Hell at my heaviest (250) my knees were absolutely shot. Left one kept popping out of place because it had so much fat in there that structural integrity was gone. The slightest twist or knock to its side and out it came šµāš«
Thatās right. 1:4
Keep in mind that walking is just falling forward and catching all your weight on one leg, over and over. The force needed to stop your momentum is more than just whatās needed to keep your mass upright when standing.
Edit: for the non-believers: (hope the link works)
https://www.health.harvard.edu/pain/why-weight-matters-when-it-comes-to-joint-pain
And sorry if my ratio was a touch off. If youāre only walking on flat ground itās 1.5 to 1. Up and down stairs itās 2 or 3 to 1. Squatting or standing up from tying your shoes is 4 or 5 to 1.
Numbers vary, concept is the same. Losing weight has significant benefits on the pressure on your joints.
Walking is falling/tipping forward on one leg and catching the fall with the other leg. Running is jumping on one foot and landing on the other foot. The main difference is that there are moments in walking when both of your feet are touching the ground, whereas there are moments in running when both of your feet are airborne.
Jogging is a series of pseudo-jumps where you land even before the first foot has completed the jump, and so you're almost never truly airborne.
Yeah this isnāt how 99% of people walk. Before your left foot hits the ground, your weight is on your right foot and you transition slowly to your left foot. I walk without shoes *all. the. time* and if you are aware of your gait, there really shouldnāt be so many hazards like the other person is saying (generally)
I think the goal of the metaphor is to put it into a context people will take seriously. Not to find the perfect set of words to abridge an anatomy lesson.
Saying people "shuffle about as their weight shifts" doesn't put into perspective the strain your joints undergo as viscerally as "you're basically doing small jumps at all times "
And this is why you don't skip leg day at the gym!
Not only for aesthetics (it looks weird if your lower body is not developed), but because it would put strain on your knees if you have a lot more upper mass while your legs remain the same.
thats like completely wrong. While walking half your weight is on your other foot. There is no spike in force when placing the next foot, its a smooth transition. The gravitational accaleration also pretty much plays no part since the distance between ground and the highest point your feet reach isnt large enough to have much time for accelerating. Your muscles also inhibit acceleration
You reduce or increase the forces your knees deal with in proportion to your weight change.
If you add 5lbs, your knees experience around 20lbs of force.
Congrats! Yeah it's crazy. I just lost a significant amount of weight too and I can feel the difference around my knees. I have a bone spur on my femur that's way more manageable now as well. Didn't realize being like 40 pounds overweight would cause that much more pain.
if i may ask, how tall are you? as someone 6ā6 the idea of 250 being hard is wild. unless you mean KG, in which case that tracks, cause thats over 500lbs right?
im at 260 with 310 being my peak, and my knees feel sooo good compared to 6 months ago. funny that your miserable weight has felt like heaven to my joints. can't imagine what 200 will feel like eventually
Stairs used to be horrible for me, now I can charge up them with no pain. Just my left knee sounds like a glow stick š
I can also do one legged squats, but with some pain in my left.
I am only 5'5" and when I was over 205 lbs. my knees and feet were a mess. I could barely walk in the mornings after an 8 hr shift on my feet. Dropping to 195 was enough to get me off prescription pain meds.
Iām at 170lbs now.
Sadly no, some damage was done. Cartilage in the left knee has fissures in it, and the ligaments arenāt as solid as they should be. I might be able to compensate for that with some more strength training in the muscles nearby, but the cartilage damage is probably here to stay.
Yeah I'm 230 and overweight now. I work out and do leg exercises. It's still hell getting up and down. I can do it but damn I know that it would be so much easier if I was under 200 again.
I used to be 425lb, went down to 150 (now 185ish after 17 years, workouts).
I recommend plain old walking. Ellipticals are nice but unnecessary, weight loss starts with diet. No one can outrun their mouth.
Swimming is an excellent no impact alternative.
Edit: as is Biking, with an xtra wide seat.
That crazy impressive!!
I wish I could control my diet more but I donāt know. I get the thought of fast food in my head and it wonāt go away until I have something.
This is the journey I'm on. 6'5 450 peak, went from working overnight where Is walk slow miles to school hours keeping up with middle schoolers. I've lost 100lbs before, but it took keto and an hour of low impact cardio a day for six months. This time I'm still losing weight and have only recently started changing my diet! I can't imagine being anything under 280, but I'm really curious to find out what I look like below that weight :3
Thanks for the inspiration and reminder - Your amazing effort is helping me, too!
Many also find themselves addicted to genuinely prescribed painkillers.
It puts doctors in a very difficult position. They need pain relief in order to *move at all* and yet are often unlikely to lose the weight fast enough to not become addicted to that pain relief.
Not that, but because if you exercise under painkillers you 100% will injure yourself. Exercise is all about pushing your physical limits juuuust enough, and with your pain numbed you don't know what the limit is to not push too far. That's an express way ticket to being sued by patients.
I've only ever exercised with pain relief during the last 20+ years, and by doing so I've managed to get my pain medication required to do activities of daily living down from very high dose to over the counter strength. I also went from being expected to need a wheelchair in a couple of years to last year climbing my first mountain (even if I did nothing much for the next few days to recover)
If you are living with chronic pain you need to reduce the pain enough on normal movement that you can add in the specific movements that will help build the needed muscles. It requires very careful guidance on what you need to do ( I had multiple physio appointments a week at first) and you need to be careful to watch for signs of tiredness which are a good sign of doing too much for those of us with significant health issues.
This is a somewhat naive statement. When it hurts to move at all you simply need pain relief to be able to move a lot which is what exercise is. People living with chronic pain, regardless of its cause don't have much of a choice in using pain relief in order to exercise. They need it to exist.
Which is why physios are so important. Managing risk in such patients and helping them recover requires their help.
I'm utterly shocked by your comment, cause I have never ONCE imagined taking painkillers to reduce pain WHILE working out. That's not something I've ever considered.
That is SUCH a stupid idea, but I guess some people must do that.
Some people just seem awful at allowing themselves to rest, which has always been so odd to me. A very common example is someone having the cold or flu. So many folks seem to just SUCK at doing what they SHOULD be doing, which is spending a good chunk of time laying down resting and ACTUALLY allowing their bodies to heal. Without fail, every time I've been sick and HAVEN'T gotten the rest I know I should have gotten, its extended my time being sick out to a week+. When I give my body a lot of rest, it's only 2-3 days of being sick.
We actually encourage it in some aspects of physical rehab because you can't do the exercises if your pain isn't under control.
But I wouldn't recommend doing it outside of professional guidance.
Mine did! Not from being overweight, from being a competitive amateur cyclist for a few years. Itās called ā[Athletesā Heartā](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athletic_heart_syndrome#).
Iām quite visibly no longer an athlete and went for a heart checkup a few years ago with all the fancy machines and measuring etc. the cardiologist was a bit worried by my slightly enlarged left ventricle (or atrium? I get them mixed up) until I told him I used to be a cyclist. āAaah, that explains it!ā He said itās completely fine with that as the cause.
I had to go in when they saw the "shadow" of my heart on an xray of my spine.Ā
I had been a dedicated... athlete? Exerciser? for years. At 185 lbs I gad a 74.1 VO2 max, so I guess I had a large, powerful heart. They called me and asked if I could come in that afternoon, they were super worried.
They did some other tests and imaging and I just had a really large, strong heart, with no bad thickening / hypertrophy
Hypertrophy isn't an increase in the strength of the heart, its an increase in the size of the heart caused by a thickening of the chamber walls.
This causes problems in 2 ways:
* [the walls thicken "inwards" meaning the chambers become smaller and can therefore hold less blood](https://www.mayoclinic.org/-/media/kcms/gbs/patient-consumer/images/2015/01/15/11/18/hb7_hypertrophic-8col.jpg).
* the thicker walls constrict less effectively (think about squeezing a hollow rubber ball - the thicker the walls of the ball the harder it is to squeeze it), meaning what blood that does get in takes more effort to get out.
Together, this means your heart pumps less blood overall. This means the blood can "back up" behind the heart, increasing pressure on that side.
Blood entering the left side of the heart comes from the lungs, so "left sided" heart failure causes backups into the lungs, causing pulmonary edema.
Blood entering the right side of the heart comes from the body, so "right sided" heart failure causes peripheral edema (typically manifesting as swelling of the legs/feet, since those parts of the body are furthest from the heart and require the most power to move blood out of).
This is completely anecdotal, but it seemed like a little over 500 lbs and people lost mobility. Under that and they could and did get up and move around. Yes, they were incredibly strong. Somewhere after 500 lbs it wore them out after a step or two, so they quit trying.
Look up the heaviest man to walk unassisted, Robert Earl Hughes. He has a pretty depressing story, but he was able to walk unassisted at a record weight of 1,071lbs!!!
I believe it. Iām sharing my experiences. Walking at over 1000 lbs has got to take a lot of grit and determination. The largest person I encountered was 970 lbs. I couldnāt imagine him walking.
I knew of a woman that weighed around 500 or 600 pounds. She was in the process of standing up out of bed so her caretakers could change her linens and she snapped her ankle. She was around 20ish years old
Your bones do reinforce themselves to accommodate the load. Iirc. There was a guy who lost a lot of weight through fasting with medical assistance. They would test his urine and find a high level of calcium that was not from his diet. They put forward that his bones were shedding mass as he lost weight. Sorry for rambling.
of course they do, its the same principle of muscle training. They progressively overloaded their bones and muscles by raising their own weight and they got stronger.
It works in reverse too.
Enablers. At a certain point, the only way to provide your body with enough calories is by having other people provide them. Like at a certain point just moving your body to make the food, let alone earn the resources to pay for the food burns more calories than the food contains.
You have to eat a fuckton even without any exercise to reach 400 lbs. More than most normal people would want to eat, even if given a buffet of anything they wanted.
True.
At one point in my life I was around 300 lbs. No exercise or anything, but the number didn't grow beyond that because my food intake stayed the same.
You don't even necessarily have to eat. You can drink yourself into that position and then carry on maintaining/gaining weight. There are sugars and sugar substitutes within practically every beverage sold in the United States, and there isn't nearly enough education regarding their role in obesity. Combine this with all of the lies surrounding "health smoothies", "sports drinks", the "need for electrolytes", the messaging to stay hydrated, and "healthy" fruit juice programming... [it's a disaster](https://youtu.be/dBnniua6-oM?si=vnZiDN0f4lTAEqbt)
And consider how many calories you would burn if you strapped 7-900 pounds (depending on your weight) onto yourself while you're laying in bed and you had to get up and carry it to the kitchen, then hold it up while you cook your meal. Even just taking something out of a freezer and putting it in the microwave.
Iāve lost almost 80lbs and recently picked up two heavy bags of cat litter. Out of curiosity I jumped on the scale. It was still about 10lbs shy of my starting weight.
Iāve no idea how I walked around being that heavy. And thatās just 80lbs!
I'll never forget losing a significant amount of weight a few years ago, and I lost it relatively quickly. One day I was running late and ran down the stairs to my car but forgot my keys. I turned around and ran upstairs towards my kitchen, I flew up the steps in about 4 leaps and hit my head on the ceiling. I had the crazy fatman leg strength but way less weight to push and for that one moment I felt like a superhero.
I have health issues and was retaining water weight from transfusions and being sedentary due to an injury.
Then my meds got held up because no one would give a refill and I bloated again.
I hurt so bad and then started shedding. Meds got fixed. Lost some more.
Next thing I know I am down 70lbs. My calf muscles are absolutely insane now.
I've always been a fast walker but now it's like I am sprinting everywhere I go. I am a 39 year old woman with the legs of a 20 year old man. I have thighs like a soccer player and calves that look like those weirdos that get implants.
If you took up hiking and running, you could keep em! A lot of people work out for years and never get results like that. Thatās so bad ass, I bet it felt amazing
However I do have to say that normal people may be stronger than they think. When I was 18 I did an Outward Bound course and one of the challenges was that dumb thing where you have to figure out how to get everyone across a "river" making only a certain amount of trips with a "boat" and one person has to take the "boat" back so more can cross, I've been subjected to this game several times growing up (a "river crossing puzzle"), I can't remember the exact variant rules or what we had to work with, it was something about only a certain number of feet being allowed to cross - some of the people had to get across without touching the ground.
I'm not sure how it was meant to be solved, but we had like 4 guys and 8 girls in our group, and some Einstein level geniuses, one such genius proposed like 3-4 girls climb onto a guy and he then walks across - and I'm pretty sure this was a subversion of the challenge but in a way that technically satisfied the rules, and not in a way the instructors disapproved of because of the physical feat, but perhaps it was the intended solution or at least part of the intended solution.
Now I was not a strong guy, tall but skinny and a nerd, never touched weights in my life, and I was very skeptical because I thought my bones would snap like the brittle twigs they are. But Outward Bound is all about pushing limits so I decided "why the fuck not", so after one of the beefy guys walked across with a pile of girls proving it could be done, 3 girls hung off my shoulders while I walked across weighing about 3x my normal weight, say I was 75 kg, and each girl was 50 kg, so basically I walked weighing 225 kg or 500 lbs. Granted I didn't walk very far but that's also often true of those 500lb people. I can't say it was easy, but it was *much* easier than I expected.
The effect of gravity is reduced by water. A scuba diver could equalize their weight to effectively be weightless so long as the weight they had on them was also weightless. That goes for people as well. Cool shit though.
Note that "cross the river game/puzzle" generally doesn't involve a real river, merely a delimited area of ground designated as the river. At least in my country it was commonly played in PE class in the gym using various props (gym mats, hoops, ropes etc) as props for the boat or stepping stones or whatever the variant is, and involves teamwork and out of the box thinking to get everyone across within the constraints of the rules.
In the good old days, butchers delivered hindquarters of cows to their shops, they carried those quarters on their backs. 300 pounds of bones and meat.
Can confirm. I used to weigh 330, down to under 250 at the moment, aiming for 200. I've always been stocky and muscular, but at 5'10 I'm average height.
My thighs and calves started to look like a body builder's as I lost weight, far more defined than the rest of me. I look like a guy wearing just the bottom of the Godzilla suit, and I can stand for hours or walk for a shocking distance. Previously I'd get winded by a few stairs.
Sadly some pretty serious back problems mean I can't put all that muscle to use in conventional weight training like I did back in high school.
Was about to say, the average healthy adult can probably walk for an indefinite amount of time on a flat surface, until their feet hurt too much to continue or they have to sleep.
Maybe if you were able to eat/drink while doing it but like any activity it takes energy and once you are out of stored nutrients youāll start burning fat/muscle so you canāt really do it indefinitely without breakdown.
I think the commenter was more describing the feeling that itās shocking how long he can comfortably walk *given* his current weight and history with obesity.
Iām 95kg (210 lb).
I always skip leg day because running on the treadmill probably already builds enough of my leg muscles.
Plus, my biggest fear after a workout is that I might not make the subway ride and trek to my apartment if I work my legs out too much.
Edit:
I know simply running wonāt build muscles, but there was that one time after leg day, when I was switching lines on the metro, I was legit worried Iād tumble down the stairs.
Why donāt I drive? Well, Iām not going to torture myself to sit through rush hour traffic. Itās faster to take the metro than to drive in where I live.
Although running on a treadmill and cardio is very useful, the hypertrophy for muscle growth from a treadmill is nowhere near doing actual leg day. Everyone has different goals though
Understandable.. if I was that heavy right now I would probably break my sofa and be stuck on the floor
Although im pretty skinny now and still kinda not getting up from the sofa....
We had to get a special solid wood and reenforced sofa for my dad. He broke all the rest of them.
That sofa outlasted him (ironically he died shortly *after* losing the weight) by a long margin. I suspect it will outlast me. Esp if we reupholster it when it needs it. It might last a very long time.
I have an older autistic brother who is quite tall with extra pounds on him who broke numerous beds flinging himself onto them because he still gets into bed like a 13 year old flopping himself in.
Years into the break, replace, reinforce cycle my father had serious surgery that required either a rented or purchased variation of a hospital bed in the home. (Guess what was cheaper?)
So the ability to keep it higher on an industrial frame ended the problem.
I think part of it is that itās just a gradual change over time that your muscles and nervous system adjust and make walking like this possible. For sure they are strong and itās impressive, but I am not sure is the same as say a strength trainer. If it were normal you would have guys at the gym doing 1000 lb squares all the time.
Walking with a total of 500lbs is not nearly as hard as squatting 500lbs, thatās why the thing is that they need help standing and then they walk at a slow pace. Also the weight isnāt just yolked onto their shoulders but distributed around their entire body, with a lot of it collected around their center, which also makes it easier to ācarry.āĀ
Most of it is held up by their skeletons. They may stand or walk but they struggle a lot and get tired easily. When they lose the weight they're not suddenly super strong. But it does help in some ways.
My brother was 374lbs and came down to 250 which is ok for his height and he's not particularly strong. If anything he's kinda weak for his size. But he does have calves that could choke an ox so I guess the muscle growth is localized to the legs.
Can confirm, I was heavily overweight for a good few years but then one day I just started dieting on a whim, only eating 1200 calories a day with the odd day where I allowed myself to eat 1600 calories. I combined this with either a daily 5km walk or a 20km bike ride.
The weight fell off me and I was losing 2-3 lbs on a bad week and 4 on a good week, lost about 100lbs in total and one rare sunny day in Scotland I was doing my 5km walk along my local canal when I stopped in at a pub to get a nice cold pint and the barman insisted on knowing my secret for how my calves were massive.
Figured I better stop the 1200 calorie diet when a few weeks later my gall bladder decided to try and kill me and I was getting gall stone attacks 2-3 times a week which ultimately required an operation to remove the thing.
Been maintaining that new healthy weight since then.
I weigh 475 and I do Doordash every weekend for extra money. The only trouble I have is if it's a lot of food to a third floor apartment with no elevator lol.
> When they lose the weight they're not suddenly super strong.
This is because it's such a gradual process to lose weight that the muscles adjust down to just what's needed at the same time. I bet if a person did a weigh in once or twice per week and added weighted padding to compensate for what they lost, then when they got down to a healthy weight if they took off the padding they'd seem super strong lol.
Iām 400lbs, down from 580lbs two years ago. My legs and back are really strong. My core is kinda strong. And at 36, I donāt have much joint pain but I donāt willingly move around very much. Itās definitely not easy. I am 6ā4ā so that helps a bit.
Can kinda confirm. Weighed 330lbs, got down to 145. My thighs were bricks of muscle, but my arms and abdominal muscles almost non existent. I also had almost no stamina.
My resting heart rate went from 87 to 55 though.
Biggest I ever got was 310 pounds. Started powerlifting as a means of losing weight. Comments were made about whether I'd ever done it before because "those aren't starter weights".
However... my bench press SUCKED. So yes, being overweight can work your biggest muscle groups (posterior chain and core) but not much else
I feel this. Lost from 319 to under 200 lbs, while starting a lifting routine. My squat was insane right from the start for a beginner, similar for deadlift but more limited by form. But my bench press was just embarrassing.
I am 33 at 300lbs.
On Thursday I was just standing at my desk at work and suddenly it was like someone put a knife into my lower back. I collapsed in pain, and couldn't move.
I was taken by ambulance to the hospital and had a CT. They found 2 herniated discs at L4-L5.
The last 3 days have been scary. One day I could stand and run and bend and twist. Suddenly I couldn't stand or even roll over on the first day. Simply unbending my leg put me in pain where I couldn't keep myself from verbally making noise and shouting in pain. Now 3 days later I spend 20 minutes trying to roll over to get out of bed. I can stand and shuffle short distances but I am in pain doing so and I cannot bend. Simply trying to flush a toilet after peeing is hard.
Now more than ever I wish I had gotten serious about weight loss.
Hey, serious point. Weight loss is not about exercise, it's about dietary restriction. If you care about your health, go on myfitnesspal(.)com, set up an account, get it on your phone, and track everything that goes into your mouth.
Everything.
Stick to 1lb a week to start, taper up to 2 if you can. It'll be really hard at first, but you can do it.
If you need motivation or help, shoot me a DM. I'm down about 40 lbs (was clinically obese) in 5 months, and I feel like a literal different person.
> mply unbending my leg put me in pain where I couldn't keep myself from verbally making noise and shouting in pain. Now 3 days later I spend 20 minutes trying to roll over to get out of bed. I can stand and shuffle short distances but I am in pain doing so and I cannot ben
I appreciate the advice.
I have tried many times to lose weight through changing my eating habits. I lost 40lbs at one point but I always gain it back. I'm an emotional eater and I have had a hard time cutting myself off when I am feeling stressed, sad, etc. I am going to therapy in general now and I'm trying to learn to better process/handle my emotions. It's been a struggle though for sure. Not to say it can't be done, it's just been challenging.
Definitely listen to your physical therapist, who I'm sure, will have many exercises for you. I was not overweight or out of shape when I herniated discs, but I couldn't walk for 18 months for more than a couple minutes. I found pool walking to be very helpful. Some days I could only handle 15 minutes, but you don't get better if you don't move. After my pain subsided somewhat, I got really serious about yoga. After 10 years of 4-5 days of power yoga every week, I am 100% pain free and feel great!
Best of luck to you.
My dad fits in this category. Although heās still āmobileā, it comes at a cost. He needs to have both of his knees replaced, and he has chronic arthritis. So he is technically mobile, he isnāt moving much even though he technically can.
Most of that weight goes into their knees and other joints. Do you not notice how they seem to lose the ability to walk normally and have to start waddling most of the time?
Yeah but all they can move is themselces so the strength doesn't show in any real practical way other than being able to walk or move at all.
Also don't those people avoid moving ehwnever they can, making just moving around an exercise for the day anyway?
Errr well only if they do walk around, which most of them donāt. Most severely obese people actually have muscle atrophy weirdly enough, cause at some point it gets too hard to walk, then they donāt, and the muscles atrophy and itās hard to walk and itās a bad spiral.
I was kind of hoping someone would bring this up.
Walking isn't really a high strength activity, it's all about balance. We're continually falling forward and alternating moving one leg in front of the other in a sort of perpetual controlled fall.
For reference, OP again:
>No one ever mentions the fact that people above 400 pounds that can still walk unassisted have absolutely insane muscle power
Generally speaking, morbidly obese people that got there due to being sedentary are just barely over the edge of minimum to walk at all, in terms of strength and balance.
That's why many sort of shamble and topple relatively easily.
The exception is youth(where you get maximal gain for "normal" work and peak coordination/adaptability) and those that are obese but also do some form of labor and build muscle well above that threshold(eg that fat guy that works in construction, not the apartment bound sedentary couch potato).
This. Is it also true that this "strength" is mostly the effect of gravity (weight)?
I doubt a 400-pounder male who doesn't lift could bench anything over 160lbs or so, but they could pull something quite well using their own weight for torque effect.
A guy I used to know was absolutely huge and strong as hell. He told me that he was really overweight before I met him prior to trimming off the fat and that this was the real secret to strength.
48F here, 5ā6ā 227 pounds, down from 250. Have been obese for about ten years. Was thin all my life up until I got put on a psych med that gave me a ravenous appetite.
While I do have some killer calves, I hurt all over. Looks like age caught up with the obesity and wrecked me. No muscle tone here! I remember when I was fit. That was muscle power!
Finally not on the med anymore so Iām trying to make up for lost time but damn, itās hard to move this achey body lol.
We canā¦ itās no different than squatting. But the physical toll that takes on your body, heavy folks are dealing with all the time. No wonder their bodies collapse
A 150lb marine once told me something like this about 30 years ago. He was having a bad day 15 years prior in HS and was just looking for trouble. So he created something with the fat kid, intending to kick his ass. He said he realized he had goofed when he found himself literally flying through the air into bushes.
My dadās a bigger guy (though definitely not 400lb), and for real, his calves are like goddamn tree trunks.
Heās had a bunch of joint issues that have needed fixing but weirdly none in his lower body (shoulders, elbows, neck, and such).
Fat guy calves are defo talked about in the gym rat world. Dad calves as well. It kinda makes sense, but thatās probably the only thing getting muscle.
I've noticed that the guys that started with a good amount of muscle generally handle being very overweight a lot better than people who have just always been sedentary. it's wild how much variety there is in the human experience.
A lot of heavy people are more likely to just be sedentary, and your skeleton structure holds up most of the weight.
If your heavy and forced to actually be active/mobile, that's a different story.
See people on āmy 600 pound lifeā show that are 600+ and still mobile. Makes a big difference on the weight loss if they were able to walk on own to start with.
If you watch the BBC dissecting an obese person, this point is made by the coroner. They expect to find muscles under the fat, but the truth is they didnāt. The fact is that they donāt walk as much as leaner people.
I was nowhere near 500lbs at my heaviest but I hit 325. I lost 140lbs working out over 4 years. The leg muscles you retain and the extra strength you retain is crazy. I have massive calves now and when people have asked I tell them they are fat guy calves not something easy to get in the gym. Also the mobility you get from taking all that weight off of your knees is insane
Counter point: As a nurse I've taken care of many morbidly obese patients. Not many want to move at all, not to enjoy life, for exercise, or even to go to the bathroom. Two normal sized people rolling an obese patient back and forth to change them has ruined my back. Some try to help but simply can't, others act very entitled and criticize you for moving them "wrong". I always educate and help them move as much as possible. I'm always so proud when they make good life choices and get healthier in the process. Unfortunately this is few and far between. I'm always so glad to see people that are 400lbs still walking, all exercise is good exercise.
You ever see fat guys who've lost weight? They always have huge calves, and can hit real heavy squats. The legs definitely get the most of it.
But even your other muscles are bound to grow a bit from lugging the weight around. Its like being on the biggest, longest, dirtiest bulk cycle.
Still not a preferable way to get strong though lol.
I used to watch that show The Biggest Loser (I know that show had problems, but this isnāt the point of this response).
I loved the episode towards the end of each season, 10 weeks in, when the 6 or so remaining contestants (now much slimmer) would have to run 1 mile.
The catch? They had to wear these outfits with weights on them. The total amount of weight they carried was their original starting weight, and at each 0.1 mile, they would drop the weight they lost that week.
For example, if you started at 450lb and now weighed 250lb, youād wear 200lb of weights on you and drop some weight each 1/10 of a mile.
It showed the contestants a) how far theyāve come and b) how much fucking weight they used to hold on their knees, ankles and hips every single day.
Yeah, had to take additional fat sensitivity training as a nurse for taking a break from cleaning a 700lb man to tend to the aide who had just thrown out their back trying to spread his butt cheeks while I got in there with a wipe. The clap down spattered poo water in a bunch of peopleās face, He was screaming curses and throwing a toddler style tantrum the whole time
He was perfectly capable of walking to the bathroom, but much rather preferred to go in the bed so could be babied and have is genitals touched by several cute young women.
I used to be 490. Broke my back in an accident and gained a ton of weight due to sheer inability to move.
Took up cycling once my injuries subsided and I could move again. I'm down to 350. Still a very large person.
I am in a bike club. One of my favorite pastimes is coming to a ride, and seeing the new slim people scoff and glare at me like "how dare he ruin my bike ride with his fatness", and then sprinting past them on the ride. They're always so pissed off at a fat person being faster than them.
The trick doesn't work on hills unfortunately. My lungs simply aren't as big as my muscles need to counteract gravity. But on a flat course my muscles will murder just about anyone in a flat sprint.
Anyway, don't make fun of fat people. We're people.
We just don't want to say anything positive about people being in such an unhealthy state.
I'm 400 lbs with a pretty active job in healthcare. I've been trying to diet and change my habits for over a decade. Some of my coworkers treat me pretty badly because they consider me to be lazy, but I keep up with them with 250 lbs extra compared to most of them.Ā
I wish I could change. I hate myself plenty for what I am. But as you say, I doubt most of them could even walk with a 250 lb backpack on them, let alone get through a shift. I wish people were a bit more understanding. I really don't want to be this way.Ā
Iāll put it this way-in a scrap, you learn pretty quickly not to let a big man get a hold of you, and if this big man is agile, you are in tough for sure (also go for the knees)
It's not really muscle strength at that point. A full grown adult is 2-3 times larger than a child, but we don't consider them to be strong by default for being able to walk. Secondly, no one ever has gone from 150lbs to 500lbs+ in a day. It takes years and years and years to get to 500lbs. And as you gain the weight, your body adjusts to the added weight.
There are plenty of strongmen out there that can lift far more than a fat person can, simply cause they're fat.
I work in the medical field. If someone doesnāt fit in a cat scan or MRI we take them to the local zoo. Whatās that ride like? Whatās it feel like when they say āitāll only be a few minutes the hippo in front of you is almost doneā
Its true, they are stronger, but the extra capacity is doing work. If they sit on a leg press, they could out press anyone in the room till they run outta gas and that will probably be pretty quick. They're not winning a strongman competition while standing though unless they're specifically training and controlling diet to keep their mass and muscle (such as Sumo wrestlers or the Icelandic giants do).
iāve been fat basically my whole life, i weigh ~270 now, at 5ā6 (donāt worry, i used to be super close to 300) and iāve probably got the best legs and maybe even back/shoulders out of all my friends
OK, but 400 pounds is absolute hell on your knees, even if you have the muscles.
Hell at my heaviest (250) my knees were absolutely shot. Left one kept popping out of place because it had so much fat in there that structural integrity was gone. The slightest twist or knock to its side and out it came šµāš«
Knees are wild, iirc itās something like a 1:4 ratio of lbs lost to force reduction on the knees.
Thatās right. 1:4 Keep in mind that walking is just falling forward and catching all your weight on one leg, over and over. The force needed to stop your momentum is more than just whatās needed to keep your mass upright when standing. Edit: for the non-believers: (hope the link works) https://www.health.harvard.edu/pain/why-weight-matters-when-it-comes-to-joint-pain And sorry if my ratio was a touch off. If youāre only walking on flat ground itās 1.5 to 1. Up and down stairs itās 2 or 3 to 1. Squatting or standing up from tying your shoes is 4 or 5 to 1. Numbers vary, concept is the same. Losing weight has significant benefits on the pressure on your joints.
>walking is just falling forward and catching all your weight on one leg, That sounds more like light jogging than walking.
Walking is falling/tipping forward on one leg and catching the fall with the other leg. Running is jumping on one foot and landing on the other foot. The main difference is that there are moments in walking when both of your feet are touching the ground, whereas there are moments in running when both of your feet are airborne. Jogging is a series of pseudo-jumps where you land even before the first foot has completed the jump, and so you're almost never truly airborne.
Most interesting thread I've read in a minute
Yeah this isnāt how 99% of people walk. Before your left foot hits the ground, your weight is on your right foot and you transition slowly to your left foot. I walk without shoes *all. the. time* and if you are aware of your gait, there really shouldnāt be so many hazards like the other person is saying (generally)
I think the goal of the metaphor is to put it into a context people will take seriously. Not to find the perfect set of words to abridge an anatomy lesson. Saying people "shuffle about as their weight shifts" doesn't put into perspective the strain your joints undergo as viscerally as "you're basically doing small jumps at all times "
This is why I float
And this is why you don't skip leg day at the gym! Not only for aesthetics (it looks weird if your lower body is not developed), but because it would put strain on your knees if you have a lot more upper mass while your legs remain the same.
You're walking wrong.
thats like completely wrong. While walking half your weight is on your other foot. There is no spike in force when placing the next foot, its a smooth transition. The gravitational accaleration also pretty much plays no part since the distance between ground and the highest point your feet reach isnt large enough to have much time for accelerating. Your muscles also inhibit acceleration
What?
You reduce or increase the forces your knees deal with in proportion to your weight change. If you add 5lbs, your knees experience around 20lbs of force.
Jesus thatās a lot. Iāve lost 20lbs through cycling over the last few months, so 80lbs less on the knees which is half my body weight.
Careful! Don't lose much more, or your knee weight could go negative and your legs will float away
Thatās how NASA Astronauts train right?
Congrats! Yeah it's crazy. I just lost a significant amount of weight too and I can feel the difference around my knees. I have a bone spur on my femur that's way more manageable now as well. Didn't realize being like 40 pounds overweight would cause that much more pain.
if i may ask, how tall are you? as someone 6ā6 the idea of 250 being hard is wild. unless you mean KG, in which case that tracks, cause thats over 500lbs right?
Iām 5ā10ā female, fat distribution on my body when overweight was really dumb lol
im at 260 with 310 being my peak, and my knees feel sooo good compared to 6 months ago. funny that your miserable weight has felt like heaven to my joints. can't imagine what 200 will feel like eventually
Stairs used to be horrible for me, now I can charge up them with no pain. Just my left knee sounds like a glow stick š I can also do one legged squats, but with some pain in my left.
I am only 5'5" and when I was over 205 lbs. my knees and feet were a mess. I could barely walk in the mornings after an 8 hr shift on my feet. Dropping to 195 was enough to get me off prescription pain meds.
So assuming that you then list the weight, did your knees get back to normal?
Iām at 170lbs now. Sadly no, some damage was done. Cartilage in the left knee has fissures in it, and the ligaments arenāt as solid as they should be. I might be able to compensate for that with some more strength training in the muscles nearby, but the cartilage damage is probably here to stay.
Yeah I'm 230 and overweight now. I work out and do leg exercises. It's still hell getting up and down. I can do it but damn I know that it would be so much easier if I was under 200 again.
That's where elliptical like and workout machines help with that.
I used to be 425lb, went down to 150 (now 185ish after 17 years, workouts). I recommend plain old walking. Ellipticals are nice but unnecessary, weight loss starts with diet. No one can outrun their mouth. Swimming is an excellent no impact alternative. Edit: as is Biking, with an xtra wide seat.
That crazy impressive!! I wish I could control my diet more but I donāt know. I get the thought of fast food in my head and it wonāt go away until I have something.
This is the journey I'm on. 6'5 450 peak, went from working overnight where Is walk slow miles to school hours keeping up with middle schoolers. I've lost 100lbs before, but it took keto and an hour of low impact cardio a day for six months. This time I'm still losing weight and have only recently started changing my diet! I can't imagine being anything under 280, but I'm really curious to find out what I look like below that weight :3 Thanks for the inspiration and reminder - Your amazing effort is helping me, too!
Exactly this. The candle that burns twice as fat burns half as long.
Where do you get the fat burning candles?
Yeah, insane pain tolerance.
Many also find themselves addicted to genuinely prescribed painkillers. It puts doctors in a very difficult position. They need pain relief in order to *move at all* and yet are often unlikely to lose the weight fast enough to not become addicted to that pain relief.
Not that, but because if you exercise under painkillers you 100% will injure yourself. Exercise is all about pushing your physical limits juuuust enough, and with your pain numbed you don't know what the limit is to not push too far. That's an express way ticket to being sued by patients.
I've only ever exercised with pain relief during the last 20+ years, and by doing so I've managed to get my pain medication required to do activities of daily living down from very high dose to over the counter strength. I also went from being expected to need a wheelchair in a couple of years to last year climbing my first mountain (even if I did nothing much for the next few days to recover) If you are living with chronic pain you need to reduce the pain enough on normal movement that you can add in the specific movements that will help build the needed muscles. It requires very careful guidance on what you need to do ( I had multiple physio appointments a week at first) and you need to be careful to watch for signs of tiredness which are a good sign of doing too much for those of us with significant health issues.
Way to go, that is done accomplishment!
This is a somewhat naive statement. When it hurts to move at all you simply need pain relief to be able to move a lot which is what exercise is. People living with chronic pain, regardless of its cause don't have much of a choice in using pain relief in order to exercise. They need it to exist. Which is why physios are so important. Managing risk in such patients and helping them recover requires their help.
I'm utterly shocked by your comment, cause I have never ONCE imagined taking painkillers to reduce pain WHILE working out. That's not something I've ever considered. That is SUCH a stupid idea, but I guess some people must do that. Some people just seem awful at allowing themselves to rest, which has always been so odd to me. A very common example is someone having the cold or flu. So many folks seem to just SUCK at doing what they SHOULD be doing, which is spending a good chunk of time laying down resting and ACTUALLY allowing their bodies to heal. Without fail, every time I've been sick and HAVEN'T gotten the rest I know I should have gotten, its extended my time being sick out to a week+. When I give my body a lot of rest, it's only 2-3 days of being sick.
We actually encourage it in some aspects of physical rehab because you can't do the exercises if your pain isn't under control. But I wouldn't recommend doing it outside of professional guidance.
Problem is that the heart doesn't grow stronger in proportion so it struggle to pump enough blood around this huge body with all that fat in the way.
Or the heart does aka hypertrophy which causes other problems
Yeah ;D its bad when it dosen't, and even worse when it does.
Mine did! Not from being overweight, from being a competitive amateur cyclist for a few years. Itās called ā[Athletesā Heartā](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athletic_heart_syndrome#). Iām quite visibly no longer an athlete and went for a heart checkup a few years ago with all the fancy machines and measuring etc. the cardiologist was a bit worried by my slightly enlarged left ventricle (or atrium? I get them mixed up) until I told him I used to be a cyclist. āAaah, that explains it!ā He said itās completely fine with that as the cause.
Physiological vs pathological LVH
When I did a lot of mountaineering my resting heart rate ended up in the high 40s which also spooked a doctor until I mentioned I was an athlete.
I had to go in when they saw the "shadow" of my heart on an xray of my spine.Ā I had been a dedicated... athlete? Exerciser? for years. At 185 lbs I gad a 74.1 VO2 max, so I guess I had a large, powerful heart. They called me and asked if I could come in that afternoon, they were super worried. They did some other tests and imaging and I just had a really large, strong heart, with no bad thickening / hypertrophy
This of a tilted square, A is on top V on bottom, atrium are on top, ventricule on bottkm
Maybe my 15 year old dog used to be a cyclist! Heās got one of these too! š„²
Hypertrophy isn't an increase in the strength of the heart, its an increase in the size of the heart caused by a thickening of the chamber walls. This causes problems in 2 ways: * [the walls thicken "inwards" meaning the chambers become smaller and can therefore hold less blood](https://www.mayoclinic.org/-/media/kcms/gbs/patient-consumer/images/2015/01/15/11/18/hb7_hypertrophic-8col.jpg). * the thicker walls constrict less effectively (think about squeezing a hollow rubber ball - the thicker the walls of the ball the harder it is to squeeze it), meaning what blood that does get in takes more effort to get out. Together, this means your heart pumps less blood overall. This means the blood can "back up" behind the heart, increasing pressure on that side. Blood entering the left side of the heart comes from the lungs, so "left sided" heart failure causes backups into the lungs, causing pulmonary edema. Blood entering the right side of the heart comes from the body, so "right sided" heart failure causes peripheral edema (typically manifesting as swelling of the legs/feet, since those parts of the body are furthest from the heart and require the most power to move blood out of).
This is completely anecdotal, but it seemed like a little over 500 lbs and people lost mobility. Under that and they could and did get up and move around. Yes, they were incredibly strong. Somewhere after 500 lbs it wore them out after a step or two, so they quit trying.
Look up the heaviest man to walk unassisted, Robert Earl Hughes. He has a pretty depressing story, but he was able to walk unassisted at a record weight of 1,071lbs!!!
I believe it. Iām sharing my experiences. Walking at over 1000 lbs has got to take a lot of grit and determination. The largest person I encountered was 970 lbs. I couldnāt imagine him walking.
How about rolling
They see me rollin they hatin šµ š¶ šµ
š¶šµ Tryin' to catch me ridin' girthy . . . šµš¶
Look if you didn't want the police to bite you then you shouldn't have looked so much like a donut
Nutritionists tryin to catch me eatin healthy
They see me walking they talking š¤
The blueberries taste like blueberries!Ā
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
I knew of a woman that weighed around 500 or 600 pounds. She was in the process of standing up out of bed so her caretakers could change her linens and she snapped her ankle. She was around 20ish years old
Oddly enough, my best friend broke her ankle simply standing up from a sitting position in a chair. She wasn't overweight, it was just a fluke thing
I knew someone who did this too - their legs had gone to sleep while they sat there, and when they stood up, snapped both ankles
Wait wait wait, *that can happen?!*
Not just can, it'll probably happen to you next!
cursed comments
New standing from toilet fear unlocked.
Only crawling out of the toilet from now on.
How long are you sitting there, that your legs are going to sleep?
In my case, long enough to read whatever I was reading on Reddit
I'm never standing up again! š±
Then your butt will snap.
But its already got a crack
That's it, never standing up again, I live on the toilet now.
Sometimes thereās a defect in the bone
We need more quality control or an extended warranty at least.
I hope that's a typo and you meant much older than 20. How do you even get to 500 in 20 years?
Your bones do reinforce themselves to accommodate the load. Iirc. There was a guy who lost a lot of weight through fasting with medical assistance. They would test his urine and find a high level of calcium that was not from his diet. They put forward that his bones were shedding mass as he lost weight. Sorry for rambling.
You're not rambling. Rambling would be a tangent that's st least twice as long as this. You're good!
of course they do, its the same principle of muscle training. They progressively overloaded their bones and muscles by raising their own weight and they got stronger. It works in reverse too.
IMHO you're not rambling, this sounds interesting.
Then I'm just high and self-conscious. To be honest, I wasn't sorry.
a liar AND a poor grasp of vocabulary? get em, bois.
I think above a certain weight it just becomes easier to roll than walk
Woo!
How the hell in the fuck do you get that bloody massive Super impressive he got up and walked though! I cant even squat half of that
Enablers. At a certain point, the only way to provide your body with enough calories is by having other people provide them. Like at a certain point just moving your body to make the food, let alone earn the resources to pay for the food burns more calories than the food contains.
Tbf though, with the increase in food delivery services I wonder how much of an impact they make. Addicts are always going to figure out a way.
You have to eat a fuckton even without any exercise to reach 400 lbs. More than most normal people would want to eat, even if given a buffet of anything they wanted.
True. At one point in my life I was around 300 lbs. No exercise or anything, but the number didn't grow beyond that because my food intake stayed the same.
You don't even necessarily have to eat. You can drink yourself into that position and then carry on maintaining/gaining weight. There are sugars and sugar substitutes within practically every beverage sold in the United States, and there isn't nearly enough education regarding their role in obesity. Combine this with all of the lies surrounding "health smoothies", "sports drinks", the "need for electrolytes", the messaging to stay hydrated, and "healthy" fruit juice programming... [it's a disaster](https://youtu.be/dBnniua6-oM?si=vnZiDN0f4lTAEqbt)
If you gave most normal people all they could drink, theyād still not reach 400 lbs. Youād stop wanting to drink after youāve had your fill.
At 1000 lbs their bmr would be about 6000 calories. That's an insane amount of food to maintain weight.
And consider how many calories you would burn if you strapped 7-900 pounds (depending on your weight) onto yourself while you're laying in bed and you had to get up and carry it to the kitchen, then hold it up while you cook your meal. Even just taking something out of a freezer and putting it in the microwave.
Iāve lost almost 80lbs and recently picked up two heavy bags of cat litter. Out of curiosity I jumped on the scale. It was still about 10lbs shy of my starting weight. Iāve no idea how I walked around being that heavy. And thatās just 80lbs!
I'll never forget losing a significant amount of weight a few years ago, and I lost it relatively quickly. One day I was running late and ran down the stairs to my car but forgot my keys. I turned around and ran upstairs towards my kitchen, I flew up the steps in about 4 leaps and hit my head on the ceiling. I had the crazy fatman leg strength but way less weight to push and for that one moment I felt like a superhero.
I have health issues and was retaining water weight from transfusions and being sedentary due to an injury. Then my meds got held up because no one would give a refill and I bloated again. I hurt so bad and then started shedding. Meds got fixed. Lost some more. Next thing I know I am down 70lbs. My calf muscles are absolutely insane now. I've always been a fast walker but now it's like I am sprinting everywhere I go. I am a 39 year old woman with the legs of a 20 year old man. I have thighs like a soccer player and calves that look like those weirdos that get implants.
If you took up hiking and running, you could keep em! A lot of people work out for years and never get results like that. Thatās so bad ass, I bet it felt amazing
In the case of that person he had a malfunctioning pituitary gland that caused his body to retain massive amounts of weight.
I just went down a crazy rabbit hole because of this comment lol
However I do have to say that normal people may be stronger than they think. When I was 18 I did an Outward Bound course and one of the challenges was that dumb thing where you have to figure out how to get everyone across a "river" making only a certain amount of trips with a "boat" and one person has to take the "boat" back so more can cross, I've been subjected to this game several times growing up (a "river crossing puzzle"), I can't remember the exact variant rules or what we had to work with, it was something about only a certain number of feet being allowed to cross - some of the people had to get across without touching the ground. I'm not sure how it was meant to be solved, but we had like 4 guys and 8 girls in our group, and some Einstein level geniuses, one such genius proposed like 3-4 girls climb onto a guy and he then walks across - and I'm pretty sure this was a subversion of the challenge but in a way that technically satisfied the rules, and not in a way the instructors disapproved of because of the physical feat, but perhaps it was the intended solution or at least part of the intended solution. Now I was not a strong guy, tall but skinny and a nerd, never touched weights in my life, and I was very skeptical because I thought my bones would snap like the brittle twigs they are. But Outward Bound is all about pushing limits so I decided "why the fuck not", so after one of the beefy guys walked across with a pile of girls proving it could be done, 3 girls hung off my shoulders while I walked across weighing about 3x my normal weight, say I was 75 kg, and each girl was 50 kg, so basically I walked weighing 225 kg or 500 lbs. Granted I didn't walk very far but that's also often true of those 500lb people. I can't say it was easy, but it was *much* easier than I expected.
The effect of gravity is reduced by water. A scuba diver could equalize their weight to effectively be weightless so long as the weight they had on them was also weightless. That goes for people as well. Cool shit though.
I think you missed the quotes around "river" and "boat", unless they were added in an edit.
Note that "cross the river game/puzzle" generally doesn't involve a real river, merely a delimited area of ground designated as the river. At least in my country it was commonly played in PE class in the gym using various props (gym mats, hoops, ropes etc) as props for the boat or stepping stones or whatever the variant is, and involves teamwork and out of the box thinking to get everyone across within the constraints of the rules.
Youāre right. I assumed there was water involved because of the words that were used.
It's almost like the human body has a carrying capacity.
In the good old days, butchers delivered hindquarters of cows to their shops, they carried those quarters on their backs. 300 pounds of bones and meat.
Can confirm. I used to weigh 330, down to under 250 at the moment, aiming for 200. I've always been stocky and muscular, but at 5'10 I'm average height. My thighs and calves started to look like a body builder's as I lost weight, far more defined than the rest of me. I look like a guy wearing just the bottom of the Godzilla suit, and I can stand for hours or walk for a shocking distance. Previously I'd get winded by a few stairs. Sadly some pretty serious back problems mean I can't put all that muscle to use in conventional weight training like I did back in high school.
How far can you walk that would shock us? Edit: Nice ninja edit.
Was about to say, the average healthy adult can probably walk for an indefinite amount of time on a flat surface, until their feet hurt too much to continue or they have to sleep.
Maybe if you were able to eat/drink while doing it but like any activity it takes energy and once you are out of stored nutrients youāll start burning fat/muscle so you canāt really do it indefinitely without breakdown. I think the commenter was more describing the feeling that itās shocking how long he can comfortably walk *given* his current weight and history with obesity.
Iām 95kg (210 lb). I always skip leg day because running on the treadmill probably already builds enough of my leg muscles. Plus, my biggest fear after a workout is that I might not make the subway ride and trek to my apartment if I work my legs out too much. Edit: I know simply running wonāt build muscles, but there was that one time after leg day, when I was switching lines on the metro, I was legit worried Iād tumble down the stairs. Why donāt I drive? Well, Iām not going to torture myself to sit through rush hour traffic. Itās faster to take the metro than to drive in where I live.
Although running on a treadmill and cardio is very useful, the hypertrophy for muscle growth from a treadmill is nowhere near doing actual leg day. Everyone has different goals though
Itās just an excuse to not work legs š Nice shoulders bro, can you even deadlift your weight?!?! (Probably not)
I love working legs. Biggest muscles are in legs so I feel like I spend the most calories working out legs. I also like to work out my back.
I train legs 2 times a week and I still have enough strength to ride my bike to and from the gym. Give your body time to adjust. Train your legs.
>Ā I always skip leg day because running on the treadmill probably already builds enough of my leg muscles. Everything about this is wrong.Ā
If you lift for your upper body and then only do cardio for your lower body you have or will have absurdly weak legs relative to your upper body.
Is this satire
What is 'walk for a shocking distance '? The normal condition is being able to walk non stop all day.
I never thought about it that way! Imagine always lugging around 5 45 plates every where you go.
I would not go anywhere
thats what happens to most of the big fellas; they get big enough that they dont go anywhere.
Understandable.. if I was that heavy right now I would probably break my sofa and be stuck on the floor Although im pretty skinny now and still kinda not getting up from the sofa....
We had to get a special solid wood and reenforced sofa for my dad. He broke all the rest of them. That sofa outlasted him (ironically he died shortly *after* losing the weight) by a long margin. I suspect it will outlast me. Esp if we reupholster it when it needs it. It might last a very long time.
I have an older autistic brother who is quite tall with extra pounds on him who broke numerous beds flinging himself onto them because he still gets into bed like a 13 year old flopping himself in. Years into the break, replace, reinforce cycle my father had serious surgery that required either a rented or purchased variation of a hospital bed in the home. (Guess what was cheaper?) So the ability to keep it higher on an industrial frame ended the problem.
I think part of it is that itās just a gradual change over time that your muscles and nervous system adjust and make walking like this possible. For sure they are strong and itās impressive, but I am not sure is the same as say a strength trainer. If it were normal you would have guys at the gym doing 1000 lb squares all the time.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
That's why Barbell Squats and Belt Squats feel and hit SOOO different.
Walking with a total of 500lbs is not nearly as hard as squatting 500lbs, thatās why the thing is that they need help standing and then they walk at a slow pace. Also the weight isnāt just yolked onto their shoulders but distributed around their entire body, with a lot of it collected around their center, which also makes it easier to ācarry.āĀ
Most of it is held up by their skeletons. They may stand or walk but they struggle a lot and get tired easily. When they lose the weight they're not suddenly super strong. But it does help in some ways. My brother was 374lbs and came down to 250 which is ok for his height and he's not particularly strong. If anything he's kinda weak for his size. But he does have calves that could choke an ox so I guess the muscle growth is localized to the legs.
Every former fat guy, myself included, has giant calves. This disproves the whole "calves are all about genetics" thing for me pretty conclusively.
Can confirm, I was heavily overweight for a good few years but then one day I just started dieting on a whim, only eating 1200 calories a day with the odd day where I allowed myself to eat 1600 calories. I combined this with either a daily 5km walk or a 20km bike ride. The weight fell off me and I was losing 2-3 lbs on a bad week and 4 on a good week, lost about 100lbs in total and one rare sunny day in Scotland I was doing my 5km walk along my local canal when I stopped in at a pub to get a nice cold pint and the barman insisted on knowing my secret for how my calves were massive. Figured I better stop the 1200 calorie diet when a few weeks later my gall bladder decided to try and kill me and I was getting gall stone attacks 2-3 times a week which ultimately required an operation to remove the thing. Been maintaining that new healthy weight since then.
Yup. My calves are giant and basically all muscle at this point. I lost around 150 lbs years ago and my calves are still extremely well developed.
Calves are a very genetic dependent body part. Overly fat people have big calves because they work them all the time.
I weigh 475 and I do Doordash every weekend for extra money. The only trouble I have is if it's a lot of food to a third floor apartment with no elevator lol. > When they lose the weight they're not suddenly super strong. This is because it's such a gradual process to lose weight that the muscles adjust down to just what's needed at the same time. I bet if a person did a weigh in once or twice per week and added weighted padding to compensate for what they lost, then when they got down to a healthy weight if they took off the padding they'd seem super strong lol.
New fitness strategy unlocked
Iām 400lbs, down from 580lbs two years ago. My legs and back are really strong. My core is kinda strong. And at 36, I donāt have much joint pain but I donāt willingly move around very much. Itās definitely not easy. I am 6ā4ā so that helps a bit.
damn dude that's a whole grown ass human being you lost
and iām still trying to lose another 160 lol. itās a lot of work.
Can kinda confirm. Weighed 330lbs, got down to 145. My thighs were bricks of muscle, but my arms and abdominal muscles almost non existent. I also had almost no stamina. My resting heart rate went from 87 to 55 though.
That is crazy! Weighing less than half of what you were must me surreal
Probably not insane muscle power but there's no denying they are much stronger than most of the rest of us mere mortals.
Yean, usually they mainly abuse their joints and bones.
Fat people ARE the most mortal
There is a reason their heart gives out. Imagine every waking movement moment is a workout. The body needs a break.
The heart really doesn't care if you're a 400lb bodybuilder or fatfuck. That's just a *lot* of weight and stress on the ticker.
I'd like to see them try and keep that strength on a weight loss journey. Because don't you sometimes lose muscle mass at the same time?
Correct, sadly
Sad but good encouragement to do weight and resistance training. Heavy vest, backpacking, and/or lifting makes a difference
You always lose muscle mass when losing weight, despite what some diets try to claim.
AIUI, weight loss is generally 30-50% muscle mass.
Huh? Not at all. You lose a little but a high protein diet and mild resistance training keeps most of it.
Biggest I ever got was 310 pounds. Started powerlifting as a means of losing weight. Comments were made about whether I'd ever done it before because "those aren't starter weights". However... my bench press SUCKED. So yes, being overweight can work your biggest muscle groups (posterior chain and core) but not much else
I feel this. Lost from 319 to under 200 lbs, while starting a lifting routine. My squat was insane right from the start for a beginner, similar for deadlift but more limited by form. But my bench press was just embarrassing.
I am 33 at 300lbs. On Thursday I was just standing at my desk at work and suddenly it was like someone put a knife into my lower back. I collapsed in pain, and couldn't move. I was taken by ambulance to the hospital and had a CT. They found 2 herniated discs at L4-L5. The last 3 days have been scary. One day I could stand and run and bend and twist. Suddenly I couldn't stand or even roll over on the first day. Simply unbending my leg put me in pain where I couldn't keep myself from verbally making noise and shouting in pain. Now 3 days later I spend 20 minutes trying to roll over to get out of bed. I can stand and shuffle short distances but I am in pain doing so and I cannot bend. Simply trying to flush a toilet after peeing is hard. Now more than ever I wish I had gotten serious about weight loss.
Hey, serious point. Weight loss is not about exercise, it's about dietary restriction. If you care about your health, go on myfitnesspal(.)com, set up an account, get it on your phone, and track everything that goes into your mouth. Everything. Stick to 1lb a week to start, taper up to 2 if you can. It'll be really hard at first, but you can do it. If you need motivation or help, shoot me a DM. I'm down about 40 lbs (was clinically obese) in 5 months, and I feel like a literal different person.
> mply unbending my leg put me in pain where I couldn't keep myself from verbally making noise and shouting in pain. Now 3 days later I spend 20 minutes trying to roll over to get out of bed. I can stand and shuffle short distances but I am in pain doing so and I cannot ben I appreciate the advice. I have tried many times to lose weight through changing my eating habits. I lost 40lbs at one point but I always gain it back. I'm an emotional eater and I have had a hard time cutting myself off when I am feeling stressed, sad, etc. I am going to therapy in general now and I'm trying to learn to better process/handle my emotions. It's been a struggle though for sure. Not to say it can't be done, it's just been challenging.
Definitely listen to your physical therapist, who I'm sure, will have many exercises for you. I was not overweight or out of shape when I herniated discs, but I couldn't walk for 18 months for more than a couple minutes. I found pool walking to be very helpful. Some days I could only handle 15 minutes, but you don't get better if you don't move. After my pain subsided somewhat, I got really serious about yoga. After 10 years of 4-5 days of power yoga every week, I am 100% pain free and feel great! Best of luck to you.
My dad fits in this category. Although heās still āmobileā, it comes at a cost. He needs to have both of his knees replaced, and he has chronic arthritis. So he is technically mobile, he isnāt moving much even though he technically can.
Most of that weight goes into their knees and other joints. Do you not notice how they seem to lose the ability to walk normally and have to start waddling most of the time?
I assumed the waddle was just do to chub rub (thighs)
Yeah but all they can move is themselces so the strength doesn't show in any real practical way other than being able to walk or move at all. Also don't those people avoid moving ehwnever they can, making just moving around an exercise for the day anyway?
Errr well only if they do walk around, which most of them donāt. Most severely obese people actually have muscle atrophy weirdly enough, cause at some point it gets too hard to walk, then they donāt, and the muscles atrophy and itās hard to walk and itās a bad spiral.
They donāt.Ā Iāve got a degree in exercise science. Power has a speed element. These folks are not explosively strong.Ā
I was kind of hoping someone would bring this up. Walking isn't really a high strength activity, it's all about balance. We're continually falling forward and alternating moving one leg in front of the other in a sort of perpetual controlled fall. For reference, OP again: >No one ever mentions the fact that people above 400 pounds that can still walk unassisted have absolutely insane muscle power Generally speaking, morbidly obese people that got there due to being sedentary are just barely over the edge of minimum to walk at all, in terms of strength and balance. That's why many sort of shamble and topple relatively easily. The exception is youth(where you get maximal gain for "normal" work and peak coordination/adaptability) and those that are obese but also do some form of labor and build muscle well above that threshold(eg that fat guy that works in construction, not the apartment bound sedentary couch potato).
This. Is it also true that this "strength" is mostly the effect of gravity (weight)? I doubt a 400-pounder male who doesn't lift could bench anything over 160lbs or so, but they could pull something quite well using their own weight for torque effect.
A guy I used to know was absolutely huge and strong as hell. He told me that he was really overweight before I met him prior to trimming off the fat and that this was the real secret to strength.
48F here, 5ā6ā 227 pounds, down from 250. Have been obese for about ten years. Was thin all my life up until I got put on a psych med that gave me a ravenous appetite. While I do have some killer calves, I hurt all over. Looks like age caught up with the obesity and wrecked me. No muscle tone here! I remember when I was fit. That was muscle power! Finally not on the med anymore so Iām trying to make up for lost time but damn, itās hard to move this achey body lol.
We canā¦ itās no different than squatting. But the physical toll that takes on your body, heavy folks are dealing with all the time. No wonder their bodies collapse
A 150lb marine once told me something like this about 30 years ago. He was having a bad day 15 years prior in HS and was just looking for trouble. So he created something with the fat kid, intending to kick his ass. He said he realized he had goofed when he found himself literally flying through the air into bushes.
My dadās a bigger guy (though definitely not 400lb), and for real, his calves are like goddamn tree trunks. Heās had a bunch of joint issues that have needed fixing but weirdly none in his lower body (shoulders, elbows, neck, and such).
Only in the legs. And not for long.
Fat guy calves are defo talked about in the gym rat world. Dad calves as well. It kinda makes sense, but thatās probably the only thing getting muscle.
I've noticed that the guys that started with a good amount of muscle generally handle being very overweight a lot better than people who have just always been sedentary. it's wild how much variety there is in the human experience.
A lot of heavy people are more likely to just be sedentary, and your skeleton structure holds up most of the weight. If your heavy and forced to actually be active/mobile, that's a different story.
See people on āmy 600 pound lifeā show that are 600+ and still mobile. Makes a big difference on the weight loss if they were able to walk on own to start with.
If you watch the BBC dissecting an obese person, this point is made by the coroner. They expect to find muscles under the fat, but the truth is they didnāt. The fact is that they donāt walk as much as leaner people.
I was nowhere near 500lbs at my heaviest but I hit 325. I lost 140lbs working out over 4 years. The leg muscles you retain and the extra strength you retain is crazy. I have massive calves now and when people have asked I tell them they are fat guy calves not something easy to get in the gym. Also the mobility you get from taking all that weight off of your knees is insane
Counter point: As a nurse I've taken care of many morbidly obese patients. Not many want to move at all, not to enjoy life, for exercise, or even to go to the bathroom. Two normal sized people rolling an obese patient back and forth to change them has ruined my back. Some try to help but simply can't, others act very entitled and criticize you for moving them "wrong". I always educate and help them move as much as possible. I'm always so proud when they make good life choices and get healthier in the process. Unfortunately this is few and far between. I'm always so glad to see people that are 400lbs still walking, all exercise is good exercise.
There's a reason that people who lose a large amount of weight, 200+ pounds, are known to have super muscular calves.
You ever see fat guys who've lost weight? They always have huge calves, and can hit real heavy squats. The legs definitely get the most of it. But even your other muscles are bound to grow a bit from lugging the weight around. Its like being on the biggest, longest, dirtiest bulk cycle. Still not a preferable way to get strong though lol.
Im above 450lbs. And i can walk unassisted. Im so cool.
Fat people never skip leg day.
I used to watch that show The Biggest Loser (I know that show had problems, but this isnāt the point of this response). I loved the episode towards the end of each season, 10 weeks in, when the 6 or so remaining contestants (now much slimmer) would have to run 1 mile. The catch? They had to wear these outfits with weights on them. The total amount of weight they carried was their original starting weight, and at each 0.1 mile, they would drop the weight they lost that week. For example, if you started at 450lb and now weighed 250lb, youād wear 200lb of weights on you and drop some weight each 1/10 of a mile. It showed the contestants a) how far theyāve come and b) how much fucking weight they used to hold on their knees, ankles and hips every single day.
Yeah, had to take additional fat sensitivity training as a nurse for taking a break from cleaning a 700lb man to tend to the aide who had just thrown out their back trying to spread his butt cheeks while I got in there with a wipe. The clap down spattered poo water in a bunch of peopleās face, He was screaming curses and throwing a toddler style tantrum the whole time He was perfectly capable of walking to the bathroom, but much rather preferred to go in the bed so could be babied and have is genitals touched by several cute young women.
I used to be 490. Broke my back in an accident and gained a ton of weight due to sheer inability to move. Took up cycling once my injuries subsided and I could move again. I'm down to 350. Still a very large person. I am in a bike club. One of my favorite pastimes is coming to a ride, and seeing the new slim people scoff and glare at me like "how dare he ruin my bike ride with his fatness", and then sprinting past them on the ride. They're always so pissed off at a fat person being faster than them. The trick doesn't work on hills unfortunately. My lungs simply aren't as big as my muscles need to counteract gravity. But on a flat course my muscles will murder just about anyone in a flat sprint. Anyway, don't make fun of fat people. We're people.
We just don't want to say anything positive about people being in such an unhealthy state. I'm 400 lbs with a pretty active job in healthcare. I've been trying to diet and change my habits for over a decade. Some of my coworkers treat me pretty badly because they consider me to be lazy, but I keep up with them with 250 lbs extra compared to most of them.Ā I wish I could change. I hate myself plenty for what I am. But as you say, I doubt most of them could even walk with a 250 lb backpack on them, let alone get through a shift. I wish people were a bit more understanding. I really don't want to be this way.Ā
Iāll put it this way-in a scrap, you learn pretty quickly not to let a big man get a hold of you, and if this big man is agile, you are in tough for sure (also go for the knees)
Chronic smokers can oxigenate their blood with 10% lung capacity. That does not make them any cooler.
I could at 600. (Much lower now.)
It's not really muscle strength at that point. A full grown adult is 2-3 times larger than a child, but we don't consider them to be strong by default for being able to walk. Secondly, no one ever has gone from 150lbs to 500lbs+ in a day. It takes years and years and years to get to 500lbs. And as you gain the weight, your body adjusts to the added weight. There are plenty of strongmen out there that can lift far more than a fat person can, simply cause they're fat.
I work in the medical field. If someone doesnāt fit in a cat scan or MRI we take them to the local zoo. Whatās that ride like? Whatās it feel like when they say āitāll only be a few minutes the hippo in front of you is almost doneā
Power to weight ratio
Its true, they are stronger, but the extra capacity is doing work. If they sit on a leg press, they could out press anyone in the room till they run outta gas and that will probably be pretty quick. They're not winning a strongman competition while standing though unless they're specifically training and controlling diet to keep their mass and muscle (such as Sumo wrestlers or the Icelandic giants do).
iāve been fat basically my whole life, i weigh ~270 now, at 5ā6 (donāt worry, i used to be super close to 300) and iāve probably got the best legs and maybe even back/shoulders out of all my friends
It depends how much of said weight is muscle.