Does A Little Bit Of Bodyfat Improve Physical Health And Fitness?

[JoeRoccoCassara]

When I diet and exercise I usually feel leaner, but I also seem to get slower, my endurance decreases and my strength wains as time goes on. When I eat a lot of salty, sugary and fatty foods and don't workout I seem to gain weight and not really improve physically, I decline over time. However when and only when I eat salty, sugary fatty foods continually and workout 3 to 6 hours a day I gain some bodyfat and muscle but how far I can push myself in workouts greatly increases, I see fast results that don't stop, I grow stronger, I can run faster, and it doesn't stop until I begin to diet.

 

It's wierd, I've always heard your performance increases with a healthy diet, mine stays the same the same with a healthy diet, and the harder I workout the worse it gets, and the more pain I feel if I'm dieting, but when I eat fatty foods and workout I feel like I'm hulking out and growing more athletic to no end. I curl 40 lbs weights when going fatty, but can't pull off 25 lbs weights when I'm eating super lean, I weigh more but I'm faster and have greater stamina and tolerance pain. I'm happier over all. Is this because of my individual genetic makeup? How can bodyfat improve my health, appearance, relieve my pain and also improve my athletic performance?

 

[ChristineJensen]

Yes definitely, little bit of body fat improves physical health and fitness. And Nope, just have proper diet with proper spices. No more light foods and no more excess of spices foods.

[fahrquad]

Blood sugar is depleted during exercise so having some fat reserves is a good idea if you are active.  Once the blood sugar is depleted, the liver starts converting stored glycogen to glucose.  After that the next reserve is converting fat, after which the body starts breaking down muscle tissue, which is counterproductive to the purpose of exercising in the first place.   If you have ever had an episode of Hypoglycemia you can relate.  I didn't eat much Thursday night, and when I woke up Friday morning my blood sugar was 44 mg/dl.  The normal range is 70-120 mg/dl.  

 

The one time I got down to my recommended height/weight I felt like crap all of the time.  I am 5'-8'' and got down to 164 (which is a BMI of 24.9).  I am currently 234 (which is a BMI of 35.6) and I feel fine.  I am a diabetic (controlled) with high blood (controlled) and high cholesterol (controlled) and my blood work has been just fine.  I was up to 265 at one point (which is a BMI of 40.3) when I was eating the same as my wife.  Her BMI comes to 45.3, unless she has gotten heavier since the last time I was able to get her on the scale.   The wife was 155 when we got married nearly 18 years ago, which was a BMI of 25.8, and she is now around 270.  Remember that the current recommendation for BMI is 25 and under.  IMHO, I think the upper limit of the BMI should be bumped up to around 30.  At 5'-8", my body weight should be 197 to get a BMI of 30.   

 

https://www.rush.edu/health-wellness/quick-guides/what-is-a-healthy-weight

Edited December 31, 2016 by fahrquad

[OceanBreeze]

when I woke up Friday morning my blood sugar was 44 mg/dl.  The normal range is 70-120 mg/dl.  

 

 

 

44! I'm surprised you woke up at all. Must have been the sound of your teeth chattering that did it!

[fahrquad]

When I diet and exercise I usually feel leaner, but I also seem to get slower, my endurance decreases and my strength wains as time goes on. When I eat a lot of salty, sugary and fatty foods and don't workout I seem to gain weight and not really improve physically, I decline over time. However when and only when I eat salty, sugary fatty foods continually and workout 3 to 6 hours a day I gain some bodyfat and muscle but how far I can push myself in workouts greatly increases, I see fast results that don't stop, I grow stronger, I can run faster, and it doesn't stop until I begin to diet.

 

It's wierd, I've always heard your performance increases with a healthy diet, mine stays the same the same with a healthy diet, and the harder I workout the worse it gets, and the more pain I feel if I'm dieting, but when I eat fatty foods and workout I feel like I'm hulking out and growing more athletic to no end. I curl 40 lbs weights when going fatty, but can't pull off 25 lbs weights when I'm eating super lean, I weigh more but I'm faster and have greater stamina and tolerance pain. I'm happier over all. Is this because of my individual genetic makeup? How can bodyfat improve my health, appearance, relieve my pain and also improve my athletic performance?

 

Low-fat vs high-fat diets.JPG

 

I should add that body fat is important to women who are nursing, and fats also play a role in the retention and utilization of vitamins.  Women who are lean and physically active often have irregular periods or stop having a menstrual cycle altogether.  You might want to read the Wikipedia entry on fat metabolism.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatty_acid_metabolism

[CraigD]

I should add that body fat is important to women who are nursing ...

I don’t think this is true. Do you have a link of reference supporting it, Fahrquad :QuestionM

[fahrquad]

I don’t think this is true. Do you have a link of reference supporting it, Fahrquad :QuestionM

 

Really?  Do I even need to justify this?  Here is your f***ing link, and I am now looking for a thread where people with some common sense make comments worth responding to.

 

http://www.westonaprice.org/childrens-health/fat-and-cholesterol-in-human-milk/

[CraigD]

Really? Do I even need to justify this?

Of course you do! The most important rule we have at hypography is that people simply can’t claim things they think are true are, without backing them up with links or references.

 

This is more than just a rule to keep a science website like hypography from being crammed with opinions known to science to be wrong. It’s an key part of the scientific method, and its widespread adoption is what separates pre-scientific thinking from modern. Ideas like the earth being flat and the heavens being a bowl covering it are not intuitively senseless, and were considered obvious truths before the tradition of only accepting things supported by scientific experiments as being likely true became widespread.

 

Here is your f***ing link, and I am now looking for a thread where people with some common sense make comments worth responding to.

 

http://www.westonaprice.org/childrens-health/fat-and-cholesterol-in-human-milk/

:thumbs_do That link doesn’t support the claim that body fat is important to women who are nursing. It supports the claim that fat in the milk babies drink is important to their health, that a high-quality diet is important for a woman to produce milk with enough fat in it, and that a diet with too little fat in it can lead to inadequate fat in the milk a woman produces. It says nothing at all about women’s body fat.

 

Keep looking. :thumbs_up Before I asked you to, I of course looked for something supporting the claim myself, but after a quick search, found only a few posts and articles from and intended for breastfeeding mothers, all stating that your claim is a myth – an old wives tale, if you will.

 

The claim isn’t obviously true physiologically, because, as the Wikipedia article you linked in your initial post states, the glands that make milk don’t get fat from the blood or surrounding fatty tissues, but convert blood glucose into it. For body fat to supply fat in milk, it would first need to be converted into glucose, which happens when we aren’t getting enough food in our diet.

 

Body fat is valuable in situations where food supplies aren’t reliable, so nursing women in these situations can benefit from having extra body fat. But in situations where women are able to get all the food they want on a daily basis, I don’t think the amount of body fat they have has any impact on the quality of the milk they produce.

 

Metabolism is complicated, and still only partially understood, though, so I wouldn’t be surprised if I’m wrong. I’d need to see some scientific evidence before accepting the claim that body fat is important to women who are nursing.

[davidmary]

If we want to eat  a lot of salty, sugary and fatty foods then we need to go gym, work hard or drink grapefruit juice because grapefruit juice increase metabolism.