariably find themselves incredibly attracted to me. The problem is, what exactly is your expected average weight. This seems to change every year the insurance tables come out, and for some reason, keeps going down (most likely, the insurers prefer skinny people to insure, as they have less health problems. What a great way to raise rates for the rest of us....). Quite disturbingly, some weight tables that I've seen recently, puts a man my size at a normal weight of 175 pounds. (I'm 6.3", 204 pounds). I can't remember the last time I was 175, I think it was in high school. And these weight tables do not take into consideration the fact that some people are just larger, or more muscular, than others. (Muscle weighs five times a comparable mass of fat weighs; muscular people will normally weigh more). So, weight tables are fairly inconsistent.
To compensate for this tragedy (yikes, me being considered to be "morbidly obese"!), BMI calculations are commonly used. Body Mass Index is a better way of assessing your weight compared to your height.
BMI = Weight (in kilograms) / (Height (in meters) x Height (in meters))
or
BMI = W/HxH
The number you get can best describe your "condition":
Underweight: below 18.5
Normal weight: 18.5-24.9
Overweight: 25-29.9
Obese: 30 or above
The problem with this calculation, again, is that it doesn't compensate well if you have more than the average bear's amount of muscle. Those with more than average muscle, will weigh more comparatively, yet, still be in the "normal range". The converse is also true though; those with a below average amount of muscle, may not be considered to be obese or overweight by this formula, even though they are. Like everything else we humans design, it's meant to be used for the "average" person. Yet, it's a good guideline, understanding its limitations.
Gong fu for the obese
Those who are overweight or obese need to understand a few things before attempting an exercise program of some sorts. There are health issues associated with being overweight or obese, regardless of your age. There is an increased incidence of heart disease, hypertension and diabetes, among other things, in the "larger" segment of our population. Starting an exercise program with these diseases previously undiagnosed could lead you into a nasty situation where they get diagnosed unexpectedly, and quickly, when you don't want them to. Older people who are overweight are more likely to develop these diseases than younger, though, you can find these ailments in younger obese people. Also, the extra weight that a body has can lead to an increased incidence of joint problems; human joints were designed to carry a certain amount of weight. Injuries to joints during exercise in these people is increased because of the increased stress placed upon the joints. The excess of body fat can decrease one's ability to bend at certain joints, thus leading to an apparent diminishment in flexibility. And, the heavier that you are, the less likely you are to move in an agile, lithe, quick fashion, something which is helpful in the sphere of martial arts exercise.
So, should you do it?
The first thing that a seriously overweight person (or anyone for that matter), prior to starting an aggressive and strenuous exercise program, is to obtain a good and proper physical examination, by a trained health professional. Better if you find out you've got some nasty disease and get it taken care of, before you over exert yourself, and suffer the unexpected complications of it.
Second, find a good, understanding, instructor. Someone who will be patient, someone who will cater the instruction to your needs. Your needs are going to be different than the average student; you're not going to be able to exercise as much as the average bear. Your heat production is going to be increased, your ability to get rid of it will be lessened. Your exercise tolerance will be diminished. Your cardiovascular capacity will not be as great as the next student's. Your physiology is different, so your training and instruction will have to be different.
You'll need to go slowly, and surely, and purposely. It will be difficult in the beginning, your body is just not configured properly to do gong fu well. But you'll get there. Take it easy. Remember what Shi De Cheng says all the time. You climb a mountain one step at a time. You certainly won't turn into some gong fu superstar overnight. You won't lose the weight overnight either; it will take some time. Be patient, go slowly, build up your exercise tolerance slowly, adjust your diet appropriately, drink plenty of water (avoid soda and alcohol like the plague, talk about empty calories), and get plenty of rest. And be persistent.
It will take some time, but, after a while, you'll notice, that as you lose weight, your flexibility will increase, your speed and power will improve, and your ability to move around will get better. And, as that happens, your ability to lose weight will increase, thus leading to an increase in your ability to move, etc, etc. It will happen, you have to be persistent and patient. And, do it.
You can do it.
I did.
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